{ "item_title" : "Anne of Cleves", "item_author" : [" Shane Larson "], "item_description" : "Henry VIII never called her a Flanders mare. The phrase first appears in 1679, in a bishop's history written more than 130 years after the king died, and no one has found an earlier source. The record says something stranger, and it ends in Westminster Abbey.On New Year's Day 1540 a hooded stranger walked into a room at Rochester where Anne of Cleves stood at a window watching a bull-baiting, and kissed her. She gave him a brief courtesy and turned back to the window. The stranger was the king, playing a game from the romances whose rules nobody had told her. He married her five days later, saying on the wedding morning that he would not do it but to satisfy the world and his realm. Six months on, Convocation declared the marriage void. She was never crowned.Almost everything said about those months was said by men with a reason to say it: the depositions of July 1540 were gathered to prove a marriage had never been consummated. This book reads them that way. Its first part is set in the United Duchies of J lich-Cleves-Berg, a Rhineland power with a church that was neither Luther's nor the pope's, and shows why a quarrel over Guelders between Anne's brother and Charles V sent a princess from D sseldorf to England. It follows Thomas Cromwell, who staked his position on the match and was beheaded on Tower Hill on 28 July 1540, the morning Henry married one of Anne's maids of honour.Then it follows Anne for seventeen years. She accepted the annulment within days, signed herself the daughter of Cleves, sent back the ring and took terms: Richmond, Hever, an income that on paper ranked her among the richest women in England, and the title of the king's sister. She outlived Henry by ten years, Catherine Howard by fifteen and Catherine Parr by nine. In 1553 she rode through London in one chariot with Elizabeth at Mary I's coronation. She died at Chelsea in 1557, left her second-best jewel to Elizabeth, and was buried in the abbey where English kings are crowned. None of the other five is there.The fourth volume of a series on the six queens of Henry VIII, holding to one rule: Anne is never given thoughts or feelings the sources do not record. Where she drops out of the record, the book follows the people who wrote things down.What you'll learn: Where the Flanders mare came from, who repeated it, and what it hidWhy Cleves mattered: the Erasmian church, the Guelders quarrel, and the diplomacy of 1539Whether Holbein flattered her, and why the painter was never punishedHow far Cromwell fell because of Cleves, and how far because of his enemies at homeWhat Anne did right after July 1540, what it cost her, and why the book calls it skill rather than luckThis book is for you if: You have read the first three volumes and want the one wife who walked awayYou know Cromwell's fall from the dramas and want the documented version of the match that killed himYou want Reformation Germany treated as a real place rather than a page of backgroundYou want a biography honest enough to say the sources do not say instead of guessingQueen for six months. Survivor for seventeen years. The only one of the six in Westminster Abbey is the one he rejected on sight.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/890/714/9798907140868_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "18.99", "online_price" : "18.99", "our_price" : "18.99", "club_price" : "18.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details