My research into Elizabeth Boleyn’s court career during Katherine of Aragon’s queenship was fascinating. Unfortunately, I only had time to briefly touch on the court career of Elizabeth Boleyn’s mother, Elizabeth Tylney, but what I found out was very interesting.

As a reminder, Elizabeth Tylney was the daughter and heiress of Sir Frederick Tylney and Elizabeth Cheney. Her father Frederick Tylney had been the heir of his father, Sir Philip Tylney. After Frederick Tylney’s death, Elizabeth Cheney remarried to Sir John Say, making her the ancestor of three of Henry VIII’s future wives: Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, and Jane Seymour.

Elizabeth Woodville

This is what Wikipedia claims about Elizabeth Tylney’s attendance at Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, but is it true?

Elizabeth Tylney’s first husband was Humphrey Bourchier, who died in the Battle of Barnet in 1471. He attended Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation in 1465, but there is no record of Elizabeth Tylney attending the queen’s coronation, and we can immediately dispel the myth that Elizabeth Tylney carried Elizabeth Woodville’s train. According to a manuscript account of Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, her train was carried by Anne Neville, Duchess of Buckingham. This manuscript account was transcribed and published as The Coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville by George Smith in 1935.

There are also no records of Elizabeth Tylney receiving payments from the queen as a regular member of her household. Unfortunately, accounts for wages to the queen’s ladies only survive for Elizabeth Woodville’s queenship from 1466-7, so it is possible that Elizabeth Tylney joined her household later, but without direct evidence of this, we can only speculate.

In summary, there is no evidence that Elizabeth Tylney served as a member of Elizabeth Woodville’s household.

Wikipedia also claims that Elizabeth Tylney accompanied Elizabeth Woodville when she fled into sanctuary in 1470, and helped the queen during the birth of Edward V, the elder of the Princes in the Tower. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for either claim.

At this time, Elizabeth Tylney would have been referred to as ‘Lady Bourchier’, as she was the wife of Sir Humphrey Bourchier. Unhelpfully, this was also the title of Anne Woodville, Elizabeth Woodville’s sister, who was married to Humphrey Bourchier’s father, Henry Bourchier, 1st Earl of Essex. This may be why there is some confusion about Elizabeth Tylney’s service to Elizabeth Woodville — there was a Lady Bourchier in Elizabeth Woodville’s household, but it was the queen’s sister Anne Woodville, not Elizabeth Tylney.

According to John Ashdown-Hill, in his biography of Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth Widville, Lady Grey, the queen did not take any women from her household into sanctuary with her. She was, according to Ashdown-Hill, accompanied by her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, and her daughters Mary and Cecily. Ashdown-Hill also states that they were supervised by Elizabeth, Lady Scrope, and she was paid £10 for her services.

The Crowland Chronicle supports the fact that Elizabeth Woodville wasn’t accompanied by members of her household, simply saying that, ‘at this time [1470] was born Edward, the first-born son of king Edward, then in exile; which event took place on the feast of All Saints, in the monastery of Westminster at which place queen Elizabeth and her three daughters had taken sanctuary.’

We therefore have no evidence that Elizabeth Tylney was with the queen during her time in sanctuary in 1470.

Anne Neville

We are on firmer ground for Elizabeth Tylney’s service to Anne Neville. Though the evidence for Anne Neville’s ladies can only be found in the records of her coronation in 1483, Elizabeth Tylney did attend this event, so Wikipedia is right about this.

Many documents related to the coronation of Richard III and Anne Neville were transcribed and published in 1983 as The Coronation of Richard III: The Extant Documents, by Anne F. Sutton. Records of materials for the coronation were also transcribed in the first volume of The Antiquarian Repertory, which is available on archive.org.

The surviving documents reveal that Elizabeth Tylney did attend Richard III and Anne Neville’s coronation. At this point, she was the Countess of Surrey, as her husband Thomas Howard was the Earl of Surrey, and would not be made the 2nd Duke of Norfolk until several years later.

For the event, she received 10 yards of scarlet livery. Scarlet livery was customarily given at queen’s coronations for ladies to wear as a uniform, and Elizabeth Boleyn and Muriel Grey (Elizabeth Tylney’s daughters) would also receive scarlet livery for the coronation of Katherine of Aragon in 1509. She also received two long gowns for the coronation, one of blue velvet trimmed with crimson satin, and the other crimson satin trimmed with white damask.

During the coronation feast, she held the ‘cloth of pleasance’ over the queen’s head as the queen ate or drank, to allow her to do so in private. This was an incredibly intimate position for her to stand, near to the queen, and it reflected the Howard family’s closeness with Richard III.

Unfortunately, we do not have any further evidence that Elizabeth Tylney remained in the queen’s household during Anne Neville’s brief queenship, due to a lack of surviving sources for Anne Neville’s household, but we can assume that she probably did, given how close her father-in-law and husband were to Richard III.

Conclusion

To conclude, we have no evidence that Elizabeth Tylney was a member of Elizabeth Woodville’s household, though she did attend Anne Neville’s coronation and possibly remained in her service during her brief queenship.

Why do little details like this matter?

