On The Tudor Trail - Anne Boleyn's Life, 1521-1527

I have recently written an article for the website On The Tudor Trail about Anne Boleyn's life in the years 1521-7, a period that remains frustratingly shadowy. In this article, I discuss Anne's return to England from the French court in late 1521; her anticipated marriage to James Butler, heir to the earldom of Ormond; her probable appointment to Katherine of Aragon's household in 1523 and her liaison that year with Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland; her dismissal and probable return in late 1526. My approach is closely informed by the extant evidence concerning Anne's age and the Boleyn family goals and ambitions, in which it was anticipated that Anne would be ennobled as the countess of Ormond. As is well known, of course, the marriage did not come to fruition and Anne instead captured the heart of Henry VIII by 1527, four years after her affair with Percy, who inherited the earldom of Northumberland in 1527. You can read the article here.

19 July 1543: The Death of Mary Stafford

We do not know how old Mary Stafford (nee Boleyn) was when she died on 19 July 1543. Mystery surrounds every aspect of Mary's life: we do not know her date of birth, what she looked like, whether she was the oldest or the youngest of the surviving Boleyn children, what her relationship with her siblings was like, or even where she died. Mary's life has been imagined and invented in works of fiction, most notably Philippa Gregory's bestselling novel The Other Boleyn Girl and in Karen Harper's The Last Boleyn. 

Although Mary remains best known as the sister of Anne Boleyn, it seems fitting to refer to her as Mary Stafford given that she died while the wife of William Stafford. In her letter to Thomas Cromwell, written c. 1534, Mary described her second husband as 'honest' and noted that she 'could never have had one that should have loved me so well'. At a distance of almost five hundred years, it is impossible to know whether Mary's controversial marriage to William Stafford was ultimately happy, but certainly theirs appears to have initially been a love match. Like other Tudor noblewomen, such as Frances Brandon, Katherine Willoughby and Anne Stanhope, Mary had selected a second husband who was inferior to her in status because it brought the promise of security, although it enraged her family and compelled her sister to order her dismissal from court.

At her death, Mary held a number of properties, many located in Essex. After the disgrace and deaths of her brother and sister in 1536, she was her father's sole heiress and it was to her that the Boleyn inheritance passed. When Mary died, the properties passed to her son Henry Carey, who was then aged seventeen. He was highly favoured by his cousin Elizabeth following her accession in 1558. Henry's sister Katherine was also a favourite of the queen. 

Above: Anne Boleyn. In the realm of fiction, Mary and Anne have often been presented as jealous rivals. 

The last years of Mary Stafford's life were not necessarily pleasant ones. Her unexpected marriage to William Stafford displeased her family and her sister, who was then queen, banished her from court permanently. Less than two years later, Anne and George Boleyn were both executed, alongside four other men, on scandalous charges of adultery, incest and treason. Less than two years after the shocking events of 1536, Mary's mother died, and a year after that, her father also passed away. In 1542, her sister-in-law Jane Parker was beheaded for treason alongside Mary's cousin, Katherine Howard. Although she was not necessarily close to any of these individuals, it would be surprising if the betrayal, bloodshed and devastation that was inflicted on the Boleyn family between the late 1530s and early 1540s did not have an impact on Mary, by then the only surviving child of Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn.

Two biographies of Mary have been published to date and she regularly features in general histories of Henry VIII's reign. Moreover, she has been the subject of numerous novels. However, much of Mary's life remains unknown. Perhaps it is this mystery, this uncertainty, that makes her so entrancing to modern audiences today. 

Above: Katherine (left) and Henry (right), Mary's children by her first husband William Carey. Both were greatly favoured by their cousin, Elizabeth I. 

The Character Assassination of George Boleyn

Above: Negative depictions of George Boleyn were offered in both The Tudors (left) and The Other Boleyn Girl (right).

My research focuses on the maligning and misrepresentation of high-status women in late medieval and Tudor England, examining the gendered dimension and motivations for attacking prominent women. However, it was not only women who were defamed and maligned, but men too. One outstanding example of this is George Boleyn, lord Rochford, whose posthumous reputation has been notorious. He is frequently depicted as a rapist, homosexual, heretic, womaniser, abuser or coward - and, often, all of these are mixed together. This has resulted in what could be termed the black legend of George Boleyn. However, this popular understanding of George has little basis in historical evidence.

