The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family

by Ridgway, Claire

  • That rumours spread around Europe saying that Anne had pretended to miscarry and that she hadn't been pregnant at all. Zupanec quotes the Bishop of Faenza writing to Prothonotary Ambrogio on 10th March 1536. The bishop stated that Francis I had said "that 'that woman' pretended to have miscarried of a son, not being really with child, and, to keep up the deceit, would allow no one to attend on her but her sister, whom the French king knew here in France 'per una grandissima ribalda et infame sopre tutte.'"31 Zupanec also quotes Dr Ortiz writing to the Empress on 22nd March 1536: "La Ana feared that the King would leave her, and it was thought that the reason of her pretending the miscarriage of a son was that the King might not leave her, seeing that she conceived sons."32

  Zupanec believes that Sander's words and these reports, when combined, suggest that Anne may have been "simply suffering from illness unknown to her contemporaries",33 i.e. a phantom or false pregnancy. However, if you read Sander's original Latin, as I have done, Sander does not use the word "mola". Here is what Sander says about Anne's miscarriage in his book:

  "Venerat tempus quo Anna iterum pareret, peperit autem informem quandum carnis molem, ac praeterea nihil."34

  So, he says "molem" and not "mola"; the two words have completely different meanings.

  My Latin is not very good at all, so I asked Phillipa Madams, a Latin teacher and expert, to translate the sentence by Nicholas Sander as well as the Latin references given by Zupanec. Phillipa translated Sander's words as "there came the time when Anne was preparing again to give birth, however, she gave birth to something that was an unformed shapeless mass of flesh, and nothing else", which was in keeping with Lewis's 19th century translation.

  With regard to the references cited by Zupanec to back up the idea that "mola" meant a "false conception", Phillipa stated that the first one (by famous Roman grammarians Marcus Verrius Flaccus and Sextus Pompeius Festus) gave a definition of the word "mola" as "a millstone", used for milling grain; there was nothing about conception or pregnancy in the definition. The second one, Johannes Micraelius' glossary of Latin terms, was a definition of "mola carnis" (not "carnis molem", as written by Sander), and thus stated that this pregnancy had been a "useless conception". Indeed, as one of Phillipa's students, Ellen, found, there is a condition called a molar pregnancy which is caused by problems with fertilization; perhaps this, rather than a phantom pregancy, is what Zupanec is referring to when she says "false conception"? However, this is a very rare condition, more commonly found today in teenage pregnancies or in women over 45. In a molar pregnancy, the cells of the placenta behave abnormally and "grow as fluid-filled sacs (cysts) with the appearance of white grapes".35 In a complete molar pregnancy, a mass of abnormal cells grows but no foetus develops, and in the case of a partial molar pregnancy some normal placental tissue forms along with an abnormal foetus, which dies in early pregnancy. In most current-day cases, there are no signs that the pregnancy is anything but normal until the woman has a scan, but in some cases the woman can experience bleeding or can lose the developing foetus. The treatment is for the woman to have the "mole" removed by surgery (a dilatation and curettage, or D&C), because if it is left then there can be complications, such as the growth becoming cancerous. The woman does not miscarry the "mole" or "tumour", yet Sander is quite specific in saying that Anne "brought forth only a shapeless mass of flesh", i.e. that she miscarried or gave birth to something. A foetus in the early stages of pregnancy may, in any case, have appeared to untrained eyes as a "shapeless mass of flesh".

  A phantom pregnancy, or false pregnancy (pseudocyesis), is when a woman experiences many of the symptoms of a real pregnancy and believes herself to be pregnant, but there is no foetus, or placenta. This just doesn't fit with what we know about Anne in January 1536 – Chapuys, Hall, Wriothesley, Holinshed, de Carles and Sander all write of Anne miscarrying rather than of her being "pregnant" for months and then there being no baby born at the end of it. We can rule out a false pregnancy in this case.

