The source of this study was a letter written in The Life and Death of Anne Bullen, Queen Consort of England, printed by G. Smeeton in 1820. This document is from Queen Anne's stay in the Tower of London during her trial in 1536. Anne Boleyn was King Henry VIII's second wife and they were married from 1533 - 1536 until Anne's execution. Anne Boleyn could also be known as England's most notorious queen due to her trial and execution on the charges of treason and adultery. In this letter from Anne to Henry VIII she pleaded with him "Try me, good King, but let me have a Lawful Trial, and let not my sworn Enemies sit as my Accusers and Judges; yes, let me receive an open Trial, for my Truth shall fear no open shame; then shall you see, either …show more content…
mine Innocenecy cleared, your Suspicion and Conscience satisfied..." (Anne Boleyn)¹. There are many different views on Anne Boleyn and her execution on whether or not it was justified. I have collected a series of seven academic sources from books to online academic articles, written by scholars and experts in the field, that focus on the different aspects of Anne Boleyn such as her successes as Queen to her execution. Three of the sources I have acquired are university press books, two sources are online books and one source is an online article. The authors of these scholarly sources are meticulous with the information as well as the article covered both sides of the event with scholarly analysis'. The sources that are discussed in this study are all academic pieces of writing that I felt supported the argument that Anne Boleyn's execution was not justified as well as lent evidence as to how I came to that conclusion. These sources gave me a further insight into a momentous event in English history due to the fact that the only thing I knew beforehand was that Anne Boleyn was one of King Henry's VIII various wives who was beheaded for adultery. These sources gave me a deeper understanding on the topic and how her execution came to be. Historiography: Anne Boleyn was only Queen of England for a very short time, from 1533 - 1536, but she left a important mark on English history.
Anne might be known as England's most notorious queens whose image may have been tarnished once or twice, but these several sources cover both negative and positive perspectives on Anne and her actions. Numerous historians believe that Anne Boleyn's execution was justified as the court had evidence to support their claims although they were false and tampered with; they could not have proved that during the trial as it was the 16th century, the technology did not exist². All of the sources included in this study, have their own opinions on Anne Boleyn although some may be similar and have parallel aspects; their arguments and supporting evidence are dissimilar.
The books written by Nancy Morrison, Hester Chapman and Josephine Wilkinson all have the same perspectives on Anne Boleyn. The books all portray Anne as a positive influence on the people and focus on the good she completed in her life rather than the dire aspects. Although Chapman's book contained basic information on Anne Boleyn, it provided an effective understanding in several aspects such as gender and social equality during the 16th century. Chapman discusses how Anne's rule and legacy influenced and changed how society depicted and/or treated
…show more content…
females. On the other hand, Private Life of Henry VIII written by Morrison uses her connections and evidence about King Henry VIII to dig deeper into his interactions with his government but especially focuses on his marriages. The information about marriage to Anne Boleyn was not very thorough and had gaps in her information due to the fact that Henry VIII had everything destroyed that connected him to Anne because of her trial and execution. This book did not include any obvious bias but it had a pessimistic tone towards Anne Boleyn due to the charges of treason and adultery against her, which creates a negative representation. Compared to Wilkinson who wrote Anne Boleyn: In Her Own Words & The Words of Those Who Knew, who defended Anne against Henry VIII's accusations, she also explains how the court was right in deciding that Anne was guilty based on the evidence provided.
After all aspects of the case presented later on, King Henry VIII could later be seen as the instigator in the entire scenario, because he wanted to marry Jane Seymour but could not endure another divorce scandal.
Friedmann who wrote, Anne Boleyn, examines the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, from when she was merely the daughter of a gifted courtier to her elevation to the greatest heights a woman could reach, as Queen of England, to her tragic fall and execution, the victim of the man who had once loved her, and who had altered the course of his country's history eternally in order to have marry Anne³. The perspective of this book was helpful in my study for the reason that it gave me another perspective on this topic and was different compared to the other
sources. Furthermore, the several sources on the other side of the argument which portrayed Anne as not a very effective and helpful Queen during her reign due to the scandal of her trial. Susan Bordo, Evelyn Anthony and Retha Warnicke all had this perspective included in their books. The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen written by Bordo examines how Henry VIII affected Anne's life in positive and negative ways as well as the advantages of their marriage to the state considering Anne came from an influential family. Borda depicts Anne as a conniving and frivolous woman who's actions caught up with her in the end which ultimately lead to her execution. Bordo also discusses how Anne and Henry VIII's marriage affected societal history and how it impacted society during the 16th century⁴. Bordo's perspectives aligns with Evelyn Anthony's Anne Boleyn book as well because they both think that Anne Boleyn's execution was justified due to the sole evidence during the trial in the 16th century before all aspects of the situation arose. Anthony's book is more focused on Anne's fall from glory as Queen of England, which provides readers with more information about how her fall happened. Retha Warnicke's The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn book talks about Henry VIII's involvement in Anne's trial and execution and how he came up with the idea with his trusted confidants such as Thomas Cromwell, his chief minister⁵. Warnicke also discusses the people's reaction to Anne, which was not positive due to the fact that originally Anne was not Henry VIII's wife but rather his mistress in the public eye so she was criticized and condemned by the English people⁶. She goes into detail about Henry VIII's plan to have her arrested, charged with adultery, witchcraft, and incest which was ludicrous even to Anne's enemies. Warnicke also uses Anne's own words to support her argument: You have chosen me from low estate to be your queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire; if, then, you found me worthy of such honor, good your grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of my enemies withdraw your princely favor from me; neither let that stain – that unworthy stain – of a disloyal heart towards your good grace ever cast so foul a blot on me, and on the infant princess your daughter. Anne pleads with Henry several times through letters she wrote while locked in the Tower of London, but much to her dismay he discards them quickly; but it was later found that Cromwell did not deliver her letters to the King, for he feared they could change the king's mind⁷.