How did this black legend come about? It is difficult to separate the defamation of George from the character assassination of his entire family. The Boleyns have, in popular culture, become synonymous with greed, treachery, political ambition and ruthlessness, although modern historians recognise that they were typical of the period in which they lived in and were no worse than other noble families. But this has not prevented novelists, film-makers, and directors from slandering the Boleyns. Thomas Boleyn, a respected diplomat and talented linguist in his day, has been caricatured as an ambitious, grasping egotist. His daughter Mary has become synonymous with bawdiness and prostitution, although another line of thought has cast her as the innocent, vulnerable victim of her merciless family. Queen Anne Boleyn has suffered the most, being reduced to a scheming manipulator, a nymphomaniac, or a homewrecker - and frequently, the three are mixed together. George Boleyn then is, like other members of his family, a victim of the abuse directed at the Boleyns. 



Above: Anne (left) and Mary (right), the sisters of George.

Modern historians have been fairly appreciative of George Boleyn's significance, particularly in the English Reformation. In 1531, he was one of several crown officials who assisted Henry VIII in his claim to be supreme head of the English Church. Like his sister Anne, George owned a number of French evangelical works. He turned two of them into presentation copies for his sister, which were based on the works of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples. These texts stressed the necessity of having a living faith in Christ in order to attain salvation, rather than relying on good works and on the rituals of the established Church. George wrote a dedicatory letter to his sister in one of the texts, "The Epistles and Gospels for the Fifty-Two Weeks of the Year", in which he addressed Anne as 'her most loving and friendly brother'. He also assured her that he loved her. These texts testify to both George's devout religion and his close relationship with Anne.

Later, George's execution speech in 1536 confirmed his prominent involvement in religious reform at Henry VIII's court. He referred to himself as 'a great reader and mighty debater of the Word of God, and one of those who most favoured the Gospel of Jesus Christ.' The Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys frequently accused the Boleyns of being 'more Lutheran than Luther himself', and it seems plausible that, when Anne became queen, her brother assisted her in advancing evangelical reform at court. Their father, also passionate about religious reform, was probably also involved. Joseph S. Block has written that George's interest and passion for religious reform was motivated not only out of desire to assist his sister, but 'was a guiding light in his life'. 

George's interests, however, extended beyond religion. His biographers Claire Ridgway and Clare Cherry note that he was a talented poet and linguist. George also enjoyed an excellent diplomatic career, a point often overlooked especially in popular depictions of him. For example, in 1529 he was knighted and led an embassy to France at an unusually young age (if he was born around 1504, he would have been only twenty-five or so years of age: a point which indicates that there was already considerable confidence in his abilities). Soon after, George became Viscount Rochford. In 1533, he again travelled to France where he informed the French king about Henry VIII's marriage to Anne and was able to secure Francois I's support in the struggle against the papal denunciation of Henry's annulment of his first marriage. Further embassies followed later that year and in 1534, and in June 1534, George was rewarded for his diplomatic successes: he was promoted to Baron of the Cinque Ports.

Around the end of 1524, he married Jane Parker, the daughter of Henry lord Morley. George's marriage to Jane has more often than not been portrayed as a vicious, tempestuous and abusive union. Alison Weir describes their relationship as "unhappy" and asserts that Jane testified against her husband at the time of his downfall in spring 1536 because she was revolted and disgusted by his sexual practices. This idea was originally put forward by academic historian Retha Warnicke, who suggested that not only was George promiscuous, but guilty of sodomy with several men too. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this salacious notion has become enshrined in popular culture and has hugely influenced the prevailing view of George. In Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl, George Boleyn is a promiscuous, unhinged and sexually disturbed man who not only has an affair with Francis Weston, but is strongly suggested to have slept with his sister Anne, resulting in the birth of a deformed child and accusations of witchcraft and incest that send both of them to the scaffold. In the television series The Tudors, George is portrayed in a darker light as a serial abuser, who sexually assaults his innocent wife on their wedding night. He also enjoys a sexual relationship with Mark Smeaton. The Tudors provided the most manipulative, abusive, violent and cruel portrayal of George Boleyn to date. Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies presents George more as an arrogant, shallow dandy or fop who shamefully cries at his trial and, during his lifetime, is concerned with nothing more than the pursuit of luxury and decadence. The television series Wolf Hall similarly presents his relationship with Jane as abusive, in which he treats her violently and with contempt.


