‘A Phenix whose ashes yeldes another bryde’: Anne Boleyn’s Memory in the Reign of Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603) occupied the English throne for 45 years in what has become known as England’s ‘Golden Age’. Her reign is one of the most studied and deliberated of any English monarch, and yet, there is one aspect of Elizabeth’s life which remains an enigma, namely her feelings towards her mother, Anne Boleyn (c.1501 – 1536). Anne was infamously executed on the orders of Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII (1491 – 1547), in 1536 on false charges of adultery, incest and treason when Elizabeth was two years and eight months old. Elizabeth rarely spoke of her mother, therefore, there is much ambiguity surrounding her feelings towards Anne. This has allowed for a range of theories to develop. Some historians believe that Anne’s death was simply of no consequence to Elizabeth. David Starkey remarked that she “airbrushed her mother from her memory.” In contrast, other scholars have used psychoanalytic theory to suggest that Elizabeth suffered from the oedipal complex as a result of Anne’s fall. These hypotheses are a misleading representation of not only Elizabeth’s sentiments for her mother, but also the intricate impact that Anne’s memory had on her reign. Through the analysis of literary sources, portraiture and material objects, this article will work to challenge these theories. Instead, it will suggest that Elizabeth subtly contributed to the rehabilitation of Anne’s memory, adhering to a figurative and symbolic understanding of their relationship as expressed in the works of Protestant authors. This will reveal Anne’s multifaceted legacy to Elizabethan England, in which her memory was used to both legitimise and destabilise Elizabeth’s monarchy.