The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family (17 page)

We don't have any details of Anne's churching ceremony but it would have taken place a few weeks after Elizabeth's birth. It was usual for the service to take place about a month after the birth, but records from a church in Lancashire show that women were churched anywhere from eight to forty-eight days after the baptism of the child.
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Anne and Elizabeth

Whatever the truth about Anne's wish to suckle her own child, and go against the usual royal protocol and tradition, Anne was quite clearly pleased with and proud of her little girl. Courtiers were often embarrassed by Anne's displays of affection for her baby and by her preference for placing Elizabeth next to her on a cushion, rather than shutting her away in a nursery.
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Elizabeth's removal from court to her own household at Hatfield on the 10th December 1533 must have been a huge wrench for Anne. Even though it was just a few miles away, Anne would not have been expected to visit her daughter very much and, instead, would have been expected to get on with her queenly duties and to leave Elizabeth's upbringing to Lady Bryan and her staff. Anne had to concentrate on conceiving again and providing Henry VIII with a prince.

We don't know exactly how much time Anne was able to spend with Elizabeth, but we know the following:

• • That Anne visited Elizabeth at Hatfield in Spring 1534
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  32}
  
• • That Elizabeth was moved to Eltham, just 5 miles from Greenwich, at the end of March 1534 and that her parents visited her there a few weeks later
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• • That she was at court with her parents for five weeks in the first quarter of 1535
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  35}
  
• • That she was at court at Christmas 1535, and that she was still there at the end of January 1536 when news reached the court of Catherine of Aragon's death. Henry paraded his daughter around in celebration.
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• • That she was at court at the end of April 1536, shortly before Anne's fall. Alexander Alesius described Anne holding Elizabeth in her arms while she appealed to her husband.
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  David Starkey discounts this report, saying that Elizabeth was most probably at Hunsdon at the time.
  
• • That Anne kept in touch with Elizabeth's nurse, Lady Bryan.
  

At the end of the day, Henry and his council had the last word regarding Elizabeth's upbringing, but the stylish Anne Boleyn involved herself in buying items for her daughter's chamber and for her clothing.
The Account of materials furnished for the use of Anne Boleyn and Princess Elizabeth 1535-36
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by Anne's mercer, William Loke, included the following items for Elizabeth:

• • White sarsenet to line an orange velvet gown
  
• • Black velvet for a partlet
  
• • Black satin for a partlet
  
• • Russet velvet
  
• • Black buckram
  
• • Crimson, purple, white, yellow sarsenet
  
• • Yellow velvet to edge a yellow kirtle
  
• • White damask for a kirtle
  
• • White velvet for edging the kirtle
  
• • Russet damask for a bed cover
  
• • Black satin for a muffler and taffeta for its lining
  
• • Embroidered purple satin sleeves
  
• • Green velvet for edging a green satin kirtlet
  
• • Black velvet for mufflers
  

We learn more about the Queen's expenses in
The Queen's reckoning, beginning in December 1535. Hen. VIII
.
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(the debts owed by Anne at her death. This account includes the following items for Elizabeth:

• • "Boat-hire from Greenwich to London and back to take measure of caps for my lady Princess, and again to fetch the Princess's purple satin cap to mend it."
  
• • "A purple satin cap, laid with a rich caul of gold, the work being roundelles of damask gold, made for my lady Princess."
  
• • "A pair of pyrwykes for my lady Princess, delivered to my lady mistress." Eric Ives explains that pyrwykes were a device to straighten the fingers.
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• • "2¼ yds. crimson satin, at 15s., an ell of "tuke" and crimson fringe for the Princess's cradle head."
  
• • "2 fine pieces of "nydle rybande" [ribbon] to roll her Grace's hair withal."
  
• • " A white satin cap laid with a rich caul of gold for the Princess, 4l., and another of crimson satin."
  
• • "A fringe of Venice gold and silver for the little bed."
  
• • "A cap of taffeta covered with a caul of damask gold for the Princess."
  

Anne obviously made sure that Elizabeth looked the part of a royal princess and Henry's heir.

Anne and Elizabeth's Future

On 26th April 1536, just days before her arrest, Queen Anne Boleyn met with her chaplain of two years, her "countryman", thirty-two year-old Matthew Parker. Parker recorded later that Anne had asked him to watch over her daughter, the two year-old Princess Elizabeth, if anything happened to her. In other words, Anne was entrusting him with her daughter's spiritual care.
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Eric Ives writes that this was a request that Parker never forgot and something which stayed with him for ever.
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Parker obviously came to be important to Elizabeth, because in 1559 she made him her Archbishop of Canterbury. This was a post which, Parker admitted to Lord Burghley, he would not have accepted if he "had not been so much bound to the mother".
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By getting Parker involved with Elizabeth's upbringing and her future, Anne was putting her daughter into the hands of a man with important connections, connections with a set of men with humanist and Protestant ideals who would influence and help her daughter. This cohort included John Cheke, Roger Ascham, William Cecil, Anthony Cooke, William Grindal and John Dee. Three of these men – Grindal, Cheke and Ashcam – tutored Elizabeth, and Dee may even have spent time with the young Elizabeth. He certainly taught Edward VI and Robert Dudley. It is no coincidence that Elizabeth relied on these men when she became queen. Her mother had made sure that she was surrounded by men who could help her in the future.

