The woman who unwittingly changed British history

History is full of ifs and buts.  If, if, if....the nagging wonder of what might have happened if just one thing had been slightly different.  But, but, but...but for a tiny moment, what might have been?  So how about this if?  If one woman, born today in 1491, had been slightly more interested in song, dance and storytelling might the whole history of England have been different?

 

Henry VIII's life and reign might have been very different if a woman born on this day in 1491 had been slightly jollier

Maria of Julich-Berg.  Not a name that trips off the tongue first thing in answer to the question of which woman influenced the history of the English crown.  She was born in Julich in northern Gremany, the only daughter of the area's ruler.  Duke Wilhelm IV had been married to wife number two for ten years by the time baby Maria arrived and unless his latest Duchess, Sybille, produced a son their little girl would be the last of his line.  By the time Maria was five it was clear no boy would arrive and Duke Wilhelm negotiated a treaty with his neighbour, the Duke of Cleves.  Julich would become part of a bigger duchy on Wilhelm's death and Maria would marry John, the heir of the Duke of Cleves.

 John II, Duke of Cleves presumably looked slightly happier when he finalized the deal to unify his country with Julich-Berg and leave his son and heir a far wealthier man than he had been

Maria and John married in 1510 and on Wilhelm's death in 1511, John took his title.  By the time John II of Cleves died ten years later, making little John duke of a big area now known as Julich-Cleves-Berg, Maria had had four children and was heavily involved in how they were being brought up.  And that's where the 'if' comes in.

John III, Duke of Cleves, ruled a sizeable part of northern Europe and that made his three daughters very valuable on the royal marriage market

If Maria had approved of educating girls, if Maria had thought it a good idea to train her daughters in the courtly pursuits of song, dance and flirting then might England never have known Mary I and Elizabeth I as queen regnants?  The thing was Maria really didn't approve of girls getting an education.  She was a strict mother and teaching her girls how to charm, how to play musical instruments and sing wasn't on the list.  At all.  Instead, the three girls were taught to cook, to sew and to weave.  And while that was fine while they attended her at the court of Cleves, once daddy opened up negotiations for their marriages the problems began. 

Six Dukes of Cleves including the great grandfather, grandfather and father of Anne, fourth of the six wives of Henry VIII

 

While Maria was still medieval in her plans for her girls, the Cleves clan were on the up and looking to the future.  In 1539, Duke John started talking to Henry VIII's advisers about marrying one of his daughters to the king.  Henry was now a widower - his last wife, Jane Seymour, had died in childbirth two years earlier and of course both Anne Boleyn and Catherine of Aragon were dead too.  For about the only time in his reign, the monarch's marital record was back to scratch and his counselors wanted to make the most of this relatively peaceful time to make a good match abroad that would help both king and country.  Duke John had two unmarried daughters, Amalia and Anne, and the Tudor court was ready to admit one of them.

 

 

Sybille of Cleves was the eldest daughter of the duchess who didn't do dancing but luckily for her, she was already married by the time Henry VIII came looking for a new wife

 

Even with the King of England knocking on the door offering a wedding ring, Maria didn't see the point in changing course.  She allowed a court painter to make an image of her two unmarried girls but that was the only concession to a possible crown that she offered.  Cooking and cleaning remained on the curriculum and while Henry studied the two portraits, their two subjects continued their rather fusty way of life, little knowing the consequences.

 

 

 

The famous portrait of Anne of Cleves which won her the hand of Henry VIII and cost his adviser, Thomas Cromwell, his head. 

 

Henry, of course, chose Anne and at the end of 1539 she packed up her rather unfashionable clothes and her sewing and recipe books and sailed for England to become its queen. The king had a two year old son but he needed more boys to secure his dynasty.  This 24 year old bride was to provide a Duke of York and plenty more besides.  But it was loathing on first sight for the 47 year old king and every second spent in the company of his fourth queen made matters worse.

 

As well as being flattered by the portrait sent to woo a king, Anne was a fish out of water in Henrys high spirited and cultured court.  Whereas the first of his queens called Anne had been lively, quick witted, interested in music and courtly romance, this second one stared at it all in bemusement and could barely understand what was being said to her, let alone set the room alight with sparkling conversation.  And while Henry may have been steering clear of another woman who might challenge him as much as Mistress Boleyn had, he wanted something more than Anne.  Antonia Fraser argues that Anne of Cleves lack of learning was a major factor in her being divorced less than six months after her marriage.