Above: George Boleyn in Wolf Hall.

There is no evidence for any of this, and we cannot know the truth of George and Jane's marriage. Their childlessness has frequently been cited as conclusive evidence of their marital unhappiness, but it is equally possible that either partner suffered from infertility, or perhaps there were other problems that we just do not know about. In the absence of evidence, it is unfair and contrary to historical practice to speculate negatively about their relationship. Contrary to legend, Jane was not the 'principal accuser' of her husband in the wake of his downfall in 1536, and she may have been coerced into providing testimony, in what must have been a terrifying and traumatic experience for her. Jane has traditionally been presented as jealous and hurt by George's close relationship with his sister Anne, in which he neglected and mistreated his wife in favour of spending time with his more attractive and accomplished sister. Again, there is no evidence for this. Perhaps Jane was jealous of Anne, perhaps she hated her, perhaps she did love George and was hurt by his treatment of her. Alternatively, and equally validly, perhaps she enjoyed a good relationship with her sister-in-law and perhaps she was treated well by George. We cannot say, and as stated, it is unfair and fruitless to speculate.

George was implicated in Anne Boleyn's downfall in the spring of 1536, and he was one of five men sentenced to death for committing adultery with her and plotting to murder Henry VIII (and, in his case, incest). While the majority of modern historians reject these charges entirely, and present all six as innocent of adultery and treason, several writers have speculated that George was guilty of 'unnatural' sexual offences, primarily sodomy and buggery. His sexual partners have been identified as Mark Smeaton and, perhaps, Francis Weston, both of whom were also accused of adultery with the queen and executed. As noted above, the notion of George Boleyn as a homosexual has gained credence in popular culture, and it is almost impossible to read a novel, watch a film, or view a play about him that does not subscribe to this prevailing view of him as a lover of men. However, as with his relationship with his wife, there is no evidence for this. George did provide Smeaton with a manuscript attacking the institution of marriage, but it is reading far too much into this to infer from this alone, in the absence of any other evidence, that George and Smeaton were lovers. George Cavendish, who served Cardinal Wolsey, later described George as 'my life not chaste, my living bestial, I forced widows, maidens I did deflower': in other words, identifying him as a serial womaniser, rather than a sodomite. However, Cavendish was a hostile and prejudiced writer with a clear agenda: to blacken the name of the Boleyns, whom he blamed for the downfall of his master. The famed Tudor poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, who knew George personally, lamented that, had George 'not been so proud, for thy great wit each man would thee bemoan'.

It is disturbing to realise that George Boleyn's posthumous reputation has been more negative than it was in his own lifetime. Since his death, he has been subjected to vitriolic attack, shameful slander and, in short, character assassination. In his lifetime, observers alleged that his chief vices were pride, arrogance and, from the perspective of religious conservatives, heresy. However, with the exception of Cavendish, none of them accused him of sexual lechery, and his intimate, loving relationship with Anne was cruelly distorted and misrepresented in 1536 as an incestuous relationship in order to get rid of them both. George Boleyn was a talented linguist, a renowned poet, and above all, a principal exponent of religious reform. He occupied a central place in English politics in the late 1520s and most of the 1530s, and was actively involved in several embassies on the Continent. His contemporaries were in awe of his talents and appreciated his significance. Controversy about George centres on his sexual preferences and on his relationship with his wife Jane. In the absence of any evidence that their relationship was unhappy, or that his sexual behaviour was anything but conventional, George should be given the benefit of the doubt, and should instead be admired and respected for his talents and skills.

The Boleyns and the Howards in Popular Culture

Above: Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, The Other Boleyn Girl (2008), left.
Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire, The Tudors (2007-10), right.

The Boleyns and the Howards have been mythologised and misrepresented in many mediums of popular culture ever since the sixteenth century. In stories of Anne Boleyn's rise to power, in particular, her Boleyn and Howard relatives are typically depicted as power-hungry, merciless courtiers who stop at nothing, including murder, treason and incest, to achieve what they want and cement their power. But how accurate are these portrayals? The short answer is: we don't know. Chroniclers did not record the motives of these individuals, even if they were aware of them, and depictions of the Boleyns, in particular, are frequently hostile.

