Anne Boleyn's Early Life Part One: Birth, Childhood, and Details about Anne's Early Education

Anne Boleyn: The most important and influential Queen Consort England has ever had

Written By: Katelyn Abbott

                                                          A picture of Anne Boleyn

“The king has been very good to me. He promoted me from a simple maid to be a marchioness. Then he raised me to be a queen. Now he will raise me to be a martyr.”- Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn, considered being “the most important and influential queen consort England has ever had”, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn. She had black hair and brown eyes and came to spend her childhood at Hever Castle in Kent. During her adolescence Anne was educated in the Netherlands largely as a maid-of-honor to Archduchess Margaret of Austria and France mainly as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Claude of France. Anne ended up returning to England where her allure, her beauty, her brilliance, her charm, her drive, her elegance, her fine sense of humor, her grace, her high independence, her impeccable sense of fashion, her keen wit, and her lively, opinionated, and passionate personality earned her a circle of admirers. She entered the service of Katherine of Aragon as a lady-in-waiting and first was engaged secretly to Henry Percy, but their engagement was ended by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. Anne had a flirtatious relationship with Sir Thomas Wyatt, but she had gone on to catch the attention of King Henry VIII of England. King Henry VIII had tried to make Anne his mistress, but she refused because she had seen how her sister Mary Boleyn had scandalized herself as she had been his mistress and Anne wanted to keep her good name and make an honorable marriage for herself. King Henry VIII offered to marry her and make her the Queen of England and Anne promptly accepted his proposal. She put up with waiting for nearly seven years for King Henry VIII to obtain an annulment from his marriage to Katherine of Aragon. The final break away from Rome by King Henry VIII was what it took before they were married on January 25, 1533 and Anne was crowned the Queen of England on June 1, 1533. Anne was unable to give King Henry VIII the son that he desperately needed and their marriage ended tragically for her. She was arrested, brought to trial, convicted on false charges of adultery, conspiring the death of the King, high treason, incest, and making fun of King Henry VIII’s clothes, music, and poetry, deemed to be sentenced to death, and executed on May 19, 1536.  Their daughter Princess Elizabeth Tudor would become England’s greatest queen.

Birth

Anne Boleyn became the Queen Consort of England, but because she did not seem to be destined for fame or getting noticed among her contemporaries history cannot provide much accuracy of the beginning of her life as historians do not even know for sure about her exact date of birth. Her birth may have been as early as 1499 or as late as 1512 considering the evidence someone accepts. Historians debate over her date of birth with the majority of them settling on it being around late May or early June from 1501 and 1509.

                 A picture of Blickling Hall where Anne might possibly have been born at

Anne’s parents Sir Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn were of noble heritage. Sir Thomas Boleyn, an ambitious, brilliant, and cunning man with diplomatic skills and a natural gift for foreign languages, was an English courtier and diplomat and a favorite of King Henry VII. The Boleyn family was descended from merchant stock, but had risen up the social ladder as Sir Thomas Boleyn's grandfather Geoffrey Boleyn had risen up to become Lord Mayor of London and had received a knighthood. Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, renowned for her beauty, her intelligence, and her charm who had served as a lady-in-waiting first to Elizabeth of York and then to Katherine of Aragon, ended up coming from much more illustrious origins than her husband as she was the daughter of Thomas Howard the second Duke of Norfolk and a direct descendent of King Edward I of England. Anne was of more noble birth than King Henry VIII’ s three other English wives Jane Seymour, Catherine Howard, and Catherine Parr were according to Eric Ives and at the time of Anne’s birth the Boleyn family was considered to be one of the most aristocratic families in England.

Sir Thomas Boleyn and Lady Elizabeth Boleyn seemed to have a relatively successful marriage based more on ambition than love and had at least five children together. Only three of their children being their son George and their two daughters Mary and Anne reached adulthood with their other two sons Henry and Thomas dying in infancy or early childhood. The birth order of the surviving three Boleyn children has been disputed by historians, but it is generally accepted that Mary was the oldest child (born around 1499 or 1500), George was the middle child (born around 1504), and Anne was the youngest child.

