Claire Baumgartner

Anne Boleyn was Henry VIII’s second and perhaps most controversial wife.  Many believe that she alone was fully responsible for the King’s break from Rome and the Pope; that his love for her was so great he would let his country fall to ruin. However, Anne was not the main factor in Henry’s decision to defy the Pope. In fact, some historians argue that the break with the Catholic Church would have happened with or without her, but Henry’s feelings for her provided a catalyst for the break.

From the time of her arrival at court until a short while before her death, Anne Boleyn had a strange sort of power over the King of England. He was completely infatuated with her, and she knew how to play that to her advantage. She promised him sons, something Catherine of Aragon had failed to give him even after years of marriage. She was young and beautiful and she was the only woman he courted who refused to become his mistress, insisting she would sleep with her husband and no one else, not even a king.

View Anne Boleyn’s Life and Rise to Power in a larger map

Anne was brought up well, as were most ladies of the time. She was sent from home at a young age to learn court manners and graces, as well as languages and other things that would help her find a good husband when the time came. Spending so much of her youth in France, she had a fondness for the country and its people, something that put her in even more direct opposition with Queen Catherine, the daughter of Spanish royalty. Henry was known for often changing alliances between France and Spain, and when he was courting Anne his attitude toward Spain and the Holy Roman Empire cooled considerably, while England’s relationship with France grew ever-stronger. Anne knew the French king personally, having been his wife’s attendant for many years. It is interesting to note that Henry created a peerage just for Anne; the title of the Marquess of Pembroke was, in its time, the only hereditary female peerage in the world. This happened before they were married, and indeed before they knew they would even be able to marry. Henry thought very highly of Anne, and she of him.

 Henry’s Letters to Anne

Henry’s letters to Anne, likely written in the late 1520’s, show just how much influence she already had over the king. He writes at length of hope and love, calling her his mistress and he, her servant. While there are no records of Anne’s letters back to him, though we can assume that they were filled with just as much ardor and fancy prose. Henry writes much about “absence” and “lack”, referring the the long lengths of time Anne spent away from court, something he hated but her family believed to be a good thing (they were clearly proponents of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”). “Time” and “trust” were also big factors in his letters. Henry and Anne waited almost a decade until they were finally able to marry; they would have been quite familiar with waiting and “trusting in God”, as they both-Henry especially- believed that Henry’s first marriage was cursed by God and he was absolutely doing the right thing by putting Catherine aside for Anne.

Anne Boleyn has long been associated with the English Reformation. In fact, many believe that she was the first Protestant Queen of England and that she alone converted Henry from Catholicism. However, both Henry and Anne identified as Catholics their entire lives, albeit Catholics who did not agree with the Pope or the Church. Henry was vehemently against Martin Luther and Lutheranism, going so far as to burn Lutheran heretics at the stake for their beliefs. Anne was more open-minded; she owned a copy of the Bible translated into English and encouraged her ladies and other servants to read it whenever they wished. She was also notorious for openly reading books that Henry himself had banned, for fear they would incite a Lutheran uprising. She was even able to convince Henry, the man who had ordered the books banned, to read some of them. While he did not always agree with their teachings, Anne was never punished for flouting his laws. Her opinion mattered very much to him, something that was not seen again until he married Catherine Parr, his sixth wife and another Protestant sympathizer, when he was close to death and less able to rule his country. Anne’s name will always be tied to the Reformation; she was an intelligent woman who had a good head for both politics and religion and absolutely knew how to play the game. Even today she is one of the women most associated with bringing about one of the most important changes in English history.

The faction of staunch Catholics at court loathed Anne, seeing her as a threat not only to the One True Faith, but also to the kingdom itself as she was not popular with the common people, who believed her to be a witch, or a whore who had witchcraft at her disposal. They started rumors that she had a sixth finger on one hand, and that she made pacts with the devil. These rumors persist even today; many see Anne Boleyn as her opponents painted her almost 500 years ago.

