The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (21 page)

The king’s reaction to Anne’s anger in 1534 was worse than that in 1533 and may have been the first indication that Anne no longer fully occupied the king’s heart. She was certainly alarmed enough about the new mistress to attempt to take action against her, enlisting the help of her sister-in-law, Jane Rochford, to help her. Jane was regularly resident at court during the first year of her sister-in-law’s queenship and, with the banishment of Mary Boleyn, may well have found her royal kinswoman coming to rely on her more than usual. Anne and Jane certainly appear to have felt that they had common enough interests to conspire together for Henry’s mistress to be exiled from court. The details of the plot do not survive, with Chapuys speculating that it was to have the rival sent away ‘through quarrelling or otherwise’. Unfortunately, for the two women, the plot was unsuccessful, with Jane bearing the brunt of the king’s anger and being sent home from court in disgrace early in October 1534. The length of Jane’s exile is nowhere recorded, although Chapuys referred to her dismissal on 19 December 1534, implying that she was still kept away from court. This is the last time that the records show Jane acting with her sister-in-law, and Anne’s failure to protect her from banishment may have caused Jane an estrangement, particularly as Anne escaped all censure. Chapuys certainly implied that it was Jane who suffered for Anne’s complaints against the mistress, recording that ‘neither is there any further sign of the king’s ill-humour towards the Lady’s relatives, except that which is naturally connected with their occasional quarrels; though it must be said, Rochford’s wife was dismissed from Court owing to the above mentioned cause’.

Jane Rochford remains a shadowy figure in the sources. However, there is a hint that she may have become publicly opposed to her sister-in-law’s interests by the last months of 1535. Henry’s eldest daughter, Mary, had been denied her title of princess and declared to be illegitimate on the annulment of her parents’ marriage, something which was not widely supported in England. In October 1535, while the court was absent from London, a number of women went to watch Mary as she was moved from her lodgings at Greenwich and, weeping, declared her to be ‘princess’ (and thus, impliedly, heiress to the crown in spite of the Act of Succession which named Princess Elizabeth as heir). This protest, although hopeless, attracted attention, with the ringleaders being imprisoned in the Tower. Not surprisingly, given the fact that Henry did not want to draw attention to support for his eldest daughter over his younger, the incident receives very little attention in the sources. However, the Bishop of Tarbes did briefly record its details in a despatch. Interestingly, a marginal note which relates to the information on the ringleaders states ‘Millor de Rochesfort et millord de Guillame’, something which has been interpreted to suggest that Jane and her kinswoman, Lady William Howard, were the two women imprisoned.
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This evidence has been described as ‘not convincing’, although it is generally assumed that Jane and her husband were estranged by the end of 1535.
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Other evidence also supports the fact that Jane, in spite of her position in the Boleyn family, was friendly towards Princess Mary.

Jane’s father, Lord Morley, remained devoted to the interests of Henry VIII’s eldest daughter throughout his lifetime, dedicating a number of his works and translation projects to her. Mary’s fragmentary privy purse expenses from the late 1530s and 1540s also indicate an association. Lord Morley presented the princess with a New Year’s gift in 1537, 1538, 1540 and 1543 (a year in which a book was presented).
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The princess reciprocated with the gift of a book in January 1544.
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In December 1537 she also made a payment to one of Lord Morley’s servants, suggesting that they had delivered a message or a gift from their master.
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The princess held the family in high enough esteem to stand as godmother to a child born to Jane’s brother Henry and his wife in January 1537, making a payment to Mistress Parker’s nurse and midwife in gratitude for her safe delivery.
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Following the fall of Anne Boleyn there is also considerable evidence that Jane herself was in favour with the princess. Like her father, Jane gave Mary New Year’s gifts in 1537, 1538 and 1540. That she had earlier been in the habit of giving the princess gifts is clear from the sum of 5 shillings paid by Mary in January 1537 for ‘mending of the clock which my lady’s grace had of my Lady Rochford’.
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In February of that year Mary gave Jane 12 yards of expensive black satin for a gown, while that April she rewarded a servant of Jane’s, suggesting that the pair communicated when not together.
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Similar payments to Jane’s servants were made in April 1538 on two separate occasions.

