Footnote 532: No conclusive evidence on this point is possible; the French ambassador, Clement VII. and others believed that Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn had been cohabiting since 1529. On the other hand, if such was the case, it is singular that no child should have been born before 1533; for after that date Anne seems to have had a miscarriage nearly every year. Ortiz, indeed, reports from Rome that she had a miscarriage in 1531 (L. and P., v., 594), but the evidence is not good.[(back)]
Footnote 533: See Friedmann's Anne Boleyn, 2 vols., 1884, and articles on the Boleyn family in D.N.B., vol. v.[(back)]
Footnote 534: See George Fisher, Key to the History of England, Table xvii.; Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1829.[(back)]
Footnote 535: Henry would then be fifteen, yet a fable was invented and often repeated that Henry VIII. was Anne Boleyn's father. Nicholas Sanders, whose De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani became the basis of Roman Catholic histories of the English Reformation, gave currency to the story; and some modern writers prefer Sanders' veracity to Foxe's.[(back)]
Footnote 536: The error that it was Anne who accompanied Mary Tudor in 1514 was exposed by Brewer more than forty years ago, but it still lingers and was repeated with innumerable others in the Catalogue of the New Gallery Portrait Exhibition of 1902.[(back)]
Footnote 537: L. and P., iii., 1994.[(back)]
Footnote 538: In Harpsfield's Pretended Divorce there is a very improbable story that Wyatt told Henry VIII. his relations with Anne were far from innocent and warned the King against marrying a woman of Anne's character.[(back)]
Footnote 539: Wyatt, Works, ed. G.F. Nott, 1816, p. 143.[(back)]
Footnote 540: L. and P., iv., 3422.[(back)]
Footnote 541: Ibid., iv., 3218-20, 3325-26, 3990, 4383, 4403, 4410, 4477, 4537, 4539, 4597, 4648, 4742, 4894. They have also been printed by Hearne at the end of his edition of Robert of Avesbury, in the Pamphleteer, vol. xxi., and in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. The originals in Henry's hand are in the Vatican Library; one of them was reproduced in facsimile for the illustrated edition of this book.[(back)]