Anne Gainsford

Anne Gainsford, Lady Zouche (died before 16 July 1548) was a close friend and lady-in-waiting to Queen consort Anne Boleyn.

She was in the household of Anne Boleyn, as early as 1528 before the latter became the second wife of Henry VIII of England five years later. She served Anne Boleyn before and after her own marriage to Sir George Zouche of Codnor. According to one source, It was Anne to whom Anne Boleyn lent her proscribed copy of William Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man. After it was stolen in jest by her bethrothed, George Zouche, it fell into the hands of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. After its return, Anne Boleyn persuaded the King to read the book. however, it's more likely to be that of Mary Zouche, another lady-in-waiting. which was the popular diminutive of the name Anne in the 16th century.

In 1528, according to biographer George Wyatt, an incident occurred at Court in which Anne Boleyn lent Anne her copy of William Tyndale's The Obedience of a Christian Man, a book that Cardinal Wolsey had proscribed. When it was taken from her hands in jest by her betrothed Sir George Zouche, it was later discovered in the latter's possession by Richard Sampson, Dean of the Chapel Royal, who promptly took it to his master, Cardinal Wolsey. When Anne Boleyn was informed of this, instead of being angry with Anne Gainsford for allowing it to fall into Wolsey's hands, she remarked that it would be "the dearest book that ever dean or cardinal took away", John Zouch of Codnor Margaret Zouch, who married Augustine Babington of Normanton (died 1559). George Zouch William Zouch Lucy, Frances, Anne, and Audrey.

At the end of the 16th century, George Wyatt, grandson of poet Sir Thomas Wyatt, and one of Anne Boleyn's first biographers, compiled his work largely from the reminiscences of one of Anne Boleyn's serving women. Samuel Weller Singer, the nineteenth-century editor of Wyatt’s work, identified the lady as Anne Gainsford. Historians accepted Weller Singer’s erroneous identification of “Nan” as Anne Gainsford even though, in the words of Anne Boleyn’s most prominent biographer Eric Ives, “given such links, the volume of material Wyatt recorded is disappointing”. Research of Anne Boleyn's female household by Sylvia Barbara Soberton proves that Weller Singer was wrong in his identification of Wyatt's informant because Anne Gainsford died before George Wyatt was even born. In his last will dating to 16 July 1548, George Zouche, Gainsford’s husband, made it clear that he had remarried since he mentioned “Elleyn now my well-beloved wife”. Sir George Wyatt was born c. 1553, some five years after George Zouche’s last will was written. Sylvia Barbara Soberton argues that Weller Singer’s identification of the maid serving Anne Boleyn as Anne Gainsford was influenced by Wyatt’s description of an incident with a woman of Anne’s household reading a banned book that ended up on Cardinal Wolsey’s desk. This woman was identified as Anne Gainsford by John Louth, Archdeacon of Nottingham, whose reminiscences were published in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. By the time Weller Singer edited and published Wyatt’s work, Louth’s account of Anne Gainsford, George Zouch and Anne Boleyn reading William Tyndale was already well known. Weller Singer included Louth’s reminiscences in his edition of Wyatt’s biography. Soberton argues that the two book incidents were very similar, but the chronology in Wyatt’s account is muddled; he describes that it happened following Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s wedding in January 1533 and has Wolsey interrogating the maid’s suitor, though Wolsey died three years earlier.