it is uncertain when her two siblings were born, but it seems clear that her sister Mary was older than Anne. Mary's children clearly believed their mother was the elder sister. Mary's grandson claimed the Ormonde title in 1596 on the basis that she was the elder daughter, which Elizabeth I accepted. Their brother George was born around 1504. The academic debate about Anne's birth date focuses on two key dates: c. 1501 and c. 1507. Eric Ives, a British historian and legal expert, advocates 1501, while Retha Warnicke, an American scholar who has also written a biography of Anne, prefers 1507. The key piece of surviving written evidence is a letter Anne wrote sometime in 1514. She wrote it in French to her father, who was still living in England while Anne was completing her education at Mechelen, in the Burgundian Netherlands, now Belgium. Ives argues that the style of the letter and its mature handwriting prove that Anne must have been about 13 at the time of its composition, while Warnicke argues that the numerous misspellings and grammar errors show that the letter was written by a child. In Ives's view, this would also be around the minimum age that a girl could be a maid of honour, as Anne was to the regent, Margaret of Austria. This is supported by claims of a chronicler from the late 16th century, who wrote that Anne was 20 when she returned from France. These findings are contested by Warnicke in several books and articles, and the evidence does not conclusively support either date. Two independent contemporary sources support the 1507 date. Author Gareth Russell wrote a summary of the evidence and relates that Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, wrote her memoirs shortly before her death in 1612. The former lady-in-waiting and confidante to Queen Mary I wrote of Anne Boleyn: "She was convicted and condemned and was not yet twenty-nine years of age." William Camden wrote a history of the reign of Elizabeth I and was granted access to the private papers of Lord Burghley and to the state archives. In that history, in the chapter dealing with Elizabeth's early life, he records in the margin that Anne was born in MDVII (1507). Anne's great-great-great-grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies and a knight. One of them, Geoffrey Boleyn, had been a mercer