Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford

by Julia Fox

  Certainly, as she rode to London, Jane understood that her destiny lay outside the confines of Great Hallingbury. Even while she enjoyed those brief years of childhood, Jane realized that they were but a preparation for the future—hers. Lord and Lady Morley took the upbringing of their children very seriously. It was their duty. Both boys and girls must be taught all that society demanded if they were to take their rightful place when the time came. Lord Morley had a love of learning that lasted all his life. Educated at Oxford himself, he wanted a stimulating and rigorous education for his son and heir, Henry. Expertise in the classics, though, was not something to encourage in his daughters. No husband would want a wife who was more knowledgeable than himself. And so Jane’s schooling was designed to fit her for the role of a wife and mother. She stayed at home in those early years, learning how to read and write, how to supervise servants and run a large household, and how to harness the healing properties of common herbs so that she could treat everyday ailments. Then, of course, there was needlework. Jane spent hours quietly sewing and perfecting convoluted yet delicate stitches. In this she was not alone; most wealthy women excelled in this pastime. Even Queen Katherine made shirts for her husband and thought nothing of mending them herself as a sign of her love. Jane’s favorite lessons, though, were perhaps music and dancing. A talented musician himself, the king delighted in everything musical. He reveled in the highly choreographed and glittering masques performed after supper at court. In these spectacular entertainments, favorite gentlemen strutted about in elaborate costumes, performing roles as holy pilgrims, mysterious strangers, or brave knights ready to rescue damsels in distress. The prettiest and most accomplished of the ladies always got the best parts. For Jane, it was as well to be ready. Opportunities to be on show before the entire court did not come easily, even for the daughter of a peer. Chances had to be seized.

  That is, naturally, if God willed it so. Religion underpinned everything. While still a child, Jane was instructed with the underlying beliefs of Catholicism. She learned about the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrament of the Mass. She took comfort in the gentle goodness of the Virgin Mary who, along with the saints, could intercede for her with God. She prayed for the pope in Rome and she prayed for the king and queen. With her rosary beads in her hands, Jane recited the prayers she was taught. And she attended the services that were conducted in the Morleys’ private chapel within the house itself. The Latin words of the Mass became familiar to her as she knelt with her relatives and servants before the altar and watched the priest use the chalice and other religious ornaments given by the late Alice Lovel. She saw the terrifyingly vivid doom pictures painted on church walls that showed the souls of the righteous led into heaven by saints, martyrs, and winged angels while the damned were dragged away to eternal torment by laughing devils and monsters. She was thankful that the Catholic Church stood between herself and the horrors of hell, for the church was invincible.

  It also preserved the fabric of society and the established hierarchy. For Jane, this meant that next to the king, her father was the most revered person in her life. He was head of the family. He took all the major decisions. As she rode away from Great Hallingbury, Jane knew that one day he would arrange her betrothal and she would be expected to conform to his wishes. All families chose their children’s spouses with infinite care. Marriage was, after all, a contract. It brought material and social advantages to both sides. It was not something to be entered into lightly. But it was what she was being trained for and one day it would happen.

  Of course, it would bring responsibilities. Jane only had to watch her own mother to appreciate the complexities of the life that awaited her. Alice St. John was the daughter of Sir John St. John, a prosperous and respected Bedfordshire landowner. Her wedding to Lord Morley was brokered by Lady Margaret Beaufort, Morley’s patroness and a relative of the St. Johns. Jane saw how well the match worked. Alice gave birth to at least five children: Jane herself; her sister Margaret, presumably named after Lady Margaret, who helped pay christening expenses for the Morley progeny; another sister Elizabeth; and two sons, Henry, the heir, and his brother, Francis. Childbirth was both painful and hazardous but it did not interfere very much with a noblewoman’s other duties. Although the bond between mother and baby could be as strong then as it is now, Lady Morley was not required to care for any of her offspring herself; wet-nurses and servants did that. She supervised their upbringing only in the most general of terms. In fact, Jane rarely saw her mother when she was very young, for like so many women of her station Lady Morley accompanied her husband on his visits to court, sometimes staying away from the family houses for long periods. As a peer, Lord Morley had to play his part in the affairs of state. For most nobles, this meant engaging in the dangerous jousting that the king so enjoyed and fighting in the wars against France. Morley, though, was no soldier. Eventually, he served Henry with his pen, as a writer and translator of classical texts, but in the meantime attendance at court was a painless way of proving his loyalty and doing his duty. Naturally, Lady Morley went with him. So, once she was old enough, did Jane.

