Is this really ANNE BOLEYN’S LAST LETTER, written on 6 May 1536, while she was imprisoned in the Tower of London, or is it one of history’s most famous forged letters? In this six wives documentary from History Calling we look at what happened to Anne Boleyn in the days after her shock arrest and at whether she was able to compose a remarkable letter to her husband, Henry VIII, in which she pleaded her innocence of any wrongdoing against him, admonished him for his treatment of her and reminded him of his paternal duty to their daughter, the two year old Princess Elizabeth, later Elizabeth I. Anne’s death, which is arguably one of the most famous executions in history, was and is a great Tudor scandal, but did she try to save herself by one last appeal to her husband before she became the first queen ever executed in English history and if so, did Henry even receive the letter?

I’ll take you through the provenance of this missive (including the story that it was found in the papers of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex after his own execution in 1540) and at what modern historians have made of its handwriting, contents and style and the likelihood that Anne was allowed to write it. If it was composed by this doomed queen, we’ll also think about how much it tells us about what Anne Boleyn was like. Along the way we’ll look at the conditions of Anne’s imprisonment and at how she acted during the final days of her life.

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READ

[FREE] Sandra Vasoli, ‘6 May 1536 – A Letter from the Tower by Sandra Vasoli’
https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/6...
[FREE] Sandra Vasoli, ‘Anne Boleyn’s Emotional Last Letter to her Husband Henry VIII from the Tower of London’
https://www.theanneboleynfiles.com/an...
[FREE] Gareth Russell, ‘May 6th, 1536: The Mystery of the Queen's Letter’
http://garethrussellcidevant.blogspot...
Sandra Vasoli, Anne Boleyn's Letter from the Tower: A New Assessment (MadeGlobal Publishing, 2015) https://amzn.to/39lM5lM
Susan Bordo, The Creation of Anne Boleyn: In Search of the Tudors' Most Notorious Queen (One World Publications, 2014) https://amzn.to/3zznLY1
Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (WileyBlackwell, 2005) https://amzn.to/3h9efQD (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3xLivgr (US link)
Sarah Morris and Natalie Grueninger, In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn (2013) https://amzn.to/3y8rt6z (UK LINK) OR https://amzn.to/2W9oJct (US LINK)
Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives Of Henry VIII (2nd edn, Phoenix, 2009) https://amzn.to/3atiEfi (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/36IqD5r (US link)
David Starkey, Six Wives: the Queens of Henry VIII (Vintage, 2004) https://amzn.to/3k9uD4Z (UK link) OR https://amzn.to/3wImKIh (US link)

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Thumbnail: Portrait of Anne Boleyn from the National Portrait Gallery, London. Photo by Flicker, hape662, CC BY 2.0 (detail). Supposed last letter from Anne Boleyn, 6 May 1536, British Library, MS. Cotton, Otho C. x. fol. 232v (detail)

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