‘The Witch Bullen’

 

 

Anne Boleyn (by an Unknown Artist after Hans Holbein). Hatfield House. According to novelist Norah Lofts, 'the Devil's Pawmark' can be seen below her right ear' 

During the filming of Anne of the Thousand Days, actress Genevieve Bujold commented upon her starring role. “Day by day I discover more about Anne Boleyn until now I know her very well. I like Anne very much”, she said. However much Bujold admired Anne, historically, the tragic queen did have her enemies, she added. “People hated her. They called her a witch — she was supposed to have had a sixth finger growing on her left hand.” (1)

Bujold’s comment showed how persistent the witch legend of Anne Boleyn was — the seductress who made her way into Henry VIII’s bed through witchcraft and used it against her opponents until her final reckoning by an executioner’s sword upon her ‘little neck’. But as I had once argued, there was no evidence of Anne being called a witch in her own lifetime. The notion was in fact a twentieth century creation. (2)

Much attention has been given to a remark made by Henry VIII in January 1536. Anne had miscarried the longed for male heir, and the king, in mix of rage and sorrow, supposedly uttered that his marriage was void as it had resulted from Anne’s use of ‘sortileges and charms’ upon him. The incident was reported by Anne’s bête noire, the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys. However, even the envoy was suspicious of Henry saying such a thing as he told his master Emperor Charles V. He had received this piece of gossip through the Marquess and Marchioness of Exeter who hated the queen and eager for her to be rid of. (3)

Even if Henry VIII did say that Anne had trapped him into marriage through magic spells — echoing a similar accusation made in 1532 of her employing ‘philters, charms or otherwise’ (which should be read in the context of Anne as the King’s seducer — not as a witch — dabbling in love potions and such) — he was surely just blowing off stream. (4) The remark ‘may have been no more than bluster’ as historian Eric Ives opined. (5) Henry was a pious man, and had he truly believed that Anne was a witch in league with the devil, he would have immediately put an end to the marriage. Instead, the couple stayed together (and presumably continued to try for a baby) and were even planning a trip to Dover in the spring of 1536. This was abruptly cancelled when Anne was arrested for high treason in wishing/plotting the King’s death as evident by her alleged adultery. Tellingly, the charges never included witchcraft.

Before and after her death, Anne’s critics were vocal about their dislike of her, centred her supposed sexual immorality. The outcries against Anne as a ‘whore’ were numerous. She had ‘justly lost her head, because that she did spot the king’s bed’ wrote George Cavendish in his Metrical Visions, and she was remembered by her embittered stepdaughter Mary Tudor as ‘a criminal who was punished as a public strumpet’. (6) Anne as a proponent of religious reform had also won her enemies. Reginald Pole, who later became Mary’s Archbishop of Canterbury, lamented England’s break with Rome and railed against Anne as the ‘domestical evil’; ‘the person who caused all this.’ (7) However, neither Mary nor Pole ever saw fit to call her a witch. Even the Catholic polemicist Nicholas Sander who popularized Anne having a sixth finger on one hand, did not either. (8)

So where and when did ‘Anne the witch’ arise? The stirrings began much later in the earlier part of the 20^th century. In the 1932 novel Anne Boleyn by E. Barrington (Elizabeth Louisa Moresby), the author wrote how Anne, having natural imperfections on her hand and neck was an object of derision by the ignorant:

How could she forget that when she was a child she had heard her nurse whisper to another, ‘Look at her hand, her throat—the devil’s marks in her body. She will come to a bad end—the devil’s own brat. Her rages are like his own!