 

 

Anne of Cleves - she was very monochrome in comparison to the women who had entranced Henry

 

 

Other historians point out that among the young women lined up to be ladies in waiting to the new queen and in situ for her arrival in England was Catherine Howard.  It's not clear whether Henry had laid eyes on her before Anne stepped off her ship or whether the fateful meeting came soon afterwards but Catherine was in the king's sphere and his heart within weeks of his fourth queen landing in England.  This merry monarch had taken on a Church and an Empire to be rid of one royal wife so as he could marry a commoner from the Howard family and it may be that once he'd seen Catherine nothing was going to stop him doing the same again if he had to.

 

 

 

Catherine Howard - Henry may already have fallen for her charms by the time he first saw

Anne of Cleves

 

 

If Henry had already fallen for Catherine then there was little that Anne could do to win him over.  But there's also little doubt that had this fourth queen been slightly more accomplished at court she might have been able to manipulate the situation more to her own advantage. As it was, Anne won few friends in her short stint as queen.  And while that may be because the fickle world of Tudor politics meant no one was ready to side with a woman who was clearly not in the king's favour, her lack of learning and inability to charm and lead the singing and dancing made her a laughing stock from the very beginning.  If she had been just a little more sophisticated it might have been much harder to throw her over.  All Anne needed was one son and the whole course of English history might have been different.

 

But ifs and buts count for nothing. As it was, Maria saw her second daughter become queen of England before being relegated to the role of King's Sister.  But that was a wealthy job in itself and Anne lived comfortably in England and outlived her king by ten years.  Which is, of course, more than can be said for Catherine Howard who was dead within two years of marriage.  Anne of Cleves may have failed to please her king and failed to provide an heir but she succeeded where all but one of his other wives failed.  She survived her husband.

 

 











'Anne' outside bet - the most favoured name for a royal princess?

It means favoured and it's certainly that when it comes to Queens of England.  The name Anne has been used for more queens, regnant and consort, than any other.  But it's not been borne by a monarch for almost 300 years now - could this be its moment to take the throne again?

 

Anne

 

There have been one Queen Regnant and five Queen Consorts called Anne.  But like Elizabeth, most of the royal holders of the name have made some kind of mark on history and there are very few royal Annes we don't know about.  Aside from our six queens, there have been four royal princesses with the name - a grand total of ten - so although it was one of the most used names for women in England for centuries it's never been an all conquering royal favourite.  Perhaps because the six women who have worn the crown were encountered more than their fair share of tragedy.  Here's a run down of the queens called Anne.

 

 

Anne Boleyn

 

Let's get the most famous one out of the way.  The rise, fall and continuing fascination with Anne Boleyn is among the best documented tales in English history.  Other queens are talked about in terms of marriage contracts or romances but Anne was a career woman and she made a pretty good job of her ambitions and desires until 1536 and historians still don't really understand why the dynamic duo of Henry and the Boleyn Girl fell apart then.  Was it the lack of a male heir - after all, Anne had been pretty invincible until she failed to fill the nursery with princes?  Or was it something deeper?  Through their six year courtship and most of Anne's three year tenure as Queen of England, she and Henry had worked closely together and she was one of his chief advisers.  Several of his other closest confidantes went the way of the axe - was Anne just more political capital?

 Anne Boleyn - one of the most famous people in British history. 

 

Anne was the second child of Sir Thomas Boleyn and his wife, Elizabeth Howard, and she had two paternal great grandmothers called Anne - possibly the reason she was given the name.  The controversy caused by her relationship with Henry and the long and public battle he fought to divorce his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, to marry Anne meant she was never popular - even complaining to Henry on the day of her coronation that there were too many caps still on heads and not much noise as she made her way through the City of London.  To highlight their dissatisfaction with their new queen, many called her Nan Bullen.  Nan was a common abbreviation of Anne and Bullen the original form of her surname.  While her family gained power at court and she ruled Henry's heart, she ignored the sniping and reveled in being Queen Anne.

Natalie Dormer as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors - almost 500 years after her death, Anne's story continues to fascinate

 

In fact, Anne's end was the beginning of the restoration of her reputation.  She was queen for three years but the lack of a son and continued machinations at court pulled apart her relationship with the king.  However, his decision to try her on charges of adultery, treason and witchcraft and her execution were truly shocking events.  She was beheaded on May 19th 1536 at the Tower of London and for the next twenty two years her daughter, Elizabeth, lived in the shadow of her siblings while trying to avoid plots that could lead to her own death.  But Anne's daughter went on to be one of England's most famous monarchs and Anne continued to cast her fascination as the centuries drew on.  The first woman to be elevated to the peerage in her own right, as Marquess of Pembroke, she is now credited with far more political involvement in Henry's reign than ever before.

Anne of Cleves

 

The next queen with the name, Anne of Cleves, had an almost subliminal reign so short was her marriage to the much married Henry VIII.  But she certainly made an impression, albeit a negative one.  Like Henry's first Queen Anne, she had two great grandmothers called Anne or Anna and was most likely given the name in their honour.  But that is where the similarities end.  The first Anne had a powerful hold over Henry.  The second one barely held his hand.

