The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family (20 page)

Kramer's argument for Kell also rests on her argument for Henry having McLeod Syndrome, a syndrome which can only be manifested in people who have a Kell positive blood type.

Here are some facts about McLeod Syndrome:

• • Symptoms of McLeod syndrome begin to appear near the patient's fortieth birthday
  
• • The symptoms grow progressively worse over time
  
• • The symptoms include muscle and nerve deterioration, facial tics, malformed blood cells, and damage of the internal organs like the liver and the heart
  
• • There is also often an erosion of mental stability, wherein the patient becomes more and more irrational and erratic.
  
• • Patients usually display symptoms like memory deterioration, depression, paranoia and even schizophrenia-like behaviours.
  

Kramer believes that "there is a plethora of evidence to show how Henry's personality and mental processes had changed", particularly after his 40th birthday. Examples she cites include:

• • The banishment of Catherine of Aragon and Henry's cruel treatment of her and of Mary
  
• • The executions of the Carthusian monks
  
• • The executions of Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More
  
• • The fall of Anne Boleyn and her execution, along with the executions of men he'd been friends with, e.g. Norris
  
• • His mood swings and the way that he could just turn against those he'd loved
  
• • His behaviour when Jane Seymour was dying; he was more concerned with hunting
  
• • His response to Anne of Cleves when she didn't recognise him at their first meeting in Rochester. Kramer writes, "The mental impairment caused by McLeod syndrome likely exacerbated Henry's response to Anna's gaffe" and "he developed a deep-seated revulsion towards Anna."
  
• • The fall of Thomas Cromwell and his subsequent execution.
  
• • His decision to execute the frail and elderly Margaret Pole
  
• • The falls and executions of Catherine Howard, Lady Rochford, Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper.
  
• • Bad foreign policy decisions
  

Kramer comments that Henry VIII changed from knight to nightmare, and that this was the result of McCleod Syndrome. I don't agree. Thomas More, who served Henry VIII as his Lord Chancellor, was very close to the King, more like a father figure to him. Nonetheless, he once famously said of Henry, "I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go", knowing that Henry was capable of tyranny when it suited his ambition. And I have to agree with the great historian, J. J. Scarisbrick who remarked, in response to the argument that Henry's behaviour became more tyrannical after 1536, "Henry was not notably more cruel afterwards than he had been before".
⁴²

Before he turned forty, Henry had made scapegoats of his father's chief advisors, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, and he had executed Edmund de la Pole and the Duke of Buckingham. Yes, there were many executions after he turned forty, but Henry was having to deal with the aftermath of the break with Rome, with those who challenged his authority by not accepting his supremacy or who were a threat to him. I'm not excusing his tyranny, and I do believe he was a tyrant, but I just can't see that there was a radical change in his behaviour after his fortieth birthday. He always had those tendencies and they simply got worse when he felt threatened.

So, I don't believe that Henry had McLeod Syndrome and I don't believe that he was Kell Positive. I therefore don't believe that he was to blame for his wives' reproductive woes, and I don't actually think that you can say that Anne Boleyn did, in fact, experience reproductive woes.

Alison Weir puts forward the theory that Anne Boleyn may have been Rhesus negative and that this explains why she experienced stillbirths. Rhesus disease does not occur in a first pregnancy, but in subsequent pregnancies when a mother has been sensitised to Rhesus positive blood cells by carrying a Rhesus positive baby. After sensitisation, when the woman is carrying a Rhesus positive baby, her immune system will produce antibodies which attack and destroy her baby's blood cells.
⁴³
Weir concludes that this theory explains why "Anne's first pregnancy had resulted in a healthy child, but her three subsequent pregnancies had ended in stillbirth".
⁴⁴
But, I don't believe that Anne had that many pregnancies; what's more, the one that ended in January 1536 was a miscarriage, not a stillbirth. Rhesus disease, when untreated, results in stillbirth or deafness, blindness, cerebral palsy or learning difficulties; but it doesn't result in miscarriage. Today, Rhesus negative women are given a special injection, an anti-D injection, between 28 and 30 weeks of pregnancy, to stop their body making antibodies which would harm their baby. Anne lost her baby in 1536 at around 15 ½ weeks, so it was too early for it to be affected by her Rhesus negative blood type, if indeed she had it. I don't believe that Rhesus disease explains Anne's obstretic history at all.

In my opinion, Anne, and Catherine of Aragon too, were just unlucky. They were living at a time when miscarriages were common, infant mortality was high, and there was no prenatal care. They were not unusual. Anne, in particular, cannot be said to have suffered a series of miscarriages because there is only firm evidence for one such miscarriage. It is human nature to want to explain something, but I think it's time to stop trying to find medical reasons for what happened to these women and to stop trying to lay blame.

Was Anne Boleyn Pregnant at her Execution?

I'm often asked this question, which you also see being asked on forums and blogs. The idea that Anne was pregnant when she went to her death on 19th May 1536 was put forward by Alison Weir in her book
Henry VIII: The King and His Court
, first published in 2008.
⁴⁵
Weir argued that Henry VIII's comment to Chapuys in April 1536, when he said "Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not? You do not know all my secrets", was a reference to Anne's pregnancy. Furthermore, Weir argues, this was backed up by Henry's words to his ambassadors in Rome and France regarding "the likelihood and appearance that God will send us heirs male," thus implying that Anne was actually already pregnant. The problem is that Chapuys actually recorded this conversation in a letter to Emperor Charles V on 15th April
1533
, not 1536. He wrote:

"He asked me three times if he was not a man like other men (si nestoit point home comme les autres), adding that I had no reason to affirm the contrary, seeing I was not privy to all his secrets ; leaving me clearly to understand that his beloved lady was enceinte."
⁴⁶

Well, of course, Anne
was
pregnant in April 1533, with Elizabeth, so Chapuys' comment makes sense. Weir obviously made a mistake with the date; Chapuys cannot be recording a conversation which took place in 1536 in a letter in 1533. In any case, Weir has changed her mind on this matter and refutes it in her more recent book,
The Lady in the Tower
. Unfortunately, the idea is still out there being discussed.

