Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford

by Julia Fox

  The sheer terror of such an end proved an excellent deterrent to many as Cromwell beavered away to ensure conformity. Henry’s subjects were ordered to take the oath accepting the legality of Anne’s marriage and the succession of her children. Most of those in the city of London did so on the very day that Elizabeth Barton was hanged. There is no record of whether Jane was required to take the oath but she would certainly have done so if necessary. Henry issued Suffolk with full authority to imprison without bail any who preached or spread “or otherwise set forth pernicious opinions and doctrines, to the exaltation of the power of the bishop of Rome.” That too was a crime. Every careless word could be reported and Cromwell’s spies were all around. The minister himself was inundated with messages about miscreants of every type and every degree of seriousness. Sir Francis Bryan happily reported the capture of a certain George Taylor who had called Henry a heretic and said that he would play football with the king’s crown if he had it. Despite Taylor’s pleading that he had been drunk at the time, Bryan felt that his execution would be “a very great example and the safeguard of many.” He even suggested the most appropriate towns for the displaying of Taylor’s four quarters, one of which, coincidentally, was Jane’s manor of Aylesbury. In Suffolk, Margaret Chancellor was reported for calling Anne “a goggle-eyed whore” and praying that she would never have another child by the king. Hugh Lathbury, a hermit, was another casualty for saying that Katherine would soon be queen again. He was obviously disturbed since he also said that he had seen her recently in Lincolnshire “and she would make ten men against the king’s one,” but his mental state did not save him. Nor was royal mercy likely to be extended to Friars Hugh Payn and Thomas Hayfield, who “in great pain and sickness” begged for forgiveness for praying for the pope “by name after the old custom,” until they heard such prayers were forbidden.

  Those keen to prove their own loyalty to their king knew exactly what they had to do. They included Jane’s relatives who lived in the more far-flung corners of the realm. Sir Piers (Peter) Edgecombe, a leading figure in the southwest and married to her mother’s sister, Katherine, clearly knew his duty. He informed Cromwell that he had committed Friar Gawan, warden of the Grey Friars at Plymouth, to the castle at Launceston until “the king’s pleasure be known,” and that he had also “punished by pillory and stocks in the market places such persons as spoke opprobrious words of the queen.”

  Whatever Jane thought about all of this, she could see its inevitable logic. Convinced in his own mind that what he was doing was morally correct, Henry would not countenance rebellion, disobedience, protest, or the mildest and most tentative disagreement. Everyone about him knew that. When Wolsey had warned Kingston all those years ago to beware “what matter ye put in his head, for ye shall never put it out again,” he had been devastatingly percipient. In the king’s head now was his own assessment of his rights, duties, and role in both church and state. It was safest to go along with that assessment.

  That was easier for some than for others. Anne, Thomas, and George were genuinely exhilarated by the new religious ideas and sometimes they interested Henry in them. Jane’s father, Lord Morley, perfected the art of bending with the wind. He accepted the loss of the pope’s political powers readily enough and turned up punctiliously for every treason trial or parliamentary sitting. Kings, he knew, had to be obeyed without question. “It often chanceth that tyrants do range and occupy the higher powers to afflict their subjects,” he wrote, “and yet this notwithstanding the commandment of the king must be observed.” Fortunately he believed his own prince to be gentle and devout, but even had he not been blessed with such a ruler, Jane’s father advocated a pragmatic approach. He counseled against the folly of resistance. Aiming to die in his own bed with his family about him, he saw no virtue in placing himself in needless danger. “It is a great point of wisdom,” he said, “to dissemble some time and to give place.” Brought up in such a school, his daughter appreciated the value of silence. In any case, she had been at court long enough to understand how her world worked. Harsh policies might be the best way to protect Anne’s position.

