Miniature Whistle Pendant and Anne Boleyn

Miniature Whistle Pendant - possibly a gift from Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

By family tradition, Henry VIII’s first gift to Anne Boleyn was a gold and enamel ‘pendant in the form of a pistol, chased with scrolling foliage’ (Starkey, 1991, p. 115).

A snake is entwined around the barrel and it contains ‘a set of tooth and ear picks, with spear, scythe and spatula shaped blades’ (Starkey, 2003, p.11).

The whistles were designed like pieces of jewellery and used to summon servants and hounds (Starkey, 2003, p.11). In this portrait of Nicholas Bacon we see him wearing one shaped like a dragon.

Sir Nicholas Bacon, 1579.

These devices were sewn onto the King’s masque costumes in large quantities. In September 1510, Robert Amadas was paid £266 for ‘wreaths, hearts and roses of fine gold’; of which many were ‘lost off the King’s back’, stolen or ‘given away at his pleasure.’ (Starkey, 1991, p. 115)

A separate tradition has Anne Boleyn giving this pendant to a Captain Gwyn, officer of the guard, who supposedly escorted her to the scaffold on the morning of her execution. She is said to have given this to him in acknowledgement of his ‘respectful conduct’ and told him that it had been the King’s first gift to her and ‘that a serpent formed part of the device, and a serpent the giver had proved to her.’ (Weir, p. 265)

According to Weir, Agnes Strickland discovered that the Gwyn family still owned the trinket in the 1840s, however Weir doubts the authenticity of the tale.

Professor Ives in The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn echoes these sentiments,

‘There is no contemporary record of Anne giving gifts on the scaffold, which must cast doubt on the pendant supposedly given to a Captain Gwyn’ (p. 407).

Apart from there being no contemporary record, one must seriously question whether Anne would have so publicly criticised the King knowing that this would seriously jeopardise the safety of those that would be left behind – most importantly, her two year old daughter Elizabeth.

Furthermore, it was simply not in keeping with Tudor scaffold etiquette. When considering how Anne could have gone to her death without protesting her innocence, instead acquiescing in such injustice, Ives points out,

‘Convention demanded it; religion demanded it, and it would be Elizabeth who would suffer from the luxury of defying the king and his supposed justice.’ (p. 358).

Anne Boleyn’s scaffold speech makes the pendant tale all the more unlikely,

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, according to the law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I come here only to die, and thus to yield myself humbly to the will of the King, my lord. And if, in my life, I did ever offend the King’s Grace, surely with my death I do now atone. I come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught I say in my defence doth not appertain to you. I pray and beseech you all, good friends, to pray for the life of the King, my sovereign lord and yours, who is one of the best princes on the face of the earth, who has always treated me so well that better could not be, whereof I submit to death with good will, humbly asking pardon of all the world. If any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best. Thus I take my leave of the world, and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. Oh Lord, have mercy on me! To God I commend my soul.

The pendant is now housed in the British Galleries in room 58E of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.