The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (15 page)

Brought up in court all my young age,
Withouten bridle of honest measure,
Following my lust and filthy pleasure.
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While this account was written with the hindsight of Jane’s scandalous fall, Cavendish is likely to have known her and it may be accurate. The account suggests that she spent much of her youth at court and, perhaps, enjoyed a less than spotless reputation. No scandal has been linked to Jane before the last year of her life, but it should be noted that the court was a place where flirtations were rife and conduct could be somewhat free. The Imperial ambassador, Eustace Chapuys, for example, famously noted that he doubted that Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, could have been a virgin at the time of her wedding given that she had spent some years at court.

Very little evidence survives relating to Jane’s childhood. Her father was a noted scholar who made translations of a number of important works. As such, it can be assumed that Jane received some sort of education, particularly as her signature on a surviving letter indicates that she was literate.
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A list of some of Jane’s possessions compiled in 1536 contained references to three books: a primer bound with silver and gilt, a book covered in black velvet and with a clasp of silver and a book covered in crimson velvet.
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Jane was interested in education, with a letter from a William Foster surviving from 1536 in which he called Jane the ‘most special patroness of my study’.
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She remained close to her father after her marriage, with him continuing to guide her religious education. In a dedication written to the Princess Mary, for example, Lord Morley noted that the princess had translated a prayer of St Thomas Aquinas when she was aged eleven in 1527 or 1528. Morley commented that the prayer ‘is so well done, so near to the Latin’ that he marvelled at it that he had caused it to be copied into the books of his wife and his children ‘to give them occasion to remember to pray for your grace’.
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Jane’s loyalty to her father, who was a friend to Princess Mary, caused her problems with her husband’s family in the years following her marriage.

The Morleys enjoyed close connections with the Boleyns, which probably explains how the match came to be arranged. Jane’s grandmother, Alice Lovel, had taken Elizabeth Howard Boleyn’s brother, Sir Edward Howard, as her second husband, while Jane’s sister married Thomas Boleyn’s nephew, John Shelton. Jane and George’s marriage agreement was signed on 4 October 1524, with the couple known to have been married by the autumn of 1525 at the latest.
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At the end of 1526 Thomas Boleyn received £33 6
s
8
d
from a servant of Jane’s father: a reasonably substantial sum which suggests that it was connected to the agreement made at the time of the marriage.
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Jane also later claimed that ‘the King’s Highness and my Lord my father paid great sums of money for my jointure to the Earl of Wiltshire [Thomas Boleyn] to the sum of 2,000 marks’.
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From this, Jane was assured an annual income of 100 marks in the event that she was widowed during her father-in-law’s lifetime, to increase to 300 marks per annum on his death.
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The king’s involvement in her jointure suggests that he may have been involved in the negotiations for the match, perhaps to please his mistress, Mary Boleyn. Certainly, in the early 1520s Jane was socially superior to her husband, who was still a teenager. George had served as a royal page as a child and, in 1522, received the grant offices in Tunbridge jointly with his father, later also receiving the grant of a manor in Norfolk.
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This may, perhaps, have been to make him a more attractive proposition to the Morley family, although within a few years of the marriage the fortunes of the Boleyn family dramatically increased.

At the time of Jane Parker’s marriage to George Boleyn, his sister, Mary, was the pre-eminent member of the family at court. The end of her relationship with the king is nowhere recorded, but it was probably midway through 1525, perhaps shortly before the ennoblement of Thomas Boleyn, but before Mary conceived Henry Carey, who should be considered her husband’s child. This coincides with the return of her sister, Anne, to court, who was the woman that supplanted Mary in the king’s affections. Nicholas Sander claimed that Mary saw the king’s waning affection for her and his interest in her sister and, becoming jealous, went to the queen

and bade her be of good cheer; for though the king, she said, was in love with her sister, he could never marry her, for the relations of the king with the family were of such a nature as to make a marriage impossible by the laws of the Church. ‘The king himself,’ she said, ‘will not deny it, and I will assert it publicly while I live; now, as he may not marry my sister, so neither will he put your majesty away.’
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Sander is a highly prejudicial source but, on occasion, his work contains elements of the truth. It is certainly not impossible that there was some jealousy between the two sisters as Mary watched herself be supplanted in favour of her younger sister, Anne Boleyn.

