Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (19 page)

A
S
H
ENRY WAITED
for confirmation of the arrival of his son, Anne went into labor. We cannot be certain that Jane was with her sister-in-law, but it is likely that she was there and was one of the first to see the face of the child who would one day become England’s most famous queen. For the baby, of course, was a girl, not a boy. After years of anticipation, Henry still had no male heir. The documents proclaiming the arrival of a prince had to be speedily changed: there was only room to squeeze in one letter after
prince
to turn the word into
princes.
Chapuys announced the tidings baldly and with a note of satisfaction. “On Sunday last, the eve of Our Lady, about 3 p.m., the king’s mistress was delivered of a daughter,” he wrote to Charles, “to the great regret both of him and the lady.”

A Te Deum was sung in the Chapel Royal and in the churches throughout the city of London, but there was no denying the first crack in Boleyn invincibility. For Jane’s family, it was a blow; their fortunes were bound up with the sex of the child. Anne had failed in her most important task. Yet it was not all bad. Anne was recovering well. She had conceived quickly, the pregnancy had gone smoothly, and the delivery was relatively swift and certainly uncomplicated. The infant seemed strong and healthy and was likely to live. All of these things placed Anne in a different league from Katherine. With God’s will, the next effort would produce the desired result. Fortunately, this appeared to be Henry’s approach too. For now, the best policy was to prepare for a glittering baptism for the new princess, in accordance with the dictates of the Royal Book, and put on a confident front.

In the meantime, there was much for Anne’s ladies to do. The queen could not leave her apartments until she was churched to remove the taint of childbirth. From the moment the baby was born, some of Anne’s attendants began to care for her while the others devoted themselves to Anne. The little girl was washed gently in warm water and her navel soothed with powder of aloes and frankincense before she was wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in her crib to sleep. Ladies offered Anne refreshment, perhaps some thin broth or a caudle, a warm and nourishing drink made from a mixture of gruel, wine, and spices. She was not permitted to rise from the bed for some time; these things could not be rushed. Only when she was considered able to sit up, in itself a celebratory affair, did her ladies wash her and change her clothes and bedding. There was no question of her attending the baptism. For the childless Jane, this was likely to have been her first direct contact with the rituals associated with childbirth. About a year before, her brother’s wife, Grace, had had a son, named Henry after his father and grandfather, but Jane probably did not travel home for the delivery. Her own court commitments would take precedence.

As Anne regained her strength, preparations began for her daughter’s christening. The place selected for the grand event, and it certainly was going to be grand, was the Church of the Observant Friars, adjacent to the palace and linked to it via an enclosed gallery. Anne and her family could only approve. While Marquess of Pembroke, Anne had received a letter from Robert Lyst, a lay brother there who championed her cause, complaining that some of the friars were vociferous advocates for Katherine. Bringing the baby here, then, was a sweet revenge. In other ways too it was a significant venue, since the church, with its superb window portraying the family of Henry VII, was very much a royal creation, and Henry himself had been baptized there. Ironically, so had Princess Mary, for Greenwich had been her birthplace as well as that of her half sister’s. At first Chapuys was convinced that Anne’s child was actually to be named Mary, both as a deliberate insult and to indicate that Henry’s eldest daughter was about to be deprived of her title. He was partly right, for the Boleyns could not countenance any child except their own possessing that rank, so Mary’s status was indeed soon to plummet. But the baby was called Elizabeth after Henry’s mother and, coincidentally, after Anne’s.

We cannot be sure whether Jane was present or not as her niece was officially received into the church. She may have remained with the queen in her closed apartments, although many ladies of the court were definitely at the christening on that early autumn afternoon, just three days after the baby’s birth. If Anne wanted her sister-in-law at her side, they could both rely on George for a detailed description of everything that happened.

Sir Stephen Peacock was having a most exciting period as mayor. Hardly had his servants put away his best robes after the coronation than they were needed again, for he was a leading guest. After lunch, Peacock and his aldermen, dressed in crimson or scarlet velvet and with their golden chains gleaming once more on their breasts, took to their barge as their oarsmen rowed them back to Greenwich. A second barge, with forty of the city’s leading citizens on board, brought up the rear. Once they had arrived, a procession was assembled and the christening could commence.

