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Anne of Bohemia: Overcoming Infertility

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Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts

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Abstract

Anne of Bohemia (b.1366–d.1394) was the childless first wife of deposed king, Richard II. This chapter examines her struggles with infertility, and her ability to still achieve a largely positive reputation. Anne never gave up in her attempts to have a child (as shown by an apothecary bill), but she also sought out other outlets, such as intercession. After her untimely death, Richard II helped burnish his wife’s image through her epitaph and other memorializations that emphasized the queen’s work as a nurturing, albeit non-biological, mother. In addition, Anne brought prestige to Richard’s court through her imperial blood, she was a successful patron, and she supported Richard’s political endeavours. She also functioned as an imagined patron for authors such as Chaucer, who seems to have thought quite highly of the queen. By examining all of Anne of Bohemia’s accomplishments, we can see that queenship was much more than motherhood.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Thank you to Chelsea Griffis and Becky Cerling for their comments and revisions. I also thank the USC Provost’s Fellowship Program and the Schallek Awards, sponsored by the Richard III Society and the Medieval Academy of America, for their funding and support of my dissertation, which is where I started researching Anne of Bohemia. See: Kristen L. Geaman, Anne of Bohemia (London: Routledge, 2022), which further develops some of this chapter’s arguments.

  2. 2.

    Thomas Walsingham, The St Albans Chronicle: The “Chronica Maiora” of Thomas Walsingham, ed. and trans. John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003–2011), 1:572–575.

  3. 3.

    L.C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey, ed., Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 24–25.

  4. 4.

    Adam Usk, The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377–1421, ed. and trans. Chris Given-Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 4–5 (translation). Latin on page 4: “reginam benignissimam”; George B. Stow, ed., Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 134: “Hec enim regina, quamuis sine liberis discessit, tamen gloriosa et regno Anglie, in quantam potuit, proficua tenebatur. Vnde proceres ac plebei in eius mortem ualde condolebant.”

  5. 5.

    George B. Stow, “Stubbs, Steel, and Richard II as Insane: The Origin and Evolution of an English Historiographical Myth,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 143, no. 4 (1999): 623–629.

  6. 6.

    For instance, when Richard II was about to re-marry, some of his nobles based their objections on the inability of his six-year-old bride to help him immediately secure the succession. See: Jean Froissart, Chronicles of England, France, Spain, and the Adjoining Countries, trans. Thomas Johnes, 2 vols. (London, 1839), 2:573–574.

  7. 7.

    Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (New York: Penguin, 2003), xx, 23, 24–27, 44, 48, 54. This book is also called The Book of the Three Virtues.

  8. 8.

    See: Helen Lacey, The Royal Pardon: Access to Mercy in Fourteenth-Century England (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), 154–155, 155n133.

  9. 9.

    Lois L. Huneycutt, “The Idea of the Perfect Princess: The Life of St Margaret in the Reign of Matilda II (1100–1118),” in Anglo-Norman Studies XII, ed. Marjorie Chibnall (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), 91.

  10. 10.

    Huneycutt, “The Idea of the Perfect Princess,” 88–93.

  11. 11.

    Calendar of Select Pleas and Memoranda of the City of London: Preserved Among the Archives of the Corporation of the City of London at the Guildhall, A.D. 1381–1412, ed. A.H. Thomas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 7–8.

  12. 12.

    de Pizan, The Treasure, 25–26, 47. Some parts of this chapter are based on ideas developed and presented earlier in: Kristen L. Geaman “Beyond Good Queen Anne: Anne of Bohemia, Patronage, and Politics,” in Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, ed. Heather Tanner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 67–89 (see 69–71 for historiography).

  13. 13.

    Iva Rosario, Art and Propaganda: Charles IV of Bohemia, 1346–1378 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), 1–2.

  14. 14.

    František Kavka, “Politics and Culture under Charles IV,” in Bohemia in History, ed. Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 70–72; S. Harrison Thomson, “Learning at the Court of Charles IV,” Speculum 25, no. 1 (January 1950): 6, 8.

  15. 15.

    Édouard Perroy, L’Angleterre et Le Grand Schisme D’Occident (Paris: J. Monnier, 1933), 136–139; Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997, 1999), 83–84, 86–87; Anthony Tuck, “Richard II and the House of Luxembourg,” in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. Anthony Goodman and James L. Gillespie (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 205–229, esp. 214–217.

  16. 16.

    Froissart, Chronicles of England, 1:681.

  17. 17.

    Westminster Chronicle, 22–23.

  18. 18.

    Froissart, Chronicles of England, 1:682.