  Others were not so pragmatic and so the harsh policies continued. This time the victims were austere Carthusian monks, together with some from other orders, foolish enough or brave enough to deny their king his brand-new title, turning themselves into traitors in the process. Their treatment while in prison was barbaric. Yet half starved, sick, and completely undeterred by the agonies they faced if found guilty of treason, some spoke out forcefully in support of their beliefs and the supremacy of the pope. Before an audience that included Cromwell, Audley, and Thomas Boleyn, Richard Reynolds from Syon Abbey asserted that the majority of the population were behind him. “I dare even say all this kingdom,” he said, “although the smaller part holds with you, for I am sure the larger part is at heart of our opinion, although outwardly, partly from fear and partly from hope, they profess to be of yours.” This was not what Henry wanted to hear. Those who refused to conform were sentenced to the full horrors of a traitor’s death. Again, Jane knew every last grisly detail of what that entailed, for Thomas and George had ringside seats as knives seared through flesh and the stench of burning organs permeated the air.

  Tied to hurdles and dragged along the sharp and bumpy ground from the Tower to Tyburn, Reynolds and three Carthusian priors—John Houghton, Robert Lawrence, and Augustine Webster—were hanged until almost dead and then cut down. For the spectators, and George and Thomas were not the only members of Henry’s council present to watch unmoved as the victims choked and gasped for breath, the best was yet to come. The hangman cut into the men’s living bodies to remove their testicles, hearts, and bowels, which were then ceremonially burned. To increase the agony, each victim had to watch his companions die while awaiting his own turn to suffer the same fate. All died with great “constancy,” showed no fear, and during that inhuman period of dread anticipation, actually “preached and exhorted the bystanders with the greatest boldness to do well and obey the king in everything that was not against the honor of God and the Church.” Finally, the bodies were beheaded and cut into quarters which were then displayed prominently as a warning to any recklessly considering the idea of displeasing the king. As the executioner and his assistants removed the blood-drenched straw, George, Thomas, the Duke of Richmond, Norris, and the rest could return to the court or to their own homes for supper. So perish all traitors. It had been a good day’s work.

  It was not the only one. Katherine’s stalwart advocate, the elderly, frail Bishop John Fisher, was the next to pay the price. He was attainted for meeting the Holy Maid and not condemning her; his goods were seized and he was imprisoned. Barely had he been released than he was arrested again, this time for refusing the oath to the succession. As far as the Boleyns were concerned, the oath secured their descendants’ inheritance. Fisher found the issue much more complicated. He made it plain that while he was prepared to accept the succession and was ready “to swear never more to meddle in the validity” of Henry’s marriage to Katherine, he could not agree to the preamble of the act, which amounted to a tacit denial of papal supremacy. To do so would be to deny the ideals that had governed his life. Cranmer’s attempt to argue for the compromise by which the bishop was allowed to swear to the succession alone was completely rejected by the king. Henry was determined to have every last detail of what he wanted, right down to the tiniest of small print or, he said, “it would give occasion to all men to refuse the whole” and thus deny both his supremacy and the validity of his marriage to his beloved Anne. In that, the Boleyns could only concur.

  So the bishop, now in his midsixties, languished in the Tower, from where he wrote pitifully to Cromwell asking for adequate clothes and food. He possessed “neither shirt nor sheet nor yet other clothes” except ones that were “ragged and rent too shamefully.” He was not complaining of their condition but they did not keep him warm. As for his diet, he said, “God knows how slender it is at ma
ny times.” Because he was old and weak, there were certain foods he needed. Without them, he wrote, “I decay forthwith, and fall into coughs and diseases of my body, and cannot keep myself in health.” For the first few months of his incarceration, a friend, who was a merchant, sent him meat, wine, and jelly, and his brother, Robert, did his best to help, although this was “to his great hindrance” as he was not wealthy. Fisher’s pleas for better treatment, books, and a priest fell on deaf ears. As the court repaired to Greenwich for the festivities and frivolities of the Christmas season, and as Henry and Anne smilingly received their New Year’s gifts, the elderly cleric shivered in his cell. It was indeed unwise to court the king’s displeasure. Jane could see that for herself.

  Ultimately, it was also fatal. Once the Act of Supremacy was on the statute book, making it fully fledged treason to persist in refusing to acknowledge the king as head of the church, the screws were tightened. Fisher was questioned relentlessly, sometimes by Cromwell, sometimes by the council. Henry, and doubtless Anne, was kept fully up to date on the minutest of developments. Her family too followed every single move, a process made easier by Thomas’s position on the council. In fact, Thomas helped interrogate Fisher’s fellow prisoner, the former chancellor, Sir Thomas More, who had also fallen afoul of the draconian new laws.

