The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (74 page)

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Authors: Alison Weir

Tags: #General, #Historical, #Royalty, #England, #Great Britain, #Autobiography, #Biography & Autobiography, #Biography, #Biography And Autobiography, #History, #Europe, #Historical - British, #Queen; consort of Henry VIII; King of England;, #Anne Boleyn;, #1507-1536, #Henry VIII; 1509-1547, #Queens, #Great Britain - History

BOOK: The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn

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40
LP

41
Ibid

42
Excerpta Historica
(
LP
911);
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP;
Carles

43
Sergeant; Warnicke

44
Milherve;
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

45
Miscellaneous Antiquities;
Strickland

46
Some sources call her Mary, but there is no record of a Mary Wyatt, nor does a Mary Wyatt appear in the extensive pedigree drawn up by David Loades in his edition of George Wyatt’s papers.

47
Hare;
Westminster Abbey
guidebooks

48
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

49
Froude, Note D in Thomas (
LP
911); Carles

50
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

51
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911);
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP

52
Abbott; Younghusband

53
Chapman:
Anne Boleyn

54
Ives; Impey and Parnell

55
Carles

56
Lisle Letters

57
LP

58
Foxe

59
LP;
Wriothesley

60
Wriothesley

61
Murphy

62
Chapman:
Two Tudor Portraits

63
Cited by Murphy

64
Wriothesley

65
Harleian manuscripts

66
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

67
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

68
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant; LP;
Froude, Note D in Thomas (
LP
911)

69
Henry VIII: A European Court in England

70
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant

71
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

72
Ibid

73
Chronicle of King Henry VIII;
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

74
Wriothesley; Harleian manuscripts

75
Carles

76
LP

77
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

78
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

79
Herbert; Strype

80
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

81
LP

82
Carles

83
Ives

84
Milherve

85
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911);
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107); Aless

86
Carles

87
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

88
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant

89
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107). Wyatt family tradition had it that, on the scaffold, Anne gave the prayer book she was carrying to Margaret Wyatt, who thereafter always wore it on a chain in her bosom (Strickland). It is sometimes claimed that this prayer book was the illuminated “Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary,” which had been made for Anne in 1528 in France, and which she inscribed:
Remember me when you do pray, that hope doth lead from day to day
. This book is now on display at Anne’s former family home, Hever Castle in Kent.

However, this cannot have been the prayer book Anne is said to have given to Margaret Wyatt, which was preserved in the latter’s family for generations, and was shown in 1721 to the engraver and antiquary George Vertue by its then owner, Mr. George Wyatt of Charterhouse Square, London. It was also mentioned in Horace Walpole’s
Miscellaneous Antiquities
, printed at Strawberry Hill in 1772. In 1817, George Wyatt’s editor, Samuel Singer, claimed that the Wyatt prayer book was in the possession of the publisher Robert Triphook, who himself produced another edition of Wyatt’s memoirs of Anne Boleyn, which was privately printed in that year. However, the description of Triphook’s book differs from that of the Wyatt prayer book, which was then still in the family’s possession.
The Wyatt prayer book is now Stowe manuscript 956 in the British Library. It is bound in pure, richly chased gold enameled in black, in an intricate pattern, and closely resembles one of Holbein’s designs for jewelry and goldsmiths’ work, having the same arabesque ornaments. It measures not quite two inches in length and just over an inch and a half in width, and has a ring for threading through a neck chain or girdle. Small as it is, it contains 104 leaves of vellum, on which are inscribed metrical versions of twelve abridged psalms by the Tudor lawyer and writer John Croke. Tiny prayer books like this one had been given by Anne Boleyn, in happier days, to all her ladies, as aids to devotion.
It is not inconceivable that Holbein himself designed this example for Anne Boleyn, although far more likely that it was commissioned for the Wyatts, as his original drawing shows the initials T.W.I., which are missing from the prayer book binding. These initials suggest that the prayer book was made to mark the marriage of the poet Wyatt’s son, another Thomas Wyatt, to Jane Haute in 1537, a theory borne out by that indefatigable researcher George Wyatt’s failure to mention it in his account of Anne Boleyn. Nor is it mentioned in the family memorials compiled by his descendant, Richard Wyatt, in 1727.
The tale of Anne giving the prayer book to Margaret Wyatt would appear to arise from a misreading of the first-recorded mention of the book in George Vertue’s manuscripts; in his “Notes on Fine Arts” (1745) he says he saw in the possession of Richard Wyatt “a most curious little prayer book manuscript on vellum, set in gold, ornaments graved gold, enameled black—such as were given to Queen Anne Boleyn’s maids-of-honor—and was thus given to one of the Wyatt family, and has been preserved for seven generations to this time.” This only states that Anne gave such books to her ladies—which is attested elsewhere—and that she gave one to a lady of the Wyatt family who served her. No mention is made of this gift being given on the scaffold, and that circumstance seems to have been inferred by later writers. There is also no record of any lady of the Wyatt family serving Anne Boleyn as a maid-of-honor. Jane Haute passed on what she knew of Anne Boleyn to her son George Wyatt, so if she knew anything about a prayer book, he would surely have recorded it. (See
On a Manuscript Book of Prayers)

90
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

91
Abbott

92
Wriothesley;
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

93
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

94
Aless

95
Carles

96
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

97
Carles; Froude, Note D in Thomas (
LP
911);
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

98
Harleian manuscripts

99
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant;
Froude:
Pilgrim (LP
911)

100
Wriothesley

101
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant

102
Ibid

103
Younghusband

104
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107); George Wyatt

105
Wriothesley

106
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

107
Excerpta Historica (LP
1107)

108
Ridley:
Henry VIII

109
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

110
Abbott

111
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

112
Ibid; Tytler; Strickland

113
George Wyatt

114
Carles

115
Abbott

116
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

117
George Wyatt

118
Carles

119
Wriothesley

120
Chronicle of King Henry VIII

121
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

122
LP

123
Milherve;
Histoire de la Royne Anne de Boullant

124
SC

125
Erickson:
First Elizabeth

126
Carles

127
Froude, Note D in Thomas
(LP
911)

128
Anthony; Abbott

129
Carles. Annabel Geddes, the former Director of the London Tourist Board who founded the London Dungeon, has suggested that Anne’s head was sewn back onto her body by her women before burial, as Charles I’s was in 1649, but no eyewitness account mentions this.