Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (36 page)

Mary’s rehabilitation in royal affection, however, was a popular assumption. It was surely simply a matter of time before Mary took her rightful place at her father’s side. Ostensibly the omens were good. Mary had viewed Anne as her chief enemy. Now that she was out of the picture, Mary could see no reason for continued persecution. She wrote several letters to both her father and to Queen Jane, receiving “kind words and encouraging hopes,” although significantly not from the royal couple themselves, that tempted her to believe her troubles were over. She was even able to receive the odd visitor, although that was not to last. It was not long before Lady Shelton, still in her post as lady governess despite her niece’s fall, was ordered to keep her incommunicado. Before Lady Shelton received that instruction, Lord Morley visited Mary at Hunsdon at Whitsun in early June, about three weeks after the executions.

As Hunsdon was only six miles away from Great Hallingbury, a courtesy call was unremarkable, although Jane’s father had not visited the princess at Beaulieu or Hatfield, neither of which were too far for a day’s trip. Plainly, Morley, ever careful where personal security was involved, felt that the fall of the Boleyns had changed the political landscape, as indeed it had, although not quite as much as he seemed to think. Mary and Morley hit it off. A friendship developed that was to last for many years and involve gifts on both sides. Mary even became godmother to Jane’s nephew, and gave fifteen shillings (seventy-five pence) to the baby’s midwife and nurse. Lord Morley had the useful knack of being agreeable to all, of course. He had already sent Cromwell a greyhound “for a gentleman to disport withal,” hoping that the dog would be “the best.” Cromwell so much deserved relaxation, an obsequious Morley wrote, after his “great labors” that he “hourly take for the wealth of many.” A little later, he sent the minister, somewhat appropriately, copies (in Italian) of Machiavelli’s
History of Florence
and
The Prince.
For a man like Morley, approaching Mary was a rational move.

Jane’s father did not go alone that June Sunday. His wife and daughter accompanied him. The daughter’s name is not mentioned in the documents, but since Jane was much too busy trying to sort out her jointure problems, the daughter referred to was far more likely to have been her sister Margaret, who was probably a year or two younger than Jane and was married to John Shelton, Lady Shelton’s son, a staunch Catholic who would later prove his devotion to Mary’s cause. For Margaret to go with her parents and take the opportunity to chat with her parents-in-law was perfectly natural, and the princess came to like her. Mary gave one pound to the midwife and nurse at the christening of the Sheltons’ baby and paid eight shillings for a frontlet as a present to Margaret. For Jane, the wife of a convicted traitor, to call on Mary before the princess’s official reconciliation with the king was the sort of risky move of which she was wary. Once Mary was back in favor, it was to be a different story. Then, being on good terms with the king’s elder daughter was a shrewd move. Watching one’s back was as entrenched in the Parker family as it had been with the Boleyns.

Jane more than likely witnessed the reunion of father and daughter. This, however, took time. Henry did not welcome Mary back with open arms, all memories of her disobedience instantly erased. Before that happened, she would be forced to recognize the invalidity of her mother’s marriage and her own illegitimacy. Rumors of the pressure that was placed on her would have reached Jane’s ears. When Mary refused to accept her mother’s divorce with all its implications, she was viciously abused by Henry’s councilors and told that she was “an unnatural daughter” who deserved to have her head beaten against the wall until it became “as soft as a boiled apple.” Cromwell called her “the most obstinate woman that ever was.” Faced with such merciless treatment, and with the danger to her supporters so great, she finally capitulated.

Acknowledging her father as supreme head of the church and the pope merely as the bishop of Rome, she accepted that her mother’s marriage to Henry was “by God’s law and man’s law incestuous and unlawful.” She begged her father’s pardon for not conceding more quickly: “I do most humbly beseech the King’s Highness, my father, whom I have obstinately and inobediently offended in the denial of the same heretofore, to forgive mine offences therein, and to take me to his great mercy.” As Henry demanded total surrender, complete humiliation, Mary had to go still further. “I will never vary from that confession and submission I made to your Highness in the presence of the Council,” she had to promise. In a state of inner turmoil, finding the stress almost unbearable, a broken Mary pleaded with Chapuys to ask the pope for a dispensation for what she had been compelled to say.

