Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Family Trees

  The Parkers

  The Boleyns

  The Howards

  Note on Units of Currency

  PROLOGUE: The Hand of Fate, 1511

  THE EARLY YEARS

  1 Childhood

  2 All That Glisters

  3 Château Vert

  4 A Suitable Match

  5 For Better, for Worse

  WOMAN IN THE SHADOWS

  6 Kindness Captures a King

  7 The Falcon’s Rise

  8 Lady-in-Waiting

  9 The Sweat

  10 Fortune’s Wheel

  11 Almost There

  A WOMAN OF IMPORTANCE

  12 Soaring with the Falcon

  13 The Falcon Crowned

  14 Long May We Reign

  15 Birth of a Niece

  16 The Boleyns Rampan

  THE WINDS OF CHANGE

  17 The King’s Displeasure

  18 Happy Families

  19 The Final Flourish

  20 The Wheel Turns

  21 The Edge of the Precipice

  22 Death of the Falcon

  CARVING A CAREER

  23 Taking Stock

  Photo Insert One

  Photo Insert Two

  24 A New Beginning

  25 A Prince at Last

  26 The Bitterness of Death

  27 A Woman of Property

  28 A Question of Trust

  THE PATH TO THE BLOCK

  29 The King’s Jewel

  30 In the Maidens’ Chamber

  31 “That Bawd, the Lady Jane Rochford”

  32 Royal Justice

  EPILOGUE: History Finds a Scapegoat

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix: The Likeness of Jane Boleyn

  References and Abbreviations

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  About the Author

  Copyright

  In Memory of My Parents

  NOTE ON UNITS OF CURRENCY

  In citing units of currency, the old sterling denominations of pounds, shillings, and pence have been retained. There are twelve pence in a shilling (modern 5p or US$.10), twenty shillings in a pound (£1 or US$1.95), and so on. Equivalents for Tudor gold and silver coins are noble (modern 45p or US$.90), angel (33p or US$.66), royal or rose noble (50p or US$1.00), sovereign (100p or US$1.95), and groat (1.6p or US$.03). A mark is thirteen shillings and four pence (66p or US$1.20). One hundred marks is sixty-six pounds (US$130). Estimates of modern values for sixteenth-century figures can be obtained by multiplying all the numbers by one thousand.

  PROLOGUE

  The Hand of Fate, 1511

  THEIR WAY LIT by the flickering light from great wax torches and to the soothing sound of chanted prayers, the mourners walked solemnly toward the three black-draped barges ready at the river’s edge. Among them were the leading men of the land, entrusted with the somber task of accompanying the tiny coffin containing the body of the infant prince to its resting place with his ancestors in the Abbey Church of St. Peter’s at Westminster just a few miles away. It was February and bitterly cold. The icy waters of the Thames lapped against the sides of the vessels, the leafless trees stood stark and sentinel as if to guard the baby on whom so many hopes had rested, the breath of the oarsmen was clearly visible as they watched the casket being gently brought aboard. The final journey had begun.

  A tolling of the bells could be heard as the cortège made its way slowly from the royal palace of Richmond where the child had died so suddenly to the Abbey where the monks waited patiently. All would be done according to strict protocol and tradition, every minute detail of the prescribed ceremonial observed. Eight royal officers, yeomen and grooms of the household, were stationed at the door of St. Peter’s to receive the tall funeral torches, thick wax and resin candles fixed into wooden holders, carried by the twenty appointed torchbearers. The choir, which faced the sanctuary, and the catafalque on which the coffin would be placed were draped with over three hundred yards of black cloth, arranged under the meticulous supervision of Ralph Jenet, the yeoman of the Wardrobe of Beds. He could never have performed a more poignant task for the king, his master. The air inside the church was laden with the smell of the burning wax and the soft fragrance of the incense.

