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In May 2012, I attended the Boleyn Festival Blickling and was lucky enough to hear, among other notable speakers, the late Professor Eric Ives talk about the life and death of Anne Boleyn. At the end of the evening a member of the audience asked Professor Ives whether or not he believed that the ladies that accompanied Anne to the scaffold in May 1536, were among those who had served the queen during her imprisonment in the Tower of London. To this he responded with an emphatic “yes”.

Historian Alison Weir, who had earlier in the evening spoken about Mary Boleyn, was quick to disagree with Ives, a short debate ensued, with both parties agreeing to disagree on this point.

So who was appointed to serve Anne Boleyn during her imprisonment?

From Sir William Kingston’s five surviving letters to Thomas Cromwell (Singer, pp 451-461) concerning Anne Boleyn’s behaviour during this time, we know that the following women were in attendance:

Mary Scrope, Lady Kingston – Wife of William Kingston, the Constable of the Tower of London. Lady Kingston served Anne during her imprisonment and, together with Lady Boleyn, accompanied the queen to her trial in the King’s Hall on Monday, 15 May. Lady Kingston’s husband had been instructed by Thomas Cromwell to record anything of significance said by Anne and so she was essentially a spy.

Margaret Dymoke (Coffin or Cosyn) – Married to Sir William Coffin, Anne Boleyn’s Master of the Horse. In his letters to Thomas Cromwell, Sir William Kingston assured Cromwell that ‘I have every thyng told me by mestrys Cosyn that she thynks met for mee to knowe’. He also reported that Mistress Cosyn and Lady Boleyn slept on a pallet by the foot of the Queen’s bed, while his wife, Lady Kingston, slept outside the bedchamber and so when Lady Kingston was not present to report back on Anne’s every word and move, Mistress Cosyn and Lady Boleyn were.

Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (nee Wood) – Married Sir James Boleyn, Anne’s uncle. Lady Boleyn and Lady Kingston accompanied Anne to her trial on Monday, 15 May.

Elizabeth Stoner – ‘Mother of the Maids’, whose job it had been to look after the maids of honour at court, was appointed as a domestic servant.

Alison Weir also lists Mrs Mary Orchard, ‘Anne’s old nurse’, as a second domestic servant (Pg. 138), however, does not specify the source. It’s worth noting that Anne does direct some speech to a ‘Mary’, as recorded by William Kingston.

Weir and other historians, including Joanna Denny, also list Lady Anne Shelton (nee Boleyn) among Anne’s attendants. Lady Anne was Thomas Boleyn’s sister and was married to John Shelton. She was in charge of the combined household of Henry VIII’s children, Mary and Elizabeth, and by some accounts was not sympathetic to her royal niece who is said to have intentionally maneuvered her own cousin, Lady Anne Shelton’s daughter, Madge Shelton, into Henry VIII’s path in order to divert his attention from another potential female rival at court.

There is certainly mention of a ‘Mrs. Skelton [Shelton?]’ in Kingston’s letters but it comes when Kingston is reporting a conversation that Anne had admitted to having had with Francis Weston. It seems that Anne had reprimanded Weston for ‘neglecting his own wife and flirting with Madge Shelton, instead of leaving the field clear for Norris’, who had been courting Madge (Ives, Pg. 335). This reference then, to a ‘Mrs Skelton’, is likely to have been about Mistress Madge Shelton and not her mother, Lady Shelton.

Of course, Weir and Denny may have had access to another contemporary source, which confirms Lady Shelton’s attendance and which, at this point, is unknown to me.

By Anne’s own admission (recorded by Sir William Kingston in an undated letter), she disliked the women selected to serve her and complained of how unkind it was for ‘the king to put such about me that I never loved.’ Kingston assured Anne that the king believed these women ‘to be honest and good women’, but Anne responded by saying that she would have preferred ladies ‘of mine own privy chamber, which I favour most.’

When writing about Anne’s ‘finale’, Ives asserts that:

‘Escorted by Sir William Kingston, followed by the four ‘wardresses’ she had disliked, Anne walked the final fifty yards [to the scaffold] (Pg. 357). In the notes section, he acknowledges that:

‘The story that Anne’s own ladies attended her on the scaffold appears to be derived from stories about her giving them keepsakes’ (Pg. 423), which he concludes, are not corroborated by ‘any contemporary account’ (Pg. 407).

Weir, on the other hand, in The Lady in the Tower, argues that it was not the hostile spies that accompanied Anne to the scaffold but ‘four young ladies’, recorded, according to Weir, in ‘several eyewitness accounts’ (Pg. 262), concluding that ‘the young ladies, probably four in number, had served as maids-of-honour in the Queen’s household, and had been retained to attend her at her trial and afterwards.’ (Pg. 212-213). She does though make it very clear that there is no contemporary evidence to substantiate the tradition that either Margaret Wyatt, Lady Lee, sister of the poet Thomas Wyatt or Katherine Carey, Anne’s niece (Mary Boleyn’s daughter), accompanied the queen to the scaffold.