Now that he had his way, Henry could find it in his heart to forgive her. He and Queen Jane went to see the twenty-year-old Mary in July 1536 with a small group of attendants. The reconciliation was highly emotional. Henry was at his most loving and magnanimous. “No father could have behaved better towards his daughter,” a relieved Chapuys told Charles. Queen Jane gave her a diamond ring, Henry gave her money, and immediately she was treated with more respect and reverence. It all boded well for the future, although Chapuys had to backtrack a few days later, when he informed the emperor that “mixed with the sweet food of paternal kindness, there were a few drachmas of gall and bitterness,” which he put down to the assertion of “paternal authority.” Most likely so.

With Mary no longer judged as inferior to Elizabeth, who had also lost her title and her legitimate status, she was able to join the king and queen at court. Jane had no need to distance herself from Mary. An assessment of the current state of the succession suggested that it might indeed be politic to be on good terms with her. All of Henry’s three acknowledged children had been bastardized. Because of his gender, the Duke of Richmond would probably have taken precedence but he died before his eighteenth birthday, possibly from a lung infection. When he had witnessed the swordsman strike Anne’s head from her body, Richmond had little more than two months to live. That left Mary and Elizabeth, unless Queen Jane proved fruitful. Although the king allegedly told Mary that “he was getting old, and feared he would have no children by his present wife,” hope still sprang eternal in the royal breast. Just before Richmond’s early death, Parliament passed a new Act of Succession by which the children of Henry and Queen Jane would inherit, and if there were none, the king could name his own successor. Nonetheless, if the queen really did fail to produce an heir for him, there was always a possibility that Mary would gain the throne after all.

Perhaps it was with this in mind that Jane developed a relationship of a sort with her. The princess was on friendly terms with both the Morleys and the Sheltons, despite Lady Anne Shelton’s tempestuous years as her lady governess, and Sir John Shelton, Lady Anne’s husband, remained in charge of Mary’s household even after it was reorganized by the summer of 1536. Jane needed to make her own way. The Boleyn shield had disintegrated so building bridges was always prudent. Therefore she gave Mary a clock, probably as a New Year’s gift in 1537, although the princess had to pay five shillings to have it mended a few weeks later. A month later, Mary paid just over four pounds for twelve yards of black satin as a present to Jane and gave money to Jane’s servants and to one of her gentlewomen several times over the next few years. Mary and Jane met frequently at court during that time and the payments and gifts show that some kind of bond certainly existed between them, although we do not know whether it was close or simply politeness. Nor, of course, do we really know what Jane had thought about Mary during her own years as a Boleyn wife. She may have felt more innate sympathy for the princess than she had ever dared reveal, although she had been aware that her own true interests depended on Anne’s children ascending the throne one day. Since the chance that little Elizabeth would do so was now remote, maintaining a reasonable discourse with Mary was eminently pragmatic.

Thus Jane settled back into her usual life, albeit with an alternative mistress. In public, Queen Jane lived up to her chosen motto, “Bound to Obey and Serve,” an attitude that gratified her husband, who wanted no more tantrums and interference from a wife. Subservience was a word that had never been in Anne’s vocabulary. Queen Jane appeared to do all the right things; she seemed sweet and kind to everyone. She had even kept her word to Chapuys and had indeed pleaded for Mary, so much so that the king had told her she was being short-sighted and should save her care for the children she might have herself. If she pressed too much, she ran the risk of being “rudely repulsed.” Few can have been more relieved than Queen Jane when Mary’s rustication ended. Relations between the two women were always respectful but affectionate, Mary writing to her as “the Queen’s Grace, my good mother.” The queen had not entirely learned her lesson, however. Conservative in matters of religion, she sank to her knees to beg the king to restore the monasteries, only to be told sharply to get up and not “meddle with his affairs.” Her predecessor had died, Henry warned, “in consequence of meddling too much with state affairs,” a threat that “was enough to frighten a woman who is not very secure,” reported Chapuys.

Perhaps that was why Queen Jane’s sister, Elizabeth, Lady Ughtred, wrote to Cromwell when left in comparative poverty following the death of her husband. When William Carey had fallen victim to the sweat, Mary Carey had written first to her sister and Anne had gone straight to Henry on her behalf. Elizabeth did not approach Queen Jane. Clearly she felt that her sister either would not help her, an interesting reflection on Queen Jane’s studied kindness, or could not, which might illustrate the limited extent of her influence with Henry. Lady Ughtred wanted monastic land—she specified which—so that at least she could secure a house for herself. She had been “driven,” she said, “to be a sojourner” as her living was too poor for her to welcome her friends. Cromwell took the matter in hand, seizing the chance to marry off his own son, Gregory, to the grieving widow. Although Queen Jane’s influence might be weak, he was determined to increase his and a union with the Seymours could be of benefit.