In the first instance, the idea that Elizabeth Tylney served Elizabeth Woodville is not born out by the contemporary sources. It seems to be a misunderstanding that was mentioned online, and is now accepted as fact in some circles. I haven’t seen it repeated in history books yet — it seems to only circulate online — but we see from the false belief that Elizabeth Boleyn served in Elizabeth of York’s household how quickly a claim not backed up by primary sources can reach history books. I’ve already written about the myth that Elizabeth Boleyn served Elizabeth of York here.

Secondly, I think it is important to understand the legacy of royal service that Anne and Mary Boleyn were following when they joined Katherine of Aragon’s household. We have primary source evidence that their maternal grandmother Elizabeth Tylney served Anne Neville, their maternal aunt Muriel Grey served Elizabeth of York, and their mother Elizabeth Boleyn served Katherine of Aragon.

While this list of queens does not include Elizabeth Woodville, it is still impressive and fascinating that Anne and Mary’s grandmother, aunt, and mother had all served queens before Anne and Mary joined Katherine of Aragon’s household. Despite the regime change between Anne Neville and Elizabeth of York, the Howard family were able to retain a position in royal service, close to the last Plantagenet queen and the first Tudor queen.

It is difficult to tell who served late medieval queens such as Elizabeth Woodville and Anne Neville, because of a lack of surviving sources for their households. For Elizabeth Woodville, we only have a record of her coronation, and payments to ladies in her household for one year of her queenship. For Anne Neville, the record of her ladies is even more lacking, and we can only work out who served her from the women who attended her coronation.

Records for ladies of the queen’s household arguably do not get much clearer until later in the 16th century. Even with records of Katherine of Aragon’s ladies, their roles within the household aren’t clearly laid out in documents such as livery lists, so it’s difficult to tell which rank each woman held, or if they were in ordinary service (at court regularly) or extraordinary service (attending for special occasions).

When I was writing my book, I was surprised to find misinformation about both Elizabeth Boleyn’s service to Elizabeth of York, and Elizabeth Tylney’s service to Elizabeth Woodville.

Unfortunately, in this case, it seems that Elizabeth Tylney did not have a place in Elizabeth Woodville’s household, though she probably served Anne Neville. She certainly attended Anne Neville’s coronation, but a lack of surviving sources for Richard III’s queen means that we can’t draw anymore conclusions about Elizabeth Tylney’s court service.

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little more about Elizabeth Tylney’s court career! If you would like to read more of my research, please do subscribe.

This post will discuss the findings of the paper, which is open access and can be read here. I will also discuss whether or not I think the sketch really does depict Elizabeth Boleyn, and what I hope happens next.

The research

The paper is called Reassessing Anne Boleyn and other Boleyn women in Holbein drawings using facial recognition, and it was co-authored by Karen L. Davies, Hassan Ugail, and David G. Stork, and published in npj Heritage Science on 24 March 2026.

I read it shortly after it was initially published, and I (like a lot of people, I’m sure!) was truly baffled by the science behind it. In summary, the paper used facial recognition software to cluster Holbein’s sketches into family groups, and created a kind of family tree for members of the Howard and Boleyn families, therefore identifying a previously unidentified sketch of Anne Boleyn. This sketch as traditionally been identified as Amalia of Cleves, the sister of Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s fourth wife.

Using facial recognition software to compare these sketches to other Holbein sketches of Howard family members, such as those of Henry Howard and Mary Howard, as well as a portrait of Princess Elizabeth attributed to William Scrots (RCIN 404444), the research found matches between a proposed sketch of Anne Boleyn, the Windsor sketch, the portrait of Princess Elizabeth, and a proposed sketch of Mary Boleyn (RCIN 912247).

This is a very basic summary of the research as I understood it, and I apologise if I’ve misunderstood something. As I say, the paper was written for a specialist audience, and though I was interested in the identifications, I didn’t understand the science behind the identifications.

To cut to the chase, the paper proposes that the sketch traditionally called Amalia of Cleves actually depicts Anne Boleyn, the sketch traditionally called Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, actually depicts Mary Boleyn, and the Windsor sketch actually depicts Elizabeth Boleyn.

The paper argues that we cannot trust the labels on these portraits, as they date from the 18th century, and there is not a clear chain of provenance from John Cheke to these labels, as it is often claimed. The paper also points out that several of the labels actually misidentify figures — for example, the sketch labelled ‘Mother Jak’ actually depicts Margaret Giggs.

The paper also argues that children may have been mistaken for their parents in the labels, as in the case of one of the sketches of Henry Howard, who is identified in the 18th-century inscription as his father, ‘Thomas Earl of Surr[e]y’ (RCIN 912215).

Because of this, as well as the facial recognition findings, the paper argues that it is possible Elizabeth Boleyn and Anne Boleyn were confused for one another, hence why the sketch has been identified as Anne as opposed to her mother.

These are the most pertinent findings from the paper, as far as I can see. The science is completely lost on me, but in short, the paper proposes that we have preparatory sketches by Holbein, which depict Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary Boleyn. This is huge if true, but there has been an immediate backlash from art historians such as Bendor Grosvenor.

Issues and questions

As Dr Grosvenor, Lucy Churchill, and others have already said, there is a questionable methodology at work here. Portraits are not photographs, and training facial recognition software to recognise similarities between sketches is not fool-proof. While Holbein was uncannily good, we have to take into account the fact that these are portraits, not photographs.

