The Boleyns were wealthy merchants of London, of which one of them had been Lord-Mayor, but Anne's mother was of noble blood, being daughter and co-heir of the Earl of Ormonde,[533] and it is a curious fact that all of Henry's wives could trace their descent from Edward I.[534] Anne's age is uncertain, but she is generally believed to have (p. 188) been born in 1507.[535] Attempts have been made to date her influence over the King by the royal favours bestowed on her father, Sir Thomas, afterwards Viscount Rochford and Earl of Wiltshire, but, as these favours flowed in a fairly regular stream from the beginning of the reign, as Sir Thomas's services were at least a colourable excuse for them, and as his other daughter Mary was Henry's mistress before he fell in love with Anne, these grants are not a very substantial ground upon which to build. Of Anne herself little is known except that, about 1519, she was sent as maid of honour to the French Queen, Claude; five years before, her sister Mary had accompanied Mary Tudor in a similar capacity on her marriage with Louis XII.[536] In 1522, when war with France was on the eve of breaking out, Anne was recalled to the English Court,[537] where she took part in revels and love-intrigues. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, although a married man, sued for her favours;[538] Henry, Lord Percy made her more honest proposals, but was compelled to desist by the King himself, who (p. 189) had arranged for her marriage with Piers Butler, son of the Earl of Ormond, as a means to end the feud between the Butler and the Boleyn families.
[Footnote 533: See Friedmann's _Anne Boleyn_, 2 vols., 1884, and articles on the Boleyn family in _D.N.B._, vol. v.]
[Footnote 534: See George Fisher, _Key to the History of England_, Table xvii.; _Gentleman's Magazine_, May, 1829.]
[Footnote 535: Henry would then be fifteen, yet a fable was invented and often repeated that Henry VIII. was Anne Boleyn's father. Nicholas Sanders, whose _De Origine ac Progressu Schismatis Anglicani_ became the basis of Roman Catholic histories of the English Reformation, gave currency to the story; and some modern writers prefer Sanders' veracity to Foxe's.]
[Footnote 536: The error that it was Anne who accompanied Mary Tudor in 1514 was exposed by Brewer more than forty years ago, but it still lingers and was repeated with innumerable others in the Catalogue of the New Gallery Portrait Exhibition of 1902.]