  Unsurprisingly, since her true importance still lay in the future, much of Jane’s early life is undocumented. There was nothing unusual or noteworthy in how she was brought up. But as a way of widening experience, it was customary for young girls of her class, while in their early teens, to be sent away from home to serve in the households of other rich noblewomen. Sir Thomas Boleyn sent his two daughters to France; little Catherine Howard, another relation of Jane’s through marriage, spent her formative years with the Duchess of Norfolk. For the Morleys, the crucial decision was not whether to let Jane go; it was her destination. The most envied situation of all for a girl was admittance to the royal court in the train of a great lady. The greatest lady of all was the queen. Mothers schemed and plotted furiously to place their daughters with her. And very possibly, this is what happened to Jane. In his series of poems, Metrical Visions, George Cavendish, who knew her personally, wrote that Jane was “brought up at court” all of her “young age.” Certainly, when Jane rode out from Great Hallingbury and left childhood behind, she traveled to a new life. And that life was centered on the court of Henry VIII with all its intrigue, jealousies, and sheer exuberant luxury. It was an environment she would never leave.

  CHAPTER 2

  All That Glisters

  FROM THE MOMENT she walked into Henry’s court, Jane entered another world. It was a world of complete opulence, a world in which everything that could make life more comfortable and more pleasurable was abundantly provided. The king demanded only the best. His palaces were richly furnished; his plate was silver, gilt, or even gold. At night, the twinkling flames from hundreds of candles, firmly secured into the branches of gilt candelabra, glowed against the wooden paneling or brought alive the deep colors of the priceless tapestries that adorned so many walls. The evening suppers comprised course after course. Venison, veal, lamb, peacock, quail, heron, pigeon, turbot, salmon, bream—anything could appear, perhaps flavored with exotic spices like pepper, mace, nutmeg, or saffron. By day, there could be hunting, jousting, tournaments; after supper, the haunting melodies of Henry’s musicians could fill the air or there could be dancing or even a masque or pageant to delight the eye. Amid all of this moved the rich, the famous, the glamorous, resplendent in bright, stylish garments glinting with precious stones. She did not see the king or queen every day—they would often retire to their private or privy apartments to be served only by the select few allowed admittance—so there were plenty of hours to be whiled away in quiet sewing; but for Jane, fresh from the calm tranquillity of rural Essex, the sights and sounds of those first days were almost unbelievable.

  She was barely given time to take it all in, perhaps even less than a year, before she was on the move. This was not unusual. The court was not fixed in one place. Its personnel followed Henry from palace to palace, and he moved frequently so that each building could be thoroughly cleane
d to reduce the threat of disease. In fact, he had such a dread of infection that he refused to be in any city where there was a hint of contagion. This move, though, was entirely different: it happened in June 1520 and was across the Channel to the English port of Calais. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry’s chief minister, had arranged for his master to meet the French king, Francis I, for a series of discussions that took place near the town of Guisnes, about five miles south from Calais. To please both monarchs, these talks were conducted in style and splendor, such style and splendor that the whole event came to be known as the Field of Cloth of Gold. And Jane traveled with her king.

  She was, of course, not alone. Since they were bitter rivals, neither Henry nor Francis wanted to be upstaged by the other. Thus, they were accompanied by their queens, by the most important people of their kingdoms, and by an army of servants and attendants. The names of many of those who embarked at Dover with the king are known. They range from the great dukes of Buckingham and Suffolk, to knights of the shires, to gentlemen such as Thomas More, down to hirelings like Thomas Wilson, a farrier. Then, among the list of those gentlewomen designated to attend upon Henry’s wife, Katherine of Aragon, we find the name of Mistress Parker, the form of address commonly used for Jane as the daughter of Sir Henry Parker, Lord Morley. In fact, almost six thousand men and women were assembled from each side. The sheer logistics of transporting them, let alone housing and feeding them, was a nightmare. Luckily for Henry, Wolsey was the perfect man for the job. Indeed, Wolsey seemed capable of anything. He oversaw absolutely everything to do with the meeting, although even he was forced to delegate some of the arrangements. His principal assistant was Sir Richard Wingfield, the resident ambassador in France, whose sterling efforts in liaising with the French court ensured that both sides did exactly the same thing and arrived with exactly the same numbers in their entourage. For the French to flaunt their superior wealth would never do. As an experienced diplomat in his own right, Wingfield was astute enough to be punctilious in consulting Wolsey on every detail that cropped up, no matter how trivial. And it was Wolsey who had engineered the talks in the first place.

  This was no mean feat. The English nobles were never happier than when fighting their traditional enemy; Henry shared their enthusiasm. Since he always believed himself the rightful king of France, and felt fully justified in using the title even though the only French land England possessed was the port of Calais and the area around it, persuading him to these talks required all of Wolsey’s “filed tongue and ornate eloquence.” Now that everyone had braved the Channel crossing, though, the fashionable humanist concept of peace and harmony captured their imaginations, especially since the celebrations themselves were so bewitching. Anyway, war was a cripplingly expensive pastime and no one wanted Wolsey to concentrate on the vexatious question of increased taxation. No, supporting their king in a face-to-face meeting designed to bring about peace in Europe was acceptable, even exciting. There was bound to be a good joust or two to look forward to: they would provide a welcome excuse to parade English military prowess. And Henry was determined to put on a first-rate show. His England might be the smallest of the big three powers compared to the dominions of Francis and Katherine’s nephew, Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, but it was civilized, cultured, and sophisticated. He would prove it.

  So it was that Jane and the rest of the court sailed across the Channel with their king, a voyage of about five hours since the weather, at that point, was favorable. Her first sight of Calais was its stout walls as they became distinctly visible in the distance; it was a sight she was destined to see again in very different circumstances. A few days after landing at Calais, Henry and his party moved on to Guisnes. There a temporary palace had been built for him. It was, according to the chronicler Edward Hall, “the most noble and royal lodging before seen.” It was connected to the castle of Guisnes by a special gallery “for the secret passage of the king’s person into a secret lodging within the same castle the more for the king’s ease.” The building itself was “sumptuous.” It had stone foundations with walls partly of brick and partly of wood, in which tall glass windows were set, clearly a miracle of Tudor engineering. There were two pillars at the entrance with statues of Bacchus and Cupid “from which flowed streams of malmsey and claret into silver cups.” The interior was just as breathtaking. Apartments were prepared for Henry, for Katherine, for Henry’s sister, Mary, the dowager queen of France (a title she retained until her death) and now the wife of the Duke of Suffolk, and, significantly, for the cardinal also. Preparations for the king’s reception had been underway for weeks. The lord chamberlain and officers of the Wardrobe had been sent over to get everything ready for him forty days before he was due to arrive. They carefully draped the ceilings of the rooms with silk. Cloth of gold or silver*1 was bought by the yard and used lavishly, as was silver damask and black velvet, yellow velvet, crimson velvet. The Great Hall provided the ideal gallery in which to show his tapestry collection, shipped to Guisnes with so many of Henry’s other possessions from his palaces at Richmond, Greenwich, or Westminster. Crafted in vibrant colors, in threads of gold and silver, with subjects taken from so many biblical stories, and with one of particular beauty portraying a scene in which King David coveted Bathsheba, it is hardly surprising that all who saw them marveled.