I will also say that the Scrots portrait of Princess Elizabeth is not a great benchmark for comparison, as it has been attributed to a completely different artist, who also had his own style. If the sketches were compared to a Holbein portrait of Princess Elizabeth, I would be more convinced.

I am also curious as to why Holbein’s portrait of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (RCIN 404439), was not included as a point of comparison. That is a portrait by Holbein, and Norfolk was Elizabeth Boleyn’s brother and Anne Boleyn’s uncle. If portraits are being included as points of comparison, not just sketches, then that portrait should be included. If the facial recognition software brings up a brother-sister match between the Windsor sketch and Holbein’s portrait of Norfolk, and an uncle-niece match between the sketch traditionally identified as Amalia of Cleves and Holbein’s portrait of Norfolk, then I would be swayed. I’m not sure if this is within the algorithm’s capabilities, but I was confused as to why Norfolk’s portrait wasn’t included in the clustering.

It must also be pointed out that neither the sketch traditionally identified as Amalia of Cleves or the Windsor sketch appear to have been used as the basis for the ‘B pattern’ portraits which were created during Elizabeth I’s reign. If either depict Anne Boleyn, why were they not used as the basis for these portraits? Was this knowledge somehow lost between the drawing of the sketches and the creation of these portraits?

I also can’t see similarities between the sketch and portrait of Elizabeth, Lady Vaux, and later portraits of Mary Boleyn, such as the one by Remigius van Leemput (RCIN 402991), even though the paper places the portraits side by side to argue that they are similar. Admittedly, this could be put down to artistic differences between Holbein and van Leemput.

I am also unconvinced by the argument that the double chin of the woman in the Windsor sketch can be accounted for by Elizabeth Boleyn’s illness. To quote the paper: ‘others interpret the sitter’s full or doubled chin as evidence of illness (scrofula) […] the illness reading gains primary corroboration in Warley’s April 1536 report that Elizabeth was ‘diseased with the cough’ (LP X.669). Elizabeth Howard died in 1538, and the April 1536 illness may represent the onset of her terminal condition.’

In my opinion, this is the writers making the evidence fit their theory that the Windsor sketch depicts Elizabeth Boleyn. We do not know what illness Elizabeth Boleyn was suffering from in April 1536, and we should be careful when suggesting that the Windsor sketch sitter’s double chin might have been a depiction of Elizabeth Boleyn’s illness. That being said, the authors were careful to use the word ‘may’, so they aren’t making a definitive statement.

This paper was always going to face an uphill battle, because the Windsor sketch has been accepted as depicting Anne Boleyn for such a long time, due to the 18th-century label and the informal dress of the sitter. Here I will say that I’ve been convinced by Sylvia Barbara Soberton’s argument that the sitter isn’t wearing a nightgown, but is in fact wearing furs, as we see in the Holbein miniature of Margaret Roper. I am therefore unconvinced by the argument that the Windsor sketch must depict Anne Boleyn simply because the woman is in an apparent state of undress, because I don’t think she is.

But even if she is, could the sketch not portray a woman close to the queen, such as her mother? Is it not just as likely that Holbein would sketch the queen’s mother in such casual dress, as he would the queen? I’m not saying this to suggest that I believe the Windsor sketch definitely depicts Elizabeth Boleyn, but I’m just not convinced by the argument that the sketch has to depict Anne just because she’s wearing fur.

I think this paper tried to argue too many things at once. Proposing new Holbein sketches of Elizabeth, Mary, and Anne Boleyn was bound to face controversy, particularly because none of the sketches have been identified as those sitters before, and so many people are attached to the Windsor sketch depicting Anne Boleyn.

The media coverage also didn’t help, because several outlets mentioned the use of AI, which was always going to raise hackles, even though this wasn’t generative AI, so I have less of a problem with it.

The media coverage

This actually brings me on nicely to the media coverage. I’ve already mentioned the fact that Elizabeth Boleyn wasn’t mentioned by name in the BBC’s TV coverage (and here is a shorter version of the same coverage), and was only referred to as ‘Anne Boleyn’s mum’, which I didn’t like. I understand that this was being made for a wide audience who might not have known the name Elizabeth Howard, or even Elizabeth Boleyn, and they wanted to keep it simple for viewers. However, it would have been nice if they could have mentioned her by name at least once, given that the research is arguing that one of the sketches depicts her.

I also have issues with the Guardian’s coverage of the story, in which they claim, ‘The unidentified woman sat in the Boleyn-Howard cluster, while the Windsor sketch seemed to be closer to images of Elizabeth Howard, Boleyn’s mother.’ This is just badly worded, because we have no images of Elizabeth Boleyn, not even posthumous portraits. The paper isn’t arguing that the Windsor sketch looks like Elizabeth Boleyn, because we have no images of her.

As is often the case with research like this, it was simplified for TV. I would urge anyone who is interested to read the paper itself, which is open access and free to read online. The paper is cautious in its assessment, and Karen L. Davies stresses in her BBC interview that this is not a definitive attribution. The team are just sharing their research, and allowing it to become part of the conversation.

Conclusion

Does the Windsor sketch depict Elizabeth Boleyn? I don’t know.

