Elizabeth Boleyn is one of the most shadowy and silent figures in the dramatic downfall of Anne Boleyn in 1536. As the mother of a queen accused of adultery, incest, and treason, Elizabeth Boleyn stood at the heart of a scandal that rocked the Tudor court—but left behind almost no trace. While her daughter Anne and son George were arrested, tried, and executed, Elizabeth’s actions remain a mystery.
Unlike the men in her family who played visible roles in the events, Elizabeth Boleyn disappeared from the historical record just when the storm hit. What happened to her? Why did she remain silent? And what can her absence tell us about the role of women—and mothers—at the Tudor court?
Transcript of What Happened to Anne Boleyn’s Mother? The Forgotten Fallout of 1536
Today, we are going to talk about how Anne Boleyn’s family—her mother and her father—reacted to her arrest and downfall. This was something that someone recently asked about in a comment on one of my videos, wondering: what was her mother doing? Because we don’t really hear much about that.
On the 2nd of May, 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested at Greenwich and taken by barge along the Thames to the Tower of London. She would never leave it. As the king’s men moved swiftly to accuse her of adultery, incest, and treason, the court was buzzing with fear and whispers.
Her brother George was arrested that same day. Her father, Thomas Boleyn, kept his head down. But what about her mother? While all the spotlight blazed on Anne’s downfall, Elizabeth Howard Boleyn remained almost entirely in the shadows—silent, invisible, and to this day, still a mystery.
Elizabeth Howard came from one of the most powerful families in England. She was the daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Duke of Norfolk, and the sister of the third Duke, who would later preside over Anne’s trial. That’s got to make your Thanksgiving dinner a little messy, huh?
She married Thomas Boleyn in the 1490s—a union that likely served both ambition and alliance. Together, they had at least five children, two of whom—Anne and George—would one day lose their lives to the executioner’s axe.
As her daughter rose in and fell from Henry VIII’s affections, Elizabeth’s household became a center of political gravity. She was at court during Anne’s years as maid-of-honour to Queen Katherine, and later as Henry’s mistress, and then his wife.
There’s every reason to believe that Elizabeth was deeply enmeshed in court life, especially in managing her daughters’ reputations. When Henry was courting Anne, Elizabeth likely acted as chaperone. She was definitely not just a passive bystander—until 1536, when she all but vanishes from the historical record.
Here’s what makes Elizabeth Howard Boleyn so mysterious—so haunting: we don’t actually know what she did when her daughter was arrested. There are no surviving letters, no mention of her trying to visit Anne in the Tower, no records of pleas for mercy or even expressions of grief.
For a woman whose daughter was queen, and then accused of incest with her own brother, who was also that woman’s son, obviously, the silence is deafening. Why the silence? Some historians suggest that Elizabeth may have been seriously ill by that point. Others think she stayed away deliberately—either out of political caution or despair.
As a woman, she may not have had the power to intervene, and after all the arrests, the Boleyn name was toxic. Perhaps she withdrew to protect herself. Perhaps she was just too devastated to do anything.
But we do have Anne’s own words. In one account of her final days, she is said to have cried out, “Oh, my poor mother, thou wilt die with sorrow.” That brief, anguished line shows that Anne knew her mother was suffering—and feared that the disgrace would break her. Maybe it did.
While Elizabeth stayed silent—or was silenced—the men in her family were conspicuously active. Her husband, Thomas Boleyn, did nothing to publicly defend Anne or George. He even took part in the trials of some of the men accused with Anne, though he avoided serving on George’s jury. His lack of any kind of open resistance speaks volumes. Whether out of political calculation or fear, he prioritized self-preservation.
Even more chilling was the role of Elizabeth’s brother, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk. As Lord High Steward, he presided over the trials of Anne and George—and he even announced their sentences. He reportedly wept after George’s condemnation, but he still did the job.
The Howard family had clawed its way to the top, and Norfolk wasn’t about to risk it all for his niece and nephew. Did Elizabeth argue with him behind closed doors? Did she beg him to stop it? Again—we don’t know.
What about Anne’s older sister? The Boleyns had three surviving children, and the other one was Mary. Well, Mary Boleyn had been largely estranged from the family. By 1536, she had married a commoner, William Stafford, for love—and had been pushed aside as a result. She lived quietly in the countryside and did not return to court during the crisis. There’s no evidence that she visited Anne or attempted to intervene at all.
Other relatives, like the poet Thomas Wyatt—who had once admired Anne and probably had a bit of a romance with her—were caught up in the chaos too. Wyatt was imprisoned briefly. The rest of the Howard-Boleyn network kept their heads down. Because in Tudor politics, blood might be thicker than water—but family ties had their limits.
After the executions of Anne and George, Elizabeth faded from view entirely. She never returned to court, and her name disappears from any royal records. She died less than two years later, in April 1538, at the Boleyn family estate at Hever.
Some sources suggest that she was broken down by grief. Others suspect illness. Her will offers no emotional insights—just practical instructions and bequests. There was no public mourning, no commemorative monument. Like so many women of her time, Elizabeth’s story is written in the spaces between the official records—in what was not said, and what was never preserved.
We’ll probably never know what Elizabeth Boleyn really thought during those weeks in May 1536. Like so many women of her time, her story just drops off the map when things got dangerous. But the silence itself tells us something. She lost two children to the axe, and nobody wrote down her feelings about that.
So we’ll leave it there for now. Basically, when people ask, “What was Anne’s mother doing?”—we don’t know. And that speaks volumes, I think.
Related link:
Claire Ridgway on the Boleyns
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