She is a witch. She bears the devil’s marks on her body. She hides her left hand for it is a claw, and her throat bulges with his apple that she ate. (9)

Edith Sitwell would describe Anne in similar terms. In her historical fiction Fanfare for Elizabeth, she was presented as ‘a creature of Doom’, ‘not a woman at all’, but ‘an infernal region, a Pandemonium of the Princes of Darkness and all the Powers and Principalities of the Air’. (10) Even in nonfiction, Anne as a malevolent being took hold. The historian Garrett Mattingly wrote as as novelist using colorful prose in describing her extra finger — it made ‘the pious cross themselves to avoid the evil eye and the more superstitious still to whisper of devil’s gets and the sure sign of a sorceress’. (11)

At around the same time, Montague Summers and Margaret Murray added more fuel to the fire. Summers was a believer in the occult who truly thought Anne was a witch. In his nonfiction study Witchcraft and Black Magic, he reported – with no evidence — that she ordered the severed head of Bishop John Fisher brought to her so she could ‘thrust a silver bodkin through the dead tongue’. (12)

Murray was equally outrageous. Anne was not a wicked witch, she claimed, but a follower of old paganistic beliefs. As an anthropologist and folklorist, Murray argued for the existence of an ancient European witch cult that survived into the Medieval and Tudor periods. Those in the know — and this included Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn and others at the royal court – believed that the king’s vitality was tied to that of the land. Should the king decline or die, the kingdom will too. Hence to ensure the king’s continuing might, living sacrifices in his place were necessary. In the 12^th century, Thomas Becket was killed for King Henry II’s sake, and in the 16^th century, Anne Boleyn was executed to preserve Henry VIII. (13)

Murray’s theories were widely dismissed, but they took root in some modern pagan circles. In 1970, when rock star Jim Morrison of The Doors married Patricia Kennealy, a follower of Wicca, they underwent a blood mingling ceremony to join their souls ‘on a karmic and cosmic plane that had an effect on future incarnations’ in keeping with ‘a legend that Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn had been married in the witch ritual—probably for some of the same reasons.’ (14)

 

 

Dorothy Tutin in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and Charlotte Rampling in Henry VIII and His Six Wives (1972)

 

Television also spread the idea of ‘Anne the Witch’. In an episode of the BBC television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Anne (played by Dorothy Tutin) jokes how her followers would be seen as ‘her familiars’. Then in another, she is referred to as having supernatural powers and that occult forces were at play on her wedding night. In the follow-up series Elizabeth R, Anne was denigrated as ‘the witch Bullen’. (15)

The Six Wives of Henry VIII (as was Elizabeth R) was a hit with audiences, and a movie version entitled Henry VIII and His Six Wives was made shortly afterwards. Anne who ‘wasn’t a nice girl’ and ‘had dangerous qualities of spitefulness and arrogance’, according to actress Charlotte Rampling who now played her, was described in the novelization of the film as a ‘witch-haired, slant-eyed beauty’. (16) To further emphasize Anne as an antagonist, Rampling was shown with a deformed finger and a disfigurement upon her neck.

In the 1980s, Anne continued on her broomstick thanks to Norah Lofts’ biography of her. A portrait type believed to be of Anne revealed ‘the Devils’ pawmark on her neck, Lofts claimed, and she went to great lengths in suggesting that Anne could really have been a witch devoted to her ‘dark master’. Among other things, she had made threats of affecting the weather as witches do, and she had a pet taking ‘one of Satan’s many names’. (17)

It would not be surprising if rock singer Anne Hull (of the Heavy Metal music band Hellion formed in 1982), was influenced by Loft’s ideas. She adopted the stage name ‘Ann Boleyn’ after learning the famous queen was ‘accused of being a witch’, which evidently appealed to Hull whose band liked to use Satanic imagery in their act. (18)

 

 

Anne Hull (Ann Boleyn) of the musical band Hellion

 

Novelist Jean Plaidy might well have been equally captivated. While an earlier novel of hers about Anne Boleyn had no mentions of witchcraft, the newer The Lady in the Tower did not shy away from the notion. In it she had Anne lamenting about how she was vilified:

“Now I was called the Sorceress. I had a sixth finger which had been given to me by the Devil. By spells I had seduced the King from the path of virtue. The Devil and I had concocted a scheme to break up the King’s marriage.” (19)

In a similar fashion, Margaret George, author of popular historical epics, portrayed Anne as a ‘wild and dark and strange’ creature — ‘half supernatural, half mad’ — who practised black magic to make herself queen in The Autobiography of Henry VIII, with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers. (20)

