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The Age of Anne Boleyn. I

© Wendy J. Dunn

At time of canvasinge this matter so,
In the courte (newe entred) theare dyd frequent
A fresche young damoysell, that cowld trippe and go,
To synge and to daunce passinge excellent,<
No tatches shee lacked of loves allurement;
She cowlde speake Frenche ornately and playne,
Famed in the cowrte (by name) Anne Bullayne
William Forrest

At the birth of Anne Boleyn, if a seer had predicted her important role on the stage of English History, I feel certain her father - Sir Thomas Boleyn- would have scoffed. Indeed, of all possible futures for this girl-child, it would not seem conceivable that Anne's destiny lay as a crowned Queen of England, consort of Henry VIII. At best, her father probably thought of a future where one of his daughters, surviving the perils of infancy and childhood of this period, achieved a marriage strengthening Boleyn's own status at court. But to ever imagine his daughter Anne as Queen and spouse to a King? The possibility of that would have been entirely remote.

Later Earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire, Thomas Boleyn - or Bullen as the family was known then- was but a knight at the time of Anne's birth. A son of a man whose own father, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, stood even lower on the rungs of English society- a self made man who became a Mayor of London and gained an heiress, the daughter of Lord Hoo and Hastings, as his wife.(i)

Thomas Boleyn, the ambitious father of Anne Boleyn continued building upon what his grandfather first built and rarely- that is, until his daughter Anne had the misfortune to miscarry the King's son in 1536- missed a step to raise his family higher in the Tudor hierarchy. Indeed, Thomas Boleyn had done well enough for himself when he married Lady Elizabeth Howard, a daughter of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, head of a prolific family, with bloodlines stretching back to Edward I, through his second marriage to Margaret of France. But, at Anne's birth, Sir Thomas Boleyn- with his daughter's future as mother to one of England's best-loved monarchs hidden from him-had no reason to leave documentation about the date of her birth. This being the case- Anne's birth year, as indeed the place of her birth, is shrouded in the deepest mist of history, and has long been fodder for lively debate amongst Tudor historians.

My reason for entering this fray is a belief that the arguments for Anne's birth in 1507 are much stronger than the other suggested years of 1502 or 1501, indeed, as early as 1499.