The little known story of England's first evangelical Queen

Neil Rees 18 November 2024 | 11:27 AM

(Photo: Getty/iStock)

The little known story of England's first evangelical QueenThe modern evangelical movement owes a great debt to England's first evangelical queen. This is the story ...

14th century Church politics

The politics of mediaeval Europe were complicated. In 1378, there was a Schism in the Catholic Church and there were two rival Popes, Urban VI in Rome and Clement VII in Avignon in France. These rival Popes formed political alliances to get support, and excommunicated each other. In the early 1400s, there was even a period of three rival Popes, and the mess was not sorted out until 1417.

Such was the chaos, that it effectively sowed the early seeds of the Reformation, because many people started to question the whole papal system, and were dismayed that the Church was getting entangled in politics and accruing wealth, rather than helping the poor. Discontent with the Papacy had been brewing for some time. In England, one of the most radical voices of protest was John Wycliffe (c1324-1384), sometimes known as the Morning Star of the Reformation, who was supported by the Black Prince.

Richard II

In 1377 Edward III died. His son the Black Prince had died in 1376, and so his young grandson was crowned as King Richard II. As he got older he became an eligible bachelor, and he received offers of marriage from around Europe.

In the midst of this, Pope Urban VI, the Pope in Rome, tried to form alliances between his supporters, against his rival Pope. So it was that a marriage was arranged between King Richard II of England, and Princess Anne of Bohemia, half-sister of King Václav (Wenceslas) IV of Bohemia.

In 1381, Anne left Prague, crossed Europe and waited at Calais until the weather was favourable to take them to Dover, and then on 18th December crossed the Channel and travelled on to London. She brought a large court of Bohemians with her, and some later married English courtiers. Richard and Anne were married on 20th January 1382 at Westminster Abbey and were both crowned two days later on 22nd January 1382.

Anne of Bohemia

Anne of Bohemia was born in 1366. She was the child of King Karl (Charles) IV of Bohemia, who ruled over Bohemia and Moravia along with Silesia, which is roughly the area of the Czech Republic today. He is the most famous of Czech kings and in Prague his name lives on in Charles University, Charles Bridge, Charles Square and the nearby fairytale Karlstejn (Karlstein) Castle, as well as in the Bohemian spa town of Karlovy Vary (also known as Karlsbad).

The Czech Bible

King Charles encouraged learning and the Czech language. He encouraged writers and poets to write neither in Latin nor in German - the language of the Holy Roman Empire - but in the language of the people which was Czech. In 1347, King Charles IV commissioned scholars to translate the Bible from Latin into Czech. In 1348, King Charles started Charles University in Prague.

King Charles had many children who were brought up at Prague Castle, in the newly transformed and prosperous city of Prague. They received a good education in three languages and were literate in Czech, German and Latin. The Bible played an important role in their upbringing. Princess Anne was born in 1366. She could read the Bible in Czech, German and Latin, and she memorised portions of it. She had ladies-in-waiting who read with her, who held to a faith which we would today call evangelical.Good Queen AnneAlthough the marriage to King Richard II of England was arranged, it was clearly a success. Richard was devoted to Anne, fondly calling her "My beloved Bohemian". During an era when royal infidelities were unsurprising, they were both faithful and loyal.

Queen Anne interceded on behalf of people to moderate the actions of her husband, and warned him against shedding innocent blood. People were spared death on a number of occasions due to her pleading on their behalf. After the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, she persuaded the king to pardon the rebels and brought them her goodwill.

She was generous with the needy. She encouraged her husband to share the leftovers from their lavish banquets with the poor in the streets of London, and the food was delivered with kind words, long before food banks were a thing! The people called her "Good Queen Anne". It is highly likely that Chaucer's poem called "The Legend of a Good Woman" was a tribute to Queen Anne.

Commissioning the English Gospels

Contemporary accounts describe Anne as a humble, kind and compassionate queen, living out a quiet pious Christian faith. She used to read and study the Bible at a time when that was unusual, although it did not help that few were literate in Latin or had access to a Bible. Wycliffe noted that she brought to England copies of the Gospels in Bohemian, Teutonic and Latin i.e. Czech, German and Latin.

When she arrived in England Queen Anne wanted to learn English and she was disappointed to find that there were no Gospels in English, so she asked for translations to be made for her of the four Gospels, to help her learn the language.