Given the popularity of Anne as a witch into the 1980s, academia did not lag behind. Historian Retha Warnicke, in her controversial The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn proposed that Anne’s fall from result was the result of ignorance and superstition surrounding her stillbirth in 1536. The child was born deformed, according to Warnicke, and Henry VIII, anxious to deny paternity, was convinced that his wife had consorted with others. Though she was not directly accused of it, she was indeed suspected of witch-like behaviour in her adultery and in the resulting birth of her baby. Warnicke’s theory was controversial, with many historians arguing against it, but it was great material for fictional works by by Philippa Gregory and Carolly Erickson. (21)

 

Anne Boleyn by an Unknown Artist. Lyndhurst Castle, Tarrytown, New York

 

Besides literature, Anne was said to be witch-like in the visual arts. Along with the painting referred to by Lofts, a portrait of Anne wearing the well-known ‘B’ pendant was used as a Halloween decoration at Lyndhurst Castle in Tarrytown, New York. (22). Another version of this portrait type was described as depicting Anne as

’something of a wicked witch, the arch manipulator whose sexual allure drove Henry into the break with Rome: a portrayal clearly visible in the black dress, cold eyes and pale skin seen here’. (23)

Despite the fact that Anne was never called a witch in her own lifetime, the label has stuck. In popular culture it’s pervasive. Some years ago, she was memorialized with a ‘Witch’s Garden’, complete with ‘aphrodisiacs, fertility and other potions’ at Hampton Court, (24) and her portrait was seen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. More recently in 2024, she appeared in the fantasy novel Queen B: The Story of Anne Boleyn, Witch Queen by Juno Dawson.  

 

 

 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001)

 

While some still argue that Anne Boleyn’s contemporaries thought she was a witch (25), the facts suggest otherwise. It was a modern notion. Though fanciful, it has added to Anne’s allure — another aspect of the fascination she has held over people for centuries.

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(1) Genevieve Bujold: Rare Bloom in a Royal Garden, Seventeen Magazine, November, 1969, p. 140.

(2) Anne of the Wicked Ways: Perceptions of Anne Boleyn as a Witch in History and in Popular Culture by Roland Hui. Parergon - Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Volume 35, Number 1 (2018), pp. 97-118.

(3) Calendar of State Papers Spanish, v (ii), no. 13.

(4) Calendar of State Papers Spanish, iv (ii), no. 967.

(5) The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn by Eric Ives, Wiley-Blackwell, 2005, p. 298.

(6) The Life of Cardinal Wolsey and Metrical Visions by George Cavendish. Edited by Samuel Weller Singer, 2 vols. Chiswick: Whittingham, 1825, ii, 39–46. Calendar of State Papers Venetian, vi, no. 884.

(7) Life of Reginald Pole by Martin Haile, Pitman, 1910, p. 173; and The Correspondence of Reginald Pole, edited by Thomas F. Mayer, 4 vols, Ashgate, 2002–08, i, 106, no. 110. Agnes Strickland claimed Pole had called Anne ‘a sorceress’, but she gave no source for this: Lives of the Queens of England, 12 vols., Blanchard and Lea, 1856, iv, 179. This was later repeated in The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn by Alison Weir, Ballantine, 2010, p. 296, and in The Faith: A History of Christianity by Brian Moynahan, Doubleday, 2002, p. 402.

(8) For a discussion of Sander’s controversial description of Anne, see: note 4.

(9) Anne Boleyn by E. Barrington, Doubleday Doran, 1932, pp. 10–11, 329.

(10) Fanfare for Elizabeth by Edith Sitwell, Macmillan, 1946, p. 17.

(11) Catherine of Aragon by Garrett Mattingly, Vintage Books, 1941, pp. 246–47.

(12) Witchcraft and Black Magic by Montague Summers, Rider, 1946, pp. 123–24.

(13) For Murray’s theories: The God of the Witches, Oxford University Press, 1952 and The Divine King in England: A Study in Anthropology, Faber, 1954.