  Jane’s acquaintance with Fisher was slight. She knew about him as Katherine’s champion but he had never been a daily court attendee, minister, or courtier like Suffolk or Norfolk or Cranmer. She was unlikely to know much about him on a personal level. Sir Thomas More was different. A successful lawyer, he had been speaker of the House of Commons and a royal councilor, one of Henry’s favorites. The author of Utopia, a manifesto famously calling on Henry to reform society, he was renowned for his rapier wit, his humor, his learning, his integrity, his devotion to the Catholic cause. Like Thomas Boleyn, he was a friend of Erasmus, the Dutch humanist, but his religious views were vastly different from those of the Boleyns, whom he probably considered heretics. They had always known that More would never become an ally, particularly when he had swiftly resigned from the chancellorship after being in the position for less than three years and then pointedly declined the summons to Anne’s coronation. But he had been at court, and quite often. George and Thomas knew him well. Jane almost certainly met him and talked to him at some point. And those who met him usually liked him.

  Nothing would help him now, though, unless he changed his mind and took the oath. Just like Fisher, he might well have agreed to the succession if that had been the only issue. But for him it was not. He could not bring himself to accept that Henry actually had the right to bring about momentous changes within the church without the consent of a general council, a meeting of the most influential figures in the church summoned by the pope. No individual could, not even his king. “A man,” he avowed, “is not so bound in conscience by a law of one realm as by a law of Christendom.” To take the oath would be to lose his soul. It was a point of principle that would cost him his life, but that was of no matter. “I have lived, methinketh, a long life,” he wrote, “and now neither I look nor I long to live much longer.” And should he go to the block, he did not want his family to grieve. Instead he would pray that they would all meet again in heaven “where we shall make merry for ever, and never have trouble hereafter.”

  Die he did, of course. So did Fisher. Thomas Boleyn was named on the commission set up to try the bishop, and both he and George were named on the one established for More. So the two Boleyns, father and son, together with Cromwell, Suffolk, Audley, and Norfolk, were among those who sat on the bench alongside the judges for the trial of the former chancellor. Neither prisoner really stood a chance, although More, ever the brilliant lawyer, argued his case admirably, despite only hearing the precise charges laid against him for the first time on that day. They were read out in Latin, a process that took almost an hour. Skillfully, he trod the tightrope between answering the questions where he could without entrapping himself. Only when he was found guilty, after the handpicked jury had deliberated for just fifteen minutes, did he speak out and really proclaim his views. He was devastating: “Since I am condemned, and God knows how, I wish to speak freely of your statute, for the discharge of my conscience. For seven years I have studied this matter, but I have not yet read in any approved doctor of the Church that a temporal ruler could or ought to be head of the spirituality.” When Audley, Sir Thomas’s successor, remonstrated on his presumption of superiority to “all the bishops and nobles of the realm,” More rounded on him:

  My lord, for every bishop of your opinion, I have more than a hundred saints of mine; and for one parliament of yours, and God knows of what kind, I have all the General Councils for a thousand years; and for one kingdom, I have France and all the other kingdoms of Christendom…I say further, that your Statute is ill made, because you have taken an oath and sworn never to do anything against the Church, which through all Christendom is one and undivided, and you have no authority, without the common consent of all Christians, to make a law or Act of Parliament against the unity of Christendom.

  More finished his address to the stunned room by praying that God would protect the king “and give him good counsel.” Reynolds had not dared go quite that far. The doomed man left Westminster Hall for his journey back to his prison cell in the Tower, the point of the ceremonial ax pointing symbolically toward him to indicate that he had been found guilty. Waiting at the wharf where his boat landed was Margaret Roper, his most adored daughter. Knowing that it was the only chance she would have to embrace her father for the very last time before he disappeared from view and from reach behind those thick unyielding walls, she pushed her way through the guards. She did so, her husband tells us, “without consideration or care of herself.” The soldiers, of necessity usually unsentimental and unemotional, did not stop her. “Margaret, have patience, and do not grieve,” said More. “It is God’s will.” He continued gently, “For a long time you have known the secrets of my heart.” His composure slipped a little, when after “having stepped back ten or twelve paces,” she rushed to cling to him just once more. Fighting back the tears, he asked her to pray for his soul. More remained calm to the bitter end, but his last letter to Margaret, written with a charcoal stick on the night before his beheading, revealed his true feelings. “I never liked your manner toward me better than when you kissed me last, for I love when daughterly love and dear charity hath no leisure to look to worldly courtesy.” Even the childless Jane, a Boleyn, was likely to be touched by that.

