12. MYTH: Elizabeth had six fingers on one of her hands, and she inherited the deformity from her mother, Anne Boleyn
In the years following her execution, rumors that Anne Boleyn had six fingers on one hand started to spread throughout England and beyond. The first reference to this was made by Nicholas Sander in 1530. And it soon gained currency across the continent, as did similar rumors that the second wife of Henry VIII even had three breasts as well as the extra digit. Since she was Anne’s only child, the rumors even went so far as to say that Elizabeth had inherited her mother’s physical deformities but managed to hide them from the public and even from those closest to her, for instance by refusing to get married.
All serious historians refute such allegations. Notably, Sander, who was the first to mention the ‘six fingers’ thing was a Catholic and was intent on slandering the Protestant Anne Boleyn. Since physical deformities were widely assumed to be a sign of evil, this would have been an effective line of attack – as it would have been for Elizabeth. However, there’s no evidence to suggest that either Anne or Elizabeth had any extra fingers or breasts. What’s more, it’s highly unlikely Henry VIII would have taken Anne as his wife is she wasn’t conventionally attractive – after all, this was a monarch who had his marriage to his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, annulled on the grounds that he found her too ugly to consummate the union.