Mary Boleyn was not the only Boleyn woman to attract amorous attention at court in the 1520s, with her sister, Anne, arriving home from France in 1522 after she was recalled to England to marry James Butler and settle the Ormond inheritance. Anne, like her father, had no enthusiasm for this solution and she soon set about arranging her own higher-status marriage.

Anne Boleyn had been absent from England for nearly a decade by 1522. With her French grace and manners she immediately caused a stir at court, with one favourable sixteenth-century biographer, George Wyatt, commenting:

In this noble imp, the graces of nature graced by gracious education, seemed even at the first to have promised bliss unto her aftertimes. She was taken at that time to have a beauty not so whitely as clear and fresh above all we may esteem, which appeared much more excellent by her favour passing sweet and cheerful, and these, both also increased by her noble presence of shape and fashion, representing both mildness and majesty more than can be expressed.
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Unlike her sister, Anne did not conform to contemporary ideals of beauty, with dark hair and skin and dark eyes. Even those commentators hostile to her agree that there was something unusual and compelling about her which made up for any defects in her appearance. The later sixteenth-century writer, Nicholas Sander, after slandering Anne with claims of a number of monstrous deformities, admitted that ‘she was handsome to look at, with a pretty mouth, amusing in her ways, playing well on the lute, and was a good dancer. She was the model and mirror of those who were at court. For she was always well dressed, and every day made some change in the fashion of her garments.’
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Anne seemed more French than English in her homeland and became one of the leaders of fashion at court, with George Wyatt commenting that she artfully hid a minor defect on the tip of one of her fingers with stylish, long hanging sleeves which were soon copied by the women of the court.
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Although Anne was nominally promised to James Butler, no steps were taken to bring matters to a conclusion, and within a few months of her arrival she had acquired a considerably more prominent suitor in the shape of Henry Percy, heir to the Earl of Northumberland.
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Percy, a young man of a similar age to Anne, was a member of Cardinal Wolsey’s household. It was soon noted that, whenever Wolsey came to court, his young attendant would visit the queen’s chamber to ‘fall in dalliance among the queen’s maidens’. He soon turned his attention solely to Anne herself and, according to William Cavendish, who was a contemporary of Percy’s in Wolsey’s household, ‘there grew such a secret love between them that at length they were engaged together, intending to marry’.

There is some doubt as to the extent that matters reached between Anne and Percy as they conversed privately in the queen’s apartments. Wolsey, although a regular visitor to the court, was not usually resident there and so meetings between the couple must have been fairly snatched in nature, particularly as Percy or Anne would have been called away by their respective employers when service was required. In 1532 Percy’s wife, Mary Talbot, claimed that her marriage was invalid due to her husband’s earlier binding betrothal to Anne, something which would have made her own marriage invalid. This corroborates Cavendish’s account and, while a somewhat desperate attempt to end her own unhappy marriage, is likely to have some truth to it, particularly as by 1532 Anne was the king’s own fiancée and, as such, any claim that she was effectively already married would have been a very dangerous one to make. A letter survives from Percy, written at the time of Anne’s fall to the king’s then chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, which refutes any betrothal, with Percy claiming that

