There were five women including Lady Kingston who were originally with her when she was first arrested. Shelton, Coffin, Stoner, Boleyn and Kingston. None of them were young, none of them were very fond of Anne, (so it is said) and they were there to spy on her.

Denney claims that Margaret Wyatt was there with Anne. There are no names given as to which ladies were with Anne during her final days. We only know the names of the original five ladies.
There is no reference anywhere that Henry relented after the trial and allowed Anne her choice of attendants, Nor is there reference that Cromwell changed the women. Not all accounts say the four who attended Anne at the end were young. Ives’ says she was accompanied to the scaffold by her “four wardresses.”
I have read (and cannot tell you off the top of my head who it is who wrote it. Denney maybe?), that twelve year old Katherine Carey was there. I hope she wasn’t there. That is too damn young to watch an aunt die in such a horrible manner. In this era or in any era. Weir says there is no mention of Katherine at court until 1540.

If these four women (I don’t count Kingston as anything more than a spy for her husband) were with her throughout her incarceration and trial, then maybe they did eventually sympathize with her. Two of these women were her aunts. They must have felt something in the end besides contempt. After the trial, if it was the same women, they would have seen Anne’s strength and her conviction. Something that is never mentioned that these women would have seen is the anguish she felt after the death of her brother and the other four men. They would have seen and heard her swear not once but twice, before and after she took the host, that she was innocent. They would have seen her praying all night. They could have eventually come around to sympathize with Anne as they watched her grapple with the horror of what was happening to her and the fact that she was handling it in such a brave manner. Anne’s actions may have swayed their opinion of her in the end.

Sharon said

Denney claims that Margaret Wyatt was there with Anne. There are no names given as to which ladies were with Anne during her final days. We only know the names of the original five ladies.
There is no reference anywhere that Henry relented after the trial and allowed Anne her choice of attendants, Nor is there reference that Cromwell changed the women. Not all accounts say the four who attended Anne at the end were young. Ives’ says she was accompanied to the scaffold by her “four wardresses.”
I have read (and cannot tell you off the top of my head who it is who wrote it. Denney maybe?), that twelve year old Katherine Carey was there. I hope she wasn’t there. That is too damn young to watch an aunt die in such a horrible manner. In this era or in any era. Weir says there is no mention of Katherine at court until 1540.

Fiction tends to have Margaret Wyatt, Margeret and Mary Shelton and an un-named lady which allows for the writer to place her/his heroine as part of the plot.

eta…sometimes it’s Mary Wyatt., Margaret Wyatt and Margaret Shelton along with the un-named lady.

Starkey says that the ladies were the four who had attended Anne during her stay in the Tower( Six Wives pp582) but doesn’t give names..

I haven’t got any of my other books at hand…tidying up again..I’m heading to bed but I’ll look up tomorrow..

Mariette,
Last night I looked in Denney’s book and there it was. She said that Anne gave Margaret a book of psalms on the scaffold. She doesn’t mention other names. I try to stay away from her book. Way too soapy.
We seem to have pretty much the same books.
Yes, fiction writers always have the women Anne loved with her at her death. It makes for good reading, and I would certainly like to believe that she had friends with her at the end, but the majority of historians leave us with little hope of that. They just don’t know.

I’m pretty certain that Lady Kingston would have been with her, after all she would have been with her from the time Anne was taken to the tower.
Did Anne have a preist with her? I am sure I’ve heard the name Matthew Parker in connection with Anne somewhere along the line.

Weir also says in The Lady in the Tower, “In fact, there is no evidence in any contemporary source to support the claim that Margaret Wyatt was one of them and accompanied Anne to the scaffold.” page 276
She states that in the 18th century, Thomas Grey copied a life of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder from one of the unpublished Harleian manuscripts. In that it was claimed that Margaret did attend Anne at her execution.
I think John Skip, who served as her almoner, was with Anne in the Tower. He heard her swear her innocence in front of Kingston on the 18th.
Six days before her arrest, Anne asked Matthew Parker to care for Elizabeth if something should happen to her. He went on to serve Elizabeth as the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Oh I think Kingston was there, I just think she was continuing to spy right to the end. So I don’t count her as one of Anne’s ladies. Petty, I know!

I know Lady Jane Grey had the Catholic priest Feckenham with her on the scaffold while her husband Guildford Dudley had no priest ( The sisters who would be Queen ..Leander de Lisle p 150-51)

I guess I was expecting all of these kind of exectutions to have a priest on hand.

It’s possible that Henry was afraid of what Anne would say if she had a priest present. Yes I know that whatever was said between the confessee, and the confesser was sacrosanct, but Henry couldn’t have a preist running about who may have known some dark secret about him, that the priest may inadvertely bleat to others. It’s very possible of course that Anne simply didn’t want a priest with her.