A search of Letters and Papers (an archive of contemporary documents), reveals a Spanish account from the Vienna Archives, (read it here, entry 911) incorrectly dated 16 May 1536, in which the anonymous author reports that,

‘The said Queen (unjustly called) finally was beheaded upon a scaffold within the Tower with open gates. She was brought by the captain upon the said scaffold, and four young ladies followed her… A young lady presented her with a linen cap, with which she covered her hair, and she knelt down, fastening her clothes about her feet, and one of the said ladies bandaged her eyes. Immediately the executioner did his office; and when her head was off it was taken by a young lady and covered with a white cloth.’

It is unclear as to whether or not the author was an eyewitness to Anne’s execution or whether he was simply reporting hearsay, however, Weir believes that the ‘young ladies’ could not have been those ladies appointed to serve Anne during her imprisonment, as they were certainly not young by any stretch of the sixteenth century imagination. Furthermore, a poem written by Lancelot de Carles composed on 2 June 1536 (Read a version here, entry 1036) speaks of ‘her [Anne’s] young ladies’ accompanying the queen at her trial and of her ladies ‘in tears’ and appearing ‘bereft of their souls’ on the scaffold.

An imperial account, printed in The Pilgrim (pp116-117), identical in parts to the Spanish account above, mentions ‘four of her ladies’ but does not identify them as young.

Another anonymous letter, said to have been written by an eye-witness, is a ‘translation of a letter from a Portuguese gentleman to a friend in Lisbon, describing the execution of Anne Boleyn, Lord Rochford, Brereton, Norris, Smeton and Weston’ and reproduced in Excerpta Historica (Pg. 260). In it the author reports that Anne ‘was assisted by the Captain of the Tower…together with the four ladies who accompanied her’ and that before her execution, Anne turned to her ladies and thanked them for their diligent and ‘true service.’

So, the question remains, is it possible that these ladies were the same women that were appointed to act as Cromwell’s spies? The same women that only a week or two earlier, the queen had admitted to never having loved?

I think that it is possible.

It is important to remember that not all contemporary accounts of Anne’s execution refer to Anne’s ladies as being young, nor do they all describe Anne as having warmly thanked them for their service. Furthermore, there does not exist a contemporary or eye-witness account that states that Henry VIII sanctioned the appointment of four new ladies from Anne’s household (which was dismantled on 13 May, 1536), nor is there one that actually names the women present on the scaffold. I am though well aware that Kingston’s original letters were damaged in a fire, which broke out at Ashburnham House, Westminster, where the Cotton manuscripts were temporarily being stored, opening the way for speculation and various interpretations about Anne’s final days.

It remains then a possibility that after being by Anne’s side, day and night, over the period of her imprisonment, and witnessing first hand Anne’s courage, dignity and the king’s so called justice, the four ‘wardresses’, one certainly Anne’s own aunt, were moved to tears by the execution of their mistress – an anointed Queen of England. Perhaps Anne too, humbled by her imminent death, chose to turn her back on the past and free herself of old grudges, thanking the ladies for their service, even though they had not been her preferred attendants.

If you are interested in reading more about the events leading up to Anne’s arrest and execution? I recommend The Lady in the Tower by Alison Weir and The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown by Claire Ridgway.

P.S

Bess Chilver makes a very valid point in the comments section: ‘it is likely that the attitude of these ladies towards Anne significantly changed when they had to witness Anne taking mass and swearing twice on the host’ that she was innocent of all charges. ‘To swear on the Host and with the imminent expectation of death would clearly have been significant to those watching (which included Kingston himself). No person in the period would risk going to their death with a lie on their lips.’

In Kingston’s last letter to Cromwell he reports ‘this morning she sent for me [Anne] that I may be with her at such time as she received the good Lord to the intent I should hear her speak as touching her innocency always to be clear.’ (Spelling modernised).

Sources

Cavendish, G. The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, ed. S. W. Singer, 1827.

Denny, J. Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen, 2004.

Ives, E. The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 2004.

Ridgway, C. The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown, Kindle Edition, April 2012.

Thomas, W. The Pilgrim, ed. J. A. Froude, 1861.

Weir, A. The Lady in the Tower, 2009.

Wriothesley, C. A Chronicle of England During the Reign of the Tudors, ed. W. D. Hamilton, 1838.

‘Henry VIII: June 1536, 1-5’, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10: January-June 1536 (1887), pp. 424-440. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75435 Date accessed: 12 July 2013.

‘Henry VIII: May 1536, 16-20’, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10: January-June 1536 (1887), pp. 371-391. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=75431 Date accessed: 13 July 2013.