Was Anne Boleyn also executed for being a witch?

No, she didn’t have six fingers, she wasn’t a witch and she probably wasn’t catting around, especially not with her brother.

Henry wanted a son to secure the Tudor line on the throne, and back then, people didn’t realize that it’s chromosomes in the sperm that determine the sex of a child. A woman’s egg has only X chromosomes. A man’s sperm can have X or Y chromosomes. See how unfortunate that was for Anne?

Anne miscarried twice and only carried a girl to term, a baby who grew up to be Queen Elizabeth I. After the second miscarriage, Henry accused Anne of “bewitching” him and luring him to sin in leaving his first wife, Catherine. But Catherine hadn’t had a son either, and that’s why he left her in the first place, though he made some other justification for it at the time. Henry was good at believing his own lies if it got him his way.

The real reason Anne Boleyn was executed was because she didn’t give Henry VIII a son, and Henry had found his next prospect, Jane Seymour.

What @aprilsimnel said. GA.

And she was bossy. ;)

I put a silly face on the bossiness, but it was a real issue. Anne Boleyn was the driving force between Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, the changes in the church, and a great many other things. She was portrayed as being willful and having strong opinions and not being afraid to let her opinions known for a reason. She spent time in the French court learning about a great many things and becoming very forward for a woman in her time. She was fatally ambitious and rose to her position by more or less manipulating Henry VIII into doing her bidding. After a while, Henry VIII got tired of being ruled by a woman as he had been in the beginning of their relationship and, with her failure to produce a son, sought reasons and ways to get rid of her to get the far more biddable Jane Seymour into her place. Jane had all the virtues that Anne was lacking (modesty, knowing the proper place for a woman) and was seen as a welcome change from the conniving and scheming that the Boleyn (and Howard) families were doing through and with Anne.

Yes. Anne also put a lot of courtiers off who could’ve influenced the king in her favour. It was probably a mistake for Anne’s family to have had her in the French court, where women had more leeway and influence, for so long. But regardless, I think Henry knew the people and Parliament weren’t going to go for Annulment II: Whitehall Boogaloo. It was easier, in a realpolitik way, to just have a kangaroo trial and execute her.

I have read a couple of her biographies and it seems that there was a discrepancy on the reason Henry decided to marry Anne in the first place (it was lust, truthfully). He decided to blame it on witchcraft, basing his case on the evidence that she had an extra finger (polydactyly) and a third nipple (which was thought to breastfeed the devil) and stating that she had used witchcraft to seduce him. this didn’t end up being a charge in court, however.

I totally agree. I don’t think Anne was catting around. I think Henry wanted her, a young and healthy woman, to give him a nursery full of sons. His first wife had one daughter and a string of miscarriages. When Anne started doing the same ( she had 3 or 4 miscarriages and one daughter) he could see it happening all over again. Henry was desperate for a boy, and Anne’s very life depended on having one, so she was pregnant constantly didn’t let her body recover from one miscarriage before she was pregnant again (and again and again.) Also she was a protestant, so all the catholics wanted to be rid of her.

Just a side note, Anne Boleyn’s mother and Catherine Howard’s father were brother and sister. They had another brother, William, who is my 12th great grandfather.