Anne Boleyn's Heart


Henry VIII ripped England away from Catholicism to divorce his first wife and marry the witty and sophisticated Anne Boleyn. But Henry, desperate for a male heir, thought the marriage cursed after Anne produced only a daughter and multiple miscarriages. The king accused her of having affairs with commoners and even her own brother. Anne Boleyn was soon arrested and beheaded at the Tower of London in 1536, and legend has it that on the orders of King Henry, her heart was torn out. Allegedly, Henry secretly kept it in a heart-shaped casket in a church alcove in Suffolk, until it was rediscovered in 1836 and reburied underneath the church's organ.


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