As Claire Ridgway of The Anne Boleyn Files notes, Thomas Boleyn, father of Anne, is frequently presented as a manipulative, cunning man who stops at nothing to achieve his ambitions, including placing both his daughters in the king's bed and turning on his two youngest children when they fall from grace. Historians have, to some extent, supported this characterisation, with Paul Friedmann terming Thomas 'mean and grasping' and P.W. Sergeant going so far as to say that 'it is clearly hopeless to attempt a defence of Sir Thomas'. But we simply do not know if Thomas pressurised both Mary and Anne to seduce Henry VIII, as is portrayed in both The Other Boleyn Girl and The Tudors. This seems to be a very modern conceptualisation, in effect portraying Thomas Boleyn as a pimp who advertises his beautiful daughters while coldly calculating the best odds for them. But, in both cases (especially regarding Anne), it appears to have been nothing of the sort. Rather, Henry VIII fell in love with these women, and Thomas probably made the best of his good fortune, rather than avidly scheming to manipulate his king into falling in love with his daughters.

Yet popular culture has not favoured this line of approach. In particular, in The Tudors, Nick Dunning offers a portrayal of Thomas that is cold, calculating, deceptive and ruthless. He turns on Mary when she displeases him and bullies and manipulates Anne to do what he wants her to do. The Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys, who loathed the Boleyn family, depicted Thomas as a heretic, liar and bully. He was said to have a hot temper and even staged a masque at the downfall of Thomas Wolsey in which the late cardinal was taken to Hell, to burn in eternity. 

In The Other Boleyn Girl, both the novel written by Philippa Gregory and the 2003 and 2008 film adaptations, Thomas Boleyn plays far less of a role than in The Tudors, and particularly in the 2008 film starring Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman, he is a weak, ineffectual man, pitied by the audience for his spineless demeanour and nervous behaviour. In short, it seems safest to agree with Claire Ridgway regarding Thomas:

'I guess we'll just never know what kind of man Thomas really was but he cared enough about his daughters to make sure that they received a top notch education...' 'Thomas Boleyn can be described as ambitious and self-seeking, but I do not think he was an evil man who manipulated his children and then turned his back on them in their hour of need. In my opinion, he was simply a product of Henry's court and his time, a courtier who enjoyed basking in royal favour but who knew the sense of hiding when things got too hot. He was a survivor.'



Portrayals of Thomas's brother-in-law, and the uncle of Anne Boleyn, Thomas Howard duke of Norfolk have been similarly negative. Historians have, once again, in some measure supported this negative characterisation. Joanna Denny, who wrote biographies of both Anne and her cousin Katherine Howard, described Thomas Howard thus:

'He was a monolithic figure, a monster and ruthless in his cold-hearted use of those around him, including the members of his own family, who were just pawns for his ambition... His survival was just part of his astonishing luck, ironically cheating the scaffold of another Howard at the last hour and dying in his bed'.

A prevailing view in both popular culture and academia seems to be of the Howards and Boleyns as power-hungry, cold-hearted schemers who 'pimped' their female relatives out and ruthlessly sacrificed them when they fell from grace. It might appear that way, but it was not necessarily the case. Claire Ridgway has already raised questions about the exact role played by Thomas Boleyn and the Boleyn family in Henry VIII's pursuit of Anne Boleyn, and it is fair to do the same with Katherine Howard and the Howards. I agree with Antonia Fraser that the Howards were probably pleasantly surprised when the king became infatuated with Katherine and asked for her hand in marriage. As Fraser contends, she was not a suitable candidate for queenship, because of her murky past. My research indicates that Thomas Howard, duke of Norfolk, probably had no idea about his niece's sexual escapades when she married Henry VIII.