When conducting research for my project, I came across a website that contained a few primary sources regarding the Salem Witch Trials. One of these primary sources was the photo of a legal document explaining the death warrant and reasons for execution of a woman named Bridget Bishop. Bishop was claimed to be a witch in Salem during the year 1692, and the document explaining her significance involving witchcraft resides in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. My thesis for this primary source is that the judge and jury believed they were seeking justice by executing Bishop, a woman whose death was truthfully based on her differences as a person rather than actual crimes she committed.
On a sweltering 1892 August day in Fall River, Massachusetts, Andrew and Abby Borden were violently murdered in their home on Second Street. The subsequent police investigation and trial of Lizzie Borden gained national attention and rightfully so considering a female murder defendant on trial was and is to this day an extremely rare proceeding. The Lizzie Borden Trial held in 1893 attracted attention from nearly the entire United States with newspapers in New York City, Providence, and Boston publishing articles at a frenzied pace. The trial was the most sensational murder trial of the nineteenth century (excluding the Lincoln assassination) and despite an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence Lizzie was acquitted by a jury of twelve men. Several exceptional factors surrounding the case including the actions of key figures during trial, police investigation, and the fact a female was facing double murder charges make the case truly significant when looking at American legal history.
The early modern era in Western Europe was a dangerous place for women with the rise of so called “witches” populating towns and country sides. With the peak of these witch trials happening between 1560 and 1640 in England (the making of the west 499). This caused the people of Europe to live in fear of the devil and his counterparts on earth. Over 80 percent of victims of these witch trials were women and thousands upon thousands of trials taking place all across Europe and the North American Colonies at the time as well (motw 500). Seeing that women are mostly accused of witches, it raises the questions as to why that is. Upon examining 2 specific cases in this essay, those being of Walpurga Hausmannin from Dillingen, Germany and Francatte Camont from Lorraine, France; one can see that both these cases are very similar in many aspects despite the fact that both these women were trialed in different countries in Western Europe. In this essay, the reader will explore the motivations, visions and the targets of these witch trials with specific evidence and focus on the trials of both Walpurga and Francatte. The reader will also be able see connections between both trials throughout as well.
Gunn, G. (1994). Trials and interrogation of Anne Hutchinson. In G. Gunn, Early American Writing (p. 159...). New York: Penguin Books.
The last is love. Love is the emotion that plays the most important role in the life of Anne Boleyn. Anne has many passions for many things over the course of her life. Her first love was with the court chancellor, it was abruptly ended when Henry decided that he had other plans for Anne's life. He carried out these plans by not allowing Anne to marry the man that she truly loved.
IV. Torturing techniques written in her diary as well corpses that were eventually found lead up to her two trials in 1612.
The case of Anne Gunter fits the modern stereotype of witchcraft accusations and the trials that resulted from them; a young girl falsely claims that an older woman or women are causing her harm using supernatural abilities they have gained through nefarious means, sending the community into an uproar. Hysteria runs rampant through the community and the poor women are harshly punished – the formulaic story plays out similarly throughout popular media, must notably in Arthur Millers’ ‘The Crucible’. Yet in the case of young Anne Gunter from North Moreton, there is a deviation from the “standard plot” of a witchcraft trial – the women are acquitted and Miss Gunter’s subterfuge is revealed. The fact that the allegations are not only proven to be false, but a confession of such is given by Anne Gunter allows the focus to shift from the actual Gunter case to what factors played into why people were accused of witchcraft. What we can infer from the Gunter case is that people in England were accused of witchcraft because of three major things: lack of power, prestige, and plenty within society.
