Reel Heraldry: Anne of the Thousand Days, Part 4

Continuing our look at the heraldry in the 1969 movie Anne of the Thousand Days, we come now to the arms of the Anne of the title, Anne Boleyn (or Bullen).*

There are two places where her arms appear (both times marshaled with those of King Henry VIII), and in these instances, it is easier to see than it was with the arms of Henry's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, that someone did their homework.

First, we get these two images (an establishing shot and a close-up) of these arms on a tapestry behind Henry:

As you can see in the second photo, the embroidered arms are very detailed, showing each of the six quarters (including quarter four, a grand quarter) of Anne's arms.

You can also see her male griffin supporter holding up the sinister side of the shield.

The other scene is one with Anne in bed showing the headboard with Henry's arms impaling hers.

Here, ther arms are fine, but the male griffin supporter has somehow become an heraldic tyger. How they got it correct for the one but not the other I cannot say.

In any event, and as in the previous post on the arms of Queen Katherine of Aragon, here from the Insignia Anglica armorial owned, digitized, and uploaded on-line by the Bavarian State Library, is the impaled arms of Henry and Anne for comparison:

If you compare the arms drawn in the Insignia Anglica and compare them to the two different depictions of the arms from the movie, you can see what a really good job they did. I admit to being very impressed, even with the issue of substituting a tyger for the male griffin supporter on the arms on the headboard of the bed.

* You have to remember that spelling was not regularized back then. While the surname is generally spelled today as Boleyn, you will note that it is also spelled as Bolleyn in the Insignia Anglica, and is often accepted as Bullen today. But even a hundred years after the setting of the movie, you find people spelling names however they heard them. In my own family tree, I have a number of Bigelow ancestors, and while the name is regularized as Bigelow today, I have found spelling variants running the gamut all the way from the very short Biglo all the way up to Biggalough.

And don't even get me started on my Scottish Forbes line! Farrabas to Forbush in just two generations before some descent lines came back to Forbes. To understand some of the variants, you have to remember that Forbes in Scotland is pronounced with two syllables, not one - For-bess - and then allow for my immigrant ancestor pronouncing it with a thick Scottish brogue. Today, here in the States at least, it is pronounce with only one syllable.