Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Betrayed Anne Boleyn
Part 1: Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester & 'Nan' Cobham
Anne Boleyn was executed on 19 May 1536. Accused of adultery, incest and high treason for allegedly plotting to kill the King, Anne implored the crowds who gathered to witness her death to “judge the best”. She was not judged the best by her contemporaries, although many felt that her death was a judicial murder. A rumour spread at court that women of the Queen’s household were instrumental in bringing about their royal mistress’s downfall.
When Thomas Cromwell built the case against Anne Boleyn he decided to depict her as an amoral, wicked and ungrateful wife who was elevated to queenship and yet betrayed her king. Following the Queen’s downfall, Cromwell wrote to the King's ambassadors in France that Anne's ladies-in-waiting had stepped forward with accusations against her. The poem of Lancelot de Carle, a secretary to the French ambassador who resided in London at the time, recounted a similar story. De Carle recorded that a certain lady of the court was upbraided by her brother for living in “sinful behaviour”. The lady “wanted her faults to be redeemed” and said the Queen was even a bigger sinner than herself. “If you don’t want to believe my assurances”, she retorted, “you can get the story from Mark”. And that’s how it all started, according to the official sources.
The lady upbraided by her husband was identified as Elizabeth Somerset, Countess of Worcester. John Hussey, one of the agents of the Lisle family and an eyewitness to the events that played out in May 1536, wrote that everything was so “discreetly spoken” that he could hardly learn anything of substance. Rumours circulated at court that some ladies-in-waiting were said to have been the chief among the Queen’s accusers, “the first accusers, the Lady Worcester, and Nan Cobham, with one maid more. But the Lady Worcester was the first ground”.
Elizabeth Somerset was Anne Boleyn’s lady-in-waiting and friend. Following her arrest, Anne “much lamented my Lady of Worcester, for because her child did not stir in her body”. Anne was referring to the Countess of Worcester’s recent pregnancy and the lack of perceived “quickening”, as the baby’s movement inside the womb was then known. Quickening signalled the child was alive and well and Anne assumed the countess’s baby was dead. “What should be the cause of it?” one of her attendants asked the distraught Queen. Anne replied that it was because of the sorrow the countess felt for Anne’s predicament. Yet it was the Countess of Worcester who, according to Hussey, stepped forward with the damning accusations.
Apart from Anne’s comment in the Tower, there are other clues that the Queen and the countess were friends. In 1532, the King paid for a midwife and wet nurse for Elizabeth Somerset’s child, likely on Anne’s request, as childbirth and payments to midwives was in the female domain but paid out of the royal treasury. The countess also took a prominent part in Anne’s coronation in 1533, and shortly before her arrest Anne lent Elizabeth a substantial sum of 100 pounds. Elizabeth would later write a letter to Cromwell, revealing that her husband did not know that she borrowed the money from Anne. It seems even more shocking, then, that the countess was said to have been Anne’s first accuser. However, it is likely that by implying that women of her household exposed her alleged adultery, Cromwell sought to add weight to the lurid charges against Anne Boleyn.
Other women who were said to have accused Anne were “Nan Cobham with one maid more”. “Nan Cobham” has never been satisfactorily identified, but it is possible that she was Anne Brooke, Baroness Cobham, the same lady-in-waiting who was summoned to attend Anne Boleyn’s coronation in 1533 and who did indeed appear on the list of ladies-in-waiting during the coronation procession.
“One maid more” may have been Margery Horseman, as suggested by Anne’s biographer Eric Ives. Margery was interrogated by Edward Baynton, vice-chamberlain in the Queen’s household, and refused to collaborate because of the “great friendship” that had lately formed between her and Anne Boleyn. Letters and other documents of the period make it abundantly clear that Margery was among the Queen’s favourite ladies. She knew what clothes Anne liked to wear, what foods she liked to consume and which animals she wanted to surround herself with in her apartments.
Elizabeth Somerset, Anne Boleyn’s “first accuser”, witnessed Elizabeth I’s coronation, and in her last will, written in 1565, she bequeathed the gown she wore that day to her daughter. Did Elizabeth ever ask the countess about her mother? Queen Elizabeth may not have had vivid memories of Anne Boleyn, but she was surrounded by people who knew and remembered the executed Queen well.
Quick Note: This article is based on the research from my book entitled “Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn.” It’s available as Kindle, paperback and hardcover on Amazon & in your local bookshop.