The paper makes a very convincing case for why we can’t always rely on the 18th-century labels on these portraits. I’ve always been wary of the identifications, as there are instances in which they are demonstrably incorrect, so it was interesting to see such a clear case for why these labels can’t always be trusted.

Professor Ugail points out in the BBC coverage that these are simply the results of their findings, with no bias behind them. For that reason, it is interesting that the clustering places Elizabeth Boleyn within the Howard family tree where it does — namely, as the grandmother of Princess Elizabeth with a facial similarity of 75.4%, and as the mother of Anne Boleyn (assuming the sketch traditionally identified as Amalia of Cleves is Anne Boleyn), with a facial similarity of 78.3%. However, as others have already discussed, there are methodological issues with these numbers, and we can’t treat portraits as if they’re photographs.

I would like to see a comparison between the Windsor sketch and Holbein’s portrait of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, to find out how much they match. As I said earlier, I am surprised that this portrait was not included as a point of comparison in the paper. I am also very doubtful about the comparison between the Scrots portrait of Princess Elizabeth and the Windsor sketch, as they are by different artists, and their different styles must be taken into account.

I’m not convinced by the argument that the Windsor sketch sitter’s double chin might be read as evidence of the illness Elizabeth Boleyn had in April 1536. I worry that this is reading too much into what little surviving evidence we do have.

All of this to say, it is always exciting to see new research in the field of portraiture, and it is interesting to see new methodologies being used. It is also very nice to see Elizabeth Boleyn being talked about in the media.

I will conclude by saying that there was certainly at least one portrait of Elizabeth Boleyn once in existence at Northampton House. It was in the collection of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, in 1614. It was described in an inventory of his belongings taken upon his death as ‘a picture of the Ladie Bullen, Queen Anne’s Mother’. Its whereabouts today are currently unknown. Though the Windsor sketch might not depict Elizabeth Boleyn, it is possible that there is a contemporary or posthumous portrait of Elizabeth Boleyn out there somewhere, just waiting to be found.

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Though we have no portraits of Elizabeth Boleyn, over the centuries, some images have been labelled as her, and I wanted to discuss them.

The Condé Museum Portrait

You’ve probably seen this portrait used online when people are talking about Elizabeth Boleyn. Unfortunately, it does not depict her. It is a portrait of an unknown lady, formerly identified as Anne Boleyn. It was previously in the collection of Armand-François Marie, Marquis of Biencourt (d. 1854), and it was donated to the Condé Museum in 1939.

The woman in this portrait is wearing a high collar, and her dress, jewellery, and hairstyle are completely wrong for the early sixteenth century. This is a portrait of a woman from the mid-sixteenth century, but it is definitely not a contemporary depiction of Elizabeth Boleyn. It is not even a later depiction of Elizabeth, nor is it a later portrait of Anne Boleyn. As the Condé Museum states, it is an as yet unidentified woman.

However, you might be surprised to know that this is not the first or only portrait mistakenly identified as Elizabeth Boleyn.

The Holbein Portrait

In the 1920s and 1930s, this Holbein portrait of Mary, Lady Guildford, was called ‘Dame Elizabeth Bullen’, and thought to be of the Flemish School. According to the Saint Louis Art Museum’s description of the provenance of the portrait, it had been in the collection of John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley (d. 1609), where it was described as a portrait ‘Of the La: Guilfourd wife to Sir Henry Guilfourd Coumptroller, drawne by Haunce Holbyn’.

It was sold in 1930 by Sotheby’s as a portrait of Elizabeth Boleyn, and it eventually was bought by the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1943, where it still resides today. Unfortunately, this was another case of mistaken identity, as this is definitely a portrait of Mary Guildford, and it is a pair with Holbein’s portrait of Mary’s husband Sir Henry Guildford, now held in the Royal Collection (RCIN 400046).

This portrait is an example of how we need to be careful with identifying portraits. This portrait circulated as ‘Dame Elizabeth Bullen’ for a while before it was identified as Mary Guildford. A portrait of a member of the Boleyn family (especially Anne Boleyn’s mother) was probably thought to be more valuable than a portrait of Mary Guildford, but in this case, this portrait was clearly meant to be displayed alongside the portrait of Sir Henry Guilford.

The Margaret Pole Portrait

I have also seen this portrait used when someone was discussing Elizabeth Boleyn — only on one occasion, in a video about her. This portrait, now held at the National Portrait Gallery in London, is widely believed to depict Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, but it actually has quite a complicated history.

In 1969, the art historian Roy Strong discussed the cleaning that this portrait underwent in 1963 (which can be found in his book, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, volume 1, p. 272). As a result of this cleaning, Strong suggested that the ermine spots on the headdress and the sleeves were later additions. Crucially for its identification as Margaret Pole, Strong concluded that ‘the gold barrel-shaped jewel was certainly a later addition, as almost certainly were the black ribbon and the W monogram jewel’ (Strong, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, volume 1, p. 272). It is these two features of the portrait that identify it as Margaret Pole — the barrel charm is an allusion to the death of her father, the Duke of Clarence, and the W pendant is a reference to the Earldom of Warwick.

