We don’t know anything about Anne Boleyn’s first few years. She wasn’t a royal princess so her early childhood and education are not documented in any way, but we know from the woman and queen that she became that her humanist father ensured she had the best education a Tudor girl could hope for. Anne could “sing and dance well”, she played the lute and other instruments,1 she spoke fluent French, she loved art and music, she appreciated the beauty of illuminated manuscripts, she had a keen interest in theology, she took an active role in Henry VIII’s annulment proceedings and in Henry’s building projects, and she was an intelligent and driven woman.
Frustratingly, we don’t even know when or where Anne was born – see Anne Boleyn’s Background and Birth – but it was somewhere between 1501 and 1507. The family moved from Norfolk to Hever Castle in Kent in 1505 and Anne would have been educated there, at home. It appears that Thomas Boleyn shared Thomas More’s views that daughters should be educated in the same way as sons, proper “learning” rather than focusing on virtue and domestic skills, so Anne, and her sister Mary, may well have been educated alongside George and had a tutor.2 George could speak Latin and Italian, as well as French, so perhaps Anne had some grounding in those languages too.
We don’t know what opportunities Mary Boleyn was given, but Anne Boleyn was able to spend her formative years on the continent. Thomas Boleyn had been sent to the court of Margaret of Austria in the Low Countries in 1512 to act as an envoy to her father Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and to conclude an alliance between England and the Empire against France. Thomas became so friendly with Margaret that they had a wager on how long the negotiations would take and he also secured a place for Anne at Margaret’s court. A place in Margaret’s court was highly sought after by royal and noble families in Europe, and this was an amazing opportunity for the young Anne Boleyn, who was dispatched to the Low Countries in the summer of 1513.
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