Notes and Sources

1 Kramer, Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII.

2 Elton, England Under the Tudors, 152.

3 Bruce, Anne Boleyn, 251.

4 Chapman, Anne Boleyn, 161.

5 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 114.

6 Ibid., n. 556.

7 Ibid., n. 958.

8 Ibid., n. 1013.

9 Ibid., n. 1193.

10 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 394, note 12.

11 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8," n. 919.

12 Dewhurst, "The Alleged Miscarriages of Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn."

13 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 282.

14 Hall, Hall's Chronicle, 818.

15 Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from A.D. 1485 to 1559, 33.

16 Holinshed, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 6:796.

17 Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne Devant L'opinion Française Depuis La Guerre de Cent Ans Jusqu'à La Fin Du XVIe Siècle, chap. Poème sur la Mort d'Anne Boleyn, lines 317–326.

18 Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl, 589.

19 Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII, 191.

20 Warnicke, "Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII," 260.

21 Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII, 214.

22 Warnicke, "Sexual Heresy at the Court of Henry VIII," 258.

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

24 Weisner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe.

25 Sander, Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism, 132.

26 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 297.

27 Zupanec, The Daring Truth About Anne Boleyn: Cutting Through the Myth, chap. 9.

28 Ibid.

29 Flaccus and Festus, M. Verrii Flacci Quae Extant: Et Sexti Pompeii Festi De Verborum Significatione, XX:424.

30 Micraelius, Lexicon Philosophicum Terminorum Philosophis Usitatorum, 825.

31 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 450.

32 Ibid., n. 528.

33 Zupanec, The Daring Truth About Anne Boleyn: Cutting Through the Myth, chap. 9.

34 Sander, De Origine Ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani, 166.

35 "Molar Pregnancy."

36 Madams, "Carnis Molem."

37 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 296.

38 "Miscarriage Statitsics."

39 "Pregnancy Loss."

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

41 Kramer, Blood Will Tell: A Medical Explanation of the Tyranny of Henry VIII.

42 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, 655.

43 "Rhesus Disease."

44 Weir, The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, 35.

45 Weir, Henry VIII: The King and His Court, chap. 47: Thunder Rolls Around the Throne.

46 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6 - 1533," n. 351.

15.
Anne Boleyn and the Charge of Witchcraft

Every year in the lead-up to the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution on 19th May, I notice a multitude of tweets and Facebook comments referring to Anne Boleyn being charged with witchcraft. This is in addition to her charges of treason, adultery and incest. I bite my tongue and sit on my hands, resisting the urge to point out the glaring error in these posts. In 2012, there was even an article by author Hilary Mantel in
The Guardian
newspaper entitled "Anne Boleyn: witch, bitch, temptress, feminist".

Now, Mantel was not actually suggesting that Anne was a witch or that she had been charged with witchcraft. In fact, Mantel writes, "Anne was not charged with witchcraft, as some people believe. She was charged with treasonable conspiracy to procure the king's death, a charge supported by details of adultery."
¹
In this, Mantel is correct; Anne was not charged with witchcraft. But Anne Boleyn's name is too often linked with witchcraft and many people, even Tudor history buffs, assume that she was indeed charged with it. It's no wonder that people make that assumption; depictions of Anne as a witch are ubiquitous. Her portrait is on the wall at Hogwarts (not that this allusion should be taken seriously, though, of course). In addition, the 2009 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show had a Witch's Garden to represent Anne Boleyn. Finally, Philippa Gregory's famous novel
The Other Boleyn Girl
²
depicted Anne Boleyn dabbling in witchcraft, taking a potion to bring on the miscarriage of a baby (which turns out to be monstrously deformed) and having a "witch taker" help to bring her down. You only have to Google "Anne Boleyn witchcraft" to find sites claiming that Anne was charged with and executed for witchcraft, or mentions of her having an extra finger and moles all over her body, which could have been seen as "witch's teats" and the marks of a witch. Even an article on the BBC history website refers to her being accused of being "a disciple of witchcraft".
³

Some non-fiction authors and historians give credence to the witchcraft theory. In her biography of Anne Boleyn, Norah Lofts
⁴
writes of Anne bearing a mole known as the "Devil's Pawmark," and of making a "typical witch's threat" when she was in the Tower, claiming that there would be no rain in England for seven years. Lofts explains that seven was the magic number and that witches were thought to control the weather. What's more, Anne had a dog named Urian, a name for Satan. In addition to this, she managed to cast a spell on Henry which eventually ran out in 1536, hence his violent reaction, "the passing from adoration to hatred". Lofts goes even further when she writes about the story of Anne haunting Salle Church in Norfolk, where, according to legend, Anne's body was really buried. Loft writes of meeting the sexton of the church; he told Lofts that he kept vigil one 19th May to see if Anne's ghost appeared. He didn't see a ghost, but he did see a huge hare "which seemed to come from nowhere". It jumped around the church before vanishing into thin air. According to Lofts, "a hare was one of the shapes that a witch was supposed to be able to take at will"; she pondered if it was indeed Anne Boleyn.