  19. 19.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:688–689; Westminster Chronicle, 42–43.

  20. 20.

    The Appellants were Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; Richard FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel; Thomas de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick; Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby (later Henry IV); and Thomas Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham.

  21. 21.

    G.H. Martin, ed. and trans., Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 424–427; Saul, Richard II, 187–190; Maude Violet Clarke and Vivian Hunter Galbraith, “The Deposition of Richard II,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14, no. 1 (January 1930): 157.

  22. 22.

    An English Chronicle, 1377–1461: Edited from Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21068 and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, ed. William Marx (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 11.

  23. 23.

    Chronicque de la Traïson et Mort de Richart Deux Roy d’Engleterre, ed. Benjamin Williams (London, 1846), 133.

  24. 24.

    The word in question is puerperium, as opposed to conception. For details on translation choices, see: Kristen Geaman, “A Personal Letter of Anne of Bohemia,” English Historical Review 128, no. 534 (October 2013): 1092.

  25. 25.

    BL Add. MS 6159, fol. 156v. “Vestre igitur celsitudini sic describimus statum nostrum ut nullo careat quod optare deberet nisi hoc quod dolentes scribimus quia adhuc de nostro puerperio non gaudemus set de hoc laborat in proximo spes salutis domino concedente.”

  26. 26.

    TNA E 101/402/18.

  27. 27.

    Medieval medicine was based on the concept of the four humours (yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm), which needed to be balanced based on each individual’s constitution. Herbal remedies and medicines were not used to treat just one ailment but could instead be used to treat a variety of problems. For details on this manuscript and the medical texts in question, see: Kristen L. Geaman, “Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive,” Social History of Medicine 29, no. 2 (May 2016): 224–244.

  28. 28.

    Monica Green, ed., The Trotula: A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 202 (from Antidotarium Nicholai).

  29. 29.

    Green, ed., Trotula, 193, 201 (from Antidotarium Nicholai).

  30. 30.

    Geaman, “Anne of Bohemia and Her Struggle to Conceive,” 235–238.

  31. 31.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:737.

  32. 32.

    Louise Tingle, Chaucer’s Queens: Royal Women, Intercession, and Patronage in England, 1328–1394 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 71.

  33. 33.

    John Carmi Parsons, “The Pregnant Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval Construction of Motherhood,” in Medieval Mothering, ed. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), 39–61, esp. 45–46, 52.

  34. 34.

    John Carmi Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession in Thirteenth-Century England,” in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 151; Parsons, “Pregnant Queen as Counsellor,” 53.

  35. 35.

    John Carmi Parsons, “Ritual and Symbol in English Medieval Queenship to 1500,” in Women and Sovereignty, ed. L.O. Fradenburg (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), 64.

  36. 36.

    Lacey, The Royal Pardon, 213–232.

  37. 37.

    “Richard II: 1381 November,” in Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. Chris Given-Wilson, Paul Brand, Seymour Phillips, Mark Ormrod, Geoffrey Martin, Anne Curry, and Rosemary Horrox (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/parliament-rolls-medieval/november-1381.

  38. 38.

    W.M. Ormrod, “In Bed with Joan of Kent: The King’s Mother and the Peasants’ Revolt,” in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Rosalynn Voaden, Arlyn Diamond, Ann Hutchison, Carol Meale, and Lesley Johnson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 288.

  39. 39.

    Ormrod, “In Bed with Joan of Kent,” 289–290.

  40. 40.

    Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office, Richard II, 1381–1385 (London: HMSO, 1895–1909), 119–120, 159, 203.

  41. 41.

    CPR, Richard II, 1391–1396, 199.

  42. 42.

    Lacey, The Royal Pardon, 32. Most pardons were requested by the trial judge and processed by the chancellor. Those that involved people such as Anne and came from the king’s grace were bypassing the regular legal process. See: Lacey, The Royal Pardon, 20, 22, 26–27.

  43. 43.

    TNA SC 8/75/3718; SC 8/42/2075.

  44. 44.

    TNA SC 8/222/11079; CPR, Richard II, 1381–1385, 458.

  45. 45.

    TNA SC 8/183/9106; CPR, Richard II, 1381–1385, 433.

  46. 46.

    TNA SC 8/224/11161; CPR, Richard II, 1389–1392, 18.

  47. 47.

    Anthony Musson, “Queenship, Lordship and Petitioning in Late Medieval England,” in Medieval Petitions: Grace and Grievance, ed. W. Mark Ormrod, Gwilym Dodd, and Anthony Musson (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), 156–172, at 161.

  48. 48.

