Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford

by Julia Fox

  Until that happy announcement could be proclaimed, there were court events and festivities for Henry and Catherine to attend, escorted, naturally, by their favorite attendants. Jane was probably one of the party who accompanied Catherine as she savored the triumphant river procession that the mayor and officials in London laid on as their customary welcome for a new queen. The decorated barges came out again, the pennants flew, Anthony Anthony supervised the Tower gunners who fired their weapons in salute as Henry showed off his fifth wife to his subjects. It was a repeat experience for Jane but a novelty to Catherine. She probably loved it, and mindful that it was a queen’s responsibility to beg for mercy, she knelt sweetly before her husband to plead for the release from the Tower of Anne’s old flame, Sir Thomas Wyatt, no stranger to trouble, and for that of Sir John Wallop, who had also displeased his king. Unable to refuse her, Henry pardoned both in a display of genial magnanimity.

  Shortly afterward, Jane joined her queen in a summer progress, as Henry was determined to visit the northern parts of his kingdom, territories that he had never seen before. When she mounted her horse at the end of June 1541, Jane understood that the journey would be important for the king. He could quell any bad feelings in areas still reeling from the effects of the Pilgrimage of Grace and he was due to meet his Scottish nephew, James V, for discussions. He would be at his most majestic, magnificent, and awesome. The rationale for his chosen itinerary was commonly known at court. Of the ultimate significance of the progress for herself and the queen, Jane had no conception.

  The trip was dogged by troubles from the outset. The weather was foul, so bad in fact that they had barely left London before the bitter cold and driving rain held them back. Soon the roads became so flooded and waterlogged that “the carts and baggage could not proceed without great difficulty,” and then Jane and the other ladies were called upon to care for Catherine who had become ill. With the queen recovered and Norfolk and Suffolk, braving the ferocious storms, sent ahead to prepare the route as much as practicable, the whole train eventually got going once more.

  As far as the king was concerned, the corner had been turned and all was going well. He particularly relished his ceremonial entry into the city of Lincoln. The citizens had never witnessed anything like it as the king’s procession rode into their town, every bell in every church pealing to proclaim his arrival. He was dressed in cloth of gold and mounted on his “horse of estate.” Catherine, shimmering in cloth of silver, was a perfect counterpart to her husband. Behind her came her ladies, doubtless Jane among them. Slowly the long lines of gentlemen, guards, and officials made their way through the streets to the great abbey church to pray. The king and queen knelt on cushions of cloth of gold as the bishop of Lincoln gave them the crucifix to kiss, after which they both walked solemnly into the body of the church, the choir bursting forth in a glorious Te Deum as they did so.

  Many towns, including Pontefract, Stamford, Scrooby, and York, were honored by a visit from their king that fateful summer. The populace decorated their streets and watched agog as the cavalcade passed by. For the royal party, it was tiring but satisfying. The king was greeted everywhere with outpourings of loyalty and thanks. Despite James’s failure to keep his appointment, Henry enjoyed himself. And so did Catherine. There were new places to see and different people to meet, and being the focus of attention and the recipient of admiring and sometimes envious glances was deliciously gratifying. At most places, she and Jane liked to seek out all the nooks, crannies, and secret places of the queen’s lodgings. Catherine loved to explore.

  There were undercurrents, however. Even before the journey had started, Jane had been aware of a few unsettling occurrences. For one thing, no one could ever feel completely safe. The immediate threat of foreign invasion seemed to have receded, but disturbances at home had continued. A sudden rebellion in the north had flared up out of the blue a few months before the progress had begun. Easily quashed, it had led the king to order the execution of the aged Countess of Salisbury, although as she was almost seventy years of age it was hard to see quite why she was so dangerous. Those towns involved with the rebellion had proved pleasingly contrite when the king had arrived on his progress but it was impossible to pretend that it had never happened. Nor could anyone forget that James V was just as untrustworthy as ever or that Ireland was far from contentedly settled under Tudor rule. Fear of rebellion there was a constant dread. With so many cares of state to wrestle with, it was fortunate that Henry was so much in love with his wife, although there had been a couple of tense moments even there.

  Catherine’s first scare had come within a few months of her wedding. “Feigning indisposition,” Chapuys had informed the queen of Hungary, the king “was ten or twelve days without seeing his queen or allowing her to come into his room,” fueling gossip that he was considering divorce. Nothing had come of this, and she and Henry had been reconciled swiftly but the incident had rankled the queen. Then, concerned by his bonhomie toward her predecessor, Catherine had begun to wonder whether the king intended to rekindle his fourth marriage and end hers. Anxiety about Anne of Cleves had made the queen “rather sad and thoughtful.” When Henry had noticed, Catherine had poured out her worries. Dispelling them, Henry had said that “she was wrong to believe such things of him.” Even if he had to marry again, he had comforted her, he “would never retake” Anne. That had been good for Catherine to hear, although she might have wondered why Henry might think he would ever need a sixth wife when he was married to her. The possible resurgence of Anne had been upsetting for Jane too: Anne would not have welcomed her back as a lady of the bedchamber after she had testified against her. Still, the storm clouds passed.

