The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (28 page)

To Mary’s grief, Thomas Clere died before his twenty-seventh birthday in April 1545. He was buried at Lambeth, suggesting that he died in London and close to Mary. By 1545, Mary was approaching her late twenties, which was unusual. Her parents already seem to have been at a loss as to what to do with her, with Mary spending time in a convent towards the end of the 1530s.
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Her sister, Gabrielle, was already a nun at a convent near Norwich, suggesting that the family were pious.

Following Clere’s death, Mary may well have begun to be concerned about the future and, in particular, her financial security. She therefore finally decided to marry, taking Sir Anthony Heveningham as her husband. Sir Anthony was in fact a cousin of Mary’s, as the son of her aunt, Alice Shelton, although he was not, as Clere had been, also a cousin on the maternal side of her family. Heveningham was an eldest son and the possessor of substantial estates, something which may have assuaged her family’s concerns about their close family relationship. In taking a first cousin as her husband, Mary Shelton defied convention to the last, although the need to obtain a papal dispensation for the match had at least been removed following the break with Rome. Heveningham was a widower with two children whose education Mary would have been required to superintend.
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The couple were married by 1546 when Heveningham settled a number of manors on him and Mary for life, with the remainder to their heirs rather than his elder children, something that provided Mary with financial security but may have been resented by her stepchildren. The couple became close, with Mary bearing several children. Heveningham also asked to be buried with her in the church at Keteringham in Norfolk, the manor on which they settled.

Mary made one further contribution to court life before retiring to Norfolk and obscurity. When her friend, Surrey, was arrested for treason in 1546, it was recommended to the investigators that they ‘examine Mrs Heveningham, late Mary Shelton, of the effect of the Earl of Surrey his letter sent unto her, for it is thought that many secrets have passed between them before her marriage and since’. This suggests a continuing close relationship even after her marriage and the possibility must be raised that they were lovers, perhaps coming together in their mutual grief over Thomas Clere. If that is the case, Mary clearly saw Surrey’s arrest and execution as the time to settle down into a more conventional life. Her first husband died in 1557 and she quickly took a second husband, a gentleman named Philip Appleyard. She died in 1560, probably aged in her early forties.

Mary Shelton was not, of course, the only Boleyn daughter to remain connected to the court. In late April 1536, as her marriage crumbled around her, Queen Anne Boleyn had taken her little daughter in her arms in the gardens at Greenwich Palace and held her up to Henry as he looked down from an open window.
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Angry words were spoken between the couple before the queen walked away, defeated, taking Elizabeth with her. This was the last time that mother and daughter saw each other, a separation that had a devastating effect on the young princess. Elizabeth was not yet three at the time of her mother’s death and was used to being a cosseted and favoured princess and heiress to the crown. She immediately noticed her demotion in status which came with her mother’s death, asking her governess, ‘How happs it yesterday Lady Princess and today but Lady Elizabeth?’ With her mother’s death Henry lost interest in his younger daughter for a time, something that the child keenly felt.
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Anne’s aunt, Lady Bryan, found the change in circumstances so dramatic that she was forced to write to Cromwell begging for clothes for her young charge and stating that ‘she hath neither gowns nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen nor rails [nightdress], nor body stichets [corsets], nor biggens [night caps]’.
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Although Elizabeth, like her maternal grandparents, was at court for the celebrations following the birth of Prince Edward in October 1537, it was some years before her father would show any particular interest in her and she was fully welcomed back to court. He never doubted her paternity, however, in spite of Princess Mary’s later assertion that she looked like Mark Smeaton, something that is a strong indication of just how little credence the king gave to Anne’s ‘adultery’. Chapuys had believed at the time of Anne’s fall that Elizabeth was to be declared Norris’s daughter but this was merely rumour, designed to blacken her mother’s name. While he acknowledged her as his child, Henry was not prepared to retain her as his heir and, like her elder half-sister before her, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate in the second Act of Succession, which was passed in the summer of 1536, with her parents’ marriage declared to be ‘taken reputed and deemed and adjudged to be of no force strength virtue or effect’.
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Surprisingly, it was left to Princess Mary, who found herself back in favour, but not in the succession, to pay attention to the younger girl, writing to their father that Elizabeth was ‘such a child toward, as I doubt not but your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming’.
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In the summer of 1536 Elizabeth, along with other members of the Boleyn family, must have seemed of very little consequence.

