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When King Henry VIII wished to divest himself of his first two wives, he cried incest in each instance. Henry invalidated his marriage to Catherine of Aragon (and disavowed the daughter she had given him) by alleging that Catherine's prior relationship to Henry's older brother placed her within the degrees of kinship prohibited by biblical injunctions against incest. He cast off Anne Boleyn (and disclaimed the daughter she had given him) by accusing Anne of incestuous adultery with her brother. Describing the Kings twicetested strategy, Bruce Boehrer affirms: "Henry sought to alter the social significance of his first two wives and their daughters by wrapping them in a thick gauze of incestuous narrative." Boehrer points out, however, that this incestuous narrative did not end with the execution of Anne:
The problems of Henry's first two marriages exerted practical pressure on both Mary and Elizabeth when they sought to inherit their father's throne; with both their mothers adjudged guilty of incest at different times, neither daughter could advance an absolutely unconflieted claim to the English crown; and thus the issue of incest directly informed English political behavior for several decades after Henry's demise.1
According to Boehrer, Mary I tried to overturn the repudiation of her mother by reenacting Henrys marriage to Catherine of Aragon: she married Philip II and forged anew England's alliance with Spain. Elizabeth I, on the other hand, refused to marry, insisting that her right to the throne did not need to be dressed up in royal authority borrowed from abroad. As part of this program, Elizabeth tried to cut short all commentary concerning the royal line of succession or her place within it. Elizabeth s reign, Boehrer asserts, "is characterized by an intense reluctance to talk openly about the family matters of the sovereign, particularly as those matters extend to the question of incest."2 Not even her own supporters were permitted to talk about the lineal status of Henry's children, an interdiction evident in the imprisonment of John Hales for writing a tract discrediting Mary Stuarts title to the crown. As Boehrer affirms: "Elizabeth clearly regarded her control over genealogical matters, both past and future, as crucial to her tenure on the throne."3
When considered in the context of Elizabeth s effort...