Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII's Obsession (2 page)
There is no evidence that Anne was anything other than the daughter of Thomas Boleyn and, certainly, he was as ambitious for her as he was for all his children. As the grandson of the Earl of Ormond, Thomas could hardly be called an upstart and he continued to rise both in the service of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Thomas Boleyn was known to be the best French speaker at the Tudor court and was well educated. He was also highly intelligent and ambitious, traits that he passed on to his daughter. When Henry VIII came to the throne he promoted Thomas to the position of deputy-warden of the customs of Calais, making him a familiar face around court. This was a measure of Henry’s confidence in Thomas Boleyn’s abilities and he continued to be promoted steadily even before the rise of his daughter.
All three of Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard’s surviving children were destined to come to prominence at the court of Henry VIII. However, the dates and even orders of the births of these children are nowhere recorded. Thomas Boleyn himself later complained that his wife had given birth to a child every year in their early marriage. This suggests that a number of children died in infancy and the couple’s two eldest sons, Thomas and Henry, certainly died as babies. Mary, Anne and George did however survive to adulthood and their ages and the orders of their births have been disputed for centuries.
The Elizabethan historian, William Camden, in his history of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth, claimed that Anne had been born in 1507. This was, until recently, generally accepted and the early seventeenth century account of the
Life of Jane Dormer,
which detailed the life of a lady-in-waiting to Anne’s stepdaughter, Mary, supported this, stating that Anne ‘was not twenty-nine years of age’ at the time of her death. It has even been suggested that something about Anne’s actual birth date can be calculated from the
Life of Jane Dormer
and that, to have not yet been 29 years old at the time of her death, she must have been born between 20 May and 31 December 1507.
A date of 1507 has long been accepted as Anne’s birth date. However, it is clear from the evidence of Anne’s life that this date is far too late. The author of the
Life of Jane Dormer
had read Camden’s
History of Elizabeth
and the two dates therefore cannot be taken to be independent. Also, if Anne was born in 1507 then she would only have been six years old, at most, when she entered the household of Margaret of Austria and left England for the first time. This is simply implausible and, while princesses might be sent abroad in their infancy, the daughters of noblemen did not enter service at such an early age. A number of earlier dates have been suggested for Anne’s birth and it will never be possible to say for certain when she was born. 1501 is commonly suggested however and this would seem to be the most likely date.
Anne’s brother, George, was younger than her and would probably been born around 1504-1505. The order of seniority between Anne and her sister Mary has also been debated heavily and, once again, it is necessary to turn to the facts of their lives to form an opinion. It was Anne who was sent to Brussels in 1513 whilst Mary remained in England. This would seem to suggest that Anne was the elder sister. However, Mary was sent to France the following year and it is probable that Thomas Boleyn would have sent his more promising daughter to Margaret of Austria, rather than simply the eldest. Mary Boleyn also married for the first time on 4 February 1520. This suggests that Mary might have been the elder daughter as it would have been usual for the eldest daughter to marry first. Once again, it is not impossible that the younger daughter should have been married before the elder.
Better evidence for Mary Boleyn’s seniority over Anne comes from a letter written by Mary’s grandson, Lord Hunsdon, during the reign of Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth. In this letter Lord Hunsdon claimed the Earldom of Ormond by virtue of his descent from the eldest daughter of Thomas Boleyn. In order to make his claim he set out a detailed, and convincing, family history. According to Lord Hunsdon:
‘Sir Thomas Bullen was created Viscount Rocheforde and Erle of Ormonde to him and his heires generall, Erle of Wiltshire to him and his heires male, by whose death without issue male the Erldome of Wiltshire was extinguished, but the Erldome of Ormonde he surviving his other children before that time attainted, he in right lefte to his eldest daughter Marye, who had issue Henrye, and Henrye my selfe... Her Majesty is a coheire with me to the said Erledome viz: daughter and heire of Anne youngest daughter of the saide Sir Thomas Bullen late Erle of Ormonde... The saide dignitie of the Erledome of Ormonde together with his lands and mannors and tenements descended to my Grandmother his eldest daughter and sole heire and accordinglie she sued her liverie as by the recorde of the same doth and maie appeare. But admytt now as equallitie of desent then is it to be considered whether my Grandmother being the eldest daughter ought not to have the whole dignitie as in the Erldome of Chester’.