Margaret Pole’s biographer, Hazel Pierce, maintains that this portrait does depict the Countess of Salisbury. In her PhD thesis, Pierce argues though the barrel charm and the W pendant were seemingly painted over craquelure, both features did not fade when the portrait was cleaned again in 1973, and were therefore probably original (you can read more about her reasoning here and here, and her PhD thesis is freely available online, in which she discusses this portrait). Finally, Hilary Mantel argued that it may not be Margaret Pole, if it was indeed altered later.

It would be wonderful to have this portrait analysed using infrared reflectography, as the NPG’s portrait of Anne Boleyn (NPG 668) was recently tested, or x-rayed. This would surely reveal which layers were added later, and give us more definitive answers than cleaning and restoration work undertaken over fifty years ago were able to give us.

Regardless of the questions this portrait poses, I believe that whoever used it to depict Elizabeth Boleyn simply grabbed a sixteenth-century portrait of a woman and used it for their video. On balance, it probably does depict Margaret Pole, as it has traditionally been identified as her since at least the mid-18th century, and it was previously in the collection of Colonel Selby-Lowndes, a descendant of the Pole family.

The Margaret of Austria Portrait

I have also seen this portrait of a young Margaret of Austria, now held at the Louvre, used in one video about Elizabeth Boleyn.

There are enough copies of this portrait to say firmly that this is Margaret of Austria as a child, and again, whoever made the video was obviously looking for a portrait of a woman in the sixteenth century — never mind the fact that she is wearing clothes from the wrong country, and there are several copies of this portrait, and it clearly depicts a young Margaret of Austria! There really is no need to discuss this further, as this is a portrait of Margaret of Austria, obviously used by the person who made the video because they wanted a portrait for illustrative purposes.

I suppose there is an irony in using this portrait to depict Elizabeth Boleyn, given that Anne Boleyn would go on to spend time in Margaret of Austria’s household.

The Windsor Sketch

This one is controversial! Recently, an open access paper, ‘Reassessing Anne Boleyn and other Boleyn women in Holbein drawings using facial recognition’ by Karen L. Davies, Hassan Ugail and David G. Stork has suggested that the Holbein sketch traditionally thought to depict Anne Boleyn actually depicts her mother. The sketch was drawn during Holbein’s second visit to England, during Anne Boleyn’s queenship, and shows a woman in fine fur and a linen cap.

I will let their case speak for itself, as I don’t want to simply repeat their work. However, as much as I want this to be true, I’m not convinced by facial recognition software alone, especially given that the paper also proposes that two other Holbein sketches also depict Anne and Mary Boleyn. In my opinion, the paper is trying to do too many things at once. I’m going to go with the majority here and accept that this is probably a sketch of Anne Boleyn, as it is labelled.

The so-called ‘Stanford Court’ portrait

In 1872, Thomas E. Winnington wrote into Notes and Queries with a question:

Notes and Queries is full of questions like this — that was its purpose, for people to write in with questions and discoveries. At least, in this case, the writer left his name, and mentioned Stanford Court. The writer was Sir Thomas Edward Winnington, 4th Baronet (d. 1872). The great-grandfather to whom he is referring would have been Sir Edward Winnington, 1st Baronet (d. 1791).

Unfortunately, Stanford Court in Worcester burned down in 1882, so seeing if the portrait was still there was a dead end. Research into the identity of Francis Nanciaat also led nowhere. However, judging by Winnington’s description, this probably isn’t a depiction of Elizabeth Boleyn. He described a woman wearing a ‘ruff around the neck’ — surely not the fashion of the early 16th century, and probably not a Holbein portrait (the Victorians in general were very confident about ascribing portraits to Holbein).

As with the next supposed portrait, I did not include this in my book, as it was such a vague reference and so unlikely to be a contemporary depiction of Elizabeth Boleyn that I thought it best to just leave it out of the book altogether.

The so-called ‘Alice Carmelian’ portrait

Another Notes and Queries question, this one from 1903. This one is even more fascinating and frustratingly vague than the previous one:

It is disappointing that the anonymised ‘Z’ did not give their name, or say where they saw this portrait. I had never heard of a portrait miniature that was once owned by Mary Boleyn, certainly not one depicting her mother.

With nothing more to go on, I had to unfortunately abandon this research trail. It was such a flimsy reference that I did not even include it in my book, as there’s no mention of where the portrait is held. We also have no portraits ascribed to Alice Carmellian, a female painter at the Henrician court, but this writer is certainly optimistic, if nothing else!

Conclusion

That is all the portraits that I know of which have been labelled as Elizabeth Boleyn, or used when people are discussing her.

It is interesting to see which portraits and sketches have been attached to Elizabeth Boleyn over the years. It goes to show how easily images can spread with certain captions, such as the Condé Museum portrait, and how readily portraits can be accepted as depicting a certain sitter until new information is discovered, such as in the case of the portrait of Mary Guildford. Some portraits have been used to depict Elizabeth simply because content creators want to use a portrait of a sixteenth-century woman, such as with the portraits of Margaret Pole and Margaret of Austria.

It is also fascinating to consider the possibility that there were stories of portraits depicting Elizabeth Boleyn circulating in the nineteenth century, as we see with the so-called ‘Stanford Court’ and ‘Alice Carmelian’ portraits. I would say that the likelihood of these depicting Elizabeth Boleyn is slim, but it is interesting to consider the idea that the Victorians were as interested in finding portraits of Elizabeth Boleyn as we are today.