Elizabeth's Household of Boleyn Relatives

The young Elizabeth was also surrounded by Boleyn relatives:

• • Anne Boleyn's uncle, Sir John Shelton, was comptroller of the joint household of Elizabeth and Mary, and was helped by his wife, Lady Anne (née Boleyn).
  
• • Lady Margaret Bryan, Elizabeth's nurse, was related to Anne Boleyn by marriage.
  
• • Katherine Champernon (or Champernowne) was appointed to Elizabeth's household in July 1536 and became her governess in 1537. She became related to the Boleyns when she married Sir John Ashley (Astley) in 1545. Ashley's mother, Anne Wood, was the sister of Lady Elizabeth Boleyn whose husband, James Boleyn, was Anne Boleyn's paternal uncle.
  
• • Thomas Parry, Elizabeth's "cofferer", or treasurer, was was also connected to the Boleyns. His wife, Anne Reade, was the widow of Sir Adrian Fortescue, whose mother, Alice Boleyn, was an aunt of Queen Anne Boleyn.
  

J.L. McIntosh writes:

"The presence of these Boleyn relations and the evidence of Queen Anne's interest in the material splendor of her daughter's environment indicates that Anne, before her death, was an important, if indirect, early influence on the development of her daughter's household's culture. Henry VIII funded the household and had the final say in all important aspects of his daughter's upbringing, such as when she was weaned, but it was Anne who was guiding the routine behavior and agenda of the household...The queen also may have begun to draw up plans for Elizabeth to receive a Protestant humanist education."
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Although Anne was unable to bring up her daughter herself, because she died before Elizabeth turned three, she made sure from the start that her daughter was well taken care of and had the appropriate household for a royal princess. Anne's instructions to Matthew Parker, one of the Cambridge cohort I have already mentioned, is evidence that Anne was not just ensuring that Elizabeth's spiritual needs would be met. She was also making sure that Elizabeth would have the connections she needed to become a formidable woman and queen. I believe that Anne's influence was kept alive by those who surrounded the young Elizabeth.

Notes and Sources

1 Sim, The Tudor Housewife, 19, citing Patricia Crawford in "The Construction and Experience of Maternity in Seventeenth Century England."

2 Youings, Sixteenth Century England, 372.

3 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England.

4 Ridgway, The Anne Boleyn Collection Volume 2, chap. Anne Boleyn's Birth Date.

5 Hall, Hall's Chronicle, 794.

6 Friedmann, Anne Boleyn: A Chapter of English History, 1527-1536, 1:189, note 2.

7 Friedmann, Anne Boleyn, A Chapter of English History, 1527-1536, 190, note 1.

8 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 183.

9 Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne Devant L'opinion Française Depuis La Guerre de Cent Ans Jusqu'à La Fin Du XVIe Siècle, l. 148–164.

10 Sim, The Tudor Housewife, 17.

11 Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 79.

12 Sharp, The Midwives Book: Or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered, 132–133.

13 Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 43.

14 Sharp, The Midwives Book: Or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered, 80–82.

15 Edwards, Mary I: England's Catholic Queen, 5.

16 Starkey, Elizabeth:Apprenticeship, 2.

17 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England.

18 Ibid.

19 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 184.

20 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England.

21 Sharp, The Midwives Book: Or the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered, 157.

22 Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England.

23 Ibid.

24 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6 - 1533," n. 1111.

25 Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, 23.

26 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6 - 1533," n. 1125.

27 Starkey, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, 511.

28 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 9 : August-December 1535," n. 568.

29 Sim, The Tudor Housewife, 26.

30 Borman, Elizabeth's Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, 21.

31 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 296.

32 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 913.

33 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 509.

34 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6 - 1533," n. 1486.

35 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8," n. 440.

36 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 141.

37 "Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, Volume 1 - 1558-1559," n. 1303.

38 Loke, "Account of Materials Furnished for the Use of Anne Boleyn and Princess Elizabeth 1535-36."

39 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 913.

40 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 255.

41 ed. Bruce and ed. Perowne, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 59.

42 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 267.

43 ed. Bruce and ed. Perowne, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 391.

44 McIntosh, "From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor 1516-1558."

14.
Pregnancies and Miscarriages 1533-1536

In the previous chapter, I looked at Anne's Boleyn's first pregnancy, which resulted in the birth of a healthy baby girl, Elizabeth. I'll now look at Anne's complete obstetric history.

In her book
Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of
Henry VIII
, Kyra Kramer writes that both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn "endured myriad stillbirths, miscarriages and neonatal deaths."
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It is often said that Anne's series of miscarriages and her inability to provide Henry VIII with a living son factored greatly in her fall. Kramer is not the only one to believe that Anne had a series of pregnancy disasters. G.R. Elton wrote that after the birth of Elizabeth "the dreary tale of miscarriages was resumed";
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Marie Bruce said " during the first six months of 1534 she appears to have had one miscarriage after another";
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and Hester W. Chapman believed that Anne suffered three miscarriages in 1534 alone plus the miscarriage of January 1536.
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Whilst I believe that a son would have protected Anne and would have prevented the plots of April and May 1536 ever happening, I simply do not believe that Anne had "myriad stillbirths, miscarriages and neonatal deaths."