Lord Hunsdon’s rather complicated account of the Boleyn titles shows that he had a good grasp of family history. Although his daughter, in her tomb memorial, stated that Mary Boleyn was the second daughter, it seems more likely that Lord Hunsdon was correct. Where the queen was his co-heir to the Boleyn title, he would have wanted to be very sure of his facts.
Mary Boleyn was probably born in either 1499 or 1500. Her birth was followed in around 1501 by Anne and a few years later the family was completed by the birth of George. Both Mary and Anne Boleyn were probably born at Blickling Hall in Norfolk although, at some point in their early childhood, the family moved to Hever Castle in Kent, the principal residence of the Boleyns. Mary Boleyn was the more conventionally attractive of the Boleyn sisters and, at the time of her birth, Anne may have seemed particularly unpromising. Much has been written about whether or not Anne Boleyn was born with physical deformities which, in a superstitious age, would have been taken to denote witchcraft or the mark of the devil. These include a sixth finger on one hand and a large mole on her neck, both of which she took trouble to hide. These deformities do not appear in her portraits but, then, they would not be expected to do so. It seems unlikely that Anne suffered from as many deformities as some hostile sources suggest but it is just possible that she had the beginning of a sixth finger on one of her hands. Certainly, this claim has been particularly persistent and even Anne’s supporter, George Wyatt, in his
Life of Queen Anne
claimed that:
‘There was found, indeed, upon the side of her nail upon one of her fingers, some little show of a nail, which yet was so small, by the report of those that have seen her, as the workmaster seemed to leave it as occasion of greater grace to her hand, which, with the tips of one of her other fingers, might be and was usually by her hidden without any least blemish to it’.
This was certainly not a full sixth finger which later writers have suggested but it may have been the subject of a few worried glances when Anne was born and during her childhood. George Wyatt also claimed that Anne had some minor blemishes and that ‘likewise there were said to be upon some parts of her body certain small moles incident to the clearest complexions’. This was very far from being a large and disfiguring mole on her neck however and it is probable that Anne’s blemishes and sixth nail merely ensured that Mary was the beauty of the Boleyn family rather than Anne. In any event, Anne’s dark colouring, which she apparently inherited from her father, made her very far from a conventional beauty in the early sixteenth century.
In spite of her lack of conventional beauty, Sir Thomas Boleyn recognised his younger daughter’s promise from an early age and he ensured that Anne received a good education during her early childhood. No details survive of Anne’s childhood at either Blickling or Hever. Given her parents’ duties at court, they were probably distant figures and Anne and her siblings would have been raised by members of their parents’ household. They are likely to have remained in the country for the majority of their time and they would have socialised with neighbours, such as the Wyatt family, who lived close to Hever. The Wyatts’ eldest son, Thomas, was a similar age to Anne and there may have been a friendship between them during Anne’s early childhood. However, most of Anne’s time would have been spent with her sister and her brother and there was a particular closeness between Anne and George which would survive into adulthood. The three probably shared the same tutors and both Anne and George excelled at their lessons, setting them apart a little from the elder Mary. As well as receiving a good education, Anne would also have been taught more traditional feminine accomplishments such as singing, dancing, music and needlework. Anne would have been aware that these were skills necessary to show her to the best advantage when she came to look for a husband.
