Episode 5

​History Documentary
We are nearing the time when Anne Boleyn enters the fray. We looked at some of her early life in episode two. Although she was born in England. At least we presume she was born in England, when, and where she was born, we certainly do not know.
But, she was of English parentage.
She was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard, sister of the inimitable Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk – can't get much more English than the incomparable Duke from Norfolk!
By the same token, you couldn't get much more French than Anne Boleyn, as we saw in episode two. She spent her early life in the Loire Valley – in France, with the French royal family, rubbing shoulders, cheek by jowl with the like of Leonardo da Vinci, no less.
It seems unlikely that she returned to England at least until Francis's wife, Claude, died in 1524. Even then, there was little reason for her to hurry back because of her friendship with Francis' sister Marguerite.
Ann's friendship with Marguerite of Angoulême shaped much of her short-lived life. In all but name, Marguerite was the Queen of France
Historian Prof S. Harrison Thompson said that she was "one of the most brilliant and attractive women of the whole sixteenth century."
Late in 1536, and wrote to Marguerite in a moment of desperation, and she said my greatest wish
In a century of outstanding women, Marguerite of Angoulême holds her own, both as a patron of the arts and sciences and as a defender and protector of reformists and humanists.
But that is to tell, not show.
But there is a second, but – what has the king of Francis sister to do with English history?
Well, the history of two kingdoms, history of the two lands separated by 25 miles of channel, inextricably intertwined and has an understanding of English history, some knowledge of French history is undeniably essential….