 The First Act of Succession-1534

The First Act of Succession was passed in 1534, before the birth of Anne’s daughter Elizabeth. Assumed to be a boy, it was not unreasonable for Henry to want the throne to pass to his newborn son by Anne rather than his Mary, his daughter by Catherine of Aragon. However, this Act was still in place after Elizabeth’s birth, and she was Henry’s one true heir until the Second Act of Succession was passed a few months after Anne’s trial and execution, removing both Elizabeth and Mary from the line of succession to the throne. While Anne had disappointed him greatly it would take two miscarriages, a dozen counts of treason and adultery, another woman, an execution and rumors of Elizabeth’s true parentage for Henry to remove Anne’s daughter from the line of succession  It is interesting that the word “son” is used so many times in the text; this was at a time when kings were assured that every child would be a son.  Henry already had a daughter whom, according to the professionals, would definitely be a boy, yet he still seemed certain that Anne’s child would be a son. Female children could inherit the throne (and indeed, both Mary and Elizabeth ruled after their father’s death), but in those days it was almost unheard of and Henry was desperate to be succeeded by a male heir. It is a known fact that Anne promised him a son and so it seems a miracle that he did not strike down the Act of Succession the minute Elizabeth- his long awaited for “son”- was born.

View Royal Progress of 1535 in a larger map

It is interesting to think that even so close to her downfall, Anne was still in Henry’s good graces. By the time of the royal progress in 1535 Henry’s attentions had already begun to stray again; Anne had given birth to a healthy daughter, but the sons she had promised were stillborn. Yet they still put up a united front and on this journey they made a point to inspect at least one of the manors held by the Duke of Suffolk; Henry’s longtime friend. The manor was being inspected before it was turned over to the Crown; Suffolk had fallen out of favor not because he married Henry’s recently widowed sister in secret and without the permission of the King (which he did), but because he was an outspoken opponent of Henry’s marriage to Anne. Many people attribute Henry’s continuing coldness towards his old friend as wounded pride and nothing really to do with Anne, but the fact of the matter is, once Anne had been executed Suffolk returned to court and to favor.

Both supporters and opponents of the doomed Queen recognize that she was an incredibly influential woman who brought about a lot of changes in her country. It is doubtful that anyone else would have had so much affect on the king, that he would divorce a woman with the strength of two royal powers at her back, to marry what amounted to a commoner with no real political alliances to another country. Their courtship and marriage was previously unheard of, and has since been unmatched in terms of passion and foolishness.

References:

 Ives, E. W. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn: ‘the Most Happy’ Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.

http://onthetudortrail.com/Blog/anne-boleyn-places/palaces-and-houses/

http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/firstactofsuccession.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32155/32155-h/32155-h.htm

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Preservation: For the preservation of this project, I will of course save a copy to my computer and to a thumb drive. Through the blog, it will be saved to a server (perhaps multiple servers), and I believe as long as Google Maps continues to work, this blog post will be view able for the foreseeable future. It might also be a good idea to post it in various places and on various other blogs, as an OnMason blog is not as prolific as others and might have a shorter lifespan, as well as a more limited audience, seeing as it’s a blog for one specific college.

I think that the concept of a Syllabus Finder is really interesting; an archive of syllabi from different courses at different universities would probably be really helpful in the future, allowing professors to possibly coordinate classes. It could also help students by arranging a syllabus from each class in some sort of digital format where they would have easy access to it throughout the term.

The idea of finding a document or something based on the word usage in said document reminds me of using Ctrl+ F to find specific words within a block of text. Speaking as someone who has used online databases and journals frequently for over four years, I find this sort of thing incredibly helpful.

For my Google Ngram Viewer I compared three of arguably most influential people in getting Henry VIII to break from Rome and establish the Church of England: Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, and Thomas Cromwell.

First I tried it in British English

Then American English, using the same dates

Then finally, English Fiction, still using the same dates

I thought that the results were very interesting. Obviously British English goes back further than either of the other two, though there seems to be some sort of error around 1680, and if I had gone back any further the error would have gotten worse. In American English, Anne seems to be consistently the most popular out of the three names, but in both of the other categories she and Wolsey alternatively share the top spot, with English Fiction trailing behind British English by about one hundred years.