The spelling of the Boleyn name was variable as common at the time. Sometimes it had been written as Bullen, hence the bull heads which had formed part of her family arms. The court of the Archduchess Margaret of Austria in the Netherlands had listed Anne as Boullan. That was from there where she had signed the letter to her father as “Anna Bolina” (which is in Latin) the name that is in most portraits of her.

Childhood and Details about Anne’s Early Education

                                                       A picture of Anne as a child

Anne Boleyn would have been brought up together with her brother George and her sister Mary by members of the Boleyn household like their childhood nurse Mrs. Mary Orchard and a French governess named Simonette in the countryside at Hever Castle in Kent. Anne had black hair and dark brown eyes and she had been a healthy child. Basic first lessons that Anne would have learned as a child would have been for her to wash her hands before and after a meal and to have table manners when it came to eating her meals and to keep her gowns clean. Children like Anne also learned the necessary lesson to put God first and their duty to rise early every morning to say their prayers just like adults were expected to do. Anne was described as a clever, deeply curious, extremely charming, friendly, and greatly lively little girl by those close to her. She was extremely close to her mother Elizabeth and her brother George and felt eager to please her father Thomas who might have seen her as his favorite child, but her relationship with her older sister Mary was  distant as they were not close to each other at all despite them loving one another. Her grandmother Lady Margaret Butler (her father’s biological mother) lived with Anne’s family at Hever Castle though the type of relationship that Anne had with her is unknown.

                          A picture of Hever Castle where Anne spent her childhood at

Hever Castle had been a beautiful small castle built within two concentric moats surrounded by rolling grassy fields and thick groves of trees. The courtyard clearly led to the kitchen. Elegant tapestries, objects of gold and silver, sumptuous furnishings, and wood-paneled walls did happen to be inside of the castle.


Childhood for Anne at Hever Castle would have been conventional as her daily life would have been directed by a rigid everyday schedule beginning with the meals that she would have eaten in the parlor with her family. Breakfast would have been served early to them at six or seven o’clock in the morning consisting of ale to drink and bread and meat or pottage (broth) to eat, dinner (the main meal of the day) would have been eaten by them at noon consisting of several courses with many dishes at each of them, and supper would have been eaten by them at six or seven o’clock in the evening. Clothes that Anne and her sister Mary would have worn for everyday life would have been gowns in bright colors, cut modestly, and of good quality over their linen shifts and petticoats, black wool stockings, and shoes with broad toes and double soles. Anne and Mary could leave their hair down as unmarried girls customarily did although they might have secured their hair with beautifully-carved headpieces and caps. She did own jewels just like her sister Mary did, but the jewels that Anne and Mary wore would have been of simple quality according to their rank and status that would never set them above their own station. Mary and her ended up most likely owning a few bracelets and necklaces that had once belonged to their mother and their grandmother which Lady Elizabeth Boleyn and Lady Margaret Butler probably gave to them. Anne would have occupied one of the lesser bedchambers to sleep in like her brother George and her sister Mary did and their grandmother Margaret might have done while their parents Thomas and Elizabeth would have slept in the Great Chamber. Her bedchamber probably have had a fireplace, small diamond-paned windows, and wainscoted walls with a large canopy or tester bed dominating the room which had expensive curtains of damask or silk hanging down from them with crisp white linen sheets made up the bed  and piled high with soft-looking pillows and an animal fur thrown across it, a chamber pot,  a chest for her clothes and linen, cosmetic jars, a cupboard to hold a basin and an ewer, a dressing table with a chair or a stool, a jewel casket to store her jewels in, and a mirror of burnished silver.  Talking to their parents would have had Anne, George, and Mary address their father Sir Thomas Boleyn respectfully as “my lord” or “Sir” and their mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn as “my lady” or “Madame” and refer to them as “my lady mother” and “the lord my father” to other people in public. Their parents would have been people who administered verbal instructions to their governess and their nurse on how to handle Anne, George, and Mary and came to give out punishments such as whippings out to them whenever they had misbehaved themselves. 