  Light and color abounded, for all was decorated for the glory of God. The walls were covered with paintings in vibrant reds and blues and greens and yellows or with richly embroidered hangings that glittered with gold and silver thread. Sculptures of stone angels smiled benignly down on the intricately carved friezes of birds, flowers, and foliage adorning the tracery around the monuments or the niches encircling the painted and gilded statues of saints. Diffused light of every shade and hue flowed through the panes of the towering stained-glass windows. The dancing flames of hundreds of candles were everywhere. The shrine, shimmering with gold and precious stones, containing the remains of St. Edward the Confessor, a founder of the Abbey, was encased in its own chapel together with sacred relics such as a thorn from the crown of thorns, the girdle of the Virgin Mary, and a phial protecting a few drops of the blood of Christ. The chapel stood proudly in the heart of the church, just behind the high altar, itself a stunning testament to medieval skill, craftsmanship, and faith. It was the perfect setting for the burial of a prince.

  More than four hundred people were present at the interment. One hundred eighty paupers held yet more torches as they walked in the procession. They took their role in the ceremony very seriously because the prayers of the poor would help those facing divine judgment. Five of the king’s knights carried specially made funeral banners. Then came the elaborate hearse swathed in over seven yards of black cloth of gold and decorated by painters who had worked day and night to complete it. Four knights reverently bore the coffin, covered with black cloth of gold and with a white cloth of gold cross upon it, over which there was a canopy held by four more knights. Four earls, a marquess, barons, and yet more knights followed. Next came chaplains, preachers, those who were “daily waiters upon the prince,” even two knights whose job it was to ensure that the correct order of precedence was maintained among the congregation. Nothing was left to chance. The mourning robes themselves were graded in fabric and richness according to the rank of the wearers, the chief of whom wore hoods covering their heads.

  The king had chosen the child’s final resting place carefully. He was placed as near as possible to those previous kings whose ranks he could join only in death. He would never sit on St. Edward’s Chair with the crown on his head; he would lie on the left-hand side of the altar, close to the canopied tomb of Edmund Crouchback, the youngest son of Henry III, a few steps from the Chapel of St. Edward. The customary, consoling words of the Latin burial service began, the coffin was ritually sprinkled with holy water and censed at each of the four sides, and as the echo of the final prayers and the antiphons led by the king’s composer and musician, Robert Fayrfax, faded away, everyone left the confines of the church. The monks could once again carry out their daily routines uninterrupted by the formalities of state. And the baby could sleep.

  It was all so different from just seven weeks earlier in 1511 when his birth was announced on New Year’s Day. His parents were King Henry VIII of England and his queen, Katherine of Aragon. He was their first living child. They were still young, the king not yet twenty, although Katherine was almost six years older, and both were delighted that the succession was now assured. The boy seemed healthy; there was every reason to believe that
he would be joined by brothers and sisters in due course. Henry was so grateful, he rode to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, Norfolk, to give thanks, a journey of about two hundred miles. Bonfires were lit in the streets of London to celebrate the birth; free wine provided for some lucky revelers; the happy news proclaimed throughout the kingdom and to the royal courts of Europe. The child was christened Henry after his father and grandfather, the first Tudor monarch.

  In the second week of February, Henry VIII and Katherine attended two days of magnificent jousts in the child’s honor at the palace of Westminster. The queen presided over the tournament serenely, secure in the knowledge that she had fulfilled her primary function as consort by producing a son. On the second day, she presented the prizes to the victors, including one to her husband, for Henry joined the lists as the gallant “Loyal Heart.” The chief nobles of the land were all there. No one imagined that the little prince would die just ten days later and would lie in a grave not far from the tiltyards.

  Nor could anyone have known then that Henry and Katherine would become only too familiar with grief. The king at first tried to hide his sorrow and comfort the queen with thoughts of the family they would one day have, but despite her numerous pregnancies and no matter how many long hours she spent in prayer, Katherine only managed to give birth to one child who lived to grow up. And that was a girl, Princess Mary. What use was she in a masculine age when prowess on the battlefield could decide the success or ruin of a dynasty?