(14) No One Here Gets Out Alive by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugerman, Warner Books, 1980, p. 296. The novel Anne, the Rose of Hever, (by Maureen Peters, Beagle Books, 1969) — influenced by Margaret Murray — also had Henry and Anne married by a pagan blood ritual.

(15) The Six Wives of Henry VIII (BBC, 1970): Anne Boleyn by Nick McCarty and Jane Seymour by Ian Thorne. Elizabeth R (BBC, 1971): The Lion’s Cub by John Hale.

(16) Henry VIII and His Six Wives (London: Anglo-EMI Film Distributors, 1972), a publicity

press book. Henry VIII and His Six Wives by Maureen Peters , Fontana, 1972, pp. 42, 82.

(17) Anne Boleyn by Norah Lofts, McCann & Geoghegan, 1979, pp. 36–39 and the frontispiece for the portrait.

(18) Ann Boleyn (Hellion), interview by Anders Ekdahl, March 2012 

(19) The Lady in the Tower by Jean Plaidy, Fontana/Collins, 1988, p. 285.

(20) The Autobiography of Henry VIII, with Notes by His Fool, Will Somers by Margaret George, St Martin’s Griffin, 1986, pp. 246, 300.

(21) The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory, HarperCollins, 2001. The Favored Queen: A Novel of Henry VIII’s Third Wife by Carolly Erickson, St Martin’s, 2011.

(22) Michael W. Handis, ‘Lyndhurst’, The Researching Librarian, 28 December 2013 <https://researchinglibrarian.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/lyndhurst/> [accessed October 29, 2025].

(23) Lost Faces: Identity and Discovery in Tudor Royal Portraiture, edited by Bendor Grosvenor, Philip Mould, p. 59,

(24) ‘Henry VIII’s wives honoured Hampton Court Palace Flower Show gardens’, Your Local Guardian, 14 May 2009 <http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/kingstonnews/4364680.display/> [accessed October 29, 2025].

(25) For example:“Large wen” or “swelling”? Exploring Myths and Misconceptions About Nicholas Sander’s Description of Anne Boleyn and Its Link to witchcraft by Sylvia Soberton. Royal Studies Journal, 10, no. 2 (2023).

Anne Boleyn's Falcon Badge in the Tower of London?

 

The so-called falcon badge is in the lower right corner. Above is an inscription by Thomas Miagh (dated 1581).

 

At the fall of Anne Boleyn in May 1536, Henry VIII and his court were ready to move on. The king was described as having 'come out of hell into heaven for the gentleness in this (his new lady love Jane Seymour) and the cursedness and the unhappiness in the other.' Anne, the cause of his great misery was now out of sight and out of mind. Her portraits were destroyed or put away, and her heraldic badges were removed - though not altogether successfully. Examples of her likeness and her emblems still survive here and there.

Does a reminder survive in the Tower of London where Anne was imprisoned before her execution? Amidst a clutter of stone carvings in one of the buildings within is that of a bird perched upon a curious object. The eminent historian, Eric Ives, had no doubts as to what this represented - the disgraced Queen Anne - he even waxed poetic about it:

'For her, the most poignant memorial was in the Tower of London, where it remains to this day on the wall of one of the cells in the Beauchamp Tower. There crudely and hastily scratched by a man who knew he had little time, is Anne Boleyn's falcon. Which of 'lovers' made it we do not know, but the image is unmistakable. The tree-stump is there - the barren Henry - the Tudor rose-bush bursting into life, the perching bird whose touch wrought the miracle. But there is one change to the badge which Anne had proudly flourished in the face of the world. The falcon is no longer a royal bird. It has no crown, no sceptre; it stands bareheaded, as did Anne in those last moments on Tower Green'. (1)

But Ives' opinion that this was chiseled in tribute to Anne Boleyn needs be examined. That it is 'unmistakably' her heraldic badge is questionable. It actually bears little resemblance to Anne's majestic falcon standing on a stump. The missing crown and sceptre were explained as the artist's commentary of Anne as a victim of Fortune, but what is left - the bird and what it situates itself upon look nothing like what ought to still be recognized as Anne's royal device.