We only have one image of Anne and that's what caused all the problems.

 

 

 Anne of Cleves looking rather jolly in a picture that won her a king's hand in marriage

 

Henry gambled on making her Queen number four because of Hans Holbein's famous portrait of her.  Sadly for Anne, Hans and most of all, Thomas Cromwell, Henry far preferred the picture to the real thing.  When she arrived in Rochester at the start of 1540 to marry the king he declared 'I like her not'.  We do know that wife number five, Catherine Howard, was also there as a lady in waiting to the queen.  Whether or not Henry had already caught sight of a woman who would obsess him we don't know.  We do know that he said he liked wife number four even less after their wedding night and that he himself declared the marriage was never consummated with all blame being heaped on Anne's lack of physical attraction for the king.  The marriage was annulled at the beginning of July that year with Anne receiving a rather nice settlement in return for her relegation to the role of King's Sister.  Cromwell's enemies took their chance to plot against him and just weeks after his choice of royal bride was divorced, he was executed.

 

So far we have the sexiest and the least sexy queens of England as arguments for the name, Anne.  The other three queen consorts with the name aren't nearly as exciting. 

Anne of Bohemia

The first with the name was Anne of Bohemia who came to England in 1382 to marry the still teenage king, Richard II.  She had no grannies, great grannies or aunties with the name but interestingly her father's two previous wives had been called Anne or Anna.  And dad was very influential.  He was pretty powerful in Europe at the time and Richard ended up paying him a dowry as part of a complex power trade off that resulted in the choice of royal bride being very unpopular.  To her credit, Anne turned public opinion around and she's recorded in the chronicles as being kind and generous, interceding for the common people on many occasions.  Poignantly, she is noted as being kind and concerned about pregnant women despite never having a child of her own.  Anne is credited with introducing horned headdresses to England and popularizing riding side saddle.  Given her short reign and lack of heir, she made a fairly big impression in her time.  She died in 1394 of the plague, leaving her husband devastated.  Some historians point to her death as a crucial moment in Richard's reign.  Losing his sensible, good hearted first wife is seen as turning point in his rule - from there on, he lost some of his grip on reality.  Less than five years after Anne's death, he had lost his throne.

 

 

 Anne of Bohemia and her husband, Richard II, who is said to have lost his way after losing his youg wife to the plague in 1394

 

 Anne Neville 

 



The next Queen Anne was the wife of the next King Richard and again the daughter of a powerful man who was used to getting his own way.  Anne Neville was the youngest child of the most powerful man in England, the Earl of Warwick.  Sadly for dad, another Richard by the way, he didn't have any sons so had to use the marriages of his two daughters to solidify his hold on the throne. 

Anne was named after her mother, Anne de Beauchamp, who had actually inherited the tile of Earl of Warwick but who was barred from bearing it because she was a woman and had to make do with letting hubby be earl while she was countess.  Anne de Beauchamp was one of the wealthiest women in England and her inheritance, to be shared between her daughters, was one of the reasons her girls were so highly sought after on the marriage market.

 

Daughter number one, Isabel, wed the middle York brother.  George, Duke of Clarence was next in line to the throne of Edward IV for almost a decade until the birth of the king's son, another Edward.  Isabel came close to being queen on more than one occasion before dying in mysterious circumstances.  Daddy Warwick liked to back his horse both ways and married his youngest girl to another claimant of the crown. Anne's first husband was Edward, Prince of Wales - a title he held because he was the eldest and only son of the deposed Lancastrian king, Henry VI.  When Warwick decided to try and get back the power he had lost as Edward IV's confidence as king grew, he joined forces with the Lancastrians and Anne cemented the alliance.  But it was short lived as was Edward - killed in the Battle of Tewkesbury six months after their marriage.  Warwick had died at the Battle of Barnet two months earlier and Anne was now the widow of a traitor.

 

 

Anne Neville, Queen Consort of England 1483 - 1485.  She packed a lot into her short life but it was littered with tragedy throughout.

 

She was rescued by a man who went on to be one of the great villains of English history.  But for Anne he was a real knight in shining armour, saving her from a long widowhood in disgrace.  Richard III was the plain old Duke of Gloucester and the youngest brother of Edward IV when he married Anne in 1472, around a year after her first husband had been killed.  They had a son, another Edward and presumably named after the duke's brother rather than the now duchess' dead hubby.  But Anne's life took another tragic turn in 1483.  Her brother in law died and Richard seized power claiming that he dead king's wife was trying to rule the country along with her family, the Woodvilles.  But his early protestations of trying to protect the inheritance of his nephew, the boy king Edward V, soon faded away and in the summer of 1483 the boy and his brother disappeared I the Tower of London. Anne had seen her husband turn from romantic hero to alleged king killer.

