Notorious: Anne Boleyn and the Great Tudor Hoax

From historian Hayley Nolan comes the explosive narrative of an audacious young girl who conned her way to the center of King Henry VIII’s divorce scandal and went head-to-head with Anne Boleyn.

This gripping new analysis tells of how Elizabeth Barton, a poverty-stricken housemaid-turned-nun, became the culprit who delayed Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn for seven infamous years. Wielding unimaginable influence over the biggest names in Tudor history—from the Pope to Catherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey and even the King himself—Barton spearheaded the smear campaign against Anne Boleyn that would eventually ruin her.

But was the young girl simply a victim of these Catholic power players or the dastardly mastermind behind this great Tudor hoax?

Elizabeth Barton wasn’t born into power or privilege. A household servant, she shot to fame at the age of nineteen when a terrifying illness prompted apparent prophecies from God. But when a group of ambitious clergymen saw an opportunity to stop the King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, an almighty con began. Now, as a national celebrity, the daring young girl commanded audiences with Henry VIII, threatening death and damnation if he married Anne Boleyn, whilst urging the Pope not to give into Henry’s demands for divorce.

But when Anne Boleyn achieved the impossible and became Queen of England, the clock began to tick down on Barton’s own demise; Boleyn launched a counterattack in support of England’s Reformation, desperate to save the people from what she saw as a corrupt system of oppression and wicked schemes like these. And though Boleyn would shock the world by trying to save the young girl and the conspirators who had been plotting her ruin, she couldn’t prevent the Tudor’s most dangerous courtiers, Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer, as they closed in to bring the audacious Elizabeth Barton down for good.

Notorious: Anne Boleyn and the Great Tudor Hoax is the story of Barton and Boleyn, two rivals at the center of the world’s most infamous divorce and the shocking truth about how they changed history.