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, I’m fairly certain that none of the portraits mentioned in this post depict Elizabeth Boleyn, though I’m sure the Condé Museum portrait will continue to circulate online when people discuss Elizabeth — it seems too entrenched to be stopped now.

I understand the desire to use a portrait when discussing Elizabeth Boleyn, in order to illustrate posts or videos about her. However, I would encourage people to use contemporary manuscript illuminations of noblewomen, or actresses who have depicted Elizabeth Boleyn in films and on TV. That is at least more honest than using portraits of other people to depict her, or using portraits that are wildly out of date for her lifetime.

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When we pair records such as these with manuscript illuminations of private royal spaces, we can get a clearer picture of the private chambers Elizabeth Boleyn stayed in when she was at court. One of my favourite depictions of a private royal space is from the early 15th-century manuscript The Book of Queens (BL MS Harley 4431).

This illumination shows tiny details, such as fabric pinned to the walls to keep in heat, barred windows, a high ceiling, and sumptuous textiles everywhere. When we imagine the spaces Elizabeth and other women of her station inhabited at court, we should picture brightly coloured rooms full of expensive textiles and jewels.

There are numerous references throughout the paybooks to repairs made to Elizabeth Boleyn’s chambers. She is referred to throughout the paybooks as the ‘Lady of Wiltshire’, and, touchingly, ‘the Queen’s mother’. For instance, in June 1533 — not long after Anne became queen — ‘two panes of old glass new set in lead’ were placed in the windows of the stairs ‘by the Queen’s mother’s chamber’ in Windsor Castle.

Where were Elizabeth’s chambers?

What is interesting about these repairs is that sometimes we get glimpses of where certain chambers were in relation to other parts of the court, or to one another.

In 1532, repairs were made to Anne’s lodging in Westminster Palace, which was specified as being ‘directly under the library’. Again, in this entry we see the chamber of ‘my Lady of Wiltshire’ listed directly alongside Anne’s, suggesting that their chambers were next to one another. This would fit with the fact that Elizabeth Boleyn was acting as Anne’s chaperone during her courtship with the king. ‘A pair of garnets’ were also ‘set upon a window in the lord of Rochford’s lodging’, suggesting that George’s chambers were close to his mother’s and sister’s.

In the case of the entry referring to Elizabeth Boleyn’s chambers in Windsor Castle in 1533, we know that her chambers were near a staircase on the ‘Queen’s side’ of court. The court was physically divided between the ‘King’s side’ and the ‘Queen’s side’. As the queen’s mother and a member of Anne Boleyn’s household, Elizabeth’s chambers were on the queen’s side of the court.

That same month, more repairs were carried out to the windows of Elizabeth’s chambers in Windsor Castle, and they offer us greater insight into where exactly her chambers were in relation to the chambers of other members of the court. These repairs were much more intricate. ‘A pane of old glass new set in lead’ was placed into the window, and two panes of glass were scoured and mended, among other repairs.

However, just above the entry referring to Elizabeth Boleyn’s chambers are some familiar names: Mary Carey (née Boleyn); ‘my Lady of Worcester’ (Elizabeth Somerset), one of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting; and James Boleyn, Thomas Boleyn’s brother. Between James Boleyn’s chamber and Elizabeth Boleyn’s chamber is an entry for ‘the next chamber to [James Boleyn’s chamber]’.

These entries suggest that the repairs were made systematically, from one room to the next. That would make sense — workmen would have repaired one window, and then moved onto the one next to it. This allows us to have an understanding of where chambers were in relation to one another. In Windsor Castle, Elizabeth’s chambers were only three doors down from Mary Boleyn’s chambers.

If we assume that entries next to one another refer to rooms next to one another, then we can infer that Elizabeth’s chambers were near Anne’s and Henry’s in Greenwich Palace, as in August 1533, five window panes in ‘my Lady of Wiltshire’s chamber’ were repaired. This entry is straight after an entry referring to repairs made to windows in ‘the gallery between the king’s garden and the park’, ‘the queen’s chamber’ and ‘the king’s lodgings’.

Elizabeth’s chambers were also apparently right next to Anne’s chambers in Woking Palace. In August 1534, repairs were made to the windows of ‘the queen’s chamber’, ‘the queen’s bedchamber’ and one of the bay windows in ‘the queen’s mother’s chamber’. As with the entries in Windsor Castle, the entries for these repairs were listed right next to one another.

In August 1535, Elizabeth and Thomas had matching decorations of ‘the flower of the king’s privy chamber’ [the Tudor rose] placed into their chambers in Greenwich Palace. This entry specifies that ‘the queen’s mother’s chamber’ was ‘ov[er] the Lord of Wiltshire’s chamber’, meaning that Elizabeth’s chamber must have been directly above Thomas’ chamber.

Conclusion

Records like these give us a wonderful insight into the private spaces of the Boleyn family during their time at court. It is especially interesting to note where they stayed in relation to one another at different lodgings. In many instances, the records suggest that Elizabeth had rooms near her husband, children, and other members of the Boleyn family. At Woking Palace, her chambers were seemingly directly next to Anne’s lodgings, and at Greenwich Palace, her chambers were right above Thomas’.