John Wycliffe

Anne developed a friendship with John Wycliffe of Oxford, who shared a common interest in the Bible, and he came under her patronage. Anne's Scriptures in Czech and German interested Wycliffe. He is supposed to have remarked that if a small nation like the Czechs could have their own translation, why shouldn't the English? In 1382, when Wycliffe was on trial for heresy, Queen Anne interceded and ended the trial and he was freed. Later Anne cherished and read her own hand-written copy of the four Gospels in English.

It seems likely that the Gospels were translated for Queen Anne by John Trevisa, vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. This is mentioned in the original preface to the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible published in 1611. Here in the preface called "The Translators to the Reader", there is a section documenting the history of translations of the Gospels, which says "even in our King Richard the seconds dayes, John Trevisa translated them into English".

Wycliffe died in 1384, but Queen Anne had made it possible for Bohemian students to come and study at Oxford, which started an intellectual interchange between Oxford and Prague, using the then academic lingua franca of Latin. Wycliffe's followers - the itinerant poor priests later known as Lollards - were England's first evangelical movement.

DeathQueen Anne died in London, probably of the plague, on 7th June 1394, aged just 28. King Richard II and Queen Anne had no children, so our current royal family is not descended from her.After her death the king was distraught. He ordered the first ever royal double tomb in England, where the king and queen were to be buried together, both with effigies in Westminster Abbey. At the funeral address the Archbishop Arundel of Canterbury commented on her knowledge and study of the Bible. He said that although she was a foreigner, she constantly studied the four gospels in English, and explained them. The Archbishop said that in her knowledge of the Gospels, and the reading of godly books, "she was more diligent than even the prelates themselves, though their office and business require this of them".

The Latin inscription by her effigy, when translated, reads: "She was devoted to Christ and well known for her deeds; she was ever inclined to give her gifts to the poor; she calmed quarrels and relieved the pregnant. She was beauteous in body and her face was gentle and pretty. She provided solace to widows, and medicine to the sick."

The king vowed that for an entire year he would enter no building except a church where he had spent time with Anne. He was a widower and later remarried. After he died, it was with his first wife Queen Anne that he was entombed in the double tomb he had commissioned, which can still be seen in Westminster Abbey.

Symbol of Anglo-Czech relations

For the Czech community in England Queen Anne was an important figure. Prior to the Great War when Czechs were seeking support for independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she became a symbol of an ancient Anglo-Czech friendship which they wanted to restore. A delegation of London Bohemians (Czechs) would visit the tomb each year on the anniversary of her death, where with the permission of the dean of the Abbey they would lay red and white roses - being the colours of the arms of Bohemia. This is recorded in London newspapers for the years 1904 to 1907, and when they learnt of it, the Czech Embassy repeated it in 2022.

Evangelical legacy

However more than the political symbolism, Queen Anne's legacy has had ramifications in a direct line of influence down through Protestant history. After her death in 1394, her friends and servants returned to Bohemia with copies of Wycliffe's writings. These in turn influenced the Czech scholar Jan Hus (John Huss), who had begun teaching at Charles University in Prague in 1398. Soon after in 1399, he first publicly defended the beliefs of John Wycliffe. He openly stated that he was influenced by Wycliffe's writings and translated some into Czech.

In 1415, Jan Hus was brought before the Council of Constance (Konstanz), where he admitted his admiration for the writings of John Wycliffe. The Council condemned Hus for heresy and burnt him at the stake, and it also retrospectively condemned John Wycliffe for heresy.

The Lollards of England and the Hussites of Bohemia and Moravia were precursors to the Reformation. In 1521, when Martin Luther was on trial at the wonderfully-named Diet of Worms, it was the confirmation that he agreed with Hus which condemned him as a heretic.

Further down the centuries the Hussite movement led to the Moravians, who started the first Protestant missionary movement. It was in 1738, through contact with the Moravians in England, that John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed, which was the catalyst for the Evangelical Revival.

You can trace a line from Queen Anne of Bohemia, the woman who wanted the Scriptures in English, and John Wycliffe, to the Hussites, to the Moravians, to John Wesley and to the Evangelical Revival. She was never canonised as a saint, and so does not have a day of remembrance in any liturgical church calendar. Yet she played an important role in the first Bible in English, and the whole Evangelical movement owes deep gratitude to Anne of Bohemia, England's first evangelical queen.