Just as the streets had been decorated for Anne’s days of triumph, so the way from the palace to the church was decked with golden tapestries and cloth of gold hangings. The ground was covered with green rushes; it would not do for anyone to slip. Inside, the church was ablaze with light and glittering with cloth of gold. The font, of solid silver, stood railed off in the middle, underneath a crimson satin canopy and on a covered dais three steps high, so that everyone could see the proceedings very clearly.

The citizens of London, walking in pairs, formed the vanguard of the cavalcade. Various gentlemen, squires, and chaplains came next, followed by the aldermen, and Peacock, quite an old hand at parades by now, was allowed the honor of walking in alone. Henry’s council came in after the mayor, then the musicians of the Royal Chapel, the nobles, and the bishops. All were magnificently attired in deference to the new arrival. Jane may have had a chance later to have a word with her father, whose rank meant he was likely to be present. Some of the nobility were entrusted with specific tasks: the Earl of Essex was responsible for the gilt basins, the Marquess of Dorset held the golden salt that was used to protect the child from evil, Lady Mary Howard bore the christening cloth of pearls and precious stones. Then came little Elizabeth for her first public outing, carefully carried by the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, on duty once more. The baby was wrapped up warmly in a purple velvet mantle, her ermine-trimmed train supported by the Countess of Essex, the Earl of Derby, and, in pride of place, Thomas Boleyn. Family prominence did not end with Thomas. One of the four lords holding a canopy over Elizabeth was her uncle, George. Her great-uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, walked solemnly on one side of her while the Duke of Suffolk was on the other.

The ceremonies, led by John Stokesley, bishop of London, began at the church door as was customary. Cranmer acted as godfather, and the godmothers were the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset, the Marchioness of Exeter, and the ever useful Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. Once the baby had been christened in that magnificent silver font, Garter King of Arms cried out, “God of his infinite goodness, send prosperous life and long, to the high and mighty Princess of England Elizabeth.” To a triumphant burst from the trumpeters, Elizabeth was carried to the altar where she was also confirmed by Cranmer; sometimes both christening and confirmation were completed on the same day. The services and prayers took some time—these things always did—so members of the congregation were grateful for the sweetmeats and spiced wine that servants brought them before they left the confines of the church.

As the joyous sound of Henry’s trumpeters burst forth, it was time for everyone to walk to the palace, their way lit by five hundred torches, some held by servants and others fixed into stands. Many guests remembered taking part in the somber procession escorting Prince Henry to his resting place more than two decades before, but today’s occasion was a happy one. If any had fleeting thoughts of Katherine or Mary, they wisely kept them private. Norfolk and Suffolk went straight in to the king’s rooms to reassure him that the proceedings had gone smoothly. It was they who came out to thank Peacock and his aldermen on the king’s behalf for their attendance and to offer them refreshment before the journey back to London.

Once Elizabeth was sleeping in her cradle in Anne’s rooms, she and her ladies could admire the fabulous christening gifts that her godparents had presented. Cranmer gave a gold cup—no silver for him. The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk gave a similar cup, also of gold but studded with pearls. The Dowager Marchioness of Dorset’s offering was three beautifully worked gilt bowls, together with their covers, and the Marchioness of Exeter gave three more, despite her devoted support for Katherine and Princess Mary and her constant communication with Chapuys. Together with further gifts received from other guests, it was a most welcome haul. Proper respect had been paid to the latest Boleyn. Anne could not fail to be satisfied. Chapuys might sniffily report to his master that “the christening has been like her mother’s coronation, very cold and disagreeable both to the court and to the city,” but in fact the whole occasion had been a notable success.