  Henry understood this only too well. There was little he would not do to gain the son he needed. In the process, his country was changed forever and few of his subjects were untouched. And some were more affected than others. One of the knights who had jousted with the king on that carefree day and who later helped carry the body of the tiny child was Sir Thomas Boleyn, a courtier who was very much in favor with his sovereign. Thomas and his wife, Elizabeth Howard, had two daughters and a son. The girls’ names were Anne and Mary, and their brother was George. When the mourners entered Westminster Abbey on that raw February day, these children were playing with their attendants. So was the little girl, Jane Parker, who would one day marry George Boleyn. They grew up blissfully unaware that the direction of their lives and even their ultimate fate would be so determined by the death of a prince they had never seen. Those four children were not to know that one would become a queen, one would eventually lead a life of relative obscurity, three would face the headsman’s blade and that Jane’s reputation would become tarnished with tales of adultery, incest, and betrayal.

  THE EARLY YEARS

  CHAPTER 1

  Childhood

  IT WAS TIME TO GO. The horses shifted and stamped restlessly. They always seemed to know when a long journey was imminent. The carts were laden with fashionable clothes, domestic items, everything needed to make life comfortable. Servants and escorts were ready too. For Lord Morley’s daughter, Jane Parker, a new life was about to begin. She rode out toward London, leaving her family home at Great Hallingbury behind.

  Until now, the Tudor mansion built by Lord Morley had been her world. The solid, red-bricked house replaced an earlier Morley dwelling that had nestled in the same Essex village for over three hundred years. It was huge, a magical place for giggling children to hide and play. Scattered among the richly carved oak furniture and plate inside the building were many reminders of Lord Morley’s mother, Alice Lovel. When she died in 1518, Alice made generous bequests to her son. Lord Morley could sleep in the bed of cloth of gold and tawny velvet she left him. He could sit in her “best chair,” which stood in the long gallery that Morley equipped with expensive linenfold paneling and tall, graceful windows. Alice’s gilt bowl emblazoned with her own coat of arms as well as that of her first husband’s was on display for all to see. An even older and more precious heirloom was the special cup with its gilt cover, which Alice said was “gotten” by her ancestors. That too was on view. One of the exquisitely embroidered wall hangings also came from her. Lord Morley had been allowed to choose whichever one he wanted from her estate. Everything fitted perfectly into his newly constructed home, which was one of the finest in the county. Its grounds were impressive too. If the weather was fine, Jane roamed happily outside in the carefully tended gardens, which stretched for over two acres. There was an orchard to provide apples, pears, and quinces for the quince marmalade that everyone loved. There was a pond surrounded by trees and stocked with fish. There was a long brick stable block and hay loft, so necessary for the Morley horses, surmounted by tall red Tudor chimneys. Whether Great Hallingbury (or Hallingbury Morley, as her father preferred to call it) was snuggling under thick snow or basking in the warm sunshine of a summer’s afternoon, the setting was idyllic, especially during those few precious years of childhood when time passes slowly and growing up seems so far away.

  Just a short walk across the fields from the house was the parish church of St. Giles. It is still standing. Built largely of flint and limestone, and with a square bell tower, the church was small and intimate. The nave, forty-five feet long, with circular windows set deeply into the walls, led into the chancel through a round arch constructed of Roman bricks, for there had once been a Roman site here. It was probably in this pretty church, so much the heart of the village, that Jane was baptized. About the year 1505, the tiny girl was carried to the porch of St. Giles by her mother’s midwife. Lady Morley was not present as it was customary for mothers not to reenter society until they had been churched or purified about forty days after giving birth. With Jane’s godparents at her side, the midwife gently took her inside for the baptism itself. There, at the stone font, before the richly carved rood screen and amid the painted walls and brightly colored statues of saints, the baby was welcomed into the great Catholic fold. Lord and Lady Morley knew how important it was to have babies received into the protection of the church as quickly as possible after their birth. Life was unpredictable and diseases often struck without warning; they did not want their little daughter to fall into limbo, the dreadful nothingness that awaited the souls of unbaptized children. Everything, therefore, was correctly done. The priest blessed Jane with holy oil on her shoulders and chest, on her right hand and on her forehead. Salt was placed into her mouth so that she would be “freed from all uncleanness, and from all assault of spiritual wickedness.” She was dipped three times into the sacred water in the font. She was anointed with holy chrism. The godparents, whose names are lost to us, made their promises. They vowed to ensure that Jane’s mother and father kept her “from fire and water and other perils” and to be certain that she knew “the Pater noster, Ave and Creed, after the law of all holy church.” They told the priest the name chosen for her: she was christened Jane, possibly after her father’s sister, another Jane Parker. Family ties were always important.

