Today’s article will be about Anne Boleyn’s animals.

Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII on hunting, scene from The Tudors

Anne had favourite dog named Purkoy. She received him as a gift from Lady Honor Lisle,wife of the Governor of Calais  and became very fond af the animal. Unfortunately little Purkoy had an accident – he fell out of the window.  One of Anne’s ladies-in-waiting (presumably aslo her friend) Margery Horsman wrote to Lady Lisle :

”The queen’s grace setteth much store by a pretty dog, and her grace delighted so much in little Purkoy that after he was dead of a fall there durst nobody tell her grace of it, till it pleased theking’s highness to tell her grace of it.” / The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn, Eric Ives, p. 213/

 Anne was so attached to her favourite dog that no one dared to tell her about the accident, but the king. In her book ‘Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England’s Tragic Queen’ Joanna Denny writes that little Purkoy’s death might not have been an accident ;

”It may be that this was no accident but warning to the Queen, as shown by Chapuys’ sinister description of the King and the Queen’s shock being ‘like dogs falling out of a window’. Such an incident could easily have brought on a miscarriage , which was perhaps the intention” / p. 232/

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