  But these episodes had illustrated the root of Catherine’s own dilemma. As long as the king worshipped her, she was safe and secure, but as Jane was in a position to know, Henry was capricious. Just a few years earlier, he had recklessly risked the vengeance of the greatest power in Europe, together with the wrath of the pope, for the sake of one woman, only to destroy her without a qualm, on the flimsiest of grounds, when his ardor had cooled. Queen Jane, of course, would never have been discarded: she had produced his precious heir, Edward. Even had Henry become bored with her simpering goodness and amused himself elsewhere, the mother of his son would have been secure until her dying day. As she was. At least Catherine aroused her husband sexually as Anne of Cleves had not, but she could never rest entirely easily unless she could give him that Duke of York to grace the nursery.

  There was still time, though. Catherine was young, healthy, and active and Henry optimistic. With the misgivings of the previous year that Chapuys had sensed now a thing of the past, Henry settled down in the weeks after his return from what he had thought was a highly successful progress to his blessed domestic life with his jewel. He was so happy that he ordered the bishop of Lincoln to thank God for the “good life” he had with his wife “and hoped to have with her.”

  Henry’s nightmare began the following day, on Wednesday, November 2, All Soul’s Day. As the king went to the chapel to pray, Cranmer handed him a letter. The archbishop had received information so heinous about Catherine’s morals that he felt that the king had to be told, but since “he had not the heart to tell it by word of mouth,” he had written it down instead. Unable to conceive that his jewel could be flawed, Henry ordered a discreet investigation in order to root out those who had dared to slander her. Assuming the issue was under control, he simply got on with his usual routine while he waited for the results of the enquiry which would, he was certain, exonerate his queen. He would then punish the perpetrators of such wicked lies.

  For the time being, life continued as normal. The court was at Hampton Court, perhaps relaxing after the long progress. Catherine and her ladies sewed, danced, listened to her musicians, chatted, walked in her gardens, all blissfully unaware that soon, for some, life would never be normal again. And all the while, Henry’s most trusted councilors were rounding up witnesses, listeni
ng to their stories, writing out statements, and uncovering more and more scurrilous details as the days slipped by. The first inkling anyone had that something was wrong was when Henry attended a special council meeting on the following Saturday morning and remained closeted away until noon. That in itself was not unheard of, although Henry was not usually prone to spend quite so long on state business. At midnight, he instructed messengers to fetch Audley and Norfolk. Even then, Jane and Catherine knew nothing. Both could sleep soundly in their beds.

  Matters came to a head the next day. Henry pretended to be going hunting so that he was well away from the main body of the palace. There in the fields, unobserved by his courtiers, he could talk over the shocking facts with his councilors. Action would have to be taken. There was proof positive that Catherine had been no virgin on her wedding day: she was damaged goods and had betrayed her gentle prince. So, after supper that evening, and without bidding farewell to the queen, the king suddenly ordered his small barge to be made ready. He left immediately, his oarsmen taking him to Westminster. If he chose, he could spend the night at York Place, although the place where he would pass the night was not uppermost in his mind. That, of course, was his disappointment in his queen, the woman whom he would never see again. Once back in London, he went straight into another council meeting, which went on through much of the night. And still Catherine slept peacefully.

  On Monday it was a different story, however. The king’s abrupt departure had become common knowledge but the cause was a mystery. Catherine could only sit within her luxurious apartments, waiting for news. No one told her anything as the hours dragged by, but unlike the French ambassador who repeated to Francis the initial rumors that such feverish activity was caused by trouble with Scotland or Ireland, she was in a position to know that the meetings might well be about other issues entirely. For Catherine had secrets, one of which concerned events that were very recent, which Jane shared. She knew that the architectural explorations she had undertaken with the queen while on the progress were designed for a specific purpose, one that was far from innocent. If Catherine’s escapades in the north and the Midlands ever came to light, Jane’s world would be shattered even more devastatingly than it had been when George had been arrested. Then, as the two women sat, time almost suspended, there came a knock on the door of Catherine’s chambers. Archbishop Cranmer had arrived with serious questions to put to her.

  CHAPTER 30

  In the Maidens’ Chamber

  WHEN CRANMER, accompanied by a handful of other councilors, entered Catherine’s apartments, she and Jane were in mortal danger. All hinged on exactly what Henry had discovered. But, although the peril remained grave, both the queen and Jane could feel only overwhelming relief that the archbishop’s focus was solely on Catherine’s life before she had met the king rather than afterward. What Catherine realized, and what Jane did not, was how much dirt could surface concerning her teenage years.