 

The badge in the Beauchamp Tower

 

 

Anne Boleyn's falcon badge

 

 

The bird - whatever its species here - stands with both feet on a large object. It is not a wooden stump as Ives said. Shaped like a spade instead of a column as a tree-stump ought to be, it is probably a leaf or some kind of plant - an artichoke perhaps? It seems to taper to a point behind the bird and its surface appears to be veined or with clustered petals. More significantly, there is a noticeable stem on the bottom.

While the amateurish skill of the carver can be excused, an ignorance of heraldry cannot. Armorial achievements were meant to be precise and easily recognizable - one had to be able to easily pick out friend and foe in the heat of battle. A carving in honor of Anne Boleyn should have been that - instantly identifiable. And if the artist was indeed one of the five men - George Boleyn, William Brereton, Francis Weston, Henry Norris or Mark Smeaton - accused of treason and adultery with the queen, he would have been entirely familiar with Anne's device and would have carved it with a degree of accuracy, if not talent.     

As the carving was done near an inscription by Thomas Miagh, a prisoner of the Tower in the reign of Elizabeth I, the emblem may actually have been done by him for himself. (2) If not, who the device represents eludes us for the moment, but it is almost certainly not Anne Boleyn, as Ives believed. The carving has no perceptible association with the tragic queen, other than in a romantic notion.

 

________________________________________

(1) Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, 2004, p. 364. See also note 34 on p. 424.

(2) For an opinion that the emblem was not associated with Thomas Miagh: The Falcon Crest in the Tower of London, 2013.

 

'Anne Boleyn: An Illustrated Life of Henry VIII's Queen' - Now available!

Happy to announce that my new book, Anne Boleyn: An Illustrated Life of Henry VIII's Queen, has been released in the UK.

North American release to follow in March.

 

 

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Anne-Boleyn-An-Illustrated-Life-of-Henry-VIIIs-Queen-Hardback/p/22465

Anne Boleyn: A Reconsideration of 1507 as Her Date of Birth

 

 

Anne Boleyn (by Robert White, after a drawing said to be of the queen by Hans Holbein)

Inscribed 'Born 1507. Married Nov. 14, 1532. Gave birth to a daughter Elizabeth Sept. 7, 1533. Beheaded May 19, 1536'

 

The birth date of Queen Anne Boleyn remains controversial. While sources from the late 16th and early 17th centuries have stated that she was born in 1507, modern scholarship has favoured an earlier date instead. The art historian Hugh Paget, in particular, had proposed 1501 as a more plausible year based on Anne's time at the Hapsburg court of Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands. Anne must surely have been about the age of 12 in 1513 when she went abroad, Paget argued, as that was supposedly the required age to be in service to the archduchess.

However, a re-evaluation of Paget's reasoning, as presented here, casts doubt that Anne was born in 1501. The obligatory age of courtly service is questionable, as was Anne's purpose for being at the Imperial court in the first place. She was most probably not engaged as a lady-in-waiting to Margaret of Austria, but was rather boarded at the Hapsburg schoolroom with other 'enfants d'honneur'. Furthermore, evidence of Anne being listed as a maid-of-honour is actually incorrect. She was confused with another young lady.

There are also overlooked statements provided by Roger Twysden, the nephew of Anne's first biographer George Wyatt. Shortly before his death in 1624, Wyatt had entrusted his notes about the late queen to his relative. Twysden transcribed his uncle's work, which clearly stated - and confirmed - that Anne was born in 1507, rather than in 1501. 

 

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When Anne Boleyn was executed on May 19, 1536, she left no indication how old she was at the time of her death. During Henry VIII's courtship of her beginning in around 1526, there were various descriptions of Anne as a 'young' woman (1), but none of these have been helpful in pinpointing her age.

