The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History (4 page)

Both the famous Paston family and the Boleyns had strong Norfolk interests and, with their similar backgrounds, it is perhaps not surprising that they regularly came within each other’s spheres of influence. The Pastons originated from the village of Paston, only 20 miles from Norwich and, thus, not far from Salle. The John Paston who was executor to Sir John Falstolf was a lawyer although, like the Boleyns, the family had some less than illustrious ancestry, with one fifteenth-century description of the family claiming that they were descended from one Clement Paston, a husbandman, who ploughed his land and ‘rode to mill on bare horseback with his corn under him and brought home meal again under him, and also drove his cart with diverse corn to Wynterton to sell’.
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The family farmed a few acres at Paston and, on the basis of this description, does not sound very far removed from Geoffrey’s own grandfather, the builder of the church at Salle, Thomas Boleyn I.

While there was evidently some rivalry between the two families, it was the Boleyns who outstripped their Norfolk rivals. Sir John Falstolf’s executor, John Paston, left two sons: Sir John Paston, the elder, and his younger brother, another John. Sir John Paston soon established himself as a leading member of Norfolk society while his brother, the younger John, attempted to build on his own social position and career by making a prestigious marriage. Interestingly, the first object of the younger John’s affections was Alice Boleyn, the youngest daughter of the by then deceased Geoffrey and his widow, Anne.

John Paston, as a younger son, had little to recommend him when he first approached Anne to suggest a match with her daughter. As a result, the younger John went to his brother for advice and Sir John in turn went in person to speak with Anne in March 1467. He found her unmoved at his pleas, writing to give his brother the disappointing news that

as for my Lady Boleyn’s disposition to you-wards, I cannot in no wise find her agreeable that ye should have her daughter, for all the privy means that I could make, insomuch I had so little comfort by all the means that I could make, that I disdained in mine own person to common [i.e. speak] with her therein.
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The best that Sir John could obtain from Anne, who was seeking a more prestigious husband for her daughter, was that she assured him that ‘what if he [younger John] and she [Alice] can agree I will not let it, but I will never advise her thereto wise’. This was hardly approval from the prospective mother-in-law, although it does show some degree of indulgence in Anne as a mother that she was prepared to allow her daughter to make her own choice with regard to the match. Anne was indeed an indulgent mother, who was close to all her children, with her eldest son, William, later requesting to be buried close to her.
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Her second daughter, Anne Boleyn Heydon, inherited a silver-and-gilt bowl with a cover which bore the arms of the Hoo family from her mother, something which she treasured all her life, eventually passing it on to her own granddaughter in her will: a testament to the close relationship between Anne Hoo Boleyn and her daughter and namesake.
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It may well be that Anne was concerned about her daughter’s suitor’s motives: it is perhaps telling that the Paston family held the manor of Kirkhall in Salle at the time and that young John, after his pursuit of Alice came to nothing, later married Margery Brewes, the daughter of Sir Thomas Brewes, who held the manor of Stinton in Salle.
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It seems improbable that he just happened to fall in love with two young ladies with close landed connections to Salle, an area in which he wished to extend his interests.

Anne’s words did not dissuade the young man, in spite of the fact that she was negotiating another marriage for her daughter at that time with a man named Crosseby. Soon after her meeting with Sir John Paston, Anne returned home to Norfolk with her daughter. She was overtaken on the road by Sir John’s letter to his brother in which he advised him to continue in his pursuit of Alice, both by seeking out and charming the mother, as well as taking more immediate steps to win the daughter herself. According to Sir John, who had fully weighed up his brother’s advantages:

Ye be personable, and peradventure your being once in the sight of the maid, and a little discovering of your good will to her, binding her to keep it secret, and that ye can find in your heart, with some comfort to her, to find the mean to bring such matter about as shall be her pleasure and yours, but that this ye cannot do without some comfort of her in no wise.

Both brothers had high hopes that the younger John would win Alice’s affections, although Sir John finished by counselling his brother that ‘bear yourself as lowly to the mother as ye list, but to the maid not too lowly’.

