Did the fall never really happen or at least wasn't significant enough to cause a TBI to Henry VIII in January 1536?

I chanced upon this excerpt in Retha M. Warnicke's “Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485–1547” questioning Henry's fall in January 1536. Here's the extract:

“The dispatches of the Imperial and French agents concerning Anne Boleyn’s misfortunes in 1536 are almost as contradictory as are the letters of the Spanish diplomats about Elizabeth of York’s queenship.

In 1972, E. W. Ives, relying on the dispatches of Chapuys, an avowed enemy of Anne, claimed that Cromwell deserted her reformed faction and took charge of a conservative faction against her because she opposed his diplomatic policies. In his 2004 biography, Ives added that Cromwell also moved against her because of her negative views about the dissolution of the monasteries.

Meanwhile, in articles published in the 1990s, G. W. Bernard, who expressed concerns that the factional theory had denied Henry mastery of his court, concluded that Anne had committed adultery with the five accused men who subsequently suffered execution. Bernard further wondered why Cromwell had confided only in Chapuys and no other ambassador.

Later, in his 2009 book, Bernard cited a poem by Lancelot de Carle, secretary to the French resident, Antoine de Castelnau, bishop of Tarbes. Having just arrived in England that spring, Carle had little time to unearth sensitive information about the court. Indeed, in the poem, completed in June 1536, Carle admitted only that he had versified the rumors circulating about Anne and her alleged lovers. In his book, Bernard amended his earlier assessments about the men’s guilt, claiming the poet was right about Mark Smeaton, Henry Norris, and Sir Francis Weston but incorrect about Anne’s brother, George, Viscount Rochford, and William Brereton.

A more scholarly approach to discussing these events is to acknowledge that the poet lacked inside information about the court and that Henry’s councilors, especially Cromwell, deliberately fed falsehoods to Chapuys. In fact, almost nothing in Chapuys’s 1536 dispatches written before April can be corroborated except that Jane Seymour attracted Henry’s attention at Greenwich and that Anne miscarried there. In modern accounts, scholars have not adopted a consistent methodology for interpreting Chapuys’ gossipy statements, partly because corroborative evidence concerning the events at court is not extant.

His report, for example, that Anne’s miscarriage possibly resulted from her having heard about the heavy fall of both the king and his horse while jousting on January 24, a day of the month that is usually identified as the eve of the third anniversary of their royal marriage, has not won widespread acceptance, perhaps because Chapuys also asserted that she did not deliver the fetus until 5 days later, on January 29. Most experts also do not, unlike early modern people, believe that a clear link exists between frights and miscarriages. The king himself, however, validated this folklore, when, as noted in Chap. 4, he worried that the pregnant Jane might miscarry if she took “a fright at some sudden displeasant rumors and bruits.”

Even so, it is also interesting that modern studies almost unanimously credit the rumor that the 44-year-old king fell while competing in a tournament even though none of his contemporaries reported having witnessed a Greenwich competition in January 1536. Charles Wriothesley, the Windsor herald, who resided in London, referred to the fall in a vague way: “It was said she took a fright, for the king ran that time at the ring and had a fall from his horse, but he had no hurt; and she took such a fright withal that it caused her to fall in travail.” He also dated the miscarriage the third day before the feast of Candlemas Day, surely January 30. That he introduced the incident as “it was said” and gave no specific date for it means that he did not witness the fall; he also provided somewhat different details than those that Chapuys had heard at his London embassy.

As noted above, Chapuys claimed that both the king and his horse took a heavy fall; indicated a different war game, jousting; and placed her miscarriage on January 29, a date revealed to him by Cromwell. It is interesting, given the importance of coinciding dates in early modern Europe, that the days Chapuys gave for the king’s fall and her miscarriage placed his accident on the eve of their likely third wedding anniversary and her tragedy on the day of Katherine’s funeral. Equally interesting is the information in Edward Hall’s chronicle, which Peter Herman determined was to a large extent based on other written sources.

In fact, from the mid-1530s, Hall left only notes and documents that his printer, Richard Grafton, drew together to complete his narrative, and to which the printer might have added some material. The chronicle not only dates Anne’s miscarriage in early February but it also lacks information about the king’s fall. The last competition in which it reports that Henry performed occurred on March 5, 1527, when he was 35 years old. Nine years later, in January 1536, the chronicle identifies no war game, either jousting or running at the ring. Since both Hall, a member of the Reformation Parliament, and Grafton lived in London, it seems odd that they would not have heard any rumors about the king’s accident.

It also seems improbable that Henry could have taken such a heavy fall without someone like an agent of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, who nosed around the court at Greenwich, mentioning it. After May 1540, Henry appeared to have lost interest even in observing the competitions, perhaps because of his age and health. Indeed, as early as April 1532, he had begun to consider his aging status. At that time, he informed Parliament, “For I am… 41 years old, at which age the lust of man is not so quick, as in lusty youth.”

As will be explained in Chap. 7, many early modern individuals believed that sometime in their forties, they had reached old age. It is therefore unlikely that the king participated in a tournament in 1536. If so, what other falsehoods might scholars someday find in Chapuys’ dispatches?

Cromwell probably revealed a plot against Anne to Chapuys because he wished to discover what he knew about the miscarriage. Almost daily, Chapuys corresponded with Mary, who lived in the household of her half-sister, Elizabeth, whose governess was Anne Shelton, the queen’s paternal aunt. Before February 17, Mary, who corresponded with him frequently, was probably the informant who alerted him that her governess and her relatives had interrogated one of Mary’s most “familiar” maids as to what she knew about the miscarriage. It is also important to note that while Chapuys seems to have validated Cromwell’s claim of having political differences with Anne, the ambassador still believed that she was guilty, calling her a putain (whore) as well as a concubine, and blaming her, not the king, for Katherine’s marital troubles.

That she miscarried a deformed fetus cannot be proved by extant documentation, as Henry would have had the vital evidence suppressed. Later, Cromwell informed Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, that the information obtained about her had been so abominable that “a great part” of it was “never given in evidence but clearly kept secret.”

Indeed, he or other councilors probably deliberately destroyed it. The statements of the female witnesses who were present in Anne’s privy chamber when she miscarried, unlike those of Katherine Howard’s servants, who testified about her premarital sexual experiences, are not now available.”