It was not until the early 17th century that attempts were made to establish the year of her birth. In 1615, the antiquarian William Camden published his Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha ad annum salutis - a biography of Anne's daughter Elizabeth I - in which he empathically stated that Anne was born in 1507 ('Anna Bolena nata M.D. VII'). (2) This date was supported by the recollections of Lady Jane Dormer, made before her death in 1612, that Anne was 'not 29 years of age' when she was beheaded. (3)

 

 William Camden (by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger)

However in 1649, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his book The Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth, was certain that Anne was born earlier. He claimed (though on what authority he did not say) that Anne, 'coming to the age of 15', was 'deflowered by some domestics of her father' and was thus sent to France in 1514 because of her bad behavior. That said, Herbert believed that Anne was born 'about or before 1498'. (4)

A date prior to 1507 was also accepted by later historians such as Agnes Strickland (who thought 1501 based on her interpretation of Herbert's book) and by Paul Friedmann. Friedmann opined 1503-1504, or even earlier as 'she may have been rather older, for women so vain as Anne generally give themselves out for somewhat younger than they are.' As well, Friedmann referred to a portrait type, supposedly of Anne by Hans Holbein no less, where her age is given as 27 in 1530. (5) However, this painting of 'Anna Regina' was actually of another Anne - Anne of Hungary, wife of Ferdinand (the future Holy Roman Emperor and brother of the other future emperor, Charles V). Nevertheless, the circa 1501 date was also argued for by historian J.H. Round in accordance with Friedmann. (6)

 

Anne of Hungary (by Robert Cooper after Hans Maler)

 

The 1501 date was raised again by art historian Hugh Paget in more recent times. In 1981, he argued - with much persuasion - that Anne Boleyn was born in that year as opposed to 1507.  Paget pointed out a letter written by her to her father Sir Thomas Boleyn from the Netherlands where Anne had gone to reside with the regent Margaret of Austria in 1513. As such appointments were supposedly only given to girls of age 13 to 14, Anne must have been born in 1501, Paget proposed. Also, he claimed that Anne's name appeared in a list of Margaret's servants. So apart from being in the Low Countries to improve her French, she was also in service to the archduchess as a lady-in-waiting. (7)

However, a reassessment of Paget's arguments questions whether the age of about 12 was actually a requirement at the Hapsburg court, and that contrary to his identification of Anne as an attendant of Margaret of Austria, she was actually not there.

 

 Margaret of Austria (left) with her aunt Kunigunde of Austria (by Gaspare Oselli and Francesco Terzio)

 

According to Anne's letter, she was grateful to her father, in his role as envoy to the Imperial court in the Netherlands, for sending her to Margaret of Austria and she would do her best 'to continue to learn to speak good French.' (8) She also made mention of how she looked forward to speaking to 'the queen'. This has been taken to mean Katherine of Aragon in England, but as Anne had newly arrived in the Low Countries and would presumably stay there for awhile, she probably meant Margaret, whom she mistakenly referred to as 'the queen' rather than 'the archduchess' or 'the regent'. Given that Margaret was appointed governor of the Hapsburg Netherlands by her father Emperor Maximilian I (until her nephew Charles of Ghent - later Emperor Charles V - came of age) and entrusted with great powers, it is likely that the youthful Anne confused her title.

 

 Eleanor of Austria, Charles of Ghent, and Isabeau of Austria (by an Unknown Artist)

 

But how young was she? Was she about 6 or about 12? The argument for the latter was that to be in service to the Hapsburgs, one had to be about 13 or 14. Paget pointed to a letter (dated January 13, 1512) from the Emperor Maximilian to his daughter where he asked Margaret to place the niece of the courtier Don Diégo de Guevara who was of that age in her household. (9) This has commonly been assumed that she was to be a servant to the archduchess. But a closer reading of the letter shows that the emperor was asking that the girl be placed with his 'most dear and much loved girls' his granddaughters: Eleanor (the future Queen of France), Isabeau (the future Queen of Denmark), and Mary (the future Queen of Hungary) at the regent's court in the city of Mechelen (Malines). It is not certain that Don Diégo's niece was meant to a demoiselle d'honneur to the three girls who were about her age. Rather than as a maid-of-honour, perhaps she was meant to be a live-in companion to them and was to finish her education with them as well. That she was being sent to Mechelen having reached the age of 13 or 14 might have been a proviso on the part of her family rather than the emperor.