Modern viewers love a good drama, and TV offers this. But it is essential to separate facts from fiction. To be fair, it is not just the Howards and Boleyns who have been conceptualised in this negative manner as power-hungry schemers who used their women for their own ends. The Seymours, in both The Tudors and the novel The Other Boleyn Girl, encourage Jane to accept Henry's advances, and are depicted as just as scheming and ruthless as their Boleyn rivals. But the fact of the matter is this: we just do not know if these families actively sought to raise their prestige and bolster their power at court by dangling their women in front of the king, or whether they made the most of their fortune when he favoured one or another of them. Surely, with so little documentary evidence, and given the mostly hostile nature of the evidence which has survived, it is best not to condemn these figures at a distance of so many years, when the cultural, social and political worldview was completely alien to our own today.

Was Mary Boleyn Really 'The Mistress of Kings'?

Above: Portrait of a woman thought to be Mary Boleyn, c. 1525.

Philippa Gregory's bestselling novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001) revitalised fascination with the Boleyn family and in particular Mary, the mysterious and unknown sister of Henry VIII's second queen. Mary Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, born before 1502, and married William Carey in 1520 before briefly becoming Henry's mistress in the 1520s, before his attention turned to her enigmatic and attractive sister Anne. After she was banished from court in 1534 for making a clandestine second marriage, Mary survived the destruction of her family and died in obscurity in 1543 in her early forties.

Traditionally, historians have suggested that Mary was 'an infamous whore' who was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England. While it seems certain that Mary was indeed Henry's mistress, probably beginning in 1522 and ending before 1525 - Henry himself admitted to the affair and had to secure a papal dispensation in 1527 to marry the sister of a woman with whom he had had sexual intercourse - it is by no means certain that Mary was the French king's mistress. Indeed, historical evidence indicates that Mary never resided at the French court as a teenager.


Above: the Boleyn sisters, Anne (left) and Mary (right).

As Retha M. Warnicke points out, there is no evidence that Mary Boleyn served as a maid of honour at the French court. In 1514, Anne Boleyn travelled to Paris to serve Mary Tudor, queen of France, and later transferred to the household of Claude, wife of Francois I, but there is no evidence that her sister was there. Household accounts documented a 'M. Boleyn', but it seems likely that the 'M' referred to 'Mademoiselle' or 'Mistress', rather than 'Mary'. Contemporaries commented on Anne's presence in France. For example, George Cavendish, gentleman usher to Cardinal Wolsey, stated: 'This gentlewoman, Mistress Anne Boleyn, being very young was sent into the realm of France'. No contemporaries, however, referred to Mary dwelling in France, where she supposedly acquired a reputation for promiscuity and licentiousness.

At the English court, it has been asserted, Mary was best known for her 'reputation in bed' (Lacey Baldwin Smith, 2013) and 'the evidence is overwhelming that Mary had a reputation for sexual improprieties' (Warnicke, 1985). As Alison Weir has thoughtfully demonstrated, however, there is in fact little to no evidence to support these views. Henry VIII's affair with Mary was discreet and secret, and few seem to have known of it. Mary remains a shadowy figure and we know nothing of her thoughts and feelings. How long her relationship with Henry lasted, and whether she truly loved him, is impossible to say. It is, however, certain that she was his mistress for a brief time in the 1520s and quite possibly bore him at least one, if not two, children.


Above: Francois I of France. It is unlikely that Mary Boleyn was ever his mistress.

While Mary was undoubtedly Henry VIII's lover for a time, it is almost certain that she was not the French king's mistress, despite persistent rumours to the contrary. In 1536, the French king informed Ridolfio Pio that he had known Mary in France 'per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopra tutte' - in other words, 'a great whore, infamous above all'. However, Mary never resided at the French court, so Francois cannot have insulted her in relation to her supposed sojourn there in the 1510s. Unlike Anne, who had departed for Europe to acquire a splendid education, Mary remained at home, probably Hever Castle, where she acquired a more traditional education befitting the status of an English gentlewoman.

So what then did Francois mean by his comment? Weir has pointed out that Pio was hostile to the Boleyns. Every member of the family was defamed and attacked by hostile political commentators who resented Anne and the rejection of Katherine of Aragon. Thomas Boleyn was slandered as heretical, grasping and scheming; his wife Elizabeth was defamed as a whore and former mistress of Henry VIII; George Boleyn was cast as a heretic and hedonist; and Anne was consistently portrayed as a whore, murderess, heretic and witch. It is therefore in keeping with this general defamation and slander of the Boleyn family that Mary, too, would have been dishonoured and abused by chroniclers and commentators hostile to their cause. Nicholas Sander, for example, slandered her in his works while abusing and defaming her sister Anne Boleyn. 