    The Teutonic Knights are one example: Codex Diplomaticus Prussicus, Volume IV, ed. Johannes Voigt (Königsberg, 1853), 124–125.

  49. 49.

    Westminster Chronicle, 503–509; Richard Maidstone, Concordia: The Reconciliation of Richard II with London, trans. A.G. Rigg and ed. David R. Carlson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003); Helen Suggett, “A Letter Describing Richard II’s Reconciliation with the City of London, 1392,” English Historical Review 62, no. 243 (1947): 212.

  50. 50.

    Maidstone, Concordia, 73.

  51. 51.

    Westminster Chronicle, 510–511, see note 4 for pelican identification.

  52. 52.

    Anastasia Pineschi, “The Pelican, Self-Sacrificing Mother Bird of the Medieval Bestiary,” The Iris: Behind the Scenes at the Getty, May 11, 2018, https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-pelican-self-sacrificing-mother-bird-of-the-medieval-bestiary/ (accessed 20 November 2020); “Pelican,” The Medieval Bestiary, January 15, 2011, http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast244.htm (accessed 20 November 2020).

  53. 53.

    CPR, Richard II, 1385–1389, 15.

  54. 54.

    CPR, Richard II, 1381–1385, 306, 579; and CPR, Richard II, 1385–1389, 7.

  55. 55.

    TNA SC 8/186/9259; SC 8/222/11055.

  56. 56.

    CPR, Richard II, 1388–1392, 514; CPR, Richard II, 1391–1396, 285.

  57. 57.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:960–961. “mulier, ultra multorum opinionem, Deo dedita, amatrix elemosyne, fautrix pauperum et ecclesie, cultrix uere fidei et iusticie, executrix furtiue penitencie.” This passage also appears in Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti, in John de Trokelowe and Anon, Chronica et Annales, ed. H.T. Riley (London, 1866), 168. Both were written by Walsingham.

  58. 58.

    CPR, Richard II, 1391–1396, 503.

  59. 59.

    Michael van Dussen, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 138, lines 9–10. For more on these eulogies, see chapter 1 in van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, or Michael van Dussen, “Three Verse Eulogies of Anne of Bohemia,” Medium Aevum 78, no. 2 (2009): 231–260.

  60. 60.

    van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, 138, lines 9, 11–12.

  61. 61.

    van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, 139, line 27.

  62. 62.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:960–961: “set tamen multorum obloquiis infamata.”

  63. 63.

    Anne potentially had a Bible in Latin, Czech, and German, although translations of the Latin of John Wyclif (who mentioned it) differ. From there, Anne’s legend grew into rumours that she had an English bible and was a reformer. For a succinct and readable discussion of Anne’s transformation into a reforming icon, see: van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, chapter 1.

  64. 64.

    Sabrina Mitchell, Medieval Manuscript Painting (New York: The Viking Press, 1964, 1965), 37.

  65. 65.

    Barbara Drake Boehm, “Called to Create: Luxury Artists at Work in Prague,” in Prague: The Crown of Bohemia, 1347–1437, ed. Barbara Drake Boehm and Jiří Fajt (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 78, quoting Josef Krása, Die Handschriften König Wenzels IV, trans. Herta Sowinski (Prague: Odeon, 1971), 73.

  66. 66.

    Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: The Middle Ages (1954; repr., Harmondsworth: Penguin,1965), 152.

  67. 67.

    Amanda Simpson, The Connections Between English and Bohemian Painting During the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984).

  68. 68.

    For further information, see: Hanna Hlavácková, “The Bible of Wenceslas IV in the Context of Court Culture,” in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas, and Caroline Elam (London: Harvey Miller, 1997), 223–231; Paul Binski, “The Liber Regalis: Its Date and European Context,” in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas, and Caroline Elam (London: Harvey Miller, 1997), 233–246.

  69. 69.

    Andrew Taylor, “Anne of Bohemia and the Making of Chaucer,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 96.

  70. 70.

    David Wallace, Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 376 (quote) and 6, 338, 376–377. Older scholarship argued that Anne commissioned The Legend, but there is no clear evidence for this.

  71. 71.

    Alfred Thomas, Reading Women in Late Medieval Europe: Anne of Bohemia and Chaucer’s Female Audience (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), especially 3, 10, 17, 206–207; Alfred Thomas, A Blessed Shore: England and Bohemia from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 26, 28.

  72. 72.

    Nigel Saul, “Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship,” English Historical Review 110, no. 438 (September 1995): 858, 861, 876. The earliest instances were in 1391, when Anne was still queen.

  73. 73.

    Saul, “Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship,” 871.

  74. 74.