 

Map of Mechelen (Malines)

The Court of Cambrai is indicated in red. The Court of Savoy (with its interior gardens) is indicated in green.

 

 

 

 

The Court of Cambrai (the Keizerhof) (by an Unknown Artist)

 

 

 

 

The Court of Savoy (by an Unknown Artist)

 

 

Anne Boleyn's own statement to her father that she was at her French lessons implies that she was in the Hapsburg schoolroom rather than in service to Archduchess Margaret. This was the opinion of historian Retha Warnicke who supported 1507 as Anne's birth date. Warnicke had also noted that Anne Brandon, the daughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, was sent to the Imperial court at age 7, as was his ward, Magdalen Rochester, at age 8. (10)

What Anne also wrote to Sir Thomas Boleyn implied she had little engagement with her hostess Margaret. Anne stated that since her arrival, she had written a number of letters to him in French under her tutor Symonnet, and this was the first one composed by herself without her teacher's help. This would mean that some weeks or even months had passed. Furthermore, she had still yet to converse with 'the queen' (here taken to mean Margaret of Austria). Anne did meet the regent when she first arrived in the Low Countries, as the archduchess described her as being 'of such good address and so pleasing in her youthful age' when she was presented to her by the Imperial envoy Claude de Bouton. (11) But this audience appeared to have been brief, and then Anne was packed off to her lessons. That she was not with Margaret indicates that she was not in constant attendance upon her as a lady-in-waiting should be.

 

Castle Tervuren (by Jan Brueghel)

 

Then where was Anne? Her letter to her father came from La Veure (Tervuren) where Margaret of Austria liked to spend her spring and summer holidays with her young charges, her three nieces and her nephew at Castle Tervuren. (12) Most likely, Anne had met Margaret briefly upon her arrival overseas, perhaps in Brussels, where the archduchess was negotiating the marriage of her niece Isabeau to the King of Denmark. (13) She was then sent off to La Veure to be with the Imperial children. It is known that they were there, as a teenage Charles accidentally shot and killed a local with his crossbow there that spring on Pentecost Monday, as his aunt regrettably reported to her father the emperor. (14)

In the fall, Anne and the Hapsburg children were taken to Margaret's palace in Mechelen. The archduchess's headquarters was the Court of Savoy. But if Anne was in the schoolroom as a little girl, rather than in service as it is argued here, she would mostly likely have been lodged in the Court of Cambria directly across the street with Charles of Ghent and his sisters. There she would have shared lessons with the other enfants d'honneur; sons and daughters of the international elite invited to live and learn at the Imperial court. (15) Anne, as the child of an important man, the Ambassador of England, would have been welcomed into this circle.

However, Hugh Paget was certain that Anne was with the archduchess as a lady-in-waiting as he referred to a list of the regent's staff in which a 'Mademoiselle de Bullan' (obviously Anne Boleyn) appeared. (16) However, this was a 19th century misreading. The lady's surname was actually 'de Bulleux'; she being a relation of one Hugues de Bulleux who served Margaret of Austria. Also, this list was actually compiled in 1525, long after Anne had left the Netherlands. (17)

 

 Roger Tywsden (by an Unknown Artist)

 

Going back to Anne's age, there is also the statements given by Roger Tywsden to consider. Tywsden (1597–1672) was a nephew of George Wyatt (1553–1624) who had written a biography of the tragic queen in the late 16th century. By his own account, Tywsden received his uncle's manuscript, from which he did a partial transcription in 1623. Among Tywsden's marginalia were significant statements saying that when Anne was 'not above 7 years of age, Anno 1514' she went to France, and that 'Anne was born 1507'. (18) Wyatt, from whom these notes were derived, had reliable sources in the form of two ladies who had personally known Anne at Henry VIII's court. (19)

 

Memorial Brass of Thomas Boleyn (The National Monuments Record)

 

With these all factors taken into consideration, there is a good argument that Anne Boleyn had gone to the Netherlands at an earlier age than supposed. That she was deemed too young is a modern conception, and Sir Thomas Boleyn seemingly had no qualms about sending her abroad as a little girl. The invitation from the Archduchess Margaret was too good to pass up, and Boleyn was not going to lose the opportunity by waiting till Anne was older. He was ambitious for her as he was for himself.    