Thomas Boleyn, although a distant figure to his children, was an extremely ambitious man. He used his children to further his ambition throughout their lives, something that also worked to Anne’s advantage. Thomas Boleyn’s intelligence and ambition was also recognised by both Henry VII and Henry VIII and he was appointed as an esquire of the body to both kings in turn. He was also created a Knight of the Bath at Henry VIII’s coronation and would have been regularly present at court during the early years of Henry’s reign. Despite his frequent and prolonged absences from home, he would have been an all-important figure to Anne and her siblings during their childhood. While no details of Anne before 1513 survive she would have tried hard to please him.
Anne certainly appears to have outstripped Mary in her education and she quickly became the focus of Thomas Boleyn’s ambition for his daughters. The Boleyns had risen through making advantageous marriages and both Mary and Anne would have been aware that they were expected to attract prominent husbands. Thomas Boleyn was often employed by the king on diplomatic missions and it was during one such mission that he managed to arrange a placement for Anne that would provide her with an extra advantage in the marriage market. In 1513 Anne’s childhood formally ended and she was sent by her father to Brussels to serve at one of the most accomplished courts in Europe: the court of Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands. The fact that it was Anne, rather than the older Mary, who was sent indicates Thomas Boleyn’s confidence in his daughter and his hopes for the fine marriage she would make in the future. For all her physical imperfections and lack of conventional beauty, Anne stood out for her intelligence and her father was determined that she should be displayed at her best when the time came for her to take a husband.
SO PLEASING IN HER YOUTHFUL AGE
Anne would have felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement as she left England for the first time in the summer of 1513. She was proud that she had been selected to become one of Margaret of Austria’s ladies but also anxious as she set out, accompanied by a small group of her father’s servants. At twelve years old, Anne would have known that her childhood was over and that she was being given an opportunity to launch herself into an adult world far superior to that offered to most girls of her age. Anne knew that she was expected to improve herself as well as be a representative of the Boleyn family and she would have been instructed by her father in how to behave.
An appointment as one of the maids of Margaret of Austria was greatly sought after and Anne was drilled by her father in how fortunate she was to achieve such a position. It was a mark of Margaret’s affection for Thomas that she agreed to take his daughter and it is clear that Thomas had confidence in Anne’s abilities to impress.
Margaret of Austria headed one of the most cultured courts in Europe and, as the first court that Anne would have visited, she must have felt a sense of awe when she arrived in Brussels. Margaret of Austria was the only daughter of the Emperor Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy and, as a child, she was sent to France to be raised as the betrothed wife of Charles IX. However, after several years in France Margaret suffered a humiliation when Charles married the heiress to Brittany instead. Margaret must have been distraught to be rejected by the man she considered herself to be married to and she would have returned in shame to her father. A new marriage was quickly arranged for her and she was sent to Spain to marry the young heir of Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain before being widowed equally quickly. Margaret’s third and final marriage was also short and by 1513 she was determined to reject any further marriages, having had three unhappy experiences. By 1513, she was also one of the most powerful women in Europe and had little need of a husband to maintain her position.
Following the death of Margaret’s brother, Philip, she had been appointed regent of the Netherlands and guardian of Philip’s young son, the future Emperor Charles V. Margaret was passionately loyal to the Netherlands, which her brother had inherited from their mother, and one of her most cherished beliefs was the need for an alliance with England. In one letter that she wrote to her father, for example, she pointed out that ‘between the Catholic king (Ferdinand of Spain) and France there are great mountains, and between France and England there is the sea, but between his (Charles V’s) lands and France there is no separation, and you know the great and inveterate hatred which the French bear to this house’. Margaret believed that this alliance could be best maintained through the marriage of her nephew Charles to Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, and she worked hard to ensure that it could be achieved. It is possible that Margaret particularly sought out Anne on her arrival in order to learn something of the language and the customs familiar to Mary Tudor.
Anne would have been relieved at the attention that Margaret showed her on her arrival and she quickly settled into her duties. She was anxious to please and made such a favourable impression on the Regent that Margaret wrote personally to Thomas praising his clever young daughter: