The Boleyns (16 page)
Jane’s exclusion from the court seems to have been explicitly Boleyn related, because within a few weeks she was back as a Lady of the Chamber to Jane Seymour, who married Henry as his third wife on 30 May. She probably needed the income which such a post conferred. It is by no means certain where she was living when not at court, unless she was given the use of Grimston, which would have been in the hands of the King. After Jane Seymour’s death, and a period in limbo, she was appointed to a similar position in the English household of Anne of Cleves, a place which she may well have owed to Cromwell’s continuing favour. By that time the Earl of Wiltshire was dead, and her annuity presumably expired with him. It was while serving in this capacity that she uttered the famous words about ‘it being a long time before we shall see a Duke of York’ in reaction to Anne’s account of her wedding night.
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By this time, although she did not remarry, she was thoroughly experienced in the ways of the bedchamber, and it may well have been for that reason that she was promptly transferred to the service of Henry’s fifth queen, Catherine Howard soon after they married at Oatlands on 28 July 1540. This promotion she certainly did not owe to Cromwell who had been executed on the day of the King’s marriage, but probably to the Duke of Norfolk, who was instrumental in arranging the match.
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Aged about thirtysix, she must have seemed a motherly figure to the nineteen-yearold queen, and it may have been for that reason that Catherine chose to confide in her. How much she told her about her prenuptial adventures we do not know, but Jane can have had few illusions as to what kind of girl she was dealing with. She was thus caught in a trap partly of her own making, because she could not resign her position without explaining why, and thus betraying the confidence with which she had been entrusted. She may also have felt a good deal of affection for her wayward mistress. Whether she acted as agent provocateur (Catherine’s story) or on the Queen’s explicit instructions (her own version) she found herself in the position of pander between the Queen and two putative lovers, Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpepper.
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These antics came to a climax during the royal progress to the north in the summer of 1541, when at each stopping place, she arranged backstairs access to Catherine’s apartments, and presumably made sure that other servants were not around. She did not actually witness any sexual activity, but later claimed (with good reason) that she believed it to have taken place. By the time that she made that statement she was trying desperately to dig herself out of the pit into which she had fallen when the story came out. However, Thomas Culpepper at his trial alleged that she had ‘provoked him much’ to intercourse with the Queen, and that was probably close to the truth.
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Both women were thoroughly interrogated, and Catherine broke down in hysterics, but the violation of a queen was ancient treason, and both Dereham and Culpepper were tried and executed. That left the women with nowhere to go, and both were condemned by Act of Attainder in January 1542. In aiding and abetting the actual bodily harm of the King’s consort, Jane was also judged guilty of high treason, and she was executed along with Catherine on 13 February. After her death she was described as a ‘meddlesome female’ and as ‘that bawd, the lady Jane Rochford’.
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Perhaps her own sexual frustrations lay behind her actions, and she welcomed the chance of vicarious experience. She seems to have died unlamented, because her actions had done irreparable harm to the Howard political interest, and thoroughly alienated the Duke of Norfolk to whom Catherine had originally owed her opportunity.
Chapuys heard that George was among that select band who attended Henry’s secret wedding to Anne, and that is likely enough, although the ambassador also heard that the celebrant had been ‘the elect of Canterbury’ whereas Cranmer appear to have been in ignorance of the event until some time later.
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Apart from that, various references to George in the records present merely a picture of a courtier and royal servant in favour. He was summoned to parliament in February 1533 as Viscount Rochford, which was an indication that he was expected to support the King in the House of Lords, since it was by no means automatic that the holder of such a title of honour would be summoned in his father’s lifetime. It was matter for the royal discretion, so it can be assumed that Henry had a good reason for wishing him to be included. The parliament sat until 7 April, and passed the Act in Restraint of Appeals, for which George dutifully voted. However, before the parliament was through, on 11 March, he was briefed to accompany the Duke of Norfolk in embassy to Henry’s ‘perpetual ally the French king’, and set off soon after for the express purpose of preventing another meeting between Francis and Clement which he knew was under consideration.
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Disconcerted by the news of Henry’s excommunication in June, Norfolk sent his colleague back to England for instructions between 8 and 27 August, with the result that both of them were recalled, and George was paid his expenses amounting to £100. They arrived back in time to perform their allotted offices at Elizabeth’s christening on 10 September. Francis was apparently considerably put out by their withdrawal, and Henry very annoyed at failing to prevent the meeting, so the alliance was under considerable strain as 1533 came to an end.
On 15 January 1534 it was again noted that Lord Rochford had been summoned to parliament, and in this session were passed the Act in Restraint of Annates and the first Succession Act.
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Once more the Boleyns did their duty, and on 30 March, the day the session ended, both were noted as being present in the House. No sooner was the parliament over, on 12 April, than Rochford and Sir William Fitzwilliam were briefed again for France, apparently to mend fences and carry out the more or less honorific task of conveying ‘a book’ from Henry VIII to Francis I. What this may have been is not apparent, but it was presumably a French version of the King’s case against the Pope. On 14 May, Chapuys noted their return, but made no comment upon their errand.
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By the summer of 1534 there are some signs that George’s favour was outstripping that of his father, which may well have been due to his close relations with Anne, and the fact that her father was becoming grumpy about her evangelical agenda, of which George was fully supportive, and towards which the King was at this stage indulgent. In June the related offices of Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports were conferred on him.
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This may indicate that he was transferring his main operations from Norfolk to Kent, possibly to avoid Jane who seems to have remained at Grimston. Being no longer welcome at court, she no doubt had a good deal of time on her hands. In April 1535 he was granted the manor of Southe in Kent, which had belonged to Sir Thomas More, but it is doubtful whether he ever lived there. As Constable of Dover Castle adequate accommodation was provided, and in any case as a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber he would have been spending most of his time in London. In May of the same year he was granted to manor of Oteham, but he did not live there either.
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He served on the Commissions of Oyer and Terminer against the Carthusian Priors in April, and against More in May. Fisher, as a bishop and a lord of the parliament, was condemned by Act of Attainder.
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On 11 April George was reported as preparing ‘in all haste’ to return to France, but the order was apparently countermanded because on 8 May John Husee wrote to Lord Lisle, ‘My Lord of Rochford goes not’, Sir William Paulet having been appointed in his place.
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The work of the Commissions clearly took precedence. He did, however, go to Calais at the end of May, as one of the team intended to negotiate for a marriage between Princess Elizabeth and the infant Duke of Angouleme, going in place of Thomas Cromwell, who pleaded sickness. The negotiation failed, and Rochford was later claimed to have spent eight days at Calais ‘and done nothing’.
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All the evidence suggests that he continued to be close to the King and in high favour as 1535 turned to 1536. In January the ever-partial Chapuys reported:
You could not conceive the joy that the king and those who form this confederacy have shown at the death of the good Queen (Catherine), especially the Earl of Wiltshire and his son, who said it was pity that the Princess (Mary) did not keep company with her …
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If they ever said any such thing, it was to reflect the King’s mood, because it would not have been lost upon such shrewd politicians as the Boleyns that Catherine’s death had removed an important safeguard of Anne’s position, and left her exposed to the fluctuations of Henry’s conscience in a way which she had not been exposed before. As we have seen, George was included with his father in the favourable lease of the Crown manor of Rayleigh in March 1536, and was writing to Lord Lisle about matters of routine business as late as 17 April. There is no reason to suppose that he had any indication of the disaster which was about to engulf his family, and may well have been on his way to intercede for his sister when he was arrested and taken to the Tower on 2 May. The surprise appears to have been complete.
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In spite of his success, Lord Rochford was not a wealthy man, and a desire to seize on his assets can have played no part in his downfall. At the time of his attainder his lands were valued at £441 10s 9d. He was of course the heir to the earldom of Wiltshire, but that was another prospect which was cut off by his death at the hands of the executioner on 19 May.
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He left no lawful children, and the legitimate Boleyn line became extinct with the death of his uncle James in 1561.
George is not an easy man to get to know. In his youth he was overshadowed by his father, and in later years by his sister. He was only thirty-two when he died. Most of the intimate record which we have of him derives from his trial, when he showed himself to be intelligent and resourceful. His enthusiasm for the Gospel is well attested, but appears more in the support which he gave to Anne than in any independent action of his own. Apart from a certain skill in translating evangelical treatises into English, his only well attested talent was for diplomacy. But owing to the difficult circumstances in which he was operating, he was denied the kind of triumph which his father had enjoyed at Mechelen. Even his poor relations with his wife, which could explain some of his conduct after 1529, is largely a matter of deduction and supposition. He was later alleged to have been a covert homosexual, and his childless marriage explained in those terms, but there is no contemporary evidence for any such orientation.
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If anything the indications are that he was a ‘ladies man’, with a certain charm of manner and a gift for versifying. It was that which his wife resented, but her own sexuality is questionable, and she may well not have offered him a very attractive option. In terms of family politics, he was from about 1525 onward an ever present factor, and enjoyed a good deal of favour, but nothing is known of his relationship with the King. As a member of the Privy Chamber he is shadowy by comparison with, say Henry Norris or William Compton. Inevitably he has gone down in history as Anne Boleyn’s brother, who was executed for having sex with her, a charge implausible enough to have cast doubt upon the whole case against her – perhaps more than is justified.
THE FALL OF THE BOLEYNS – THE TOWER DAYS
On the morning of Tuesday, 2 May 1536, Anne Boleyn was arrested and taken to the Tower. Later that same day, her brother George was also apprehended, and less than three weeks later, on 17 and 19 May, they were executed. The background to these seismic events has been much written about and speculated upon.