Anne Llewellyn Barstow finds that there was a disproportionate amount of women who were accused of Witchcraft in Western Europe between 1400 and 1650. Barstow moves on to point out through the text that these Women were victims of Misogyny due to the definition of Witchcraft being so broad and actually fitting the descriptions of the lives of many women. The patriarchal society of Europe at the time also bound women to lives of a lesser class if they were not living under the protection of men. Women were also seen as sex objects, and were seen as a threat to men who viewed women as untrustworthy and whorish. The findings of her research and views led Barstow to find that women were more likely to be accused and put to death for Witchcraft than men, as they were seen as minors before the courts and could not hold high positions but, they could be accused before the court for the heinous act of Witchery. Women were blamed for every malfunction of their reproductive systems, including stillbirth and were also blamed for preventing conception. Barstow believes that the first ever accounts of Witchcraft prosecution rose in the fifteenth century Europe as a means to control women’s sexual and reproductive lives. Barstow states, that in the English county of Essex, an amazing 92 percent of those accused of Witchcraft were women. The author proves that authors of the day do not concentrate on Women as the victims. In fact Women’s issues were merely brushed o...
I chose to start this paper by quoting an entire poem of Anne Sexton's. Why? Because no one told the story of Anne Sexton's life as often or as well as Anne Sexton herself. Over and over she wrote, recounted, and recast her struggles with madness, her love affairs, her joys and griefs in parenting, and her religious quests. For example, "Rowing" touches upon the need for Anne to tell stories about herself, her longing for connection with others, her mental problems, and her searching for God - one could not ask for a better introduction to the world of Anne Sexton.
The story of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, has been elusive to historians since her death in 1536 at the hands of her husband. This, in part, can be attributed to the destruction of almost everything she touched soon after her execution. On orders of the king, the castles that were once her home had all memory stripped of her. Portraits were destroyed, letters disappeared, their symbol of the H and A intertwined had the A ripped away. The remnants of her time on the throne are pieces of history that were overlooked in the workers haste to strip the castles in preparation for Jane Seymour to become queen. There are few hints left of what really happened during Anne’s life and how important she was during her reign which has created the widespread infatuation with Anne and who she really was. Why is Anne’s life of such interest to us then? The reasons are many and include the desire to know her role in the English reformation, being the first queen of England to ever be executed, and the impact it had on her daughter and the later Queen Elizabeth I.
Anne’s diary began on her thirteenth birthday. She had a normal life for a girl of her age, and valued the same things as any girl; she loved being with her friends, enjoyed school and already had established a passion for writing which she expressed through her diary. She first wrote “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support,” it is established that Anne, although a very social young girl, felt that she could not confide in her friends. The tone with which she wrote and the trivial matters that she wrote about exemplify her young age and lack of maturity. She wrote for the sake of writing, and wrote about the happenings in her life. When the first signs of anti-Semitism started to show, signs of worry showed through her writing, but she never wrote too deeply about it.
During the early modern period Europe experienced a phase of vicious prosecution of the people accused of the crime of ‘Witchcraft.’ There has been an estimated death toll of up to 50,000 people during these Witch-hunt crazes, although the exact figures are unknown. What is known is that overall 75-80% of those accused were woman although this varies in different states. In this essay I will discuss the role of gender in witchcraft and why the majority of people executed as Witches were women.
When Shakespeare was born in 1564, Queen Elizabeth had taken power a mere 6 years prior, and her justice system was very different from ours. In this paper, I hope to explore some of the ways punishments were different, such as how many crimes had individual punishments, often times depending on how severe the crime was. I will also go in-depth to one of the most infamous cases of the medieval period.
By the time Anne Bradstreet was born in the early 1600s, concrete gender roles, enforced by government regulation, church doctrine, and simple tradition, had been firmly in place for centuries. These gender roles dictated that women were little more than extensions of their husbands meant to be passive and servile, to perform basic household duties, and to praise their husbands and God. In the Puritan society, this was further compounded by the focus on humans' innate sinfulness leading back to the original sin of Eve, a convenient female scapegoat. Because of Eve's sin, Puritan men seemed have an underlying mistrust for all women believing that, like Eve, they were greedy for power or at least more susceptible to temptation. Thus, any woman who tried to break free of their defined role as daughter, wife, or mother was seen as a threat to the Puritan religion and the strength of the community. Guided by such harshly misogynistic beliefs, it becomes easier to understand the reasoning behind witch trials; any form of rebellion against church guidelines was sin and could easily spread to corrupt all...
In the events that happened during the holocaust were very graphic and very displeasing to lots of families. One of those families were Anne Frank’s family. In the research paper you are going to see what it was like for Anne Frank’s family. The general information, when and where they were hiding, and how they all died during the holocaust, will all be stated in the paper.