Women Who Served Anne Boleyn in the Tower
Anne Boleyn is always on my mind at this time of year. She was arrested on 2 May 1536 and executed seventeen days later. I wrote two books and two papers (for the Royal Studies Journal and The Court Historian) about Anne, debunking many myths surrounding her. In this series of articles honouring Anne’s memory and legacy, I will delve into the events that unfolded in May 1536.
In this article I will discuss the women who served Anne in the Tower of London.
“Mistress Coffin”
Soon after her arrest, Anne complained to her gaoler, Sir William Kingston, that the King had “put such two about her as my Lady Boleyn and Mistress Coffin, for they could tell her nothing of my lord her father or anything else, but she defied them all”. Mistress Margaret Coffin, wife of Anne Boleyn’s Master of the Horse, who slept on a pallet bed in the Queen’s bedchamber, proved herself to be very useful to Kingston because he reported that “I have everything told me by Mistress Coffin that she thinks meet for me to know”. Margaret Coffin may have also been the unnamed lady who spied for the imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, because in the dispatch dating to 18 May 1536, he reported that “the lady who had charge of her has sent to tell me in great secrecy that the Concubine, before and after receiving the sacrament, affirmed to her, on the damnation of her soul, that she had never been unfaithful to the King”.
“Lady Boleyn”
The identity of “Lady Boleyn”, the Queen’s aunt who served her in the Tower, has not been satisfactorily established by historians. Anne had two aunts who married her paternal uncles and were thus known as Ladies Boleyn: Elizabeth Boleyn, née Wood, and Anne Boleyn, née Tempest. The most plausible candidate is Elizabeth Boleyn, wife of Sir James Boleyn, who served as chancellor in Anne’s royal household. Only one “Lady Boleyn” took part in Anne’s coronation procession—Elizabeth Boleyn’s position as the wife of the Queen’s chancellor makes her the most plausible candidate.
In one of his letters, William Kingston related an exchange between Anne and her aunt. When Anne complained that neither Lady Boleyn nor Margaret Coffin “could tell her nothing of my lord her father, and nothing else”, Lady Boleyn admonished her by saying that “such desire as you have had to such tales have brought you to this”. Anne’s biographer Eric Ives believed that Lady Boleyn’s comment referred to Anne’s earlier inquiry of how men accused of adultery with her would make their beds and she quipped that if they could not make their pallets properly, they might at least be able to make ballets (ballads), referring to their ability to write poetry. Kingston’s original letters were damaged by fire in 1731, but antiquarian John Strype saw them before the damage was done. Strype made it clear that Lady Boleyn’s comment occurred after Anne complained that neither her despised aunt nor Margaret Coffin could bring her any news from court and proposed that Lady Boleyn might have been referring to “tale-carriers or tellers, as some perhaps of her [the Queen’s] women were”.
“Mrs Stonor” & “the other two gentlewomen”
Strype, who saw the letters before the damage permanently obliterated countless passages, asserted that one “Mrs Stonor” was among the Queen’s ladies in the Tower. This could have been the wife of Sir Walter Stonor, who was in court service as of August 1536.
In one of his letters to Cromwell, Kingston mentioned that “the other two gentlewomen” slept outside of the Queen’s bedchamber, but who those women were remains unknown.
According to myths
Some historians assert that Lady Anne Shelton, the Queen’s aunt who served as governess in the joint household of Princess Elizabeth and Lady Mary, was also present in the Tower with Anne Boleyn. Yet Eustace Chapuys’s dispatch dating to 19 May 1536 makes it clear that three days after Anne Boleyn’s arrest Lady Shelton was still in the household of the King’s daughters, making decisions as to who was allowed to visit Lady Mary, and communicating with Chapuys. She is not mentioned in William Kingston’s letters as having been present in the Tower at any point during the Queen’s incarceration.
Likewise, there is no mention of Mary Orcharde, or Orchard, who was said to have been Anne Boleyn’s “old nurse”, or governess. The story of how she attended the Queen in the Tower and “shrieked out dreadfully” during Anne’s trial has no reflection in contemporary sources. If a woman who raised her served her in the Tower, would Anne Boleyn complain to Kingston that the King appointed such servants as she “never loved”? It seems unlikely. Also, contemporary sources mention only two women who accompanied the Queen to her trial, the ladies Kingston and Boleyn.
If you like my posts, you’ll love my books! This article was based on Ladies-in-Waiting: Women Who Served Anne Boleyn.