It would therefore be ridiculous to accept such comments at face value. It is unlikely that Francois was referring to his own previous experiences with Mary. Possibly, as Warnicke credibly suggests, he only became acquainted with the new Queen of England's sister in 1532, when Mary accompanied Henry VIII and Anne to Calais. Francois may well have learned of Mary's former liaison with Henry and allowed it to cloud his view of her. His comment can hardly be read as admittance of a former relationship with Mary when she supposedly resided at his court as a teenager.

Aside from this one disparaging, insulting comment, there is no evidence that Mary was ever the mistress of the French king. There is no documentation of her stay in France, for the simple reason that she never served at the French court alongside her sister. In 1513, Anne Boleyn departed for Burgundy and later for France to serve in royal households. Her sister Mary, possibly because she was younger or possibly because she was less intellectual and brilliant than Anne, remained at home, before marrying William Carey in 1520. Shortly afterwards, she became the mistress of Henry VIII. We can say with some certainty that she was the lover of the English king, but we can equally be sure that she was never the mistress of his counterpart, the king of France.

Tudor Portraiture - or the game of Guess the Sitter

Tudor portraiture is notorious in leading to frequently incorrect identifications of sitters who were almost certainly not the sitter actually painted. Yet portraiture is highly influential in our interpretations of these supposed sitters' lives, careers, choices, and actions. Drawing upon four specific case studies here, this article considers why and how Tudor portraits are incorrectly identified, and how these incorrect identifications inform our interpretations of Tudor personages.


A portrait of Mary, Lady Dacre and her son Gregory; often mislabelled as Frances Brandon, duchess of Suffolk and the mother of the 'Nine Days Queen' Lady Jane Grey, and her second husband Adrian Stokes. This portrait has proved fundamental in leading to misguided views of Frances as being a cruel woman who bullied her daughter, due to the sitter's fierce characteristics.

This article begins with Frances Brandon (1517-1559), duchess of Suffolk by right of her marriage in 1533 to Henry Grey, marquis of Dorset and later Duke of Suffolk, niece of Henry VIII, king of England, and mother of Jane Grey, later queen of England (c.1537-1554). Frances lived a remarkable life, yet her reputation has been slandered over the course of history due to the view of her being a cruel, spiteful woman who frequently bullied her daughter Jane, often violently, which is still conveyed in modern works (Alison Weir's fictional Innocent Traitor often portrays Frances violently hurting Jane both physically and psychologically). This myth occurred at the beginning of the eighteenth century, acting in parallel with the depiction of Jane Grey as a Protestant martyr who died for her religion at only seventeen years old, executed on the orders of a vengeful queen, her own cousin Mary I. 

In view of this, a portrait of Lady Mary Dacre and her son Gregory - actually painted the year Frances died, 1559 - was relabelled as Frances Brandon and her second husband, Adrian Stokes, whom she married following the execution of her first husband Henry Grey as a traitor. Supposed similarities between the sitter's features and that of her uncle, Henry VIII, were drawn to emphasise the duchess' cruel, domineering nature. It has, furthermore, been deduced that Frances and Henry physically mistreated Jane in her childhood, due to something Jane informed her tutor, Roger Ascham, as a child:

"For when I am in presence of either Father or Mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand or go, eat, drink, be merry or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing or doing anything else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure and number, even so perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips and bobs, and other ways, (which I shall not name, for the honour I bear them), so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell". 

This passage, of course, needs to be viewed critically, particularly because this passage was only recorded much later after the actual events, and Jane's tutor Ascham actually praised her parents in an earlier letter. Furthermore, since the Victorian period, a more balanced appreciation of the character of Lady Jane Grey has developed. Rather than viewing her as a perfect child martyr, innocent and passive, as the Victorians did, historians have regarded her more critically, and while recognising her intelligence and determination, have also suggested that she was a proud, stubborn, narrow-minded, even arrogant  young woman. Frances, conversely, in contemporary sources was noted for her goodness and kindness to friends. 

