Anne Boleyn’s Sixth Finger
We’ve all heard the story, though Wikipedia dismisses it:
Nicholas Sander, a Catholic recusant born c. 1530, was committed to deposing Elizabeth I and re-establishing Catholicism in England. In his De Origine ac Progressu schismatis Anglicani (The Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism), published in 1585, he was the first to write that Anne had six fingers. Since physical deformities were generally interpreted as a sign of evil, it is unlikely that Anne Boleyn would have gained Henry’s romantic attention had she had any. Upon exhumation in 1876, no abnormalities were discovered. Her frame was described as delicate, approximately 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m), “the hand and feet bones indicated delicate and well-shaped hands and feet, with tapering fingers and a narrow foot”
I was curious, so looked up the original. Here’s the relevant passage:
From this you can see that Anne is described as ‘taller’, proceriore, in her bodily stature — in this case, taller than her sister (with whom Henry also had an affair) which, if Anne was only 5'3", would make sis pretty tiny. Black hair, oblong face, complexion somewhat yellow. You can also see that the sixth finger was only on her right hand, and that she wasn’t born with it, but rather that it grew after her birth: in dextra manu sextus agnascebatur digitus — agnascor means ‘I develop; I grow later’. Sander also says Anne had a goiter on her neck: sub mento etiam succrescebat turgidum nescio quid, ‘I do not know what caused the turgidum to grow under her chin’ (a turgidum is anything swollen, inflated, distended).
Cuius deformitatis tegendae causa, tam ipsa, quam illius imitationem, reliquae regiae ancillae, collu et pectoris superiota, quae ante nuda gestabant, operire coeperunt.
In order to cover her deformity, both she and all the royal maids in imitation began to cover the upper part of their necks and breasts, which they had previously worn naked.
I know what you’re thinking: if Anne was so deformed, why did Henry fall for her so hard? Well Sander has an answer:
Reliqua corporis proportio pulchrior videbatur, maxima venustas in labiis, in facetiis, in saltandi et fidibus ludendi peritia, Denique in vestitu, quem quotidie et novum excogitaviut et elegantissimum gessit, omnium aulicorum in ea re exemplar et speculum.
The rest of her body seemed only more beautiful in proportion [to these deformities], with her lips displaying the greatest charm, especially when she laughed, not to mention her skill at dancing and at play, and most of all her clothing, which she devised herself, changing her outfits every day and wearing them most elegantly, the model and mirror of all courtiers.
What do we make of this? We could, as Wikipedia does (quoting various eminent historians of the Tudor period), simply dismiss it. Sander’s line is: Anne seduced Henry away from the True Church, so she must be a monster. If she’s a monster she must look like a monster — six fingers, goiter-neck. Sander was six when Boleyn was beheaded, so his is not an eye-witness report. Then again it doesn’t seem to me outwith the realm of possibility. Classic polydactyly happens during gestation, which is to say people are born with extra fingers; they don’t tend to grow them after birth. But what counts as an ‘extra finger’ varies: ‘the extra digit is usually a small piece of soft tissue that can be removed. Occasionally it contains bone without joints; rarely it may be a complete functioning digit.’ It’s certainly physiologically possible that Anne developed a growth on her right hand later in life, soft tissue of some kind. It could have been a flap of skin, or some benign tumour, or other growth. It’s also possible that Tudor surgeons excised this. The exhumation in 1876 would reveal only skeletal abnormalities, not soft-tissue ones. And as for the argument that Henry could not possibly have fallen in love, or lust, with a woman who was in any way physically unusual or ‘deformed’ — that seems to me, simply, to misunderstand the way male desire works.