The younger John was not as forthcoming as his brother wished and, instead, the following month wrote to complain that he could not possibly speak to the formidable Lady Boleyn unless his brother came home and was with him.
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His timidity cost him a meeting with Anne, who, on her return to Norfolk, travelled to Norwich for the week after Easter, accompanied by both her married daughter, Anne Boleyn Heydon, and her youngest daughter, the desirable Alice. This was a missed opportunity for John, who was then at Caistor and claimed not to have been aware of the visit until it was too late. According to reports of Anne’s servants that reached the younger John, ‘she had none other errand to the town but for to sport her; but so God help me, I suppose that she wend I would have been in Norwich for to have seen her daughter’. Given Anne’s earlier response to young John’s suit, this seems unlikely. He did not receive another opportunity and Anne took no steps to promote the match.

Alice’s father, Geoffrey Boleyn II, had died in 1463. He had divided his time between London, the centre of his business interests, and his Norfolk estates, decreeing in his will, which was made only shortly before his death, that he hoped to be buried in the church of St Lawrence in the capital ‘if it happen me to decease in London or elsewhere within the Realm of England, saving always that if I decease within the shire of Norfolk, I will that then my body be buried in the Church of Blickling’.
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Geoffrey went into considerable detail in his will as to how he was to be buried, with his specifications indicating that he was a man of fairly austere tastes. He asked that his body be buried with black candlesticks and that thirteen torches be carried aloft by the same number of poor and needy people. These torchbearers, who Geoffrey specified should be poor householders rather than beggars, were to each be given a rosary, a gown lined with russet or black and a hood of black, as well as 12 pence. At the same time, Geoffrey specified that there was to be little other ceremony for him, stating that:

I will not that any hearse or gilt candlesticks be ordained or set about me not any great feast made, but a dinner to my wife and to my brother Master Thomas and to my executors and such other friends and neighbours as my said wife, my brother and executors will call unto them.

Evidently Geoffrey trusted his wife and brother’s judgement in this regard and it can be inferred that his relationship with Anne was a close one. He left her a wealthy widow, bequeathing her a significant share of his goods and chattels, including one half of his silver plate. In an age where married women were not permitted to hold any property personally he significantly left Anne all her own clothes, ornaments and jewels, a bequest which, while it seems natural to modern eyes, was not something that all fifteenth-century husbands would have condescended to do. Geoffrey’s own clothes and other personal goods were to be sold to pay for bedding, clothes, linen and woollens for poor people. Geoffrey left extensive sums to charity, something that both attests to his charitable disposition and his wealth at his death.

His children were also not forgotten, with his sons, Thomas and William, each receiving the sum of 300 marks. Geoffrey’s daughters, Isabel, Anne and Alice, each received the substantial sum of 1,000 marks. In addition to this, Anne Hoo Boleyn and her brother-in-law, Thomas Boleyn, were given the discretion as to how the remaining half of Geoffrey’s silver was to be divided between his sons and daughters. The bequests to Geoffrey’s children were all conditional on them either reaching the age of twenty-five or marrying, a common enough provision where large sums were involved, with Isabel’s to be held by Geoffrey Randolf, a merchant and friend of Geoffrey Boleyn’s. Two apprentices of Geoffrey’s took on the role of trustee for the younger daughters’ legacies. Significantly, although Anne Hoo Boleyn was not appointed to act as trustee for any of her children, she was given considerable control over the futures of all her offspring, with Geoffrey declaring that:

I will and ordain by this my testament that none of my foresaid children be married within his age of twenty-five years without the will and assent of Anne my wife, her mother, and of my brother Master Thomas and of my executors or of the more part of them, so that the same Anne my wife while she standeth sole [i.e. unmarried] and my said brother be of the same more part. And if any of my said children be married against the form aforesaid, or be governed in otherwise than by the will and assent of her said mother while she standeth soul, and of my said brother and of my executors or of the more part of them in form aforesaid, I will and ordain that then the bequests by me abovemade to such of my said children as happen to be married or governed contrary to my Will aforesaid rehearsed be utterly void and of none effect.

