Anne Helped Usher in the English Protestant Reformation
Many people saw Anne Boleyn as an immoral adulterous and a whore. In fact, she had strong religious convictions- albeit of the reforming kind. The Spanish Ambassador to England and great opponent of Anne’s, Eustace Chapuys referred to Anne and her faction as “more Lutheran than Luther himself.” Anne reputedly read the Bible daily and when Queen gave each member of her household a book of psalms in English.
Henry, on the other hand, was a religious conservative. In 1521 he had been dubbed “defender of the faith” by Pope Leo X for his rebuttal of Lutheran ideas. Anne knew that some of her beliefs were heretical. Nevertheless, she began to share them with Henry- because they offered him a way out of the impasse, he was in with Rome over the divorce. In 1530, Anne began by introducing Henry to passages in William Tyndale’s Obedience of the Christian man” which supported his growing belief in a Kingly autocracy independent of any Pope. “The King is in the person of God and his law is God’s law.” Stated the book. It was passages like this, which fueled Henry’s determination to break with Rome and take his marital destiny into his own hands.