  Jane, like everyone else at court, knew about the queen’s upbringing. It was common knowledge, arousing minimal interest. Because her mother, Joyce, had died when she was little and her father, at one point comptroller of Calais, had found it impossible or inconvenient to look after her, Catherine had been dispatched to Agnes Tylney, the widow of the second Duke of Norfolk, and her stepgrandmother, to be brought up in the dowager duchess’s houses at Horsham in Sussex and at Lambeth in London. Since children were frequently sent away from home to the households of rich patrons or relatives, few at court had felt much sympathy for Catherine’s plight, although it was true that she had probably been younger than was usual when she first went to Horsham. The dowager duchess had kept a fairly open house. She had other youngsters in her care, including, at times, Catherine’s siblings and cousins, as well as the daughters of various neighbors, so Catherine’s childhood had not been lonely or unhappy. At night, there would have been chatter and laughter in the maidens’ chamber, where they all slept together, often sharing beds. By day, there were lessons. The busy duchess had arranged for the girls to be taught to read and write and, with a pragmatic eye on acceptable feminine accomplishments, had even paid for one Henry Manox, a musician, to give them music lessons. Manox, however, had been interested in giving the bubbly and precocious Catherine somewhat more than music lessons.

  And it was the extraordinary details of Catherine’s romps with Manox, and with Francis Dereham, another of the bucks at Horsham, that had been relayed to the archbishop, and that he had in turn passed on to the king by letter a few days earlier. There is no reason to assume that Jane had known anything of the queen’s youthful adventures. She knew quite enough about what Catherine had been up to over the past few months to disturb her sleep but the queen had hoped to keep her earlier genie safely locked in its bottle as well. Unfortunately, too much was known by too many.

  And one of them, Mary Hall, born Lascelles, had let the genie out. When Mary’s brother, John, had come to visit her in Sussex, he had suggested that she should ask Catherine for employment since Mary had known the queen at Horsham. His sister’s response had put John in a terrible position: Mary vowed not to approach Catherine because she was “light, both in living and conditions.” When pressed, Mary had gone further. Manox, she had maintained, knew a “privy mark” (a private mark) on Catherine’s body and Francis Dereham “had lain in bed” with Catherine “in his doublet and hose.”

  John’s dilemma had been acute, and it was one that Jane could appreciate. If he buried the information, only for it to come out later, he would be in dire trouble for concealing it. Then, he could be deemed guilty of misprision of treason, an offense carrying a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and confiscation of all property. On the other hand, if he passed on Mary’s remarks, and they were shown to be false or unproven, he would have slandered the queen and incurred Henry’s displeasure. Either way, his position was grim. On balance, he had felt it better to tell someone, although quite who to tell had been another difficulty. In the end, he had confessed all to Cranmer, who, “being much perplexed,” and wary of bearing Hall’s burden alone, had consulted Audley and Hertford, Queen Jane’s brother. Thus it was that the archbishop had written to the king and the investigation had been initiated. Everyone remotely connected with what might have occurred in the maidens’ chamber had been rounded up and interrogated with the utmost rigor. So devastating were the results that the wounded king had left Hampton Court and sent Cranmer to question his jewel.

  By the time Cranmer walked into Catherine’s apartments, the material already amassed by Henry’s councilors was staggering. What is also staggering is that 450 years after the incredulous councilors scribbled them down, we can still read their original handwritten accounts. They were the ones at the king’s fingertips while he waited to hear of Catherine’s responses to Cranmer’s gentle probing when she faced the archbishop on that winter’s day at Hampton Court.

  The queen began by denying everything but was confronted by a mountain of evidence. For a start there was Mary Hall’s testimony, collected by the Earl of Southampton, Cromwell’s successor as Lord Privy Seal, who had rushed down to Sussex to see her. Mary had been very forthcoming. After working as a nurse to the children of Lord William Howard, the Duchess of Norfolk’s son, she had become a chamberer to the duchess herself, which is when she had met the nubile Catherine. Henry Manox, maintained Mary Hall, fell “so far in love” with Catherine that Mary “did abhor it.” Tokens were carried back and forth between them by the female servants and Mary had become worried enough to take Manox to task. If the duchess ever found out what was going on, she warned him, she would “undo” him, for Catherine came “of a noble house.” She was so far out of Manox’s league that should he marry Catherine, Mary prophesied, “some of her blood will kill thee.” Manox had shrugged off her remarks. “Hold thy peace, woman,” he had retorted. “I know her well enough for I have had her by the cunt and know it amongst a hundred.” Catherine had even promised him “her maidenhead.” According to Mary,
when Catherine berated Manox, he had responded that “he was so far in love with her that he wist not what he said.” For a fleeting moment, Mary had thought that Catherine had dealt firmly with the bragging Manox but then she saw her walking with him behind the orchard “and no creature with them but they two alone.”

  To compound her foolishness, when bored by Manox, Catherine had quickly moved on to the charms of Francis Dereham. Mary confessed to seeing “them kiss after a wonderful manner, for they would kiss” and hang together as though they were “two sparrows.” It was not long before Catherine ordered Mary to steal the key to the maidens’ chamber so that she could let Dereham in. Catherine “would go to naked bed,” said Mary, and Dereham “would lay down upon the bed in his doublet and his hose.” Mary discussed the situation with another colleague, Alice Wilkes, who told her that Dereham would lie on Catherine’s bed “till it was almost day,” and that many times there was “a puffing and blowing betwixt them.” When she could think of no more to report to Southampton, the obliging Mary provided the minister with a list of several other people whom she thought might know something. The diligent councilors set to work to trace them all. Trace them they did.