History never says sorry. One reason for this is that what has happened in the past is over and done with and none of the principal actors are around to say sorry or to accept the apologies. There are exceptions, of course, like survivors from Nazi concentration camps or the Gulag. But events a little further back in time do not offer such an opportunity. Thus the demand to pardon Anne Boleyn is an absurd one. Anne Boleyn, the second of Henry VIII?s six wives, was beheaded in 1536 because the monarch?s attention and lust turned towards another court beauty, Jane Seymour. The king charged Anne Boleyn, the mother of a future queen, with incest, adultery and black magic. Before she became Henry?s wife, she, as his mistress, had been at the centre of the most tumultuous divorce drama in history. Henry?s desire to marry the beautiful Anne drove him to seek permission from the pope to divorce his first wife. When that permission was not forthcoming, Henry broke with the Roman Church even though a few years earlier he had been hailed by the pope as the ?defender of the faith?. Anne Boleyn moved from royal favourite to royal mistress to queen to adulterer to the scaffold in record time.

The demand to pardon Anne Boleyn may have come from an amateur historian somewhat obsessed by her, but it has contemporary resonances. There has been a recent demand that Prince Charles, before he can marry Ms Camilla Parker-Bowles, will have to apologize for committing adultery. Will Charles?s apology make the slightest difference to the history of his unhappy marriage with Princess Diana? The answer is no. Neither will his saying sorry alter the opinion, good or bad, the people of Britain have of their future king. The ?sorry? will be nothing more than an insignificant gesture. Similarly, how will a pardon help the reputation of Anne Boleyn? She was, as most historians agree, a helpless woman who won a whimsical king?s favour and then lost it. The charges against her may or may not have been trumped up. The point is that, even if she was completely innocent, Henry would have found a way to get rid of her. In the event, her promiscuity provided the monarch with a pretext. Her plight only underlines the strength of Tudor absolutism and the condition of women in Henry VIII?s court.

To seek redress from history is a common tendency and an erroneous one. The present cannot undo the past. Historians can reconstruct and represent the plight of Anne Boleyn but that is not the same as granting her a pardon. She was a monarch?s moll who enjoyed herself as long as she satisfied her master. Her fall from grace had very little grace associated with it. She should be allowed to rest where history has placed her: the unwitting agent of the English Reformation.