    See: Saul, Richard II, 346–358, for a detailed analysis in favour of the French over Bohemian influence at Richard’s court.

  75. 75.

    It is possible that Richard’s decorative scheme of thirteen kings for Westminster Hall owed something to the extensive dynastic aggrandizement Charles IV promoted, especially at Karlštejn Castle. However, kings promoting their dynastic and saintly links was rather common, so it would be wise not to make too much of both having commissioned similar art. See: Rosario, Art and Propaganda; and Philip Lindley, “Absolutism and Regal Image in Ricardian Sculpture,” The Regal Image of Richard II, 60–84, 288–296.

  76. 76.

    See: Saul, “Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship” and Saul, “The Kingship of Richard II,” for further information. Aside from more formalised terms of address, Richard also pushed concepts of his subjects’ obedience and his own sovereignty.

  77. 77.

    Thomas, A Blessed Shore, 14, 65.

  78. 78.

    Bueno de Mesquita, “The Foreign Policy of Richard II in 1397: Some Italian Letters,” English Historical Review 56, no. 224 (October 1941): 632.

  79. 79.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 2:61.

  80. 80.

    de Mesquita, “The Foreign Policy,” 632; Michael Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), 93–94.

  81. 81.

    Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter König Wenzel, Volume 3: 1397–1400, ed. Julius Weizsäcker (Munich: Rudolph Oldenbourg, 1877), 61. “imperium ex nostra in alienam familiam transferatur.”

  82. 82.

    This was Richard, Earl of Cornwall, younger brother of Henry III. Richard and Alfonso X of Castile were both elected King of the Romans in 1257.

  83. 83.

    Wallace, Chaucerian Polity, 374.

  84. 84.

    Usk, Chronicle of Adam Usk, 18–19; Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:960–961.

  85. 85.

    Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi II, 134; Usk, Chronicle of Adam Usk, 18–19; The Reign of Richard II: From Minority to Tyranny 1377–97, ed. A.K. McHardy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 304.

  86. 86.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:961.

  87. 87.

    Walsingham, St Albans Chronicle, 1:960–963.

  88. 88.

    Mark Duffy, Royal Tombs of Medieval England (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), 168; and van Dussen, “Three Verse Eulogies of Anne of Bohemia,” 236, citing Lindley, “Absolutism and Regal Image,” 60–84, 288–296. Some of the ideas here were presented in: Kristen L. Geaman and Theresa Earenfight, “Neither Heir nor Spare: Childless Queens and the Practice of Monarchy in Premodern Europe,” in The Routledge History of Monarchy, ed. Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Russel E. Martin, and Zita Eva Rohr (London: Routledge, 2019), 518–533.

  89. 89.

    Duffy, Royal Tombs, 172. My translation. Original Latin:Verse

    Verse Sub petra lata nunc Anna iacet tumulata, Dum vixit mundo Ricardo nupta secundo. Christo devota fuit hec factis bene nota: Pauperibus prona semper sua reddere dona: Iurgia sedavit et pregnantes relevavit. Corpore formosa vultu mitis speciosa. Prebens solamen viduis, egris medicamen: Anno milleno ter C, quarto nonageno Junii septeno mensis, migravit ameno.

  90. 90.

    van Dussen, “Three Verse Eulogies,” 232, 234–237.

  91. 91.

    van Dussen, “Three Verse Eulogies,” 252 (lines 25–26).

  92. 92.

    van Dussen, “Three Verse Eulogies,” 252 (quote), 250.

  93. 93.

    John Carmi Parsons, “‘Never was a body buried in England with such solemnity and honour:’ The Burials and Posthumous Commemorations of English Queens to 1500,” in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 333.

  94. 94.

    On women and keeping alive family memory, see: Elisabeth van Houts, Gender and Memory in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

  95. 95.

    For the details of this historiographical myth, see: Stow, “Stubbs, Steel, and Richard II as Insane,” 601–638.

  96. 96.

    Clarke and Galbraith, “Deposition of Richard II,” 157.

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  1. University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

    Kristen L. Geaman

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  1. University Campus North Lincolnshire, England, UK

    Aidan Norrie

  2. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Carolyn Harris

  3. University of Reading, Reading, UK

    J.L. Laynesmith

  4. York, UK

    Danna R. Messer

  5. University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Elena Woodacre

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Geaman, K.L. (2023). Anne of Bohemia: Overcoming Infertility. In: Norrie, A., Harris, C., Laynesmith, J., Messer, D.R., Woodacre, E. (eds) Later Plantagenet and the Wars of the Roses Consorts. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94886-3_5

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