Notes

Love Letters of Henry viii to Anne Boleyn

By J. O. Halliwell Phillips

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 Bibliotheque 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), howeve