A new biography of Anne Boleyn claims that, far from being framed for adultery, Henry VIII’s second queen may not have been innocent of the affairs for which she was sentenced to death.
The widely held view among contemporary historians is that the charges brought against Anne – that she committed adultery with five lovers, including her brother – are too preposterous to be true, and were either trumped up by one political faction to do down another, or invented by Henry as a result of his desire to marry Jane Seymour, after Anne had failed to give him a son.
But George Bernard, professor of early modern history at Southampton University and editor of the English Historical Review, believes that the queen could well have been guilty of some of the charges laid against her – or at the very least that her behavior was such that it was reasonable for Henry to assume she had committed adultery.
Examining a 1545 poem by Lancelot de Carles, who was then serving the French ambassador to Henry’s court, Bernard concludes that the poem, entitled “A letter containing the criminal charges laid against Queen Anne Boleyn of England,” offers strong evidence that Anne did, in fact, commit adultery. She was accused of “despising her marriage” and “entertaining malice against the king”, with her indictment claiming that “by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts, and other infamous incitations” she seduced men including the musician Mark Smeaton, chief gentleman of the privy chamber Henry Norris, and her brother George, Viscount Rochford, “alluring him with her tongue in his mouth and his in hers”.
All five men, and Anne, were executed.
De Carles's poem, says Bernard, explains how Anne's affairs came to light, following a quarrel at court between a privy councillor and his sister who, on being accused of promiscuous living, points to "a much higher fault that is much more damaging" in the queen. Bernard identifies the lady as Elizabeth Browne, wife of Henry Somerset, second earl of Worcester, and her brother as the courtier Sir Anthony Browne, and says that clues offered in the poem can be supported by remarks made in contemporary letters.
"It's not that I've discovered the poem for the first time – but on the whole scholars have dismissed it because it's a literary source," said Bernard, who speculates that a reason for Anne's adultery could have been to try and produce a son for her intermittently impotent husband. "But it seems to me that [it presents] a plausible scenario – we can identify the accuser as the countess of Worcester, and we can link her to the queen."
Of the conclusions he draws from this latest evidence, Bernard says, "It's a hypothesis – not a proof. In a court of law you might not condemn her for the crime, but I don't think you'd acquit her either."
His biography, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions also disputes the view that Anne held back from sexual relations with Henry until he agreed to make her his queen, claiming that it is "highly implausible". He believes that it was Henry, not Anne, who held back, on the grounds that he wanted their children to be his legitimate heirs. "He would, I suspect, have been astonished and horrified to discover that later generations have supposed he did not sleep with Anne in those years because she would not let him," Bernard says.
***Admittedly, I haven't read this book. While I don't have as much of a problem with the use of a poem as a source (poetry was used very differently in 16th century England than it is today), I cannot possibly agree with Bernard's assessment that it was Henry who withheld sex from Anne. Men are men--whether they live in the 16th or 21st century. They always want sex and don't think about the consequences of an illegitimate child, whereas women have practiced using sex as a bargaining chip since the first day we discovered they wanted it.
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Madonna is celebrating her 52nd birthday with a King and Queen-themed fancy dress party Monday night. 