  As I said earlier, "mola" and "molem" are two completely different words; neither Phillipa nor I can understand why the references cited by Zupanec were definitions of a word not used by Sander in his book. Sander clearly wrote "informem quandum carnis molem" and "molem" simply means "mass". Phillipa explained to me, "Carnis is clearly and unambiguously referring to flesh and informem can have a range of meanings from shapeless to monstrous. Even without the misunderstanding of mola/molem Anne clearly gave birth to something."36 The Latin translation by David Lewis is, therefore, correct and has not been misinterpreted by historians. There is no way, in my opinion, that Sander's words can be read as suggesting that Anne was suffering from a phantom pregnancy; nor does this account fit the symptoms or outcome of a molar pregnancy. That's even if we take Sander's words seriously. We don't know what he was basing his story on. Furthermore, nobody takes seriously his description of Anne – the six fingers, projecting tooth etc.; we should apply the same hefty pinch of salt to his description of the miscarriage.

  As far as the rumours of Anne pretending to be pregnant are concerned, they are likely to have been just that: rumours. We have Chapuys, Wriothesley, Hall and de Carles, and later Holinshed and Sander, all writing of a miscarriage. Eric Ives pointed out in his biography of Anne Boleyn that Wriothesley was Windsor Herald, a man whose "post gave him a ready entrée to the court" and that "his cousin Thomas was clerk of the signet and close to Cromwell",37 so Wriothesley would have been well informed. De Carles, whose account backs up those of Wriothesley, Hall, Chapuys and Holinshed, was the secretary of the French ambassador, so is likely to have received information from Thomas Cromwell. I don't believe that there is any reason to doubt these reports.

  Having looked at the various theories and having examined the contemporary sources, I believe that Anne suffered an ordinary, but tragic, miscarriage in January 1536. That is what the evidence points to. It was obviously a huge blow to the royal couple, and may have been a factor in her downfall, but there was nothing strange about this miscarriage.

  How Many Pregnancies?

  There is no evidence of Anne having any other pregnancies. So, she either had one successful pregnancy and two miscarriages, or one successful pregnancy, a false pregnancy and a miscarriage. That's hardly "myriad stillbirths, miscarriages and neonatal deaths", is it?

  Miscarriages

  Before I look at miscarriages in Tudor times, I'd like to consider miscarriage statistics today, in an age where we have good nutrition and advanced medical care. According to the UK charity Tommy's:

  • Up to 1 in 4 women who get pregnant will experience a miscarriage

  • Women under the age of 30 have a 10% risk of miscarriage

  • Women between the ages of 35 and 40 have a 20% chance of miscarriage38

  The US March of Dimes website gives another statistic, saying "As many as 40 percent of all pregnancies may end in miscarriage, because many losses occur before a woman realizes she is pregnant".39 So even today miscarriages are very common; we all know women who have experienced a miscarriage, or even a number of miscarriages.

  In Tudor times too, miscarriage was a common occurrence. David Cressy, author of Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, quotes from Isaac Archer's diary of his wife's pregnancies and labours in the late 17th century, i.e. the Stuart era. In fifteen years of marriage, Anne Archer was pregnant at least ten times and had only one surviving child, a daughter. She came close to death at several points, experienced miscarriages and lost the baby either in birth or shortly afterwards. This was not uncommon; therefore, Anne experiencing one or two miscarriages was certainly not unusual or anything to jump to conclusions about.40

  Even today, with our medical advances, the Tommy's Charity points out that miscarriages are often unexplained. The March of Dimes website lists the following possible causes:

  • Chromosomal abnormality in the foetus

  • A blighted ovum, when the pregnancy sac is
empty because either the embryo never formed or it stopped developing early in the pregnancy.

  • Maternal health conditions: for example, hormonal problems, infections, diabetes, thyroid disease, systemic lupus erythematosus and other autoimmune disorders.

  • Lifestyle factors: for example, alcohol, smoking and the use of drugs.

  But again, they point out that miscarriages are still not completely understood and many cannot be explained.

  But was Henry actually responsible for his wives' miscarriages?