 

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1. Examples given in Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004, p. 40, p. 45, p. 52, p. 63.

2. William Camden, Annales Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum regnante Elizabetha ad annum salutis M.D.LXXXIX, 1615, p. 2

3. Henry Clifford, The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, (transcribed by Canon E.E. Estcourt and edited by Rev. Joseph Stevenson). London: Burns and Oates Limited, 1887, p. 80.

4. Edward Herbert (Lord Herbert of Cherbury), The Life and Reign of King Henry the Eighth, London: printed by Mary Clark for Ann Mearn, 1683, pp. 286-287.

5. Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1856, IV, p. 124. Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History, 1527-1536, London: Macmillan, 1884, II, p. 315.

6. J.H. Round, The Early Life of Anne Boleyn: A Critical Essay, London: Elliot Stock, 1886.

7. Hugh Paget, 'The Youth of Anne Boleyn', Bulletin of The Institute of Historical Research, Volume 54, Issue 130, 1981, pp. 162-170.

8. Jasper Ridley, The Love Letters of Henry VIII, London: Cassell, 1988, p. 31.

9. M. Le Glay, Correspondance de l'empereur Maximilien Ier et de Marguerite d'Autriche, sa fille, gouvernante des Pays-Bas, de 1507 à 1519, publiée d'après les Manuscrits originaux, Paris: Jules Renouard et Cie., 1839, II, pp. 81-82.

10. Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp. 12-17 and p. 259, note 17.

11. Philip W. Sergeant, Anne Boleyn, London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1924, p. 27.

12. As for the other siblings, Ferdinand (the future Holy Roman Emperor) did not join the court in Mechelen till later, and Catherine (the future Queen of Portugal) stayed in Spain.

13. M. Le Glay, Correspondance, II, p. 157.

14. M. Le Glay, Correspondance, II, pp. 155-156.

15. For the enfants d'honneur, see Samuel Mareel, (editor), Renaissance Children: Art and Education at the Hapsburg Court (1480-1530), Tielt: Lannoo Publishers, 2021, pp. 18-19.

16. M. Le Glay, Correspondance, II, p. 461, note 2. See also Le Baron de Reiffenberg (editor), Chronique métrique de Chastellain et de Molinet, avec des notices sur ces auteurs et des remarques sur le texte corrigé, Brussels: J.M. Lacrosse, 1836, p. 154 (but corrected as 'Bulleur' on p. 156).

17. The correct name of Mademoiselle de Bulleux appears in the direct transcription Margaret of Austria's  household ordinance found in Le Compte E. de Quinsonas, Materiaux pour servir à l'histoire de Marguerite d'Autriche, Duchesse de Savoie, Regente des Pays-Bas, Paris: Delaroque Frères, 1860, III, p. 282, p. 293, p. 295, p. 298, p. 313, and p. 314. ADDENDUM (Jan. 31, 2024): In their book Hunting the Falcon: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and the Marriage that Shook Europe (New York: HarperCollins, 2023), authors John Guy and Julia Fox state that Mistress Bulleux was actually Mistress Bullan (Anne Boleyn). See pages 42 and 442 (note 13). This is incorrect. That Hugues de Bulleux served Archduchess Margaret indicates that 'Bulleux' was not a misspelling of 'Bullan'.

18. Roger Twysden,  An Account of Queen Anne Bullen: From a MS. in the Hand Writing of Sir Roger Twysden, Bart., 1623, (edited by Robert Triphook), London, 1808, p. 3, p. 14, and p. 15.

19. George Wyatt, ‘Some Particulars of the Life of Queen Anne Boleigne’ in George Cavendish, The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (edited by S.W. Singer), second edition, London: Printed by Thomas Davison for Harding and Lepard, 1827, p. 422.