ANNE BOLEYN
King Henry had fallen in love with a commoner so he gave her a title. Then he married her and made her his queen. When he tired of her, he accused her of adultery for a queen was treason as it compromised the succession to the throne. Henry had the queen executed, and married another.
Adultery for a queen was considered treason. Adultery per se was not punished with death in 16th century England, but the concept was that a Queen who committed adultery was risking the royal bloodline and therefore the Crown and the Nation.
Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henry VIII. Their marriage, and her execution for treason and other charges by beheading, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard, and was educated in the Netherlands and France, largely as a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France. Anne returned to England in early 1522, to marry her Irish cousin James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond; the marriage plans were broken off, and instead she secured a post at court as maid of honour to Henry VIII's wife, Catherine of Aragon.