This week, our task was to overlay an older map on top of a Google Earth image. I chose a map of Vermont and New Hampshire from the New York Public Library website because I was born and raised in Vermont (as you will see in my screenshot, there is a little yellow thumbtack for “Home” over the state that I don’t ever remember putting there, but must have done at some point).

I thought this would be a pretty easy thing to do, but it’s really not. I was so distracted by all of the other stuff on both maps that it was really difficult for me to line up the image properly. It’s kind of a shoddy job but I think it’s in the ballpark; I used Lake Champlain as my marker and tried to get the two images as close as I could. Then I checked the state lines to see if they were acceptably aligned as well.

I tried to pull the whole thing up in Google Maps but it wouldn’t show the image of the older map so I just took a screenshot and posted it here as an image.

William G. Thomas’ and Edward L. Ayers’ article The Differences Slavery Made: A Close Analysis of Two American Communities was a very interesting article. It was focused on the idea of using digital tools to showcase and investigate a historical case, but it also gave a lot of insight into the actual events that were going on before the start of the Civil War. I thought that there was a good balance between showing the technical side of their project while also really getting into the issue that they were researching.

I very much liked the mention of Vannevar Bush’s article because it was something that I’ve read (obviously) so I was able to keep up with the mentions of it in this article, and I agree with the general assessment that the digital age is doing something good for history. The concise way in which the authors illustrated their use of Janet Murray’s four aspect of information in relation to their own project was very helpful as well; I felt that it gave me a good overview of what to expect. From our discussions in class, it was clear to me why they made the choice of using XML as opposed to HTML (basically, that it’s more flexible and extensive). There was also acknowledgement that their digitized article only dealt with relatively few issues, and Thomas and Ayers created a list of things that they were not able to cover, such as:

• how to present narrative more effectively
• how to represent event and change
• how to analyze language more precisely
• how to create visualizations as compelling and complete as narrative

They invited others to build off of their efforts.

I was impressed with the organization of their evidence; searching through it was made easier by the subheadings and the splits by topic and format. Some of the maps were difficult to read because there seemed to be a lot going on in them, but I am not sure if that doesn’t have more to do with my relative inexperience in analyzing things like this. (The map for the Lebanon Sulpher Springs was especially difficult to puzzle out).

Overall, I felt that this was a very comprehensive and informative research project and its authors were clearly eager to use digital media to further examine their topic.

Okay, full disclosure: I’ve never been good at doing things online. Nothing ever works for me and I find it all very frustrating. So when I realized that there was an interactive tutorial on how to make a map on Google Maps, I was very excited. It made things so much easier on me!

I’m basically the official tour guide of my family when it comes to showing guests around DC, so I created a map of my favorite places to take people.

View DC in a larger map

I tried to embed the image of my map using HTML but I don’t think it worked very well, so here’s a link to it as well. (Edit: It seems my embedding did work, but it doesn’t show up while I’m creating the post. Interesting.)

For my chart, I simply did a pie chart of approximately how much time I spent today doing different things:

This was probably the easiest thing to do for me.

I actually quite enjoyed reading Matt Honan’s articles (here and here) for Wire magazine. They were both very informative and I thought they were a great cautionary tale for relying too heavily on passwords and other website security to protect you. It was really interesting that the hackers didn’t seem to be at all interested in Honan’s credit card details or anything like that, but instead were focused on getting his Twitter handle. They also mentioned that they were doing it to point out the flaws in the software that companies used, which is a noble sentiment, perhaps better expressed without ruining someone’s online life.

Honan’s followup article was a nice touch, and I’m glad that he was generally able to sort things out (for the most part). He did note that it was quite a bit easier for him to contact the right people and figure out what was going on with his machine because he’s been in the business of technology for quite a while. Surely, it wouldn’t be so easy for someone like me, and nearly computer-illiterate college student. He also mentions the issues with Apple and their iCloud security. From his point of view it doesn’t seem to make sense that Apple would encourage its users to trust this software, and then not do a better security job with it. This is, essentially, leaving them wide open to something like what happened to Honan, is it not? (This makes me glad that I don’t have an Apple products except my tiny iPod).

