The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family (12 page)

Well, Nicholas Sander's 1585 book
De Origine ac Progressu schismatis Anglicani
, more commonly known as "Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism", has the following passage about Anne:

"Anne Boleyn was rather tall of stature, with black hair, and an oval face of a sallow complexion as if troubled with jaundice. She had a projecting tooth under the upper lip, and on her right hand six fingers. There was a large wen under her chin, and therefore to hide its ugliness she wore a high dress covering her throat. In this she was followed by the ladies of the court, who also wore high dresses, having before been in the habit of leaving their necks and the upper portion of their persons uncovered. She was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth, amusing in her ways, playing well on the lute, and was a good dancer."
¹

Sander really could have been describing Nanny McPhee, couldn't he? But Sander was writing in the 16th century so shouldn't we put some store in his words?

1. Figure 12
   - Vintage engraving of Anne Boleyn
   

No, not really. Sander was born in 1530 and so was only six when Anne Boleyn was executed. He never met her, he never saw her. He was a Catholic recusant who wrote
De Origine
while in forced exile during the reign of Elizabeth I, a woman he hated. While
De Origine
has been hailed by some as "an excellent, popular account of the period from a Catholic point of view",
²
others describe Sander as "Dr Slander, the most violent of anti-Elizabethan propagandists… an enemy agent and no bones about it, an emissary from the Pope to a rebel army".
³
While acting as the procurator for the English exiles in Spain in the 1570s, Sander urged Philip to attack Protestant England, believing that "The state of christendom dependeth upon the stout assailing of England."
⁴

As J.H. Pollen points out in his biography of Sander, "Heylin calls him Dr. Slander, Strype 'a most profligate fellow, a very slave to the Roman see, a sworn enemy to his own country,' Burnet's opinion is that 'Sanders had so given himself up to vent reproaches and lies, that he often does it for nothing, without any end but to carry on a trade that had been so long driven by him that he knew not how to lay it down.'"
⁵
Pollen goes on to describe how Francis Mason described Sander's work as "libel" wherein "the number of lies may seem to vie with the multitude of lines." It is worth noting that Peter Heylin, John Strype and Gilbert Burnet were all 17th century historians and Mason was a 16th and 17th century English churchman. They were not modern day historians examining Sander's work out of context, and they knew their history; this was recent history for them. 19th century historian James Anthony Froude described Sander's work as "the most venomous and successful of libels", describing how Sander "collected into focus every charge which malignity had imagined against Henry VIII and his ministers" and how Sander made use of every "scandalous story" going around at the time.
⁶

In my opinion, Sander was going by the old saying "A grain of truth is needed to make a mountain of lies believable" by making use of contemporary descriptions of Anne Boleyn and then embellishing them so as to blacken her name and that of her daughter Elizabeth I. The Venetian ambassador described Anne as "not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised… and her eyes which are black and beautiful…",
⁷
and reformer Simon Grynée wrote that "she is young, good-looking, of a rather dark complexion, and likely enough to have children."
⁸
It is likely also that Sander relied on the hostile account of Anne's coronation which was once in a catalogue of papers at Brussels:

"Her dress was covered with tongues pierced with nails, to show the treatment which those who spoke against her might expect. Her car was so low that the ears of the last mule appeared to those who stood behind to belong to her. The letters H. A. were painted in several places, for Henry and Anne, but were laughed at by many. The crown became her very ill, and a wart disfigured her very much. She wore a violet velvet mantle, with a high ruff (goulgiel) of gold thread and pearls, which concealed a swelling she has, resembling goître."
⁹

This is the only contemporary account of Anne having a wart. However, as Eric Ives
¹⁰
points out, if Anne's coronation garb was like the surcoat and mantle that Elizabeth I wore at her coronation, it would have covered Anne's neck anyway. It was not an attempt to hide her neck; and how could the observer have seen the wart in any case? Contrary to what some historians and authors have said, it is the mystery account of Brussels, not Chapuys, which mentions a swelling on Anne's neck at her coronation. The account is lost, so we do not know who wrote it. Chapuys' account of the coronation processions and pageants is not a glowing one – he compares the pageant to a funeral and describes it as "a cold, poor, and most unpleasing sight"
¹¹
– but he certainly does not give Anne a wen.

So, the wen, goitre or wart is not mentioned by any valid contemporary report and, contrary to Sander's account, Anne was not known for wearing high-necked dresses or for bringing in this fashion; high necked dresses came later. Although one historian
¹²
has quoted George Wyatt, grandson of poet Thomas Wyatt and author of
The Life of Anne Boleigne
, as saying that Anne had a pronounced Adam's apple, I have been unable to find any mention of this in Wyatt's work.

Lancelot de Carles, secretary to the French ambassador, wrote that Anne was "belle et de taille elegante",
¹³
beautiful with an elegant figure, and he had no reason to lie. Would de Carles really have described a woman with a projecting tooth, an extra finger, yellow skin and a wen as "belle"? I don't think so.

As for Anne being "a thin, old, and vicious hack", another description of Anne which is often given as a reason for her losing Henry's interest, this is a translation of Chapuys' 1536 words "Que sentoit fort a linterpretation de plusieurs la ioyssance destre quiete de maigre, vielle et meschante bague avec espoir de rechargement quest chose fort peculiarie [ment] aggreable au dict roy."
¹⁴
Actually, "maigre, vielle et meschante bague" translates to "skinny, old and nasty ring" so Chapuys may be saying that Henry VIII wanted to replace a thin, old, nasty wedding ring with a more agreeable one, i.e. Jane Seymour, but it doesn't necessarily mean that Anne was thin and old. Chapuys is commenting more on Henry VIII's whim than on Anne's appearance.