The evidence suggests that Jane sympathised with the king’s eldest daughter, making a public show of support for her while she was still exiled from court and probably still angry with the queen. Although the evidence is tenuous it is generally considered that Jane was estranged from her husband’s family by the end of 1535. Certainly, any show of sympathy for Mary from Jane would not have endeared her to Anne Boleyn.

As the queen, Anne was placed in charge of arranging the household of her daughter, Princess Elizabeth, as well as the arrangements made for the care of her teenage stepdaughter, Princess Mary. Understandably, when it was decided that the two girls were to share the same household, Anne was determined that it should be headed by those loyal to her, appointing her mother’s half-sister, Margaret, Lady Bryan, as Elizabeth’s lady mistress and her father’s two sisters, Anne Boleyn, Lady Shelton, and Alice Boleyn, Lady Clere, as its chief female officers. Her uncle, Sir John Shelton, was appointed as steward of the household, something that meant he was in charge of their domestic guard.
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The elder Anne Boleyn was the sister of Sir Thomas Boleyn. She married a Norfolk neighbour, Sir John Shelton, whose family was closely connected with her own. The family was a prosperous and well-respected one, with at least one member of every generation knighted since a Ralph de Shelton fought for Edward III at the Battle of Crecy.
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They had lived at Shelton in Norfolk, which is now a small village, since at least the early thirteenth century, taking their surname from the manor.
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As prominent Norfolk families, the Boleyns, Sheltons and Cleres were highly interconnected and the marriage was arranged to complement that of her sister, Alice, to Sir Robert Clere. Sir John Shelton was prominent in the county, serving as sheriff before their marriage, which took place in 1512 when John was in his mid-thirties and Anne some years younger.
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The couple settled at Shelton Hall, which survives today as a ruin.
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In Lady Shelton’s time it was a grand building surrounded by a high, towered wall and a moat.

Towards the end of his life Sir John Shelton commissioned fine stained-glass windows for the chancel at Shelton Church. The windows survive today and depict John’s parents, as well as John and Anne at three stages in their lives. The earliest chronologically shows the couple kneeling in church facing each other on separate panes of glass. John is depicted as a long haired, heavy-featured and well-built young man, dressed in a fine robe of red, a long furred collar and hanging sleeves. Anne is dressed stylishly for the end of the fifteenth century, wearing a tight-fitting red dress with hanging sleeves and a black hood with a veil. Her dress is low-cut and her features youthful and more delicate than her husband’s.

In the second depiction chronologically, the couple again face towards each other but on separate panes. Both kneel in church with open prayer books before them. Sir John looks older in this image, with long fair hair and a heavy beard. Beneath his heraldic mantle he wears armour, suggesting that he was depicted at around the time of his marriage in 1512, when England was at war with France. Anne also looks more mature, with a serene expression. Beneath a long heraldic mantle displaying the Boleyn family arms and bull motif, she wears a fine green dress, decorated with gold. She also wears a long gold gable hood, which was highly fashionable early in Henry VIII’s reign.

The final depiction shows the couple as they would have appeared towards the time of John’s death in 1539 when he was sixty-two.
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Unlike the other depictions, the couple are portrayed close together on the same pane of glass. Touchingly, as John kneels with clasped hands, he gazes at his wife while Anne solicitously reaches out to his shoulder with her hand. John looks considerably older in this depiction, with shoulder-length grey hair surrounding an entirely bald crown of the head. By this time he had shaved off his beard, although he retained a moustache. Once again John wears a rich red gown decorated with fur, while Anne wears a tight red dress decorated with gold. Anne’s face, which appears beneath a long black cap, is older, with a loving expression as she gazes at her husband. Clearly the couple were fond of each other, something that is also demonstrated by the high number of children born during their marriage. As well as their heir, John, the couple produced sons Thomas, who served as a groom porter of the Tower, and Ralph.
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There were a number of daughters, with both the eldest, Amy (or Emma), and the second, Elizabeth, remaining unmarried. Margaret married a Thomas Wodehouse, while Gabrielle became a nun. The youngest was Mary Shelton.

Alice Boleyn married as his second wife Sir Robert Clere of Ormesby, who was some years older than her and had already served as Sheriff of Norfolk in 1501.
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He was wealthy and had been knighted by the future Henry VIII in 1494, when the prince was still an infant.
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The couple were married at some point before 1506, with Margaret Butler Boleyn paying a dowry of 500 marks in exchange for Sir Robert’s promise of a substantial dower for his wife in the event that she was widowed.
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Sir Robert, who had continued to be prominent into the reign of Henry VIII and attended the great meeting between the English and French kings known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, lived to a venerable age, dying in 1529. He was pious and asked in his will that his executors should arrange 100 Masses for his soul. He also requested that if anyone had proved that he had wronged them then his executors should compensate them.

