Anne of Cleves (28 June or 22 September 1515 – 16 July 1557) was Queen of England as the fourth wife of Henry VIII from 6 January to 12 July 1540.
Born in Düsseldorf to John III, Duke of Cleves and Maria of Jülich-Berg, little is known about Anne before 1527. She was betrothed to Francis I, Duke of Lorraine, but the marriage did not take place.
In March 1539, Henry started negotiations with the German Protestants to form an alliance against the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire. He sought to marry Anne, the sister of William, Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, and ordered Hans Holbein the Younger to paint him a portrait of her. Once Henry found it flattering, he agreed to the marriage. Anne arrived in England in December 1539, and met Henry in January, where he surprised her by wearing a disguise.
The difference in Henry and Anne's personalities made them incompatible with each other, and the marriage was annulled on 12 July 1540 following six months with no consummation. Anne received a generous settlement from Henry after the annulment and came to be known as "The King's Beloved Sister". She lived out the rest of her life in England and witnessed the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, who were both Henry's children. She attended the coronation of Mary I on 1 October 1553, outliving all of her husband's other wives. Anne was interred as a queen at Westminster Abbey following her death in 1557.
Anne was born in 1515, on either 22 September or 28 June. She was born in Düsseldorf, Duchy of Berg, the second daughter of John III of the House of La Marck, Duke of Jülich jure uxoris, Cleves, Berg jure uxoris, Count of Mark, also known as de la Marck and Ravensberg jure uxoris (often referred to as Duke of Cleves) who died in 1538, and his wife Maria, Duchess of Jülich-Berg. She grew up in Schloss Burg on the edge of Solingen.
Anne's father was influenced by Erasmus and followed a moderate path within the Reformation. He decided to side with the Schmalkaldic League and opposed Emperor Charles V. After John's death, Anne's brother William became Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, bearing the promising epithet "The Rich". In 1526, her elder sister Sibylle was married to John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, head of the Protestant Confederation of Germany and considered the "Champion of the Reformation".
In 1527, at the age of 11, Anne was betrothed to Francis, the 9-year-old son and heir of Antoine, Duke of Lorraine but because Francis was under the age of consent (10 years old) at the time of the arrangement, the betrothal was considered unofficial and was cancelled in 1535. Her brother William was a Lutheran but the family was unaligned religiously, with her mother, the Duchess Maria, described as a "strict Catholic". Her father's ongoing dispute over the Duchy of Guelders with Charles V made the family suitable allies for England's King Henry VIII in the wake of the Truce of Nice. The match with Anne was urged on the King by his chief minister, Thomas Cromwell.
The artist Hans Holbein the Younger was dispatched to Düren to paint portraits of Anne and her younger sister, Amalia, each of whom Henry VIII was considering as his fourth wife. Henry required the artist to be as accurate as possible, not to flatter the sisters. The portraits are now located in the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Another 1539 portrait, by the school of Barthel Bruyn the Elder, is in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Negotiations to arrange the marriage were in full swing by March 1539. Thomas Cromwell oversaw the talks and a marriage treaty was signed on 4 October of that year.
Henry valued education and cultural sophistication in women (e.g., Anne Boleyn), but Anne lacked these traits. She had received no formal education but was skilled in needlework and liked playing card games. She could read and write, but only in German. Anne was considered gentle, virtuous and docile, which is why she was recommended as a suitable candidate for Henry.
Anne was described by French ambassador Charles de Marillac as tall and slim, "of medium beauty, and of very assured and resolute countenance." She was fair-haired and was said to have had a lovely face. In the words of the chronicler Edward Hall, "Her hair hanging down, which was fair, yellow and long ... she was apparelled after the English fashion, with a French hood, which so set forth her beauty and good visage, that every creature rejoiced to behold her." She appeared rather solemn by English standards, and looked old for her age. Holbein painted her with a high forehead, heavy-lidded eyes and a pointed chin.
Anne was initially to travel to England alone with her cortège – the death of her father prevented her brother and mother from travelling – but there were concerns about a beautiful, sheltered young woman who had never travelled by sea making such a journey, especially during the winter. She travelled from Düsseldorf to Cleves, and then to Antwerp where she was received by fifty English merchants.
Henry met her privately on New Year's Day 1540 at Rochester Abbey in Rochester on her journey from Dover. Henry and some of his courtiers, following a courtly-love tradition, went disguised into the room where Anne was staying. The chronicler Charles Wriothesley reported:
[The King] so went up into the chamber where the said Lady Anne was looking out of a window to see the bull-baiting which was going on in the courtyard, and suddenly he embraced and kissed her, and showed her a token which the king had sent her for New Year's gift, and she being abashed and not knowing who it was thanked him, and so he spoke with her. But she regarded him little, but always looked out the window .... and when the king saw that she took so little notice of his coming he went into another chamber and took off his cloak and came in again in a coat of purple velvet. And when the lords and knights saw his grace they did him reverence.
According to the testimony of Henry's companions, he was disappointed with Anne, feeling that she was not as described. Although Anne "regarded him little", it is unknown whether she knew this was the King. Henry then revealed his true identity to Anne, and although he is said to have been put off, the marriage preparations proceeded. Henry and Anne then met officially on 3 January on Blackheath outside the gates of Greenwich Park, where a grand reception was laid out.
Most historians believe that Henry's misgivings about the marriage derived from his assessment that Anne's appearance was unsatisfactory and failure to inspire him to consummate the marriage. He felt that he had been misled by his advisors' praise: "She is nothing so fair as she hath been reported", he complained. He told others in his court that if "it were not that she had come so far into my realm, and the great preparations and state that my people have made for her, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world and of driving her brother into the arms of the Emperor and the French King, I would not now marry her. But now it is too far gone, wherefore I am sorry."
Cromwell received some blame for the Holbein portrait, which Henry believed not an accurate depiction of Anne, and for some of the exaggerated reports of her beauty. Henry urged Cromwell to find a legal way to avoid the marriage but, by this point, doing so was impossible without endangering the vital alliance with the Germans. In his anger and frustration, the King turned on Cromwell, to his subsequent regret.
Despite Henry's very vocal misgivings, the two were married on 6 January 1540 at the royal Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London, by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. The phrase "God send me well to keep" was engraved around Anne's wedding ring. According to Edward Hall, she wore a "gowne of ryche cloth of gold set full of large flowers of great and Orient pearl, made after the Duche fassion rownde". A round gown had no train. On the Sunday after the wedding there were jousts, Anne dressed in the English fashion, with a French hood.