We can therefore see how an incorrect identification of a sitter in a Tudor portrait can develop or intensify myths and legends surrounding that personage. Because Lady Dacre is depicted as unfriendly, cold, even ruthless, this was deployed by those who believed that it was actually a portrait of Frances, duchess of Suffolk to present her as a domineering woman who was prone to physical violence. This myth needs to be recognised for what it is: a myth.


Left: Katherine Howard, Elizabeth Seymour, or another Tudor woman? For centuries, controversy has raged as to who this sitter is.
Right: Angela Pleasance as Katherine Howard in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970).

No less important than the portrait of 'Frances Brandon' in informing interpretations of Tudor personalities is that of a portrait supposedly depicting Katherine Howard, queen of England. Identified as being the tragic queen c. 1898 and furthered by the renowned biography of the queen by Lacey Baldwin Smith (1961), this portrait has widely been used to put forward arguments surrounding Katherine's birth date, thus influencing our views surrounding her childhood, her personality, and the nature of her sexual relationships. Baldwin Smith arguably used this portrait to support his view of Katherine as 'a juvenile delinquent'. Recently, the identification of this sitter as Queen Katherine has been challenged, notably by Lady Antonia Fraser in her biography of the six wives of Henry VIII (1992). She identified this portrait as actually depicting Elizabeth Seymour nee Cromwell, younger sister of Queen Jane Seymour; strengthened by the fact that this portrait was housed in the collection of the Cromwell family.

While agreeing with Fraser that this portrait is not Katherine, in view of the fact that it does not match up either with notions of the queen's age or her physical appearance, I disagree that it represents Elizabeth Seymour. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, as has been recognised, at least three versions of this portrait exist. The sitter was therefore far more important than the daughter of a knight, as Elizabeth was. Whoever this woman was was clearly of noble, if not royal, rank. Secondly, we do not know when Elizabeth was born, but if it was around c.1511, as has been suggested, the sitter cannot be her, because this portrait dates to the mid to late 1530s or the early 1540s, when Elizabeth was likely in her mid twenties, not aged 21, as the sitter's age is. As Janet M. Torpy stated, "a necklace, rings, a brooch bearing the Biblical story of Lot, lace, and golden embroidery all signify extreme wealth and the appropriate piety and purity". It is entirely likely that this portrait actually depicts another royal woman, of which there are no less than four possible candidates in this period: the king's daughter Mary Tudor (aged 21 in 1537), Lady Margaret Douglas, his niece (aged 21 in 1536), or either of the king's Brandon nieces, Frances (aged 21 in 1538) or Eleanor (aged 21 in 1540). 

But this portrait, like the one thought to be of Frances Brandon, has informed interpretations and representations of Katherine Howard, whom it was commonly thought to portray for a long period of time. In the television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), as depicted above, Angela Pleasance, in her appearance as Queen Katherine, is clearly shown wearing a costume based on the dress worn by the sitter in this portrait. Her portrayal of Katherine is as a hedonist teenager who selfishly manipulates Thomas Culpeper to impregnate her, while she is seen to use physical violence against her cousin and is given to hysteria. This portrait was fundamental in Baldwin Smith's interpretation of Katherine as an older, knowing girl who firmly held the upper hand in her relationships and was prone to manipulating her lovers. Yet as my research has indicated, she was probably somewhat younger than this portrait suggests.
This portrait has also led to historians suggesting that Katherine was not as beautiful as legend indicated that she was. This can be refuted, since there are at least three contemporary statements which suggest that the queen was uncommonly attractive; one Spanish citizen gushingly stated that she was the most beautiful woman 'in the kingdom'. This does not support the notion that the woman in this portrait is of the queen.


Left: a portrait inscribed as being Anne Boleyn, 1530s.
Right: unknown woman. Identified as being Anne Boleyn by Roy Strong, yet others have identified this woman as being another of Henry VIII's queens, either Katherine of Aragon or Jane Seymour. Alison Weir suggests convincingly that it shows Mary Boleyn, Anne's sister.

Thus we can strongly see that portraiture is highly influential in guiding assessments and interpretations of Tudor personages. It seems unsurprising, therefore, that this is arguably best illustrated with the case of Anne Boleyn. The two portraits above have both been identified as showing the second queen of Henry VIII - despite the fact that neither bears any resemblance to contemporary descriptions of the queen. 

