Elizabeth I Rarely Spoke Of Anne Boleyn — Her Ring Hid A Face Said To Be Her Mother's

A gold ring from Elizabeth I's reign opens on two enamel portraits: the Queen, and a woman in a black French hood said to be Anne Boleyn. No warrant, inventory or letter names her. Mother and daughter overlapped by two years and eight months. A silver font at Greenwich, where Archbishop Cranmer stood godfather; a mercer's bill for purple satin whose last date is 27 April 1536; then, that August, Lady Margaret Bryan writing from Hunsdon that the girl had "neither gown nor kirtle nor petticoat." Elizabeth almost never named her mother in public. The City of London did it for her, seating a figure of Anne beside Henry VIII on the Gracechurch Street pageant of January 1559. Anne's chaplain Matthew Parker became the daughter's archbishop and said why. Hever Castle dated the oak of its best-known Anne portrait to around 1583, and a sapphire carried to Holyrood in 1603 was later confused with this ring. It now sits in the Chequers collection, one face named, one not. 0:00 Three tiers on Gracechurch Street 0:52 A silver font and a mercer's bill 3:17 Few visits, then a lost son 4:38 Ales, Parker and the swordsman from Calais 6:55 Out of the line, out of gowns 9:09 A father's pen, a coronation pageant 14:08 A hinged ring and a woman in a French hood 16:54 A blue ring rides to Holyrood 18:15 Lambeth, two days earlier Sources: Archbishop Cranmer's sentence of nullity, Lambeth, 17 May 1536 (Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. X, no. 896) The Act of Succession 1536 (28 Hen. VIII c.7); the Act of Succession 1544 (35 Hen. VIII c.1); the will of Henry VIII, 30 December 1546 The Act of 1553 for Queen Mary's legitimacy (1 Mary st.2 c.1); the Act of Recognition 1559 (1 Eliz. c.3) Lady Margaret Bryan to Thomas Cromwell, August 1536 (British Library, Cotton MS Otho C X, f. 234) The account of the christening of Elizabeth, September 1533 (Letters and Papers, Henry VIII, vol. VI, no. 1111) William Loke, mercer's account for Queen Anne and the Princess Elizabeth, 1535–1536 (Philobiblon Society, 1862) Alexander Ales to Queen Elizabeth, 1 September 1559 (Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, Elizabeth, vol. 1) Richard Mulcaster, The Quenes Maiesties Passage through the Citie of London to Westminster the Day before her Coronacion (1559) Correspondence of Matthew Parker (Parker Society, 1853) Calendar of State Papers, Spain: the dispatches of Eustace Chapuys, 1536 Ulpian Fulwell, The Flower of Fame (1575) — the phoenix verse on Anne Edward Herbert, The Life and Raigne of King Henry the Eighth (1649) — first printing of the Tower letter Nicholas Sander, De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani (1585) Sir Robert Carey, Memoirs Susan Doran, *History Today*, June 2024 E. W. Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (2004) Tracy Borman, Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I (2023) Hever Castle, research on the portrait of Anne Boleyn, February 2026 The Chequers Estate Act 1917 #ElizabethI #AnneBoleyn #ChequersRing