  As she rode away from these familiar surroundings, Jane knew just how important those ties were. She had every reason to feel pride in her lineage. Her father, Sir Henry Parker, Lord Morley, was a peer of the realm. He owned lands in Norfolk, Buckinghamshire, and Herefordshire as well as in Essex. He came from ancient stock. His ancestors had played their part in tumultuous events over the centuries, helping to quell the Peasants’ Revolt and fighting for king and country in the Hundred Years’ War against England’s traditional enemy, France. Yes, Jane could feel proud.

  Of course, she knew it could all have been otherwise. The family lands and title came through Jane’s grandmother, Alice Lovel. Alice’s brother, a previous Lord Morley, died in Flanders fighting for Edward IV. However, while he had died a hero, he also died without children so his entire estate went to Alice. Girls sometimes had their uses. But Alice’s first marriage, to Sir William Parker, Jane’s grandfather, brought the family close to disaster: Sir William Parker fought on the wrong side at the Battle of Bosworth. He supported the doomed Richard III against Henry Tudor, the victorious Henry VII. Sir William survived the battle but the new king never really trusted him. His son, the young Henry P
arker, the future Lord Morley and Jane’s father, was fortunate to have been brought up in the household of Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother.

  Stern and formidable she might be, but Lady Margaret was loyal to those she took under her wing. She was particularly concerned that the little boy should receive what she felt was his due, especially when his mother remarried after Sir William’s death. Lady Margaret paid five hundred marks (just under four hundred pounds) to Alice’s new husband, Sir Edward Howard, to make sure that young Henry Parker kept some family land, presumably at Great Hallingbury. Sir Edward adhered to the bargain and also remembered his stepson in his will of 1512. He bequeathed the manor of Morley Hall in Norfolk to his wife, Alice, for her lifetime, after which it would pass to Jane’s father. The legacy did not come without conditions, however. In exchange, Morley was required to give land worth ten marks a year to the prior and convent of Ingham in Norfolk or forfeit Morley Hall to them. Morley was lucky that Alice and Sir Edward had no children to complicate the situation even more. Sir Edward had sired two bastards for whom he did his best to provide: he asked the king to choose one; the other was allocated to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Howard hoped their new guardians would be “good” lords to his sons, but as an extra safeguard he left the boys money to help them set “forth in the world.”

  This did not, of course, affect Lord Morley or his inheritance. In fact, as far as Jane’s father was concerned, the Howard marriage, which might have proved so awkward, brought him both land and valuable connections at court. The Howards were a very influential family. Sir Edward’s father was the Duke of Norfolk, one of the leading men in the land, and Sir Edward’s sister, Elizabeth, had married Sir Thomas Boleyn. Sir Thomas was a rising star, an ideal companion to the gregarious Henry VIII, certainly a man it was advantageous to know. And he was a neighbor, for the Boleyns owned lands in Essex and Norfolk just like the Morleys. Being linked to the Boleyns brought more associations since Thomas had sisters who married into other Norfolk or Essex families. His sister Anne, for example, married Sir John Shelton, Alice married Sir Robert Clere, and Margaret married Sir John Sackville. The interrelationships were all very complicated but Lord Morley had every reason to believe that he and his family would gain from them. And Sir Thomas Boleyn had a son, George, who was more or less Jane’s age. Who knew what time might bring?