The sitter on the left was identified by noted Tudor historians David Starkey and John Rowlands as a contemporary likeness of Anne Boleyn. This has resulted largely from a hostile account of Anne at her coronation in 1533, which described the queen as having a fat, even disfigured, neck, resulting from a swelling which she then tried to conceal at her coronation. Further problems arise from the fact that this woman is blonde, whereas Anne was, famously, dark. This woman clearly wears a nightrobe, while the somewhat plain, rounded face bears little resemblance to contemporary reports of Anne as being narrow-faced, with high cheekbones. Yet, again, a misidentified portrait has been used to promote interpretations of its supposed sitter. Here the case seems to be that hostile accounts which vilified the queen should be regarded as historically accurate, or at least not as wild in their claims as historians have conventionally supposed. 

The portrait on the right epitomises the game of 'Guess the Sitter' in Tudor portraiture. To my knowledge, there has been no less than four sitters put forward. Originally identified as being of Henry VIII's first queen, Katherine of Aragon, this was ruled out by the fact that the portrait was painted in c.1525, when Katherine was aged forty, yet the sitter is twenty-five. This also rules out another identification of the sitter as being Jane Seymour, who was twenty-fine in c.1533 and so comes too late after this portrait was painted. Roy Strong, however, suggested that it depicts Queen Anne. There are, again, problems here. The sitter is blonde, while Anne Boleyn did not come to public attention until 1527, when the king proposed marriage to her. In 1525-6 she was a maid of honour to Queen Katherine, and so was not important enough, in a sense, to be painted in a portrait miniature. It is more likely to portray Mary Boleyn, Anne's older sister, who gave birth to a son - possibly the king's - in 1525; if one supports the view that she was born around 1499, this may tentatively be said to present Mary Boleyn. 


Above: a portrait identified as being Thomas Boleyn, earl of Wiltshire and father of Anne. Recently, however, it has been argued that it actually depicts James Butler, 9th Earl of Ormond.

Developing the game of 'guess the sitter', the portrait above has often been cited as a likeness of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire and father of Anne. Indeed, we can see how this has informed interpretations of the earl's physical appearance and supposed resemblance to his daughter Anne, as seen in Joanna Denny's biography of the queen published in 2004. Denny suggests that Anne Boleyn was not dark, as is often believed to be the case, but was actually fair in her complexion, while having auburn, as opposed to black, hair, on the basis of this portrait showing 'striking' similarities between father and daughter. However, this is almost certainly untrue, since historian David Starkey has indicated that it portrays James Butler, not Boleyn. As Starkey notes, there is "an utter dissimilarity between the Windsor drawing [of Boleyn] and Boleyn's superb tomb brass". Once again, we have been deceived as to the real sitter of a Tudor portrait.


Above: Lady Jane Grey or Queen Katherine Parr?

A portrait above shows a superbly dressed noblewoman, dated to the early-to-mid 1540s. It was initially identified as portraying Lady Jane Grey, England's first queen regnant, in 1965 by Roy Strong. This occurred due to Strong's perception of similarities between this portrait and an engraving of Jane published in 1620. Yet, as Susan E. James has convincingly suggested, the portrait actually portrays Katherine Parr, sixth queen consort of Henry VIII. This seems all the more convincing since Katherine was queen in the period 1543-1547, when this portrait was executed, and since Lady Jane was born in around 1537, she would have been only eight years old, or thereabouts, when this woman sat for  the portrait. This is clearly not a portrait of an eight year old girl. The fact that this sitter wears jewellery which other queen consorts of the period, such as Katherine Howard, adorned, indicates that it represents Katherine Parr, who would have obtained this jewellery in her right as queen. Yet, once again, a misidentification of a portrait has influenced judgements about the sitter. Frequently, this portrait is advertised in both written works (ie books) and online as showing the tragic Nine-Day queen. It probably represents her one time great-aunt, Katherine.

Tudor portraiture is therefore precarious. Whether one uses it as a source in interpretations or not, it must be carefully scrutinised before making grandiose claims. The game of Guess the Sitter is, unfortunately, a very frequently occurring one in terms of Tudor portraiture, yet it serves to show how mysterious and yet compelling this period continues to remain.