Finally, it is telling that Elizabeth was referred to as ‘the Queen’s mother’ in many of these records throughout Anne’s queenship — indeed, she was referred to by this title more than she was referred to as the ‘Lady of Wiltshire’ within James Nedeham’s paybooks. This shows that her status as Anne’s mother was recognised over and above her status as the Countess of Wiltshire (and therefore Thomas’ wife).

This isn’t the case with any other member of Anne’s immediate family referenced within these records — Mary is referred to by her married name, George is referred to as the Lord of Rochford, and Thomas is referred to as the Earl of Wiltshire. Only Elizabeth’s relationship to Anne is acknowledged. When repairs made to chambers were being recorded, it was evidently simplest to refer to Elizabeth Boleyn in relation to Anne.

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This post will focus on the evidence that we have for Elizabeth Boleyn’s presence in Katherine of Aragon’s household from 1509 to 1522. How do we know that Elizabeth Boleyn served Katherine of Aragon, and what sorts of events did she attend?

The earliest appearance of Elizabeth Boleyn in court records that I could uncover was in documents drawn up for the coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon on 24 June 1509. For the event, Elizabeth received 10 yards of scarlet livery and a gown of crimson velvet bordered with tawny cloth of gold.

This was her first public appearance as one of the queen’s ladies, and her name is listed alongside other familiar female courtiers of this period, such as Margaret Bryan, Elizabeth Boleyn’s half-sister; Mary Scrope, the future wife of William Kingston; Elizabeth Stafford, who would go on to marry Elizabeth Boleyn’s brother, Thomas Howard; and Elizabeth Boleyn’s sister, Muriel Grey, who was then Viscountess Lisle.

The next document that refers to Elizabeth Boleyn in the queen’s household dates from January 1513, when ‘Lady Bulleyn’ was given a ‘little pot gilt’ weighing 16 1/2 ounces as a New Year’s gift. The fact that she received a gift along with other ladies suggests that she was in ordinary service — that is to say, she spent most of her time at court, rather than simply visiting for special state occasions such as banquets or weddings, as a woman in extraordinary service would have done.

We next find her in a list of members of the queen’s household drawn up in 1514. This list has been transcribed and is available on archive.org. She is at the top of the list of members of ‘the Quene’s syde’ of the court, along with other familiar names such as ‘Lady Parre’ — Maud Green, the future mother of Catherine Parr. The list of the queen’s household is relatively unchanged between the New Year’s Gift Roll of 1513 and the list of members of the royal household in 1514, with several women appearing on both lists, such as ‘the old’ Lady Guildford, Lady Mountjoy, and Elizabeth Boleyn.

We can be sure that Elizabeth Boleyn was the ‘Lady Boleyn’ at court during Katherine of Aragon’s queenship, as she is mentioned by name in the next records, BL Add. MS 21116 and BL Add. MS 71009, which include table plans for a banquet that took place at Greenwich Palace on 7 July 1517. These records name Elizabeth Boleyn as ‘The Lady Eliz. Bolyn’ and ‘Ladi Bollen’. This event was also attended by several members of the Howard family.

On 17 July 1517, Elizabeth Boleyn (‘Ladie Bulleyne’) deputised for Katherine of Aragon at the christening of Frances Brandon, the daughter of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor. Frances Brandon would go on to be the mother of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen. Elizabeth Boleyn attended the christening with several other members of the queen’s household — Elizabeth Grey, who deputised for Princess Mary; Anne Shelton; and Dorothy Verney.

Elizabeth Boleyn again appears in the New Years Gift Roll of 1519, where the queen’s ladies are recorded as having received a payment from the king. She is listed (this time as ‘Lady Bullayn’) alongside several members of the queen’s household, such as Elizabeth Stafford, who by then had married Elizabeth Boleyn’s brother Thomas Howard, and Anne Shelton, Elizabeth Boleyn’s sister-in-law.

The next extant lists of members of the royal household dates from October and November 1519. These lists are worth discussing in more detail, as it has been suggested that there were two Ladies Boleyn at court from October 1519, possibly Elizabeth Boleyn and one of her sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Wood (the wife of James Boleyn) or Anne Tempest (the wife of Edward Boleyn), or Mary Boleyn.

However, in the lists themselves, it is clear that ‘my Lady Bullayn’, ‘my Lady Bolayn’, and ‘the Ladi Bullain’ all refer to the same person within lists of either members of court entitled to breakfast or entitled to livery. In each instance, the record includes a number 1 next to it, meaning that one person was entitled to either breakfast or livery.

The final record of Elizabeth Boleyn at court was in 1522, when she (‘Lady Boloyne’) received a gold pomander from Katherine of Aragon’s store. The queen had been gifted this pomander by Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, and she was passing it on to her long-time lady Elizabeth Boleyn.

This is the last appearance of Elizabeth Boleyn in a court record from Katherine of Aragon’s time as queen. It is also the same year that Anne and Mary entered Katherine’s service, so perhaps Elizabeth Boleyn decided to step away from court life. By now, she had served the queen for thirteen years, since Katherine of Aragon’s coronation, and it’s possible that Elizabeth Boleyn wanted to give her daughters time to forge their own careers.