  While the heads of More and Fisher, boiled in salt water and then tarred to prevent the gulls pecking at them too much, remained on their poles on London Bridge, a chilling warning to anyone else contemplating displeasing the king, court life seemed to go on much as before. Jane’s father returned to the tranquillity of his library and his writings. Always keen to expand his property portfolio, Suffolk, true to form, let it be known that he would like some of More’s lands in Chelsea, which lay four miles to the west of London, for, naturally, everything once owned by a traitor was forfeit to the Crown and thus there for the taking. He did not get them. Cromwell concentrated on pleasing his master, keeping a wary eye on any potential troublemakers, and carrying on with the normal matters of government. George, now appointed warden of the Cinque Ports, a plum post, was as busy as ever. Thomas served on the King’s Council with his son and kept an eye on their vast estates. Cocooned in her luxurious apartments, Anne supervised her ladies’ sewing, listened to the melodies of her musicians, and laughed with her companions. She visited little Elizabeth, bought her pretty things, fumed at the actions of the stubbornly recalcitrant Mary, and managed her husband in her own way. Every month, she watched anxiously until the first signs of menstruation dashed her hopes of pregnancy. But Jane was not always with her.

  For appearances could sometimes deceive. Over the year or so since Anne’s miscarriage, subtle changes had been occurring. And they had been occurring very close
to home: conflict within the Boleyn family coincided with disturbing hints of trouble between Anne and the king. To see his anger visited upon someone else was one thing; to be in the firing line personally was quite another. And, during that dramatic period when the Carthusian monks had rotted in prison, and Fisher and More had resorted to using charcoal as pens, Jane had become so involved in her sister-in-law’s affairs as to draw Henry’s wrath upon herself.

  CHAPTER 18

  Happy Families

  THE HORSES STAMPED IMPATIENTLY as the last of the baggage was loaded into carts. It was late autumn, the days were getting shorter, the nights darker and the weather colder, but only when Jane Rochford had left the confines of the palace did everyone set off. They had all been waiting for her. For Jane, this was reminiscent of a journey she had made so many years ago when, as a young girl, she had left the safety of her parents’ home for the excitement and allure of the royal court. That was a lifetime away. Now it was the court that she was leaving, and in ignominy. At least she was not facing detention behind the stone walls of the Tower, where the Carthusian monks Fisher and More still languished in an agony of suspense until the ax and the knife ended their lives. In view of the king’s temper, that in itself was a considerable relief.

  Over the next few months, while Henry’s justice overwhelmed others, Jane had the leisure to reflect on her own situation. Ultimately, everything had stemmed from the vulnerability of the Boleyns’ position. Anne had to give Henry the heir he needed. It was as straightforward as that. A slight edginess within the family had been inevitable after Anne’s miscarriage but for a while life appeared to continue as normal. The king had accepted his loss and pushed on with crushing the merest hint of opposition and in her position Jane already knew, or would know, every last gruesome detail about how he managed that. However, the fact remained that everything depended on Anne’s reproductive abilities. Anne’s relationship with Henry had always been one of intense passion. So far, she had proved to be the love of his life, his “sweetheart,” his “darling,” his soul mate. Sheer physical and mental attraction, as the Boleyns appreciated, was the secret of Anne’s grip over Henry and the reason for their financial gains as part of the extended royal family. But such a hold could prove a chimera. The court was brimming with attractive women, many of them younger than Anne. The danger was crystal clear: a man who had strayed from one wife might get into the habit and make it a specialty. Until she gave birth to a prince, Anne’s position would never be totally secure. Jane, like the rest of the family, was only too aware of that basic fact. And, like them, she would help her sister-in-law if she could.