But there were areas in which Queen Jane maintained her authority with a quiet determination that belied her seeming diffidence, nowhere more so than on the vexed question of costume. Jane probably discovered that her wardrobe needed a few alterations to fit in with the queen’s dictates, for the queen had her own style, essentially a contrast to that of the elegant, chic Anne. No more French hoods, with their round shape that framed and flattered the face, were to be worn. Instead the much more severe, and old-fashioned, pointed-gable style was back in vogue, and eagle-eyed women spotted the odd difference in other areas of fashion too. Mr. Skut, Anne’s former dressmaker, found himself in demand, although Honor Lisle was “disappointed” with the outfit he completed for her, which he had promised “should be made like the Queen’s gowns.” Her daughter, Anne Basset, fell afoul of the queen’s antipathy to the French hood. After constant scheming, machinations, and outright bribery, the indefatigable Honor had managed to get her daughter Anne into the privy chamber, only to find that yet more money had to be spent on equipping the girl for her tasks. The queen graciously allowed Anne to “wear out her French apparel” but refused to countenance anything other than the correct headdress. Less than a month later, the queen changed her mind. The “French apparel” would be tolerated no longer. Anne was to have “a gown of black satin, and another of velvet.” She needed one or two bonnets, complete with a band of pearls.

Such restrictions affected Jane as well. Although of a higher rank than Anne Basset, now one of her junior companions in the privy apartments, Jane understood how crucial it was to accede to the queen’s will on every issue. If Queen Jane wanted her ladies to sport the gable headdress, which had also been the favorite of Queen Katherine, then sport it they would. The queen had to be obeyed.

Jane’s life, however, was quite a comfortable one. She was, after all, a viscountess; her rank had not been stripped from her, and that brought privileges. She was expected to have female servants, two above the number her mother could have, but six below that of a duchess. If there was a court procession, she had a set place in the line and so did each of her women. The precise number Jane employed eludes us but she did not have to worry about fending for herself. The hundred pounds she had maneuvered from a smarting Thomas would help pay for it. And as she served the queen, so she was served herself. Jane would have two main meals a day: dinner, which was taken toward midday, and supper in the evening. She would not go short. The menus for each meal, or mess, were carefully selected. There were two main courses of several dishes. She could choose among beef, mutton, veal, a capon, or coney (rabbit), possibly flavored with a popular herb, aloe. The second course could involve lamb, plovers, teal (a small duck), or various tarts. Fruit was plentiful and so were eggs. She could nibble at two kinds of bread: circular roll-like manchets, made from the finest wheat, or chunks off a slightly coarser cheate loaf. She could quench her thirst on beer or wine. And that was only dinner. At supper time, everything started all over again. Henry’s chefs did not cook meat on Fridays, of course, but the sheer number of fish options was staggering: ling, pike, whiting, bream, chub, trout, conger eels, perch, crayfish, crab, shrimp, and lamprey. Should Jane still feel peckish, there was always manchet and cheate loaf in her room, which she could wash down with a gallon of ale three times a day or a pitcher of wine in the evening. Nor would she shiver. Between October 31 and April 1, she was given two fires and plenty of fuel for her chamber. Wax candles ensured she need not sit in the dark. This, anyway, was what Jane had become used to as a Boleyn.

The only slight anxiety for her concerned the Parker family. Jane’s brother, Henry, together with his relative, Sir John St. John, had somehow managed to become involved in a hunting dispute. Such things could often involve serious repercussions, so Jane would have every right to feel concerned. Lord Morley, appreciating the young men’s predicament, knew just what he had to do. There is no record of how much he had spent on Cromwell’s greyhound, but it was a sound investment, for Morley then contacted the minister to sort things out. And Cromwell did. In one of his lists of “Remembrances,” he reminded himself to “speak for” Henry and St. John. Morley thanked him profusely for his “favor” to the two men “in their trouble” and expressed his gratitude “for their deliverance.”