Alice bore three sons, with the eldest, John, later having the good fortune to inherit Blickling through his mother when the direct line of the Boleyn family died out. Alice Boleyn Clere survived her husband by some years, dying in 1539. It is a testament to the fact that she took pride in her Boleyn lineage that the arms of the City of London were proudly displayed among other heraldry on the Clere brass at Ormesby.
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Evidently Alice and her family saw no stigma in the fact that the family fortune was founded on trade and the endeavours of her grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, who, as a former Lord Mayor of London, was able to make use of the arms of the city. Alice found favour under her niece, Queen Anne Boleyn, who appointed her to assist her elder sister, Anne Boleyn, Lady Shelton, in the management of the household of Princess Mary in 1533. In her will, which was dated to October 1539, Alice made a bequest of a gold rosary to her youngest son, Thomas, ‘which Queen Anne gave me’, something which suggests that she, for one, did not consider her niece’s marriage to have been invalid.
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She was also close to her siblings and their children. Without any daughters of her own, she made bequests to a number of her nieces, such as her emerald ring, which was passed to her eldest surviving sister’s daughter, Elizabeth Shelton. To her grief, Alice’s second son, Richard, died young. She therefore divided the bulk of her estate between her surviving sons, John and Thomas, making particularly careful provision for Thomas, the youngest of the three brothers.

Alice’s motivation for taking a post in Princess Elizabeth’s household is not easy to understand, given that, following the death of her husband she had been left a very wealthy woman. On Sir Robert’s death, Alice received twenty manors as her jointure, including her marital home of Ormesby, which her husband instructed should be fully equipped for her use.
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She also received a house at Norwich together with plate and household stuff to allow her to live comfortably in her widowhood. Alice certainly had no financial need of the appointment. Additionally, she must have been aware that any position with the king’s bastardised daughter, Mary, was likely to be troublesome and even potentially politically dangerous. It may simply be that she was fond of her niece, who is known to have made her personal presents, and agreed to the appointment as a favour to her. She may also have been pressured by her sister, Anne Boleyn Shelton, to assist her in the governance of the ex-princess.

Queen Anne Boleyn was a devoted mother to her daughter, reputedly refusing to let her out of her sight and having a special cushion produced for the infant to lie upon when she sat in state as queen.
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It must therefore have been a wrench for her when, in December 1533, Elizabeth was given her own household and sent in great state to live at a variety of smaller palaces outside of London. Both Anne and Henry remained in regular contact with their daughter, visiting her often and delighting in showing her off to the world. A visit to Elizabeth in April 1534 was typical, with Sir William Kingston, one of the gentlemen present, declaring that the baby was ‘a goodly child as hath been seen, and her Grace is much in the king’s favour as a goodly child should be’.
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In March 1534 Elizabeth was officially declared heiress to the crown by Parliament, with the same enactment ruling that her elder half-sister was illegitimate and unfit to inherit the crown.

Mary had not been permitted to see her mother since 1531, although the pair continued to correspond secretly, with Catherine writing in September 1533 to warn her daughter that she had heard that ‘the time is come that Almighty God will prove you’.
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Catherine’s information was sound and that same month the princess’s household servants were ordered to remove their livery and replace it with that of the king: a public announcement of her illegitimacy.
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Henry also sent a deputation to Mary to order her to relinquish her claim to be Princess of England, something that she absolutely refused to do.
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Mary’s refusal infuriated Anne and Henry, with the king ordering that his eldest daughter’s household be broken up in November 1533, and that she move to join Elizabeth as a maid of honour, something that was deeply humiliating for Mary.
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Mary was allowed to take only a few attendants when she set out to join Elizabeth in December, with her governess, the Countess of Salisbury, being refused permission to remain with her.
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Instead Anne appointed her aunts, Lady Shelton and Lady Clere, to have governance over the former princess, something that demonstrates that she was closer to them than another aunt, the Duchess of Norfolk, whom she had had banished from court for sending secret messages of support to Catherine of Aragon.