Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (20 page)

Jane, who had always delighted in masques and dancing, was very much at home with her current lifestyle. It was not all dalliance—many peaceful hours were given over to the serious business of embroidery and sewing—but to sit and work amid the tapestries and luxurious furnishings of Anne’s apartments was hardly taxing. She could not complain. By repute, Anne was a good needlewoman and expected high standards of craftsmanship from her ladies. Jane could take pride in helping to produce the “shirts and smocks for the poor,” which, according to Wyatt’s grandson, Anne insisted her “maids and those about her” turn out every day and which were “rich and precious” in God’s eyes.

And what was important in the eyes of God was, as Jane understood, fundamental to the Boleyns. Those early days, when Henry had felt so strongly about Luther’s doctrines that he had once written a book against them, earning himself the title of Defender of the Faith in the process, were long gone. So was his subservience to the pope. While still no Lutheran, the king was Supreme Head of the Church, a title that Parliament would confirm. It was wise to accept that. Jane, brought up with a Latin Bible, no doubt felt at ease when Anne studied the exquisitely illustrated fifteenth-century Book of Hours she had owned before her fate became linked to that of the king. But she also grew used to seeing her mistress poring intently over the superbly bound edition of a translation of the sacred text into French by Lefèvre d’Etaples that she and Henry shared and that had their initials engraved in gold on the cover. Or at least she did once the shock of seeing it had worn off. To possess a copy of the Bible in any language other than Latin had often been a shortcut to the stake when Jane was a girl. Now, it would be just a matter of time before the once-forbidden work was readily available in English, and with the king’s permission. It was all most confusing but Jane’s world was changing, and the family into which she had married were busily promoting that change. She knew that.

She also knew that George and Anne, together with Thomas, were marching further along a dangerous road. Even the clerics they patronized, men like Hugh Latimer, Thomas Cranmer, John Skip, William Barlow, and Matthew Parker, were all of avant-garde opinions. Around brother and sister particularly was a highly charged, exhilarating atmosphere as they debated and argued and deliberated on questions of faith, on what was wrong with the old ways and right with the new, and on how the gospel must be brought to everyone. Chapuys once said that George could never “refrain” from entering into Lutheran discussions whenever he saw him. It was probably George who gave Anne
The Ecclesiaste,
bound in black velvet and sporting the royal emblems in brass and enamel roundels. He was also an advocate of a further book, based on a set of gospel readings and epistles gathered by Lefèvre d’Etaples, one for each week of the year. Every passage is accompanied by a meaningful essay, which George translated from French into English. He then gave the entire volume, complete with an affectionate and fulsome dedication, to his sister. George inscribed it for her too, sending greetings from her “most loving and friendly brother.” That, though, was but one of several books and manuscripts that Jane saw in the queen’s privy apartments, some of outstanding beauty, most with bindings that were themselves works of art, and many of a tone that risked censure with the more conservative members of the court. What Jane really thought about this aspect of the life she led, we will never know; she kept her counsel.

Safer by far was to give serious consideration to the tricky business of New Year’s gifts, always a minor but obligatory distraction for those in Henry’s circle. Anne was lucky: Henry would provide hers and Cromwell was on hand to remind him to actually pay in case it slipped his mind. Jane was lucky too, for among Anne’s gifts for 1534 were “palfreys and saddles for her ladies.” So another horse joined Jane’s stable, this one with a finely worked saddle. Proximity to royalty remained profitable. It also brought responsibilities. Henry took a particular interest in what he was given, frequently accepting his presents personally and sometimes with a gracious comment, but with Brian Tuke, treasurer of the chamber, sitting in the background calmly “penning all things that were presented” (and no doubt noting their value). Fully aware of the system, Jane’s offering to Henry was a shirt with silver decoration on the collar. Then, as now, a shirt was always safe. Not, of course, that it could compete in any way with Anne’s gift to her husband. She gave him a gilt basin with a fountain inside it, water issuing from the nipples of the three naked women standing at the fountain’s base. Since the entire item was studded with rubies, pearls, and diamonds, Tuke had a good deal to write down. No one else could match that, but for any courtier short of ideas and who did not want to follow Jane and resort to a shirt, Henry’s love for his animals offered other possibilities: dog collars were always most welcome, particularly if they were of silver gilt or gold damask, like those from the Earl of Huntingdon or Lady Bryan.

