Anne Boleyn's necklace in The Family of Henry VIII?

In 1544, to celebrate the new act and memorialise his daughters’ restoration to the line of succession, Henry VIII commissioned the famous Whitehall family portrait. The portrait captures the royal family in a private setting, with the King sitting in the centre beneath a canopy of state, flanked by his son and heir, Edward, on the left and his third wife, the late Jane Seymour, on the right. The King’s hand rests firmly on Edward’s shoulder, showing quite literally that Henry VIII’s dynastic hopes now rested on the shoulders of a single surviving son. The King is richly bedecked in a splendid costume of cloth of gold and red with a knee-length cloak furred with sables. Jane Seymour wears a matching gown of cloth of gold, with red sleeves and kirtle. Her large oversleeves and the edge of her gown are furred with ermine, a symbol of wealth and royalty. The inclusion of Jane Seymour rather than Katherine Parr showed that Henry VIII desired Jane to be regarded as the matriarch of the Tudor dynasty.

Elizabeth stands on the far right while Mary occupies the far place on the left. Their costumes are far more modest than those worn by Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, but they match Prince Edward’s outfit in terms of colour and fabric. They are wearing dark-patterned gowns with red undersleeves and kirtles. There is nothing remarkable about their costumes—the gowns look rather simple and are calculated to blend in with the dark background. What draws the viewer’s attention are the jewels. Upon closer inspection, it appears that Elizabeth wears a golden letter A suspended from a double strand of pearls with large pearl hanging down from an emerald within the letter. In Tudor Costume and Fashion, Herbert Norris suggested that the necklace belonged to Elizabeth’s mother, the executed Anne Boleyn.1  This suggestion may be close to the truth. Mary wears a similar pearl necklace; suspended from it is a golden cross with three hanging pearls. It is known that Mary received “a necklace with a cross” from her dying mother; was it the same necklace worn by Mary in this family portrait?2 Let’s think about it; both Mary and Elizabeth were memorialised in this painting as Henry VIII’s illegitimate daughters. They stood to inherit the crown if their half brother, Edward, died without issue. Such a turn of events seemed unlikely at the time, hence the positioning of the Tudor half sisters at the far ends of the painting. Both Mary and Elizabeth wear similar gowns—at first glance they look almost like twins. This type of representation may have served to emphasise their status as the King’s illegitimate daughters. In this context, it made sense to allow Mary and Elizabeth to wear jewellery belonging to their disfavoured mothers, whose marriages to Henry VIII were annulled in 1533 and 1536 respectively.

The Family of Henry VIII

1.       Herbert Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, p. 363.

2.       Calendar of State Papers, Spain, Volume 5 Part 2, n. 9.