After the events of May 1536, the Boleyn family was severely depleted, particularly since Sir Thomas Boleyn and his brothers had no surviving male heirs. With the death of Sir James Boleyn in 1561, the male line of the first Geoffrey Boleyn of Salle had entirely died out. In May 1536 there was still one prominent member of the family at court: Jane Parker Boleyn, the notorious Lady Rochford.

Jane Parker Boleyn, Lady Rochford, as her surviving letter to Cromwell attests, was left in a perilous financial state after the execution of her husband, George Boleyn, writing to beg assistance as a ‘poor forsaken widow’. Although a Boleyn by marriage, her father-in-law had little interest in the childless widow of his only son, no doubt seeing her as a financial burden, It is no surprise, given her long court service and her need for funds, that she quickly took a court post, serving Anne Boleyn’s successor as queen, Jane Seymour.

Henry married his third wife, Jane Seymour, within days of Anne’s death, immediately ordering that she be given all honours due to her as queen. The facts behind Jane’s appointment with the new queen do not survive but, since Jane Seymour herself was a supporter of Princess Mary, it would seem likely that, politically, the two women had interests in common. Jane Rochford’s recent biographer has suggested that it was Thomas Cromwell who secured her place, in return for the widow’s consent to act as a spy in the queen’s household.
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Although an interesting theory, there is no evidence that Jane was used as a spy, in spite of her promise in her letter that, in the event that Cromwell assisted her, ‘God shall be to you therefore a sure reward, which doth promise good to them that doth help poor forsaken widows. And both my prayers and service shall help to this during my natural life, as most bounden so to do.’
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In any event, the minister evidently had his own sources close to Queen Jane since his son later married the queen’s sister. More likely Jane Rochford, with her long court experience, was a useful attendant for the new queen. Jane Seymour, as the daughter of Margery Wentworth, a first cousin of Elizabeth Howard Boleyn, was also related to Jane Rochford through her marriage to George and may have taken pity on her impecunious kinswoman.

Jane Rochford became friends with the new queen, receiving a gold tablet as a gift from her.
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She would have taken part in most of the ceremonial events of Jane Seymour’s brief time as queen, including the ceremonies surrounding her taking to her chamber to await the birth of her child on 16 September 1537. The queen’s labour began on 9 October, lasting for two days and three nights until she was finally delivered of a son, to the joy of the king and the country. Jane Seymour was well enough to play a role in the christening on 15 October but she soon sickened. By 24 October the queen’s life was despaired of and she died that evening, probably of puerperal fever. Perhaps Jane Rochford was one of the ladies who was blamed by Thomas Cromwell for killing their mistress with kindness by suffering her ‘to eat things that her fantasy in sickness called for’.
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Jane Rochford was prominent in the funeral procession of the late queen, holding the train of her friend, Princess Mary. With Jane Seymour’s death, Jane Rochford’s court appointment came to an end. She was glad to secure a new appointment to the household of Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, who arrived in England in December 1539.

Henry VIII had agreed to marry Anne of Cleves for political reasons, although he had been pleased by a portrait of the German princess prepared by his court painter, Hans Holbein. Unfortunately Henry, who had been used to selecting his bride personally, found himself disappointed in his bride when he met her at Rochester, finding her not as described. Henry only went through with the match for fear of offending Anne’s brother, the Duke of Cleves, and efforts to consummate the marriage were unsuccessful. Anne of Cleves, whose heavy German clothes were not to English tastes, tried her best to win her husband’s affection, appearing at jousts held to celebrate her marriage ‘apparelled after the English fashion, with a French hood, which so set forth her beauty and good visage, that every creature rejoiced to behold her’.
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Soon after his marriage, Henry began a relationship with Catherine Howard, who was the daughter of Lord Edmund Howard, a brother of Elizabeth Howard Boleyn. Catherine was under twenty when she caught the king’s eye and had been raised by her step-grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. As the daughter of a younger son, Catherine, in spite of her grand family name, had few prospects and she was therefore glad to receive an appointment as one of Anne of Cleves’s maids. This was probably when she first met Jane, the widow of her first cousin. By July 1540 Henry had taken the decision to end his marriage to Anne of Cleves and marry Catherine Howard, whom he considered to be his pure ‘jewel’.