 

Her own son died the next year and in 1485 Anne became ill - she was 29 years old.  And even in her dying days life became harder still.  Her husband, by now mistrusted and disliked in equal measure, was said to be lining up his own niece to replace his wife.  When Anne died in March 1485 Richard III is said to have wept at her funeral.  He was forced to deny any plans to marry his brother's daughter.  But his queen passed unnoticed into history - she was buried in Westminster Abbey but no memorial was erected there until 1960.

 

 

A romantic interpretation of Anne Neville - her own life story had a less than happy ending

 

 



 Anne of Denmark

 

Last on the list of Queens called Anne is the consort of James I of England.  And like Henry VIII's two Annes, she had two great grandmothers called Anne before her.  She is a pretty much forgotten queen, dismissed by some as frivolous and passed over in the history books for the more dramatic sagas of her son and daughter in law, Charles I and Henrietta Maria.

 

Anne was the daughter of the king of Denmark and apparently thrilled by the prospect of marrying James when the wedding was proposed in 1589.  That was despite the rumours that James had male lovers - something the then fourteen year old Anne was not aware of.  She is said to have embroidered shirts for her future husband as a token of love.  On her marriage she became Queen of Scotland and fifteen years later, Queen of England, when the childless Elizabeth I named James as her successor.

 

 

Anne of Denmark nagged her husband and staged sit ins when she didn't get her own way

 

As a queen Anne was a great patron of the arts and commissioned plays as well as expanding the royal art collection.  She also liked to throw her weight about at home, once refusing to get out of bed for two days after her husband dismissed some favourite ladies in waiting and writing to a French envoy that the king was a bit too partial to a drink or three for her liking.

 

Her legacy is largely over shadowed by the sad story of the House of Stuart and the execution of her son, Charles I, in 1649.  By then, Anne was dead.  But through her daughter, Elizabeth, she secured the British throne once more when a lack of heirs threatened it.  Elizabeth's descendants were the Hanoverian kings of England.

 

Queen Anne

 

Just one Queen Regnant has been called Anne.  Queen Anne came to the throne in 1702 after the death of her brother in law, William III.  He had ruled alongside her sister, Mary II, and the couple had been childless.  Anne had seventeen children but none lived to adulthood and she was without an heir at the time of her own death in 1714.

 

Queen Anne was named after her great grandmother, Anne of Denmark, and her mother, Anne Hyde. Anne Hyde was the daughter of prominent politician Edward Hyde and his second wife, Frances.  They named their little girl after Edward's first wife, Anne. 

 

The woman who would be queen of England was the youngest daughter of James II but for most of her early adult life she was a royal accessory and never expected to be Queen.  She married Prince George of Denmark in 1683 when she was third in line to the throne and confidently expected to remain a Princess of Denmark all her life.

 

 

Queen Anne while Princess of Denmark

 

 

The birth of a male heir to her father, James II, in 1688 and his determination to bring the child up as a Catholic led to the Glorious Revolution which put Mary and William on the throne and made Anne their heir. 

 

When she took power in 1702 she proved popular and able but was always under a shadow of possible over influence from her friends and advisers, particularly the Duchess of Marlborough.  In her reign, Britain enjoyed some of its greatest success on the battlefield in Europe and a renaissance in arts and culture.  But Anne is perhaps best known for the tragedy of her family life.  She had seventeen pregnancies but only one child lived beyond infancy and he died aged eleven, before his mother ever became Queen.

 



Other royal Annes

 





The Queen's decision to use the name for her only daughter in 1950 was a surprise and although Anne's own daughter and eldest granddaughter have it as a middle name it's not caught on in royal circles since.  The Princess Royal's daughter, Zara, has it as a middle name as does the princess' eldest grandchild, Savannah Phillips.  And that's it. The three other princesses called Anne, out of interest, were Queen Anne's second daughter who lived for nine months after her birth in 1686, a daughter of Charles I who died aged three and the eldest daughter of George II who became Princess Royal.

 

 

 

Princess Anne, the Princess Royal and aunt of William, Duke of Cambridge

(photo Graham Grinner Lewis)

 

Anne - the case for

 

• It's been the name of more Queens in English history than any other
• It's not been used by a queen for over 300 years
• Princess Anne is regarded as one of the hardest working members of the Royal Family - a good role model for the future queen

 

And against

 

• All the queens called Anne have had their fair share of tragedy
• Queen Anne is best known now as a style of furniture
• And there is a Queen called Anne already in Europe - Anne Marie is the wife of the ex king of Greece, Constantine

 

Anne-Marie of Greece

(photo Allan Warren)