  Well, that's what Kyra Kramer believes. In Blood Will Tell, not only does Kramer argue that Henry VIII had McLeod Syndrome, and that this explains his tyrannical and irrational behaviour, she also argues that Henry had Kell Positive Blood Type and that this explains his wives' "reproductive woes". As I said earlier, Kramer believes that both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn experienced a series of miscarriages and stillbirths, and that "It seems unlikely that the two women's experiences could mirror each other so closely simply due to chance".41 Kramer argues, "It seems more plausible that something about Henry VIII himself was actually the reason there were so few children in the royal nurseries. After all, he was the common factor in every single pregnancy." She goes on to explain that the miscarriages and stillbirths experienced by Catherine and Anne "are similar to documented cases of Kell-affected pregnancies, which only occur when the father of the fetus has a Kell positive blood type but the mother has the more common Kell negative blood type." When a Kell negative woman gets pregnant by a Kell positive man and the foetus is Kell positive, her body reacts and attacks the developing foetus. This doesn't usually happen in a first pregnancy with a Kell positive baby, but there will be problems with any subsequent Kell positive pregnancies. The pregnancy ends in a late miscarriage, stillbirth or the death of the baby shortly after birth. Kramer comments that, "This is exactly what happened to any woman who had more than one pregnancy with Henry VIII."

  But what about Mary I, the result of Catherine of Aragon's fifth pregnancy? Well, Kramer argues that Mary was a Kell negative baby and so was not attacked by her mother's antibodies. She also believes that Henry, Duke of Cornwell, the baby boy born to Catherine and Henry who survived fifty-two days was a Kell negative baby. Kramer concludes:

  "Putting together the reproductive records of Henry's first two Queens, they had at least nine, and possibly even thirteen, pregnancies between them. It is blatantly obvious that they, and Henry, were fertile. Yet very few pregnancies ended successfully and only two of the babies who were born alive survived infancy. Given the relative rarity of this type of obstetrical history... it seems likely that the King was the source of their troubles. If he was Kell positive, it would explain all the reproductive misfortune he and his wives endured."

  I'm just not convinced though. Yes, Catherine was unlucky. She had four stillbirths, one son who died in infancy and just one healthy baby, Mary, who survived into adulthood. However, Catherine sounds similar to Anne Archer, the Stuart lady I mentioned earlier, who was pregnant at least ten times and had only one surviving daughter. Then we have Anne Boleyn, who had three pregnancies at the most and suffered one miscarriage that we're sure of. That's not unusual even today. So I don't agree that Catherine and Anne were unusual.

  Kramer's argument for Kell also rests on her argument for Henry having McLeod Syndrome, a syndrome which can only be manifested in people who have a Kell positive blood type.

  Here are some facts about McLeod Syndrome:

  • Symptoms of McLeod syndrome begin to appear near the patient's fortieth birthday

  • The symptoms grow progressively worse over time

  • The symptoms include muscle and nerve deterioration, facial tics, malformed blood cells, and damage of the internal organs like the liver and the heart

  • There is also often an erosion of mental stability, wherein the patient becomes more and more irrational and erratic.

  • Patients usually display symptoms like memory deterioration, depression, paranoia and even schizophrenia-like behaviours.

  Kramer believes that "there is a plethora of evidence to show how Henry's personality and mental processes had changed", particularly after his 40th birthday. Examples she cites include:

  • The banishment of Catherine of Aragon and Henry's cruel treatment of her and of Mary

  • The executions of the Carthusian monks

  • The executions of Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More

  • The fall of Anne Boleyn and her execution, along with the executions of men he'd been friends with, e.g. Norris

  • His mood swings and the way that he could just turn against those he'd loved

  • His behaviour when Jane Seymour was dying; he was more concerned with hunting

  • His response to Anne of Cleves when she didn't recognise him at their first meeting in Rochester. Kramer writes, "The mental impairment caused by McLeod syndrome likely exacerbated Henry's response to Anna's gaffe" and "he developed a deep-seated revulsion towards Anna."

