Ann, queen of Henry VIII of England, and memorable in the English history as being the primary cause of the reformation, as the mother of Queen Elizabeth under whom it was completely established, and also on account of her own sufferings. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, and was born in 1505. At the age of eight she attended the Princess Mary, Henry's sister, into France, as maid of honour, and continued in this capacity during that lady's short-lived union with Louis XII. On the death of the French monarch, she was taken into the household of Claude, queen of France, on account of her girlish attractions; but on the approach of the rupture between the two countries in 1522, Henry required her being returned to England, because, being a lady of the royal household, she could not with propriety quit France without the king's permission. She appears to have entered into a pre-contract, or given some promise of marriage to one of the sons of the Earl of Northumberland, but whether serious or frivolous is not known. This much is certain, that on her return she was appointed maid of honour to Queen Catherine of Spain, Henry VIII's first wife; and that the king himself soon became greatly enamoured of her. It has been asserted that her eldest sister, and even her mother, preceded her in Henry's favour. But be this as it may, she behaved herself with so much virtue or address, by refusing to satisfy the king's passion in an illicit manner, that she brought him to think of marrying her; and Henry, persuaded that he should never enjoy her unless he made her his wife, was thus induced to set on foot the affair of his divorce from Catherine, which at last was executed with great form and solemnity. It has been observed, that "that which would have been very praiseworthy on another occasion, was Ann Boleyn's chief crime; since her refusing to comply with an amorous king, unless he would divorce his wife, was a much more enormous crime than to have been his concubine. A concubine," it has been added, "would not have dethroned a queen, nor taken her crown or her husband from her; whereas the crafty Ann Boleyn, by pretending to be chaste and scrupulous, aimed only at the usurpation of the throne, and the exclusion of Catherine of Aragon and her daughters from all the honours due to them." But this doctrine is evidently pitched a great deal too high; for it does by no means follow that, in refusing to gratify the king's passion, except in a lawful and recognized relation, Anne contemplated an immediate marriage, which must have been preceded by a divorce. This would seem to have been the result of the king's boiling and intemperate haste to obtain possession of a young wife. In the meanwhile, Henry failed in procuring a divorce from the pope; which so exasperated him that he at length resolved to throw off the authority of the holy see, and to attack the established church. The divorce was, however, compassed in a certain way, and Henry married Ann Boleyn privately in January 1533; and as soon as he perceived that his new wife was with child, he made his marriage public. He caused Ann Boleyn to be declared queen of England on Easter-eve 1533, and to be crowned on the 1st of June following. On the 7th of September she was delivered of a daughter, who was afterwards Queen Elizabeth; and she continued to be much beloved by the king, till 1536, when the youthful charms of Jane Seymour fired the blood of this inconstant despot. Then his love for his wife was changed into violent hatred; he fancied her to have been unchaste, and caused her to be imprisoned and tried. "She was indicted of high treason, for that she had procured her brother and other four to lie with her, which they had done often; that she had said to them, that the king never had her heart; and had said to every one of them by themselves, that she loved him better than any person whatever; which was to the slander of the issue that was begotten between the king and her." And this was treason according to the statute made in the 26th year of this reign; so that the law which had been made for her and the issue of her marriage, was now employed to destroy her. She was condemned to be either burned or beheaded; and she underwent decollation on the 19th of May 1536. Some very remarkable things are related of her during the time of her imprisonment, and a little before her execution. She is said to have acted very different parts; sometimes seeming devout, and shedding abundance of tears, then all of a sudden breaking out into loud laughter. A few hours before her death, she remarked that the executioner was very handy, and besides, that she had a very small neck; at the same time feeling it with her hands, and laughing heartily. However, it is agreed that she died with great resolution; taking care to spread her gown about her feet, that she might fall with decency, as the poets have related of Polyxena; and the historians of Julius Caesar. Some Roman Catholic writers have dealt out a hard measure of justice to this unhappy woman, against whom much has been alleged, and but little, comparatively, proved. But to the criminations of party-writers may be opposed the deliberate judgment of a candid and philosophical historian. "In surveying this case," says Sir James Mackintosh, "it may be concluded that her (Anne's) departure from honour, even on the eve of marriage, is not proved; and that the general profligacy of her youth is the mere assertion of her enemies, inconsistent with probability and unsupported by proof. Whether in her last year she touched or overpassed the boundaries which separate female honour from the delicacy and decorum which are its bulwarks, is a question which, though it give rise to more doubtful inquiries, can never be considered as answered in the affirmative by the frantic language uttered in the agony of her mind and body during the first eight days' imprisonment; nor by the testimony of Smeaton, contradicted by all whom he called his accomplices; still less by the brief statements of such originally inadequate evidence in historians unacquainted with legal proceedings; and least of all by the verdicts and judgments of such a reign as that of Henry VIII., in which, though guilt afforded no security, virtue was the surest path to destruction." (History of England, vol. ii. p. 203, 204.) The character of the monster to whose fierce passions she fell a victim, would afford a sufficient solution of greater anomalies than any that are involved in the case of this unfortunate woman; to say nothing of that frightful attribute of all tyranny, by which, in homage to opinion which it can never conciliate, and in cowardly justification of its own wrongs, it seeks to blast the fame and attain the memories of those whose lives it has wantonly sacrificed.