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Chapuys was writing of quarrels between the royal couple as far back as 1534, when Henry was alleged to have been enamoured of another damsel, a development which Anne had taken badly. Given the ambassador’s hostility to ‘the Concubine’, it is wise not to take these stories too seriously, but that there should have been tiffs and reconciliations would be entirely consistent with the relationship which existed between them. It is likely that Henry went on playing games of courtly love with a variety of ladies, and that his queen took exception to such antics, but that did not mean that his marriage was breaking down. It was not until January 1536 that the King began to show a serious interest in Jane Seymour, and by then the political circumstances had changed. Jane was twentyseven, and an experienced courtier, having been a lady-in-waiting to both Catherine of Aragon and Anne herself. She was no great beauty, but she was a daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wolf Hall, near Marlborough, and therefore came of a good breeding stock.
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Henry and Anne had actually visited Wolf Hall in the course of the summer progress, and had stayed for nearly a week in September 1535, but it is by no means certain that Jane was actually there at the time. In any case, the King would hardly have needed such an opportunity to get to know her. The visit to Wolf Hall was more about the career of Jane’s elder brother Edward than it was about her own. Antoine de Castelnau, the French ambassador, picked up a story in October 1535 about the King having ‘new amours’, but this belongs in the same category as Chapuys’s tales, and is contradicted by direct evidence from the English court.
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Besides it would have been at about that time that Anne became pregnant for the third time. However, by 29 January 1536 Chapuys was reporting that the King was contemplating a third marriage, and that was an altogether a more serious business.
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Henry was well aware that his second marriage was as unpopular as ever. While the court was in Hampshire on the summer progress, there had been hostile demonstrations in London, and support for Mary in particular appeared to be growing. Cromwell’s commissioners were compiling the
Valor Ecclesiasticus
, confiscating relics and closing down shrines. The threat of religious change was in the air, and people, including many of the nobility, did not like it. The Queen’s condition therefore became doubly important. If her pregnancy should fail, as had happened before, and with Catherine dead, the King would be free to repudiate Anne and take a third wife. It was no doubt some such speculation that Chapuys had picked up. This does not mean that Henry had given up on Anne, but merely that the way was open for him to do so if he chose, and the modest figure of Jane Seymour lurked in the background ready to give him an additional incentive. Meanwhile, the complex international situation added another dimension to the equation. Paul III had responded to the news of John Fisher’s execution by excommunicating Henry (again), and by seeking to persuade the Emperor and the King of France to sink their differences in an attack on schismatic England.
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Fortunately for Henry, the Duke of Milan died without heirs on 1 November 1535, and that re-opened a long festering controversy between the two major powers. It also persuaded the Boleyns and their allies to press the King for closer ties with France, which explains why Anne was trying (without success) to arrange a French marriage for her two-yearold daughter Elizabeth, and also why she was plying a renewed correspondence with Margaret of Angouleme during November and December.
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Thomas Cromwell, meanwhile, was eyeing a different prospect. Picking up on some positive signs from Charles, he was coming round to the view that England’s security would be best served by doing a deal with the Emperor. The main obstacle in the way of such a policy was Catherine, but with her death the whole scene changed, and Cromwell’s policy suddenly seemed to the King to be a viable option.
January was an eventful month. Catherine died on the 7th, and on the 24th Henry fell heavily from his horse in the tiltyard at Greenwich, where he was celebrating his freedom with a little jousting. The fall left him unconscious for two hours, causing something like panic among those close to him, and five days later, Anne miscarried. She alleged that this was due to anxiety at the news of his accident, but the truth seems to have been that she had had a difficult pregnancy, possibly because of her age.
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This event was controversial from the start. One not particularly well informed contemporary did not believe that it had happened at all, and the whole pregnancy was a figment of Anne’s imagination, driven on by her intense desire for a son. The Emperor was also apparently sceptical at first because he had convinced himself that Anne’s childbearing days were over, a perception fuelled by his desire to bring the marriage to an end. However, there is no reason to doubt the truth of Chapuys’s despatch of 10 February, which carried the details as far as he had been able to discover them. He reported that the foetus had ‘the appearance of a male about three and half months old’, information which he must have derived from one of the women in attendance upon her, and which is confirmed independently from other sources.
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Many years later Nicholas Sander retailed a story to the effect that the foetus was deformed, but there is no contemporary evidence to that effect, and if it had been true, Chapuys would surely have reported it. When he heard the news, Henry was bitterly disappointed, and declared that there must surely be some reason why God was denying him a son. His reaction was typically self-serving, and he seems not to have given a thought to his equally distressed wife, but that is not a reason to suppose that he had already decided to repudiate her. The only merit of the deformed foetus theory is that it provides a tidy explanation for that decision, because it was a contemporary belief that deformity in a child was a sign that it was misbegotten. In other words that Anne had been playing away from home, and the conception was not by the King.