  • The fall of Thomas Cromwell and his subsequent execution.

  • His decision to execute the frail and elderly Margaret Pole

  • The falls and executions of Catherine Howard, Lady Rochford, Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper.

  • Bad foreign policy decisions

  Kramer comments that Henry VIII changed from knight to nightmare, and that this was the result of McCleod Syndrome. I don't agree. Thomas More, who served Henry VIII as his Lord Chancellor, was very close to the King, more like a father figure to him. Nonetheless, he once famously said of Henry, "I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle in France, it should not fail to go", knowing that Henry was capable of tyranny when it suited his ambition. And I have to agree with the great historian, J. J. Scarisbrick who remarked, in response to the argument that Henry's behaviour became more tyrannical after 1536, "Henry was not notably more cruel afterwards than he had been before".42

  Before he turned forty, Henry had made scapegoats of his father's chief advisors, Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, and he had executed Edmund de la Pole and the Duke of Buckingham. Yes, there were many executions after he turned forty, but Henry was having to deal with the aftermath of the break with Rome, with those who challenged his authority by not accepting his supremacy or who were a threat to him. I'm not excusing his tyranny, and I do believe he was a tyrant, but I just can't see that there was a radical change in his behaviour after his fortieth birthday. He always had those tendencies and they simply got worse when he felt threatened.

  So, I don't believe that Henry had McLeod Syndrome and I don't believe that he was Kell Positive. I therefore don't believe that he was to blame for his wives' reproductive woes, and I don't actually think that you can say that Anne Boleyn did, in fact, experience reproductive woes.

  Alison Weir puts forward the theory that Anne Boleyn may have been Rhesus negative and that this explains why she experienced stillbirths. Rhesus disease does not occur in a first pregnancy, but in subsequent pregnancies when a mother has been sensitised to Rhesus positive blood cells by carrying a Rhesus positive baby. After sensitisation, when the woman is carrying a Rhesus positive baby, her immune system will produce antibodies which attack and destroy her baby's blood cells.43 Weir concludes that this theory explains why "Anne's first pregnancy had resulted in a healthy child, but her three subsequent pregnancies had ended in stillbirth".44 But, I don't believe that Anne had that many pregnancies; what's more, the one that ended in January 1536 was a miscarriage, not a stillbirth. Rhesus disease, when untreated, results in stillbirth or deafness, blindness, cerebral palsy or learning difficulties; but it doesn't result in miscarriage. Today, Rhesus negative women are given a special injection, an anti-D injection, between 28 and 30 weeks of pregnancy, to stop their body making antibodies which would harm their baby. Anne lost her baby in 1536 at around 15 ½ weeks, so it was too early for it to be affected by her Rhesus negative blood type, if indeed she
had it. I don't believe that Rhesus disease explains Anne's obstretic history at all.

  In my opinion, Anne, and Catherine of Aragon too, were just unlucky. They were living at a time when miscarriages were common, infant mortality was high, and there was no prenatal care. They were not unusual. Anne, in particular, cannot be said to have suffered a series of miscarriages because there is only firm evidence for one such miscarriage. It is human nature to want to explain something, but I think it's time to stop trying to find medical reasons for what happened to these women and to stop trying to lay blame.

  Was Anne Boleyn Pregnant at her Execution?

  I'm often asked this question, which you also see being asked on forums and blogs. The idea that Anne was pregnant when she went to her death on 19th May 1536 was put forward by Alison Weir in her book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, first published in 2008.45 Weir argued that Henry VIII's comment to Chapuys in April 1536, when he said "Am I not a man like other men? Am I not? Am I not? You do not know all my secrets", was a reference to Anne's pregnancy. Furthermore, Weir argues, this was backed up by Henry's words to his ambassadors in Rome and France regarding "the likelihood and appearance that God will send us heirs male," thus implying that Anne was actually already pregnant. The problem is that Chapuys actually recorded this conversation in a letter to Emperor Charles V on 15th April 1533, not 1536. He wrote: