Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford

by Julia Fox

  What she certainly could not keep were the proceeds of George’s offices or any of the land he had so painstakingly accumulated over the years. The vultures were soon out for those. Nothing was too small to be worth the asking. Robert Barnes, who was burned as a heretic four years later, wrote a begging letter to Cromwell asking him to procure for him the keepership of Bedlam, which he had heard, erroneously, was worth forty pounds per annum. The Earl of Sussex fared much better. He carried off the lion’s share, gaining the stewardship of Beaulieu and some of George’s Essex manors. Andrew Flamock, who had made the king laugh when he broke wind, gained the constableship of Kenilworth in Warwickshire and Sir Thomas Cheyney became the new warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover. George’s fall was a welcome bonanza for them. Jane’s father, apparently not too squeamish to care about profiting from his daughter’s distress, did quite well too. He received some minor offices in Beaulieu and the keepership of the park at King’s Hatfield. At least they stayed in the family. Also staying in the family were the manor of South Kent, the lordship of Rayleigh and lands around Penshurst, which had been sold to Thomas already. Yet the one part of the family that they did not stay with was Jane herself. She saw every last vestige of George’s estates snatched from her grasp.

  Any who owed money to her late husband now owed it to the king, not to her. As George had faced death, concern about his debts and his obligations had played on his mind. He had hoped that the king would settle them for him but could have been under no illusions about Henry’s generosity. Perhaps the king did show compassion to the man with whom he had once played cards and bowls. If he did, we have no record of it. What Jane knew, however, was that she would not see a penny due to her dead husband. Instead, Henry would ensure that everything went into the royal coffers. George Lovekyn of East Greenwich may have thought he might escape the £100 he owed to George. He did not, he had to pay it to the king. And the archbishop of Dublin fared worse, enduring a long period of anxiety. Owing George £400, he repaid £250 and gave a further £50 “to redeem a gold cup of the said Lord Rochford’s,” leaving £100 outstanding. The archbishop had arranged for that to pay for a house of his that George wanted, but after the execution he could not even get the house back. Unfortunately, the king was now demanding the full £400. For Jane, whose finances had plummeted, recovering any of George’s money would have been so very useful.

  All she could count on was her jointure, the document signed at her marriage and designed to give her security should George die. On her wedding day at Great Hallingbury it had been perfectly natural for her to envisage herself as eventual mistress of the Boleyn estates when her husband took them over some time in the future. That would include Blickling and Hever, the two jewels in the Boleyn crown. Her jointure was a form of insurance policy that she would have preferred not to cash in, certainly not at this stage of her life. It would, after all, mean living on much reduced means and Jane was not used to thinking about costs and living expenses. Over her years at court, she had come to take the considerable rewards of royal service very much for granted. But her situation was changed beyond recognition now and she had to rely on Thomas to keep his part of the bargain.

  And that was the problem. Thomas had just lost his only son and his daughter to the headsman. With his personal position at court so unenviable, he would have to practice his extensive diplomatic skills in minimizing the damage their fall had caused him. Perhaps had Jane produced a grandson for him as a living reminder of his dead heir, he would have felt, and behaved, differently. In that case, the Ormond ancestral horn would have found a home. In Ormond’s will, he had bequeathed a rather special item to his grandson, Thomas. The item was an ivory horn tipped with gold at both ends, together with a white silk ribbon decorated in gold to support it, both of which were to be handed through the family from father to son “to the honor of the same blood.” Ormond had received the horn from his own father and, as he had only two daughters, Margaret Boleyn and Anne St. Leger, left it to Margaret’s son, Thomas. It should have passed to George and then to George’s son.

  Since Jane and George had no son, Thomas was required by the terms of his grandfather’s will to give the precious horn to Sir George St. Leger, Anne St. Leger’s son, to descend through that branch of the family. It was yet another loss for Thomas, a further reminder of what might have been. A later suggestion that George Boleyn, a colorful sixteenth-century church dean, who often took his badly behaved dog into church with him, was George’s son is unfounded. There is no record of Jane’s giving birth and had the dean been George’s illegitimate child, Thomas would surely have been involved in his upbringing, especially after George’s death. If Sir Edward Howard could acknowledge his two bastards, there was no reason for George not to do the same for his. The child would not have been in line for the Ormond horn, as that was for legitimate issue only, but he might have been recognized as kin.

  So, with no children as bargaining counters, Jane was entirely dependent on Thomas fulfilling his obligations to the letter. The precise terms of the jointure document, agreed between Thomas and Lord Morley all those years ago, were crucial. Even today, her story can only make sense in the context of these pivotal documents hidden in the archives for almost five hundred years. Unfortunately, the original document itself has disappeared over the centuries, but since it is possible to reconstruct it from other references, we have the same information that Jane had as she considered her new position. For a woman like her, used to the very best that life could offer, the future looked bleak. And Thomas’s typically shifty land dealings did not help.

  Her jointure allocated her some lands in Norfolk, including the manor of West Laxham together with the far more important manors of Aylesbury and Bierton and other lands in Buckinghamshire. Thomas had gained Aylesbury and Bierton through his mother’s Ormond legacy and probably had no real intention of handing them over to Jane. His mother, Margaret, was still alive and retained an interest in them and they offered potential sources of profit if they came up for sale. Thomas, always happy to keep or preferably gain property, therefore opted for the clause in the jointure that allowed him to give Jane a hundred marks a year during his lifetime in lieu of the lands. Jane had always known that this would be the case: it was why, even setting aside her emotional loss, it was so much better for her to be a wife than a widow. Since widows were usually given an annual payment of 10 percent of the original amount paid for the jointure, the hundred marks made sense because the cost of the jointure to Lord Morley had been one thousand marks. But the king had then added another thousand marks to the jointure amount as a gift to the young couple. Henry’s present should have been taken into account, so Jane should have received 10 percent of two thousand marks rather than 10 percent of a thousand. Unfortunately for Jane, Lord Morley had not pointed out the anomaly, so Thomas Boleyn, ever eager to retain money whenever possible, had conveniently forgotten Henry’s contribution and was now only prepared to adhere to the bare minimum that had been agreed.

  Managing on one hundred marks (sixty-six pounds) per annum would not be easy. George had happily paid fifty pounds for a gold cup, he had willingly spent twenty marks on hawks, and he had thought nothing of pocketing fifty-eight pounds as betting winnings from Henry in a single month. Jane was not used to budgeting. Even her wardrobe would be expensive. Sufficient black satin for a cloak could cost almost five pounds, about the same as for a satin nightgown. Damask was a similar price, silk and velvet even more. At approximately two pounds per yard cloth of gold or cloth of silver would have to be things of the past. If she became ill and needed a good doctor, the costs could be astronomical. Henry had once paid twenty pounds for Princess Mary’s medical expenses. One hundred marks would not go far.

  Until now, Jane had been very much under male protection and control, first her father’s and then her husband’s. With George dead, she could call on Lord Morley if necessary but his reluctance to put himself on the line made him a weak ally. In fact
, she knew precisely what she had to do if she was to rake in more funds: her best bet would be to enlist Cromwell’s help in persuading the king to take pity on her. As Brereton’s widow, Elizabeth Savage, proved, sometimes the king could be sympathetic. Her husband had not only been a courtier, but he had also amassed extensive land holdings in Cheshire and North Wales, all of which had, of course, been confiscated. Elizabeth Savage did remarkably well and remarkably quickly. Within weeks of Brereton’s execution, Henry returned much of his land to her. Later she knew whom to thank, sending a gelding to Cromwell, when seeking yet more assistance from him. Uriah Brereton was helped too, for he gained some of his late brother’s offices. No, pinning her faith on Lord Morley’s efforts was not the answer for Jane. She must approach the minister.

  That is what she did and she did it immediately. There was no point in attempting to meet him; she had to write to him, phrasing her letter with considerable skill in accordance with set conventions. We know fairly accurately what her template would have been, for in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, Angel Day, in The English Secretorie, produced what amounts to a “teach yourself how to write a letter” manual based on the accepted Tudor norms concerning status, position, and chances of success. When Jane approached Cromwell, her language was that of an inferior to a superior. Well might that have gone against the grain. Her aristocratic lineage and title were important to her and she was used to being closely associated with the woman to whom the king had once denied nothing. Cromwell was a commoner whose lowly origins were a matter for derision. But this was not the moment for standing on her dignity. She was a supplicant, one of the many who turned to Cromwell in greed or despair every day and added to his mountainous correspondence. It was true that she had given him useful information about Anne and George, but the minister had dredged it out of her. She had done nothing to earn a reward, so she knew that she had to swallow her pride or he could choose to ignore her.

  Photo Insert One

  Jane’s father, Lord Morley, sketched by Dürer while in Germany in 1523. Morley was one of the ambassadors sent by Henry to present the Order of the Garter to Charles V’s brother, Ferdinand.

  The portrait of Lady Parker, which one authority identified as Jane, but is probably Grace Newport, the first wife of Jane’s brother, Sir Henry Parker.

  Jane’s signature on her letter to Cromwell seeking his help after George Boleyn’s execution.

  Henry VIII’s signature on the Act that settled Jane’s jointure.

  The letter in which Lord Morley tells Cromwell that he is sending him a greyhound. Morley signs the letter with a flourish,“y[ou]r owne to c[omm]and, Harry Morley.”

  “Thys boke ys myn[e]” wrote George Boleyn in 1526. The book, which might have been a wedding gift, contained two French poems in manuscript form, including the satire on marriage.

  A design for tents that may well have been intended for the Field of Cloth of Gold.

  Henry VIII. A portrait of power and majesty, this image, with its emphasis on Henry’s codpiece, is also a statement of Henry’s dynastic intentions.

  Francis I, King of France.

  Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor.

  Henry VIII jousting. Katherine of Aragon is sitting in the stands watching.

  Katherine of Aragon. The queen’s youthful beauty, which had delighted Henry, has faded into staid, middle-aged corpulence.

  Sir Thomas More.

  The Challenge for Capturing a Castle. The court entertainments at Christmas, 1526, included this spectacular pageant.

  “Assembling the Riders,” taken from the David and Bathsheba tapestry series still extant. Henry’s tapestries were likely to have been very similar to the series from which this is taken.

  Henry reading in his bedchamber. An illustration from the Latin psalter illuminated for the King by Jean Maillart, which contains Henry’s marginalia claiming similarities between his own life and that of King David.

  Cardinal Wolsey.

  Henry dining in his privy chamber surrounded by his gentlemen. His cloth of estate is clearly visible.

  The Court of the King’s Bench, Westminster. The prisoners in the foreground await their fate.

  Photo Insert Two

  Thomas Boleyn’s signed conveyance of his fabulous estate of New Hall in Essex to Henry VIII. After remodeling the house in the grandest, most sumptuous style, Henry changed its name to Beaulieu, giving it to George and Jane Boleyn as a grace and favor residence.

  Anne Boleyn.

  Hever Castle, the Boleyn seat in Kent, where Dr. Butts once fought for Anne’s life against the sweating sickness. The castle was bought and restored by William Waldorf Astor in the early years of the twentieth century.

  Sir Thomas Wyatt, Anne Boleyn’s poet suitor.

  The brass tomb effigy of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, Jane’s father-in-law, wearing the robes and insignia of a Knight of the Garter, and with the family falcon emblem above his right shoulder.

  Thomas Cromwell.

  The seating plan for Anne Boleyn’s coronation banquet. Jane sat at the second table from the right.

  Cardinal Wolsey surrenders the great seal on his fall in 1529.

  The Tower of London, 1597. The Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, where Jane lies with George Boleyn, Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Howard, can be seen to the northwest of the White Tower.

  Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, the uncle of Anne and George Boleyn.

  Jane Seymour.

  Anne of Cleves.

  Catherine Howard.

  Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with his wife, Mary, the French Queen, Henry VIII’s sister.

  Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, Henry VIII’s illegitimate son by Elizabeth Blount.

  Mary Tudor, the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon.

  Elizabeth I, Jane’s niece, as a young girl.

  Edward VI, the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, as a baby.

  Sir John Russell.

  Pendant designs by Hans Holbein the Younger.

  A costume design by Hans Holbein the Younger.

  Therefore she appreciated that her tone must be one of humility; she must be self-deprecatory and she must not forget to flatter and praise the recipient. Her letter, which has survived, is a masterpiece. It had to be. She began by calling herself “a poor desolate widow without comfort.” Her “special trust” after God and the king lay in Cromwell. He was, she said, well known for displaying a “gentle manner to all them that be in such lamentable case” as that in which she found herself. She really wanted two things: some of George’s former possessions and a better deal on her jointure payments.

  She beseeched Cromwell to approach Henry for her. If only the king “of his gracious and mere liberality” would return George’s “stuff and plate,” which was “nothing to be regarded” by him, it would be “a most high help and succor” to her. She then moved on to her jointure, reminding Cromwell of Henry’s lavish contribution, explaining that she found it very hard “to shift the world withal” on just a hundred marks a year. She needed more, she said, entreating Cromwell to “inform the King’s Highness of these premises” and make the king think “more tenderly” of her. The minister’s assistance in this matter would, she felt certain, be “a sure help.” He had it in his power to transform her current existence. If he did, he would be rewarded by God, who favored those who “doth help poor forsaken widows.” As for Jane herself, she offered Cromwell her “prayers and service” for the rest of her life. She then signed the missive as “Jane Rocheford,” with her usual rather old-fashioned flourish on the R.

  She could do no more; it was up to Cromwell. And he did help her. Clearly, he went to Henry on her behalf, and the king, perhaps mindful of his donation to her jointure, put pressure on Thomas, as did the minister. The result was, for Jane, a great relief. She still did not get the promised lands but she did get a rise in her living allowance. Grudgingly, Thomas bowed to the king’s will on the very day he heard
from his royal master. Despite his finances becoming “much decayed,” he agreed to pay Jane one hundred pounds rather than one hundred marks, although he was quick to justify the original sum by referring to the jointure document itself to prove he had not cheated her. One hundred marks had been stipulated for her to receive while he was alive. She had only been entitled to two hundred marks after his “decease,” and the latter he would now freely increase to three hundred marks. Jane had, he thought, been treated generously. As a young man, he maintained, he had managed on fifty pounds despite his wife having a baby every year, thus implying that his daughter-in-law was simply avaricious.