These few months of Anne’s latest pregnancy were spent largely around London, often at Greenwich or at Westminster. When they were in London, Jane and George already had rooms at York Place, and could always stay at Durham House if they wanted a change, but George also had his own quarters inside the palace at Greenwich. This was not out of the ordinary—he did need to be always on hand—but for Henry to pay for various alterations to courtiers’ rooms was extremely rare and the king paid for the installation of a mullioned window for George at Greenwich. Just as no expense was too great for Anne’s comfort, the same was true for her brother, and as most royal residences had plenty of distractions, there would have been no excuse to be bored. Hunting was a perennial interest, especially for Henry, and there were sometimes opportunities for George to fly his rather expensive hawks, a pastime his sister relished as well. Anne liked archery too, but while Henry had bought her bows in the past, it was hardly an advisable activity for the woman carrying his son. Jane, though, could have taken part. Then there was bowling, at which both George and his father were expert, although Anne’s condition again made her a spectator not a participant. Still, they could all enjoy the excitement of the cockfights held in the newly built cockpit at Greenwich, and bet on the result, and they could do so with a perfect view of the action from their seats in the stands around the arena.

So, superficially at least, the days passed very easily. But as Jane could see, life for Anne was not trouble free. The continued defiance of Katherine and Mary was a definite thorn in Boleyn flesh. No matter how much she was coerced and despite the pressure put upon her servants, the former queen still refused to acknowledge her redefined rank of princess dowager, which she saw as a wrongful and wicked demotion. Her scornful replies to such demands were faithfully conveyed to Charles by an admiring Chapuys. “Knowing for certain that she is the true and legitimate wife of the king,” he reported, “she will never as long as she lives, on any consideration, take any other title but that of queen, and, if addressed by any other will not answer to it.” She would not “consent to damn her soul, or that of the king, her lord and husband” for “a thousand deaths.” It was an impasse. It might be perilous as well. Chapuys was truly anxious about poison, as was Katherine herself. “The little food she takes in this time of tribulation is prepared by her maids-in-waiting within her own bedroom,” he wrote.

Mary was just as intractable. Neither Henry nor Anne would allow her to remain a princess: only Elizabeth was that. And soon there would be a brother to join her in the royal nursery, his right to the throne confirmed by the recent Act of Succession hurriedly pushed through Parliament and requiring an oath of acceptance from everyone. Woe betide anyone who refused to affirm that. Indeed, among those in prison for such a refusal were Sir Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher. That, at least, was satisfying for the Boleyns, especially when Clement finally stirred himself to declare in favor of Katherine. Almost immediately after Elizabeth was born, Henry ordered that Mary should be notified that her household and allowance were to be reduced to correspond with her adjusted status. However, to persuade Mary to become “Lady Mary” proved well-nigh impossible; Jane’s sister-in-law was not the only determined female in the royal family.

Jane knew both Katherine and Mary well. She had grown up with Katherine as queen. She had seen her resplendent at Henry’s side at the Field of Cloth of Gold and at so many court celebrations or state occasions, as she fulfilled her role as consort with the graciousness and majesty so natural in a daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Like everyone else, Jane was aware of the queen’s raw anguish when she failed to give her husband the male heir he so craved. Herself a childless woman, Jane could empathize only too well. She had watched Mary develop from a little girl, who danced so prettily at court, worked at her studies, and was the pride of both her parents, into the young teenager whose world was suddenly destroyed and who was separated from the mother she loved. Yet any sympathies Jane had for Katherine or for Mary had to be suppressed. Her first loyalty had to lie with her husband and the family into which she had married. She had cast her lot in with them and had been very willing to accept the prizes that had resulted. Perhaps, though, she felt little pleasure at the harsh treatment meted out to the former queen and her daughter.

Harsh treatment there certainly was. Katherine was moved from castle to castle, from country house to country house, anywhere but near the court or near Mary. It was upon Mary that Anne’s attention particularly fell, and she was supported by George and Thomas, quick to realize how dangerous Mary was to Boleyn ambition. Henry, furious that anyone, let alone his own child, could even contemplate disobedience to his legitimate orders, was fierce in his support. “She is my death and I am hers,” Anne was reputed to have said about Mary, “so I will take care that she shall not laugh at me after my death.” As so often in the past, the Boleyns worked together. They began by securing the appointment of Lady Anne Shelton, Thomas’s sister, to replace the decidedly partisan Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, as Mary’s governess. The Countess of Salisbury, once a confidante of Katherine, had never liked Anne; it was better for the Boleyns if Mary was removed from her influence. From now onward, there would be a Boleyn in constant attendance upon the former princess. For Jane, Lady Shelton’s was another familiar face: her sister, Margaret Parker, was married to Lady Shelton’s son and would bear him five children, and Lady Shelton’s husband, Sir John, was a friend of Jane’s father. Chatting about ordinary domestic family matters, should she and Jane meet, would provide a welcome relief for the new and frequently harassed governess. Coping with the recalcitrant Mary, now seventeen, was no easy task.