An Extra Finger?

A six-fingered (on one hand) Anne Boleyn has appeared in Robin Maxwell's
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn
, Karen Harper's
The Queen's Governess
, Norah Lofts' fictional
The Concubine
and non-fiction
Anne Boleyn
, and in the Ludlow Castle Lodge portrait of Anne, a modern painting based on the National Portrait Gallery portrait. Anne Boleyn Files visitor, Sonetka, commented recently on one of my web page articles, "The major source for many earlier novelists was Agnes Strickland's
Lives of the Queens of England
, which had a sympathetic account of Anne but which also stated that she had a sixth finger which is why Lofts et al gave her one and made it a way to set her apart from the crowd, both literally and symbolically."
¹⁵
She is probably right. However, it's not just in fiction or in old books that we hear about this deformity. One Tudor history website, which is usually very accurate, explains that Anne Boleyn disguised her deformities by "creating new fashions at the Tudor court".
¹⁶
Apparently, she wore a black velvet ribbon around her neck to cover up an "unsightly mole", and used long sleeves to hide her extra finger. Alison Weir writes of Anne having a second nail on one of her fingers and how she "took pains to hide it with long hanging oversleeves, another of her fashionable inventions."
¹⁷
I've also heard a Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London tell tourists that an extra finger was found when the Victorians exhumed Anne Boleyn's remains in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, and a recent London Dungeon Henry VIII themed "infographic" declared that "Henry's wife, Anne Boleyn, had 6 fingers on each hand", along with a few other dubious facts about the King. This, of course, sparked off outrage on Tudor Facebook pages, particularly as nobody has ever gone as far to say that Anne had an extra finger on both her hands! Obviously the Yeoman Warders and London Dungeon are using the myth as a salacious fact to interest tourists and to entertain, but it means that the myth is propagated.

When we were discussing the six-finger legend over at The Anne Boleyn Files, costume expert Molly Housego tackled the long sleeve theory:

"[It's] rubbish about the extra material in the sleeves being invented by Anne to hide her hands. The large cuffed turn-back sleeves were already known, and continued to grow in size due to fashion from the 1510s onwards. Check out the National Portrait Gallery (London) 1520s painting of Catherine of Aragon to see her wearing large turn-back cuffs as well."

Catherine would, of course, have been very unlikely to have taken fashion advice from Anne Boleyn.

The Holbein portrait of Lady Mary Guildford, which dates to around 1527, shows Mary with turned back sleeves before Anne was prominent at court. Long sleeves, therefore, just cannot be attributed solely to Anne Boleyn and her desire to hide her fingers. They were simply the fashion of that time.

This legend, like that of the deformed foetus, is rooted in the work of Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander. However, Sander is not the only Elizabethan writer to mention Anne's deformity. George Wyatt, grandson of Thomas Wyatt the Elder, wrote:

"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 an occasion of greater grace to her hand, which, with the tip of one of her other fingers, might be and was usually by her hidden without any least blemish to it. Likewise there were said to be upon some parts of her body certain small moles incident to the clearest complexions."
¹⁸

Now Wyatt had nothing to gain by blackening Anne's name and his book is actually a treatise in defence of her, so perhaps there was some kind of blemish on Anne's hand. Wyatt was born in 1553 and never knew Anne Boleyn or his own grandfather, who was a close friend of Anne's, but perhaps this information had been handed down in the family. It is impossible to know, but "some little show of a nail" is far from an extra finger.

I agree with historian Retha Warnicke when she points out that Sander's description of Anne Boleyn "cannot be logically reconciled" with that of the Venetian ambassador who saw Anne in Calais in 1532. He wrote:

"Madam Boleyn is not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, a bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the English king's great appetite and her eyes, which are black and beautiful."
¹⁹

It's not the most flattering description, but does not mention a wen, goitre or mole on her neck, nor an extra finger.

Not one ambassador hints at an extra finger in their reports, yet these are men who would have seen Anne at court and who also had dealings with her diplomat father and brother. An extra finger would surely have caused some contemporary gossip. It is hard to believe that Henry VIII, a man to whom looks were important and who was paranoid about illness and disease, would have accepted such a deformity in a woman who was going to be his wife, Queen, and mother to the heir to the throne. I'm sure that he would have worried about this deformity being passed on to their child.

As far as Anne's remains being proof that she had a extra finger, Dr Mouat, who examined all the remains exhumed from the chancel of the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in 1876, recorded that the remains belonged to "a female of between twenty-five and thirty years of age, of a delicate frame of body, and who had been of slender and perfect proportions; the forehead and lower jaw were small and especially well formed. The vertebrae were particularly small, especially one joint (the atlas), which was that next to the skull, and they bore witness to the Queen's 'lyttel neck'." He also commented that "the hands and feet bones indicate delicate and well-shaped hands and feet, with tapering fingers and a narrow foot."
²⁰
He had found nothing unusual on the hand bones and certainly no extra finger bones. Of course, there is speculation that these remains were not in fact those of Anne Boleyn; but no extra finger bones were found in any of the remains.