I conclude this series of reflections by revisiting a persistent narrative about Anne Boleyn.
Why a chapter about an English woman in a study of women of l ate-medieval and early-modern France? One reason is that even though Anne was born in England her “Frenchness” was, and remains, legendary.
According to a frequently quoted observation by Lancelot de Carle, secretary at the time of Anne’s trial and execution to French ambassador to England, Bishop of Tarbes Antoine de Castelnau, people knew that Anne was English, and yet she seemed to them to be “in her manners” a “natural-born Frenchwoman.”[661] Generations of historians have assumed that she owed her grace and wit to the training that she received at the French royal court, where she passed her formative years.But the more compelling reason is that this essay’s argument depends on the sixteenth-century definition of a French word, one that I discussed in chapter 7 on Agnes Sorel: “maitresse,” “maistresse” in sixteenth-century French, or, as Henry VIII renders it, “mestres.” Between 1527 and 1528, the king penned seventeen love letters to Anne, nine in his fluent but imperfect French, eight in English. He addresses her in several as his “mestres” and, in one, famously promises to make her his only mistress, his “seulle mestres.” This letter has been woven into
a legend that Anne refused to become Henry VIII’s mistress, resisting her ardent suitor’s advances and holding out for nothing less than marriage. By strategically refusing to become the king’s mistress, Anne Boleyn became the queen, so the legend goes.
In what follows I re-examine this legend, showing how central it has become in popular representations of the queen. I then turn to Henry VIII’s use of the term “mistress” in the love letters, in particular in the “seulle mestres” letter, which has been used as evidence to support the image of a strategically coquettish Anne, to consider what “mistress” actually meant to courtiers of early sixteenth century England and France and what this means for the popular image of the queen.