MEMOIRS

OF

THE LIFE

OF

ANNE BOLEYN,

QUEEN OF HENRY VIII.

By Miss Benger,

AUTHOR OF MEMOIRS OF FRS. ELIZABETH HAMILTON,

JOHN TOBIN, ETC.

PHILADELPHIA:

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY ABRAHAM SMALL,

No. 165, Chesnut Street.

1822.

PREFACE.

In the records of biography there is perhaps no character that more forcibly exemplifies the vanity of human ambition than that of Anne Boleyn: elevated to a throne, devoted to a scaffold, she appears to have been invested with royalty only to offer an example of humiliating degradation, such as modern Europe had never witnessed. But, abstracted from those signal vicissitudes of fortune, which, in every age and country, must awaken curiosity and sympathy, there are various circumstances connected with the history of Anne Boleyn, which are calculated to creats peculiar interest in the English reader. It would be ungrateful to forget that the mother of Queen Elizabeth was the early and zealous advocate of the Reformation, and that by her efforts to dispel the gloom of ignorance and superstition, she conferred on the English people a benefit, of which, in the present advanced state of know`ledge and civilization, it would be difficult to conceive or to appreciate the real value and importance. But the most prominent feature