Free The Anne Boleyn Collection II: Anne Boleyn & the Boleyn Family by Claire Ridgway Page B

Women: The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen, 21.
    31 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 296.
    32 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 913.
    33 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 7," n. 509.
    34 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 6 - 1533," n. 1486.
    35 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 8," n. 440.
    36 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 141.
    37 "Calendar of State Papers Foreign, Elizabeth, Volume 1 - 1558-1559," n. 1303.
    38 Loke, "Account of Materials Furnished for the Use of Anne Boleyn and Princess Elizabeth 1535-36."
    39 "Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 10 - January-June 1536," n. 913.
    40 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 255.
    41 ed. Bruce and ed. Perowne, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 59.
    42 Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, 267.
    43 ed. Bruce and ed. Perowne, Correspondence of Matthew Parker, 391.
    44 McIntosh, "From Heads of Household to Heads of State: The Preaccession Households of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor 1516-1558."

September 1533
    We know that Anne was heavily pregnant at her coronation on 1st June 1533 and that she gave birth to a healthy baby girl on 7th September 1533, the future Elizabeth I. There is no evidence of a pregnancy before this time, so that's pregnancy number one.

1535
    The only evidence for a pregnancy in 1535 is a sentence from a letter written by Sir William Kingston to Lord Lisle on 24th June 1535. Kingston wrote:
    "No news here worth writing. The King and Queen are well, and her Grace has a fair belly as I have seen". 11
    Sir John Dewhurst, 12 believes that there is actually an error in the dating of this letter because Kingston asks to be remembered to "Master Porter", Sir Christopher Garneys, who actually died in 1534. It is likely, therefore, that the letter was written in either June 1533 or June 1534, and that Anne was not pregnant in 1535.

Figure 19 - Queen Anne Boleyn, from "The Tower From Within"

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 miscarriage 38
    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