As the Boleyns discussed the day, the name of Suffolk was bound to crop up and raise a smile. With his wife, Mary, the French queen, barely cold in her grave, the indomitable duke, now almost fifty, had usurped his son’s place and himself had married his ward, the fourteen-year-old heiress Katherine Willoughby, on the very day that Anne gave birth. For light entertainment it could hardly be bettered, although the worldly Boleyns would applaud his practical streak. He had not only lost the French queen, he had lost her French pension, and now in debt to the king, Katherine Willoughby was too good a prize to let slip. The situation so amused Chapuys that he could not resist informing the emperor. “In contracting such a marriage,” he wrote, “the duke will no doubt please the ladies of this country, who, imitating his example, will no doubt take their revenge, when accused of marrying again immediately after the death of their husbands, as they are in the habit of doing.” The demise of the French queen had little impact on the Boleyns, especially since she had never liked Anne and was not a frequent visitor to court. She would not be missed. Even Henry accepted his favorite sister’s death with surprising equanimity. Jane’s contact with her had been slight. Together they had performed in the masque for the French ambassadors, but that was a lifetime away. The innocent young Jane of those days was gone; in her stead, was a poised, mature woman, whose niece was in line to inherit the throne, a prospect that she could never have envisaged when she had donned her mask and danced amid the tapestries and flickering candles of Wolsey’s York Place. The world had moved on.

Jane had very little time to become acquainted with baby Elizabeth. By the end of 1533, Henry had provided the three-month-old child with her own household. From now on, Anne’s role as a mother was limited to visits rather than direct daily contact. All major decisions concerning the child would be taken by the king. He would even determine when Elizabeth should be weaned. Anne accepted her restricted role, but characteristically, she was deeply concerned that her daughter, a royal princess, should look the part. She bought her caps of purple and crimson, one of white satin “laid with a rich caul of gold,” and decorated her cradle with over two yards of crimson satin and crimson fringe. But purchasing pretty things and paying her brief visits were all she could do for her baby daughter. Breast-feeding, as Jane and every other woman of her time understood, was out of the question. At best a messy inconvenience, it was also a hindrance to conception. And that, as the Boleyns appreciated only too well, was the key to maintaining the position they had all fought so hard to attain and to which all of them, including Jane, had become accustomed. Anne simply had to become pregnant again.

CHAPTER
16

The Boleyns Rampant

“T
HE QUEEN HATH
a goodly belly,” wrote George Taylor, Anne’s receiver-general, to Lady Lisle, the wife of the Deputy of Calais, adding that he was “praying our Lord to send us a prince.” Within three or four months after Jane’s niece first opened her eyes to the land she would one day rule, Anne was pregnant again. Her entire family breathed a huge sigh of relief. This time, surely, she would produce the prince that George Taylor prayed for. Taylor was not the only supplicant. Jane was firmly settled at court, frequently at her sister-in-law’s side and very much in the heart of her country’s affairs. She did not want to give that up. It simply had to be a boy. And Henry was confident that it would be. He would soon have a son, he told Chapuys. Gloomily, the ambassador confided in Charles that Anne was “in a state of health and of an age to have many more children.” The Boleyns could only hope that his forebodings proved true.

As she watched Anne’s stomach swell, Jane enjoyed her life behind the doors of the queen’s privy chamber. It was almost as if Anne needed to prove the aptness of her chosen motto, “the most happy.” There was gossip and fun and dancing and cards. There was music and song. There were the lilting notes of the queen’s linnet, a gift from Lady Lisle, in the background. There were visitors to chat with, men like Norris, so influential within the king’s privy chamber; Weston, knighted with Jane’s brother and a fellow guest at Anne’s coronation; and Richard Page, another of the king’s gentlemen. There was lively discussion on the important topics of clothes and fashion and what was chic and what was not and who was paying court to whom. It was a whirlwind of fun and laughter, repartee and wit. Then there was the frolicking of Anne’s little dog, Purquoy,
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a creature of whom she was inordinately fond, and a further present from the solicitous Honor Lisle. Anne was so enchanted by Purquoy that when she heard that Honor had asked Sir Francis Bryan to deliver the animal, she “took it from him before it had been an hour in his hands.” The dog ran around happily, following his devoted mistress, among the ladies and their beaux, until a terrible fall cut short his life. Knowing how upset Anne would be, no one dared tell her what had happened, so the king, very sympathetic in circumstances like this, took the task upon himself. Henry loved his own dogs dearly enough to pay generous rewards to those who found his favorites, Ball and the spaniel Cut, when they got lost, so he quite understood his wife’s distress.