  For Henry, expense was a minor issue; visible magnificence was paramount. That applied to every single part of the edifice. With cloth of gold hangings on the walls, some set with pearls, and gold candlesticks, crosses, and other religious ornaments gleaming on the altar, the chapel within the palace was particularly dazzling. Vestments given by Henry VII to Westminster Abbey had been borrowed and packed reverently for use within it. Like their king, no English courtier wanted to be eclipsed by the French. All took pride in this display of English wealth and craftsmanship. That the stunning French pavilion, a patently fragile structure of gold brocade, its ceiling decorated with stars of gold foil, was dismantled after four days because of the wind and rain was especially gratifying to the chauvinistic English. Their palace stayed up despite the weather. Wolsey’s careful preparations had triumphed.

  Never one to waste an opportunity, Wolsey managed to find time to talk with French clergy and ambassadors while Henry and Francis resolutely threw themselves into the serious business of entertaining each other during the two and a half weeks or so that the meeting lasted. They jousted, banqueted, performed in elaborately costumed masques, and once had an ostensibly playful wrestle, which, to Henry’s chagrin, Francis won. They even managed to squeeze in some political discussions, talking, inevitably, in a golden tent. The jousts were a particular favorite for the crowds of spectators who reveled in Henry’s exploits as, with his horse draped in cloth of gold, he constantly defeated his opponents until he finished his bouts “right nobly and like a prince of most valiance.” All this was fought before a remarkable tree of honor with leaves of green damask and cloth of gold. Jane’s senses reeled from being a part, even an unimportant part, of what was being thought of as an extraordinary occasion. She also had fun. At one banquet, given by Katherine for Francis while Henry was feasted by the French queen, Claude, Francis insisted on kissing all of Katherine’s ladies except for four or five whom he considered “old and not fair.” So Jane, who was still less than twenty years of age and certainly good looking, was kissed by a king.

  Then, on Saturday, June 23, came the climax of the entire event, a great mass. Jane took her seat in the stands just before ten in the morning. Dressed in scarlet, the cardinals and legates of England and France made their way on to the platform. The French bishops and archbishops, who sat close to the altar, came next. Once all were ready, the joyous notes of Henry’s musicians of the Chapel Royal, a body of priests and singers whose task it was to serve his spiritual needs, rose to the heavens. Some of these were young boys with clear, pure, unbroken voices but there were adult singers too. Among them was Robert Fayrfax, who had performed so movingly
at the funeral of Henry’s baby nine years earlier.

  Jane sat with the other ladies of Katherine’s entourage in the same stands from which they had watched the jousts. The service was sung from a wooden chapel built overnight in those very tiltyards. Everyone who was anyone was there on that day, from the king’s sister, Mary, to various young gentlemen of the privy chamber such as William Carey and Henry Norris. Jane’s mother, Lady Morley, whose name, along with that of her husband, appears on the roll of those who were to be in Katherine’s retinue, sat close to her daughter. The Boleyns, Sir Thomas and his wife, Elizabeth, were nearby. So was their daughter, Mary, still a newlywed following her marriage to William Carey only a few months before. Mary Carey and Jane, both listed as “gentlewomen,” had time to become acquainted. No doubt Thomas and Elizabeth enjoyed chatting and reminiscing with Bridget, the wife of Sir Richard Wingfield who had grown up in Stone Castle in Kent, a few miles from the Boleyn estate at Hever. Her father still lived there. For the Boleyns, the event probably provided the chance of a family reunion. Their second daughter, Anne, was a member of the French queen’s household. While Anne is not mentioned in the roll of names on the English side, it is likely that she was present with her royal mistress. Perhaps Jane was able to meet, for the first time, the woman who was to become both her queen and her sister-in-law. It is also possible that Jane’s future husband, George Boleyn, was there, for knights were allowed to bring attendants and Sir Thomas may well have decided to give his only son the experience of a lifetime.