To hammer home the point, Geoffrey declared that such forfeited sums should be used charitably for the good of his soul. It is clear from this part of the will why the consent of Anne Hoo Boleyn was so crucial to John Paston: it was an extraordinary concession on her part that she was prepared to allow her daughter to potentially marry for love, even if she could not recommend the match, given the power that the will gave her to control her youngest daughter’s choice so effectively. As a final proof of Geoffrey’s affection for his wife, she was the first named executor to his will, which was proved on 2 July 1463, only eight days after the will was drafted. The claim in an eighteenth-century work on the history of Norfolk that Anne Hoo Boleyn remarried in 1501, taking a Thomas Fenys as her second husband, is groundless, with Fenys actually taking another member of the Hoo family as his wife.
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Instead, Anne remained a widow until her own death.

Alice Boleyn, as the youngest daughter of Geoffrey and Anne, was the last to marry, eventually taking Sir John Fortescue as her husband.
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The second daughter, Anne, married Sir Henry Heydon, who had been associated with her father at least as early as 1452 when it was falsely rumoured that he had asked Geoffrey to purchase Blickling on his behalf.
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Heydon enjoyed prominence as the steward of Cecily, Duchess of York, the mother of Edward IV and Richard III. He was also a Norfolk landowner. He owned a house at West Wickham in Kent and was knighted in 1485. Sir Henry died in 1503, requesting that he be buried in Norwich Cathedral, and leaving Anne Boleyn Heydon a widow at a fairly advanced age.

Anne Boleyn Heydon’s will survives and demonstrates something of the wealthy and comfortable life that she led as a widow. She lived to a good age, dying in May 1510 in the second year of Henry VIII’s reign. In her will, which was dated less than six months before her death, Anne declared that she was in full and whole mind, before requesting that ‘my sinful body to be buried in the chapel of Saint Luke in the Cathedral church of the Holy Trinity of Norwich if I die in Norwich or in Norfolk’.
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Anne Boleyn Heydon obviously had an affinity with Norwich which had, of course, been the town closest to her childhood home at Blickling and which she visited with her mother during the early years of her marriage. She also left a bequest for the repair of the cathedral, on the condition that she was indeed granted a burial there as she wished and that a solemn dirge and requiem Mass were said for her soul. Gifts were given to the prior, sub-prior and to each of the monks in order for them to pray for her. Anne was living in Norwich at the time of her death and had evidently involved herself with the poor of the city, further requesting that her executors should give alms to poor householders there, especially those ‘that be dwelling within the parish that I dwell in’. There were gifts to the black friars, white friars, grey friars and Austin friars of the city for the good of her soul – a pious gift but, given the fact that each order was to receive the same amount, suggests that she had no particular interest in any over the other.

She was clearly pious, as can be seen by the religious apparatus listed in her will. One bequest, for example, involved a gift to Thomas Landons in recompense for a primer that she had received from his father. She possessed a number of rosaries, including one made of amber beads. While she lived, Anne Boleyn Heydon presented herself as a great lady and she was determined that this continued after her death. Like her father, she took a great interest in preparations for her own funeral, declaring in her will that

there be provided xij beadmen of the poorest persons to hold light about mine hearse and each of the to have a black gown of frieze and 5
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in money, and each of them to say a dirge and mass at my burying our Lady’s psalter and 5 pater noster 5 avas and a creed.

Her grave was to be marked with a slab of marble displaying her image and her arms. Anne made a great deal of charitable donations to the church in her will, as well as arranging for an ‘honest and virtuous’ priest to be found who would sing and pray for her at Cambridge while also attending to his learning there. During her lifetime she had already been responsible for funding the studies of one scholar, Master English, who was a priest and she specifically requested that he be appointed to sing and pray for her after her death, a reasonable request by a patron. During her lifetime, Anne was wealthy enough to employ her own chaplain, a Sir John Caley, and she also had a household of servants and attendants. These household servants were to receive black gowns from her executors, providing that they attended her funeral. Charitably, Anne ordered that her household be kept in place for three months after her death, a period calculated to give her servants sufficient time to find new employment for themselves although some way below the usual one year’s wages that servants in a royal household could expect.