It did make me think of my own online accounts and how secure they are. I used to think I was very clever in picking my passcodes; there was one I used above all else because the random jumble of letters and numbers made sense only to me, and no one else knew why. But apparently, hackers don’t need your passwords in order to attack your account. I’m a bit paranoid after reading these articles; computer hacking has gotten very sophisticated, it seems, and that scares me a little. I was, of course, taught never to put your social security number online, nor your full credit card number (which I never have), but according to Honan’s new “friend” Phobia they don’t need all that information to completely wipe you off the digital map.

I think that these articles give us something to think about as we continue to rely more and more heavily on digitization for everything we do. It’s scary to think that all of your documents, your photos, your memories can be wiped away with only a few keystrokes.

I will admit, when I saw the topic for this week’s blog I shuddered a little. I’ve had classes dealing with copyright law before and it’s always such a tangled subject. Having read a lot about copyright and patent lawsuits, I know that this is a difficult subject to tackle and I can imagine that it’s that much more difficult on the Internet.

Online, it’s easy to share documents and files, music and movies. We do it all the time, through emails and other websites. It’s become a basic part of our communication with each other; I can’t remember the last time I had a professor who didn’t put the syllabus up on Blackboard so they wouldn’t waste paper.

Last year, SOPA and PIPA were the big things to talk about-I actually wrote a paper on US copyright laws for a criminology class because I wanted to discuss these acts. The Internet was furious about them; Google and other websites had a “blackout day” where they rendered their websites useless for a day as protest against these two acts. They would have restricted Internet sharing much more than it already was. The file sharing behemoth MegaUpload was also shut down last year following a long FBI investigation into their website practices.

It’s really difficult to place copyrights on Internet works because it’s really hard to track Internet works. Files can be shared so easily and so quickly that it’s almost impossible to find someone who has not illegally downloaded something. We’re all guilty of it, I’m sure. I don’t quite subscribe to the idea that “piracy isn’t a victimless crime”, mainly because I think that the prices put on media we get form the Internet is ridiculous. It seems silly to have to pay almost two dollars for one song!

Of course, while it’s very easy to share things over the web, it’s also very easy to track those same things. If someone felt the need to print off copies of a book and pass them around to friends it would be very difficult to track, unless one could round up all the copies. But Internet copies are different. Search engines make it easy to find what you’re looking for, and once you’ve found it you can begin building a case against the person who violated the copyright.

There’s a fine line between public domain and copyright infringement, and I think that on the web the line becomes that much more fine.

Like many students, I love Wikipedia. Yes, I know that there can be terrible inaccuracies in their articles but it’s always a great jumping-off point, especially if you’re unfamiliar with your research topic. It’s also a great go-to for quick trivia bits and things outside of the classroom (I, for one, really like to look up movie endings before I watch them because I hate surprises).

Of course, everyone knows that Wikipedia is just about the least reliable “legitimate” source on the Internet, but it really can be useful. I know that a lot of people like to get an overview from the article and then go to the bottom and see what sources were used. Some people actually go to these sources and use them if they seem legitimate enough.

For this blog entry I looked up The War of the Roses because I’ve been to the Wikipedia page before and I knew it was a good one. The article is quite long and in-depth, but that of course does not necessarily mean that it’s legitimate. The problem with Wikipedia articles is that usually, most of their information is correct but some of the details are wrong, and sometimes details are the most important part. The Wikipedia page for The War of the Roses has both a bibliography and a references page, which is heartening because I know that many pages only have one or the other. There are twelve different works cited throughout the article, which may seem like a small amount but most of the cited works are quite long and all-encompassing of the war. All but one have a linked ISBN number where you can look up the book on either Amazon or Google.

I think that having background knowledge on a topic allows the reader a little insight into the accuracy of a Wikipedia article. I probably know more about The War of the Roses than most people who look it up, and in fact I’ve read at least two of the source texts listed in the bibliography. Overall, I think that Wikipedia is a good place to orient yourself and learn a little about your topic, but I wouldn’t put too much stock in it. For real research, I’d go to a university database or somewhere a little more trustworthy.