No one really knew how best to handle the ex-princess. Jane would have heard many a discussion among George, Thomas, and Anne on the vexed subject. George and Anne were keen to press as hard as possible to force Mary to conform to the new Boleyn regime. Together with Norfolk, George castigated Lady Shelton, already doing her best to control Mary, for being too lenient. “She ought to deal with her,” they said, “as a regular bastard that she was.” An exasperated Anne suggested similar methods. If Mary persisted in calling herself a princess, Lady Shelton should “box her ears as a cursed bastard,” she ordered. Fortunately for Mary, Lady Shelton, while quite willing to be a reliable spy, was not wantonly vindictive or cruel and was prepared to treat her only with “respect and honor.”

Because of her own privileged position, Jane knew what was happening to Mary, but so did the rest of the court, not all of whom were enthusiastic Boleyn supporters. For anyone to take up Mary’s cause openly was suicidal, especially since speaking publicly against Henry’s current marital situation was by now against the law, but mutterings in dark corners were another matter. Even the eagle-eyed Cromwell could not be everywhere. Mary’s humiliation intensified when she was required to join Elizabeth’s household rather than have her own, which meant that Anne’s child always took precedence as the only true, legitimate princess. Stories spread of Mary’s evasions to avoid taking second place to her despised half sister. Whenever Elizabeth was carried anywhere publicly, Mary would not “walk by the side of her,” Chapuys informed the emperor. Somehow, she managed to be “in front of her or behind.” News of Mary’s property being confiscated or of the girl’s being bundled into a carriage with Lady Shelton and threatened when the former princess refused to accompany Elizabeth on a move to a new residence shocked many susceptibilities. Maybe even Jane’s.

Whether Jane actually met Mary at this time is unknown but it is quite plausible. Whenever Anne visited Elizabeth, Jane may well have been one of the ladies accompanying her. A glimpse of Mary, then, could easily have occurred. In the early months, at least, Anne hoped that her stepdaughter would see sense. Kindness had once captured a king; it might be worth trying it on a princess. On one journey to Elizabeth, she sent a message to Mary “requesting her to visit and honor her as queen which she was.” If Mary would only do so, Anne promised to plead with Henry on her behalf so that she would regain “the good favor and pleasure of the king, her father” and be “treated as well or perhaps better than she had ever been.” Mary’s tart answer bordered on recklessness. She knew of no other queen than her mother, she said, but “should the king’s mistress…do her the favor she spoke of, and intercede with the king, her father, she would certainly be most grateful to her.” Jane may not have been with Anne when Mary’s reply was received but doubtless she heard her furious response. The queen would, she vowed, “put down that proud Spanish blood” and do her “worst.” It was war. The situation was fraught but Jane’s place had to be with the Boleyns.

In any case, Jane and George benefited considerably from Mary’s disgrace. When the princess was bundled unceremoniously out of the royal palace of Beaulieu in Essex, the house was simply handed over to George. This was an amazing coup. While George had been granted keeper’s rights to the palace before, they were of a much more limited extent than this very special benefaction. It was not a gift, of course, but in the fullness of time anything was possible. The moment he got it, George began to move in his household and some of his furniture. Beaulieu was less than twenty miles from Jane’s family seat at Great Hallingbury, so her new home was not only in an area with which she was familiar, it was also ideally situated for occasional visits to her parents and brother, and since George had recently acquired a comfortable litter, she could do so in considerable style. George was even more delighted. To receive such a prize was a resounding signal of Henry’s approval. But it was symbolic too: the old Ormond residence was in Boleyn hands again. However, it was the old Ormond residence with a significant difference, for Henry had spent about seventeen thousand pounds in a massive building program to upgrade it in accordance with his own exacting standards. The highly experienced William Bolton, prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, who had a great interest in architecture and who had already worked for Wolsey at Hampton Court and on Margaret Beaufort’s tomb in Westminster Abbey, had been entrusted with the work there, so it was bound to be particularly fine. Jane and George really did have a palace to live in, and not one they needed to share. This one was just for them.