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If Anne was guilty of adultery, however, some explanation was needed as to why Henry had never noticed until his face was, so to speak, rubbed in it. Witchcraft could of course provide a convenient excuse, and there is some evidence that as early as 1533 the King had been speaking of his infatuation in those terms. Then, however, he had spoken in a moment of casual anger; now he returned to that theme in a more considered fashion. Deformed foetus or not, there must be some explanation as to why this woman had held him in thrall for nearly a decade. The obvious reason lay in his own weakness and susceptibility, but that is hardly likely to have appealed to such an egotist as Henry was. She had cast a spell over him, which in a sense was nothing but the truth, however her weapons had been her own sexuality and wit, weapons which he could have resisted had his own personality been more robust. His pride demanded some more tangible cause for his own vulnerability, and witchcraft provided the ideal explanation.
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Shrovetide came at the end of February in that year, and Chapuys noted that Henry spent the feast alone at Whitehall. That may have been significant, but there were perfectly good business reasons why Henry needed to be at Westminster at that time, and Anne was, in all probability, still convalescent after her miscarriage. So it does not follow that the King had already made up his mind about her. What the evidence does suggest is that Henry was in a very uncertain state, and prone to quarrel with his wife for no very obvious reason. Only this time there was no passionate reconciliation. Anne’s natural magic was ceasing to be effective.
There was, moreover, another very important piece in this jigsaw puzzle, and that was Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell had never liked the pro-French orientation which the logic of Henry’s policies had demanded over the last few years, and the death of Catherine offered an opportunity to mend fences with the Empire. For his part, Charles was anxious to detach the King of England from Francis for reasons quite unconnected to his marriage, and early in 1536 had blocked a papal decree depriving Henry of his throne.
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Such a decree, as he well realised, would be so much hot air unless he was prepared to enforce it, which he had not the slightest intention of doing. In an ideal world, he would like to see Anne removed, and Mary recognised as the heir to the throne. However, the world was not ideal, and he was prepared to do a deal which would leave ‘the Concubine’ in place, provided some sort of an arrangement could be made over Mary. He therefore instructed Chapuys to swallow his distaste and make a friendly approach to Cromwell to see if this was possible. The ambassador was even prepared to make a gesture of recognition towards Anne as queen, which he had hitherto studiously avoided.
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However. the obstacle to this promising line of negotiation was the Queen herself. She had no objection to the negotiations themselves, and George greeted Chapuys effusively when he came to court. There were obvious advantages in a rapprochement with the Emperor, but she had no intention of allowing any deal which hindered Elizabeth’s title to the throne, and consequently was firmly opposed to any suggestion that Mary should be restored.
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This presented Cromwell with a dilemma. Either he could leave Anne alone, and hope to do a deal which made no mention of Mary, or he could take the risk of seeking to remove her in the hope that the King would then become amenable to a fuller agreement. Perhaps if the biddable Jane Seymour could be elevated in her place, both Mary and Elizabeth would cease to be issues. It was at this stage that he realised that Henry was having serious doubts about his wife.
Anne was a politician as well as a queen, and there were more issues in train than Mary’s status. Henry had decided to confiscate the property of the smaller religious houses, and a statute for that purpose was going through parliament at the time. Cromwell had invested a good deal of time and energy in this proposal, but Anne was opposed to it.
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This seems to have been not out of any affection for monks or nuns, but because she believed that the revenues so released should have been recycled to other religious purposes. This was a view which she shared with Thomas Cranmer, but whereas the Archbishop had made his objections known privately to the King, Anne had spoken out publicly against the bill, and thereby endangered its passage. In spite of the congruence of so many of their ideas, and the fact that he owed some part of his career in the royal service to her support, in the course of April 1536 Cromwell shifted his allegiance from Anne to Jane Seymour. This involved a suspension of hostilities with the conservative elements in the court, because it was they rather than Jane’s family which provided her substantial backing, and a high level of risk.
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Because the Queen was such a formidable figure, she could not simply be shunted aside, as Catherine had been. A capital charge would be necessary, and that would involve converting the King’s suspicions into an absolute conviction that she had been guilty of adultery, and not merely of adultery but of a conspiracy to destroy him. What the indictments found against her eventually said was that she had been, on various specified dates, guilty of adultery with no less that five men, including her brother George, and that she had ‘compassed and imagined’ the King’s death, mainly in a conversation with Henry Norris in which she had claimed that ‘he looked to have her if ought came to the king but well’.
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Adultery was an ecclesiastical offence, not a criminal one, so a lot hinged on this somewhat problematic charge, but first it was necessary to convince the King that these crimes had been committed. With that conviction in place, a capital sentence could be expected, and that was what the circumstances required.