The Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, perhaps the most remarkable documents of the kind known to exist, were published at Oxford in 1720 by Hearne, in a volume entitled Roberti de Avesbury Historia de mirabilibus gestis Edwardi III, and inserted in the third volume of the Harleian Miscellany, 1745. These two editions differ considerably from each other, and still more so from the transcripts here given, which are taken from the edition printed at Paris by M. Meon, who held a situation in the Manuscript Department of the Bibliothèque de Roi. The fifth and thirteenth, however, which are not comprehended in the Vatican collection, are supplied from Hearne’s work. Of the seventeen letters of which the series consists, eight are written in English and nine in French.
They appear to have been written after Anne Boleyn had been sent away from court, in consequence of reports injurious to her reputation, which had begun to be publicly circulated. Her removal indeed was so abrupt that she had resolved never to return. The king soon repented his harshness, and strove to persuade her to come back; but it was a long time, and not without great trouble, before he could induce her to comply. Her retirement did not take place before the month of May, 1528; this is proved by a letter from Fox, Bishop of Hereford, to Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, dated the 4th of May, in that year, in which the writer, who had just returned from Rome, whither he had been sent to negotiate the king’s divorce, gives an account of his landing at Sandwich on the 2nd, of his arrival on the same night at Greenwich, where the king then was, and of the order he received from him to go to the apartments of Anne Boleyn, which were in the Tiltyard, and inform her how anxious he had been to hasten the arrival of the legate, and how much he was rejoiced by it. This letter, formerly in the collection of Harley, Earl of Oxford, is now at Rome.
It must have been very soon afterwards that Anne Boleyn left the court. In fact, in the first letter (4 of this series) the king excuses himself for being under the necessity of parting from her. In the second (6) he complains of the dislike which she shows to return to court; but in neither of them does he allude to the pestilential disease which in that year committed such ravages in England. In the third (10), however, he does advert to it as a disorder which has prevailed for some time, and on which he makes some observations.
Between this letter, probably written in the month of July, and the sixth (17), in which the king speaks of the arrival of the legate in Paris, and which must have been written about the end of September, there are two letters (1 and 5) certainly written within a few days of each other. In the second of these two, viz., the fifth of this series, the king expresses his extreme satisfaction which he has received from the lady’s answer to his request. In the effusion of his gratitude, he pays a visit to his mistress, and both address a letter (8) to Cardinal Wolsey, in which Henry manifests his astonishment at not having yet heard of the arrival of Campeggio, the legate, in Paris. The date of this letter may thus be fixed in the month of September.
The fourth (1), apparently written in August, is the most interesting of the whole collection, inasmuch as it fixes the period of the commencement of the king’s affection for Anne Boleyn. He complains of “having been above a whole year struck with the dart of love,” and that he is not yet certain whether he shall succeed in finding a place in the heart and affections of her whom he loves.