1) An op-ed on a labor dispute involving public school teachers from before 1970

• To find this I first went to ProQuest and simply typed in “1970 public schools+labor dispute” and came up with 0 results.
• I then just searched “public school labor dispute” and got 20884 results.
• I narrowed down the search by specifying that I wanted a letter to the editor, which left me with 413 results.
• I further narrowed my search by choosing a time frame (1960-1969) and was left with 86 articles
• When I narrowed it further (to 1969 only) I found this article, written about a social workers in the public schools by Mrs. Mary Lee Brady to the Chicago Tribune in January of 1969.

2) The first documented use of solar power in the United States

• I first entered the term “solar power” into ProQuest and came up with loads of entries that I couldn’t possibly narrow down, as I had no idea what time period I should be looking in.
• I then entered the phrase “use of solar power” and sorted the 135 entries by date (oldest first) instead of relevance.
• I got this  article from the Boston Globe in November of 1940, which tells about the sun’s heat causing a water boiler to heat within five minutes. While this is probably not the very first solar power encounter in the US, it seems to be a big enough feat (at the time) to at least be quite early on in the study of solar power.

3) The best resource for the history of California ballot initiatives, including voting data

• Disclaimer: I wasn’t quite sure what to be looking for with this one; it doesn’t make much sense to me. But I did my best!
• Using ProQuest (perhaps my favorite search tool) I looked up “California ballots” and got a lot of unrelated answers.
• So I narrowed the search to “California ballot initiatives” and was on the right track- only 11 results came up.
• Again, I’m not really sure of the parameters of this item, but I found an article from a 1988 issue of The Christian Science Monitor about a California ballot initiative and found it interesting regardless.

This scavenger hunt was quite a long process, and very frustrating. I think that it’s nearly impossible to find items to these exact specifications, especially #2 and #3. With #2, the first documented case of solar power being used in the US could have been published in a tiny town newspaper, or in a foreign newspaper-who knows? #3 is a little subjective, if I’m honest, because it’s our opinion of what’s the best resource. It all depends on preferences and the kind of format in which people best absorb information.

I really enjoy the fact that so many older issues of newspapers are now digitized and accessible to us. My New England-based family has read both The New York Times and The Boston Globe religiously since before I can remember and I think it’s really extraordinary that I can go back and read the same articles that my grandparents were reading before I was born, and even before my parents were born.

Digitizing newspapers and the like is also a really helpful tool to anyone researching anything, ever. They’re first- or second-hand accounts of past issues and events, and they really help to set the tone of a research topic. For this assignment, I decided to search the newspaper archives for articles about the moon landing. I got over ten thousand hits when I entered the search term “moon landing” into The New York Times database. Intimidating? Yes. But there are so many ways to narrow down the search. I could add in additional keywords that qualify that I am looking for the first moon landing. Alternatively, I could specify the publication dates, the document type, or the title of a document.

It was easy to narrow my search to four documents and find the front page article from July 21, 1969 “ASTRONAUTS LAND ON PLAIN; COLLECT ROCKS, PLANT FLAG”. That’s a moment in history that can now be pulled up with a few clicks of a mouse, which is both amazing and a little terrifying.

There are, of course, some drawbacks to having all this information, literally, at our fingertips. I am one of those purists who believe that nothing can come close to the real thing. I have held an actual July 21, 1969 New York Times newspaper in my hands and read the exact same article that is on the screen of my computer now, and I can say with certainty that the experience is very different. With a digitized document it feels as if you are removed from it somehow; I find it much more difficult to connect it with a period in history.

Another problem is the veritable inundation of information we receive. Over ten thousand articles, all about a moon landing, all from one single newspaper. That’s an incredible amount of information to wade through, especially if you don’t have anything specific in mind. Yes, there are parameters you can use, but sometimes they’re little to no use.

That being said, I still believe that the digitization of newspapers is an excellent and incredibly helpful tool to have for anyone.