Anne Boleyn was crowned queen of England at Westminster Abbey on 1 June 1533.

The ceremony followed Henry VIII’s decision to set aside his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, had declared Henry’s marriage to Catherine invalid and had recognised Henry’s marriage to Anne. In England, those rulings gave Anne the formal position Henry wanted for her. They did not end the dispute.

The coronation was a public claim to lawful queenship. Anne was not being treated as a private favourite or as a wife waiting for acceptance. She was being presented as the lawful queen. Westminster Abbey gave that claim the weight of royal ceremony, church ritual and English tradition.

Anne’s position still rested on a disputed settlement. Catherine of Aragon had been Henry’s queen for more than twenty years. Their daughter Mary had been treated as Henry’s heir before he moved to set the marriage aside. Anne’s coronation displaced both Catherine and Mary from their former positions. It also showed how far Henry would go to control marriage, succession and royal authority.

Rome had not accepted Henry’s case. Many people in England had known Catherine as queen for most of Henry’s reign. Anne’s coronation could declare a new reality, but it could not make every subject accept it.

Anne was also pregnant. That gave the ceremony more pressure. Henry wanted the child to secure the new marriage and the succession. If Anne bore a son, the break with Catherine would have its answer. The coronation looked ahead as much as it looked at the present. It was about Anne’s title, but also about the child she was expected to bear.

The child was born in September 1533. She was Elizabeth, the daughter, not the son, that Henry wanted. That did not give Henry the immediate security he had hoped for. It did, though, leave a later consequence that Henry could not have known on the day of Anne’s coronation. Elizabeth would become queen in 1558 and rule for more than forty years.

On 1 June 1533, none of that was settled. Anne Boleyn was crowned queen in public, with the authority that Henry could bring to the ceremony. The coronation made the claim clear. It did not settle the argument behind it.