It is also important to note that it’s no doubt thanks to her long service that Anne and Mary were able to get positions in Katherine of Aragon’s household. Female courtiers often got their daughters positions in the queen’s household, and generational court service is why we see the same family names appearing in queen’s households for years — mothers would gain positions for their daughters. Elizabeth Boleyn’s own service, and her husband’s service to the king, made Anne and Mary’s positions in Katherine of Aragon’s household almost a certainty.

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When I set out to write my first book — the first narrative biography of Elizabeth Boleyn — I was determined to find out if this was true. It was actually one of the first questions I wanted to answer when I started my initial research. It is crucial for understanding when Elizabeth Boleyn’s career began and how long she served at court.

Evidence for Elizabeth of York’s Ladies

Unfortunately, our evidence for Elizabeth of York’s ladies is very fragmentary. The main sources for who served in Elizabeth of York’s household are the Great Wardrobe accounts of Henry VII, the Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York, and the list of women who attended her funeral.

To dispense with the first source quickly — there are no references to Elizabeth Boleyn receiving clothing from the Great Wardrobe during Henry VII’s reign. The earliest account that I could find of Elizabeth Boleyn receiving clothing for a court event was for the coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon on 24 June 1509. For the occasion, she received 10 yards of scarlet livery and a crimson velvet gown bordered with tawny cloth of gold.

The Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York were transcribed and published in the 19th century, and are freely available on archive.org. They only cover the last year of Elizabeth of York’s life, from 1502 to 1503, so of course they aren’t a complete record of the women in Elizabeth of York’s service, though they do refer to many women in Elizabeth of York’s household. Elizabeth Boleyn is not mentioned in the Privy Purse Expenses.

Finally, Elizabeth Boleyn is not listed among the women who attended Elizabeth of York’s funeral. An account of the funeral, with a full list of women in attendance, was also published in the 19th century, and can be viewed on archive.org.

Elizabeth Boleyn does not appear in any of the three major sources for Elizabeth of York’s household, so it is safe to assume that the belief she served the first Tudor queen is a myth with no basis in primary sources.

It seems to have begun appearing in secondary sources sometime in the early 21st century, and been repeated ever since, both in print and online. However, if you look at those sources, they never cite to a primary source, and simply state that Elizabeth Boleyn served in Elizabeth of York’s household without citing the claim at all. Of course, it is possible that Elizabeth Boleyn was a member of Elizabeth of York’s household, but without direct primary source evidence, we can only speculate about that, and it shouldn’t be stated as a fact.

Muriel Howard’s Court Career During Henry VII’s Reign

However, another women is listed among the ladies who attended Elizabeth of York’s funeral: ‘Lady Lisle’. Though you might know Lady Lisle as Honor Grenville, at this time that title was held by Elizabeth Boleyn’s younger sister, Muriel Howard, who had married John Grey, Viscount Lisle, by 1500.

Muriel Howard seems to have been in extraordinary service during Henry VII’s reign — that is to say, she attended important state occasions, but was not regularly at court. This is unsurprising, as she was Viscountess Lisle by her marriage to John Grey, and therefore outranked her elder sister.

Muriel was also one of the women who accompanied Margaret Tudor when she travelled to Scotland to marry James IV. She appears in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, along with her stepmother Agnes Howard, then Countess of Surrey and later Duchess of Norfolk.

John Grey died in 1504, and Muriel remarried to Thomas Knyvett sometime before July 1506. She is referred to again in records from Henry VII’s reign, as ‘Maistress Knevett’, when a list of attendants of Mary Tudor was drawn up in preparation for Mary Tudor’s betrothal to Charles V, which was later called off.

All of these records show that it was Muriel, not Elizabeth Boleyn, who attended court events during the reign of Henry VII. If either sister was in ordinary service in Elizabeth of York’s household (again, we only have scant records of those women) then it was probably Muriel, not Elizabeth.

Conclusion

Why has the belief that Elizabeth Boleyn served in Elizabeth of York’s household persisted? A quick check of the extant records of Elizabeth of York’s ladies shows that there is no evidence of Elizabeth Boleyn at court, or attending court events, before 1509. However, the idea that Elizabeth Boleyn was in the queen’s household prior to 1509 still persists in online videos, blogs, and books which mention Elizabeth Boleyn.

It is easy for a misunderstanding to become fact if it’s repeated often enough. In this case, I haven’t been able to trace the very first time Elizabeth Boleyn was referred to as a member of Elizabeth of York’s household, and I wouldn’t want to call out other historians. I know how easy it is to make a mistake like this, especially when you’re writing a non-fiction book and every tiny detail needs to be checked and double-checked.

However, the issue comes when we don’t return to the primary sources to make sure that what we’re claiming is true. In this case, the belief that Elizabeth Boleyn served Elizabeth of York has become a foundational part of her supposed court career, but it simply isn’t true. Her court career began in 1509, around the time of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon’s coronation. She then served Katherine of Aragon for the next thirteen years, until she appears to have withdrawn from the queen’s service in 1522.

I hope that my work on Elizabeth Boleyn’s court career finally dispels the myth that she served Elizabeth of York. She had a long and successful career of her own, but it began during Katherine of Aragon’s queenship, not Elizabeth of York’s.

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