Jane was one of Anne of Cleves’s highest-ranking ladies and she, along with ladies Rutland and Edgecomb, had considerable access to the queen in her household. In the summer of 1540, when the king began a trial of his marriage, the three ladies came forward to provide a deposition setting out a conversation that they had allegedly had with Anne on the Wednesday before midsummer at Westminster Palace.
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The three claimed to have had a long conversation with Anne when they said they wished that she was pregnant. Anne replied that she knew she was not, before revealing an alarming ignorance of sexual matters when she confessed that the king would merely kiss her goodnight before rolling over in bed to sleep when they spent the night together. That this conversation ever took place is highly doubtful. At the time of her divorce Anne’s own chamberlain, the Earl of Rutland, required an interpreter to speak with the queen and it is improbable that Anne, who only spoke German, could have understood the ladies and replied in such detail. More likely, given that Henry was seeking an annulment on the grounds of non-consummation, the three ladies perjured themselves on the promise of some benefit. For this testimony to believed, Lady Rochford must have been known to be reasonably close to the queen and respected by her, particularly as the ladies also claimed that on another occasion ‘the queen declared to my Lady Rochford, how the king used her the four first nights’, demonstrating that on occasion Jane was alone with her mistress and evidently considered a potential confidante. Jane, far from being an infamous and untrustworthy figure as often portrayed, won the affection of both Queen Jane Seymour and Queen Anne of Cleves. With Anne’s divorce in July 1540 and Henry’s remarriage, she was to quickly win the affection of the final royal mistress that she was to serve.

The summer of 1540 was unusually dry, with cattle dying in great numbers. London suffered as much as anywhere, with the Thames receiving so little rainwater that it was noticeably shallow and saltwater flowed under London Bridge, leading to transport difficulties in the capital.
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Although his boat trips were curtailed, Henry was enjoying himself, taking Catherine Howard as his bride on 28 July 1540 at Oatlands Palace. Catherine dined that evening under a cloth of estate denoting her new status and, as such, she required a household of ladies to attend her.
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Jane, as an experienced courtier and Catherine’s kinswoman by marriage, was soon appointed to attend Henry VIII’s fifth wife, becoming the new queen’s closest confidante.

Henry was over thirty years older than Catherine and a poor physical specimen. Although she was in awe of her husband, she was not in love with him and was, in fact, already in love with someone else at the time of her marriage. Catherine met Thomas Culpepper shortly after she arrived at court. He was a member of Henry’s Privy Chamber and a man who would have been considered an entirely suitable husband for her. He was young and handsome and the couple may already have been lovers before Catherine became queen. Culpepper does not appear to have been a particularly pleasant character. Shortly before he became involved with the queen he had raped the wife of a park keeper in a thicket of trees while three or four of his men held his victim down.
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Rape warranted capital punishment in England and Culpepper compounded the crime by killing one of the villagers who apprehended him. In spite of this, the young man was charming and highly personable. The king, who was very fond of him, pardoned him and allowed him to return to court.

Catherine made a present of a chain and rich cap to the man she called her ‘little sweet fool’.
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She was soon also writing him passionate love letters, with her only surviving letter being addressed to her lover. In it, Catherine declared that she was troubled by news of his illness and that ‘I never longed so much for [a] thing as I do to see you and to speak with you’.
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She further added that this thought ‘doth comfortly me very much when I think of it, and when I think again that you shall depart from me again it makes my heart to die to think what fortune I have that I cannot be always in your company’. It is clear from Catherine’s words that Jane had already become her most trusted confidante and was deeply involved in the affair, writing, ‘Praying you that you will come when my Lady Rochford is here for then I shall be best at leisure to be at your commandment.’ As a respected and mature widow, Jane’s presence allayed suspicion and she was certainly considered an appropriate chaperone for the king’s wife. What possessed her to become involved in the affair is unclear as, even without the benefit of hindsight, it must have seemed like madness. Perhaps Jane took pity on the young lovers. Alternatively, she may have looked to gain an advantage over the queen to further her court career. It has been suggested that she acted under direct orders from Catherine.
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Less likely, Jane’s contemporary, Cavendish, putting words into her mouth, believed that,