this shall be to signify unto you that I perceive by Sir Raynold Carnaby, that there is supposed a precontract between the queen and me; whereupon I was not only heretofore examined upon my oath before the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, but also received the blessed sacrament upon the same before the Duke of Norfolk, and other the king’s highness’ council learned in the spiritual law; assuring you Mr Secretary by the said oath, and blessed body which afore I received, and hereafter intend to receive that the same may be to my damnation, if ever there were any contract or promise of marriage between her and me.
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This letter, which was written the day before Anne’s death when five men had already been executed for their perceived romantic associations with her, must be taken with some caution. Even Percy’s oath on the sacrament is not conclusive, in spite of the highly religious time he lived in. He was in fear of his life at the time: if he admitted to a betrothal with Anne then he was confessing to failing to inform the king that the woman he had married was actually unavailable, something that jeopardised the succession and was treason under the first Act of Succession passed in 1533. Another of Anne’s early suitors, Thomas Wyatt, was arrested at the time of her fall and, although not charged, Percy probably watched his fate with alarm. Henry VIII annulled his marriage to Anne in the days before her execution, although the pretext for this annulment is not certain, with sources variously claiming that it was due to Anne’s earlier betrothal to Percy or, alternatively, due to the king’s own relationship with Mary Boleyn.
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The relationship between Anne and Percy probably did extend to a formal promise to marry, something which, when made by two adults, was as binding as marriage itself.

Percy’s love for Anne is clear, particularly as, socially, she was far beneath him. Anne’s feelings are less certain. She had a high view of her own worth and the idea of becoming Countess of Northumberland must have appealed to her. Percy was of a similar age to Anne and there is evidence that she did indeed have feelings for him. The roots of her enmity towards Cardinal Wolsey lie in the Cardinal’s role in breaking the relationship and, while this could have been due more to Anne’s disappointment at the loss of Percy’s status rather than his person, the evidence suggests that there was more to it than this. Anne was deeply involved in the fall from power of Cardinal Wolsey in 1529 and when Henry finally gave the order for him to be arrested in 1530, it was Percy who was sent to take him into custody, with Cavendish commenting significantly that Anne sent ‘her ancient suitor’ to do the deed. This vindictiveness suggests that she was still angry over the loss of Percy, in spite of the fact that, by 1530, she knew that she was to become queen. It therefore seems highly likely that the couple were indeed in love. Percy was one of the peers who sat in judgement on Anne at her trial in 1536, but it proved too much for him. He was taken ill before the trial of Anne’s brother which followed.

Anne and Percy were unable to keep their relationship secret, with news of it soon reaching the king. Although Henry, at that stage, had no interest in Anne, he was angered by the proposed match, perhaps due to the disparity in their status or the fact that it jeopardised the Ormond settlement. Henry instructed Wolsey to break the engagement, with the cardinal immediately sending for Percy and rebuking him for his presumption. The young man, who burst into tears, gallantly attempted to defend his fiancée, declaring that

I considered that I was of good years, and thought myself sufficient to provide myself with a convenient wife whereas my fancy served me best, not doubting but that my lord my father would have been right well persuaded. And, though she be a simple maid, and has but a knight to her father, yet she is descended of right noble parentage. For by her mother she is near to the Norfolk blood: and on her father’s side lineally descended from the Earl of Ormond, he being one of the earl’s heirs general.

Although the Boleyns had come far since their humble origins at Salle, by the early sixteenth century they had not come far enough to please Percy’s father, the sixth Earl of Northumberland. On receiving a message from Wolsey, Northumberland hurried south, whisking his son away to marry Mary Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Anne was sent home to Hever in disgrace, vowing that ‘if it lay ever in her power she would work the Cardinal as much displeasure as he had done her’.

Anne Boleyn was finally able to return to court in 1525 when she resumed her position in the queen’s household. She soon found another admirer. The courtier and poet Sir Thomas Wyatt came from an old Kentish family. His father, Sir Henry Wyatt, was associated with Sir Thomas Boleyn, with them both being created knights of the Bath at Henry VIII’s Coronation in 1509 and receiving the joint appointment of constable of Norwich castle in 1511. Given the similarity of Christian names, it is not impossible that Boleyn was Thomas Wyatt’s godfather: the honour could have been returned with Boleyn’s second son, Henry, who did not survive infancy, who shared a Christian name with Sir Henry Wyatt.