Today I will answer a question asked by Areti from my Facebook Fanpage :
“I have a question about the letter that Anne is supposed to have written in the tower! Why can we not be sure if she really wrote it..? Can’t we recognise her style of writing?”
This letter was found among Thomas Cromwell’s papers and endorsed with the words:
“To the King from the Lady in the Tower”
“To the King from the Lady in the Tower”
The letter is not in Anne Boleyn’s handwriting, it was suggested that it is a copy of a lost original, or it was dictated by Anne. The letter was allegedly written on 6 May 1536.
Why this letter is considered by many as a forgery?
1. Anne Boleyn would never have written such a letter. She was blaming Henry VIII and his bad council as well as Jane Seymour for her imprisonment. Elizabeth Norton states that ;
“On 6 May Anne still entertained some hopes that she would be allowed to retire to a nunnery and she would not have wished to jeopardise this”. (Elizabeth Norton, “Anne Boleyn in her own words &words of those who knew her”, p. 255)
Would Anne Boleyn have risked the king’s wrath by writing a letter is such a reproving tone? She still had to consider her family’s wellbeing.