During her childhood Anne’s father Sir Thomas Boleyn came to see how clever and diligent she was and ensured that she received an excellent education along with her brother George and her sister Mary. Education of daughters was still rare, but Sir Thomas Boleyn was not afraid for his daughters to be educated. Anne excelled at her studies and fully applied herself to them. She was given a good academic education in arithmetic, her family genealogy, grammar, history, reading, spelling, and writing along with instruction in etiquette, feminine accomplishments such as curtseying, dancing, embroidery, music, needlework, and singing, good manners, and how to carry herself with dignity and grace though she also had fun learning about legends like King Arthur and Greek and Roman mythology and the lives and lineage of the monarchs of Europe from her brother George’s tutors. Household management would have been learned by Anne along with her sister Mary from their mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn’s guidance with them helping her to distill sweet waters, making medicines and poultices from the herbs in the garden, and preparing confits and conserves in the still room as it was important for girls of good birth to have the necessary skills to run a great household of their own. Anne learned to play games such as cards, chess, and dice, how to gamble, and outdoor pursuits such as archery, falconry, horseback riding, and hunting. Most importantly (other than her strong upbringing in religion and the Scriptures as her family had firm religious beliefs) Anne would have had learned to have unconditional obedience to the men in her life which was first to her father Sir Thomas Boleyn and then to the husband that he would choose for her to have once she was married.

Everyday life for Anne would have been full of her basic attempts to eat rich foods and sweetmeats that her governess said was bad for her digestion, constant lessons with her tutors, dress fittings, exercise, family meals in the parlor, getting into scrapes (such as her liking maybe to observe the activities going on in the kitchen by hiding herself at a small corner or behind a barrel, running around stealthy in the gardens to see what they looked like in the rain, or stealing sweets from the kitchen), having fun with her dolls, and playing childhood games with George and Mary (such as games of movement and running or games of pretend) or her dogs on the manor grounds.  She might have enjoyed reading books sitting by the river bank, in the courtyard, or under a tree in the orchid for hours on summer days and sing songs of her own making when visitors asked her to sing for them while they were there. Anne might have formed friendships with neighboring families around Hever Castle in Kent such as with her cousin Sir Thomas Wyatt and his sisters Margaret and Mary Wyatt who lived nearby at Allington Castle. Gatherings with the friends that she might have had probably occurred weekly or monthly. Anne had likely been the favorite of the childhood nurse, the governess, and the servants for she might have accepted them for who they were, cared about them, and deeply loved them (as she had probably been the first to give out hugs and kisses to them, came to be ecstatic at the birth of a servant’s child or over a servant’s return from their visits home, did know about who they were, their family histories, and their medical complainants, ended up bringing treats to the babies and children, and frequently kept the old ones and the sick ones company as they laid in bed chatting to anyone who would listen to them). Her father Sir Thomas Boleyn would have been a distant figure in Anne’s life as he had spent much of his time away at the English Court while her mother Lady Elizabeth Boleyn would have been more involved in her life as she was left at home much of the time to run the household at Hever Castle with its home farm, tenant farms, and woods belonging to the estate and supervise over her children’s early educations. It was Lady Elizabeth Boleyn who would accompany Anne and Mary to going to the market where they could show off their finery, making merry at childbirths, christenings, churchings, and funerals, and visiting their neighbors as their chaperone for unmarried girls were kept “rigorously and strictly” to protect their virtues.

George Boleyn’s education would have been more formal than that of his sisters Anne and Mary as he was a boy to prepare him for a more public career at court so that he could follow in their father’s footsteps. He would have shared lessons with them and had the same tutors with them for their early educations, but he also would have studied subjects that they would not have. Tradition insists that he was “educated among the Oxonians” at Oxford although there is no firm evidence to support this.

Like her sister Mary, Anne would have known that she was expected to make herself an advantageous marriage and bear her future husband children especially sons. Sir Thomas Boleyn would choose the men that they were to marry. It was their duties to help ensure the advancement and prosperity of their family and marriage was a good way for them to do it.