Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (25 page)

As it was, now that Anne was back in favor, mother and daughter were kept in relatively close confinement. At least the Boleyns could rely on Lady Shelton to keep a sharp eye on the former princess. With Mary stubbornly intransigent and so frequently ill with menstrual problems and nervous complaints, all of which seemed to get worse if she was under particular stress, Lady Shelton’s task was far from easy. At the slightest whisper of indisposition, Katherine always begged to care for her daughter. There would be “no need of any other person but myself to nurse her,” she entreated the faithful Chapuys, her “especial friend,” to tell the king. “I will put her in my own bed where I sleep, and will watch her when needed.” That, of course, would never be allowed. Anne and Henry were convinced that Katherine would strengthen Mary’s current obstinacy. “Although sons and daughters were bound to some obedience towards their mothers,” an irate Henry told Chapuys, “their chief duty was to their fathers.”

All health matters were, therefore, left to Lady Shelton, although the king’s most trusted physician, Dr. William Butts, was sent to check on the princess when her condition deteriorated. Illegitimate she might be in Henry’s eyes, she was his daughter nonetheless. Deep down, every Boleyn was aware of that, inconvenient though it was. The king informed Chapuys that Mary could not be in better hands than those of Anne’s aunt, as he said Lady Shelton was “an expert lady even in such female complaints.” Mary was lucky to have her, he implied. So were the Boleyns. Anne Shelton could not bring herself to be as disrespectful or unkind to Mary as they had sometimes demanded but she could be trusted to do her job efficiently. And it involved more than pandering to Mary’s complaints. When a letter from Mary to Sir Nicholas Carew, a courtier who was very much her adherent, reached him unchecked despite her vigilance, Lady Shelton questioned her charge thoroughly on how it had been achieved and who had acted as courier. She revealed all she had discovered, including the contents of the reply from Carew’s wife, directly to Henry. The Boleyns were indeed fortunate to have the capable Lady Shelton on hand. The family was pulling together again.

For Anne, George, and Thomas, that was so in religion as well. It seemed to Chapuys that they were set on destroying his church and infecting the king with their wicked radicalism. They, of course, saw it differently: they were helping to bring the true message of the gospel and ending centuries of superstition. Anne’s status and place in Henry’s heart made this more possible. She continued to enjoy reformist literature that George and others imported from France, and her influence spread out from the court as her bishops and clergymen were appointed to sees and parishes across the land. She took a keen personal interest in their preferments and in the welfare of her scholars. When a Dr. Edward Crome proved tardy in taking up a benefice she had obtained for him, she wrote to chide him for his delay. She considered, she said, that “the furtherance of virtue, truth and godly doctrine will be not a little increased, and right much the better advanced, by his better relief and residence there.” He was to go immediately. Education too was central to promoting the true gospel. She wrote imperiously to the abbot of Whitby, who had recalled one of her students, John Eldmer, from university in Cambridge and had “charged him with certain offices, to the great disturbance of his studies.” That she would not permit. Eldmer was to learn, not perform routine jobs in the monastery. “We, therefore, desire you will allow him to return to the University, with sufficient maintenance to pursue his studies,” she instructed the chastened abbot. And Eldmer was only one of the queen’s scholars. Whatever she really believed about her husband and sister-in-law’s avant-garde religious views, Jane could empathize completely with the furtherance of education. Despite not obtaining the living at Swaffham, her own scholar, William Foster, had reason to be grateful to her, although she would never have been able to give him help on Anne’s lavish scale.

Brought up to value good works as a holy duty, Jane also agreed with Anne’s desire to help the poor. Many hours had already been spent sewing shirts for the destitute while Jane was in Anne’s privy chamber. There were stories of huge sums being distributed to the needy on the queen’s orders, individual cases of special hardship investigated and assistance given, and of Anne’s personal intervention when she thought it necessary. Her summer progress in 1535 with Henry, when the king, as was his practice, ceremonially visited towns and the estates of his courtiers to show himself to his people en route, gave her several opportunities for largesse. Of course, she could well afford it; in one year alone, George Taylor, her receiver-general, accounted for an income of over six thousand pounds. As late as February 1535, she was busily helping herself to some of Katherine’s possessions, which she felt were now hers, left at Baynard’s Castle in London. Among the items she appropriated then was “a horn cup with a cover, garnished with antique works, with foot and knot of ivory,” a coffer covered in crimson velvet, and a useful set of wood trenchers. She saw no incongruity between maintaining the style expected of a queen and charitable works. Yet Anne wanted more than random charity; she also wanted proper schemes for poor relief. This explains her delight when it was decided to look into the ways in which monasteries were run: when some were closed, the money gained by the Crown could be used for education and organized forms of assistance. All would be in line with her own convictions. Henry and Cromwell were bound to agree wholeheartedly.

What Jane knew from family tales or reminiscences was the extent to which this was part of the Boleyn inheritance. Although Anne’s grandfather, Sir William, had left most of his wealth to his relatives, he was mindful of his obligations both to the church and to the poor. Norwich Cathedral, where he wanted to be buried next to his mother, received twenty pounds and each monk twenty marks, while the parish church at Blickling was the richer for four candlesticks and twenty pounds. Whenever Jane prayed in that church, she saw those candlesticks. Every householder in Blickling was given the princely sum of five pounds and his own household was to be kept in place, and therefore paid, for six months after his death. No one would be abandoned. It was a generous and unselfish gesture.

He was but following in the footsteps of his own father, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, and it was his genes too that Anne and George had inherited. Everything that Anne intended to do conformed to the blueprint her great-grandfather had provided in his will. In many ways a conventional Catholic, Geoffrey wanted masses said for his own soul, for that of his wife, and for those who were buried alongside him. He left money for that church and for the one at Blickling. But he went radically further. Like Anne, he believed in the value of preaching. He wanted a “convenable, honest, virtuous priest of good governance and conversation” to be employed for twenty years after his death to say the necessary masses four times a year. That duty performed, the priest could engage in learning or teaching or—and Anne would have thoroughly approved of this—he could “labor in preaching the word of God” on the highways and byways of the land. Even at the services he gave for Geoffrey’s soul, he was to preach a sermon. Like Anne, Geoffrey was way ahead of his time for the Catholic Church did not encourage sermons and preaching on such an informal and ad hoc basis; such activities were far more in line with the Protestant ideas that interested Anne.

Then, again just like her, he had cared about the disadvantaged and those who really were at the bottom of the heap: he had left sufficient money for food to be given to the prisoners in London four times a year. On the anniversary of his death, every four prisoners were to share dishes of beef and mutton, or two types of fish, should it be a fish day, with a pennyworth of bread, the whole meal to be washed down with a pottle of ale. In addition, he bequeathed money for five years to be spent on the general welfare of prisoners both in London and throughout the country. Leper houses received financial help too, and so did the mendicant friars in London, the “poor, sick and feeble” in hospitals in the city, and the women in the almshouses within the hospital of St. Katherine beside the Tower. Jane was involved with the hospitals Geoffrey aided, as one of them, the house of Our Lady of Bethlehem [Bedlam], was in George’s keeping. Geoffrey did not stop there. He went on to leave funds for poor householders in various named parishes, including Blickling, and for those brought into poverty through misfortunes of “fire” or “water.”

Education too mattered as passionately to Geoffrey as it did to Anne. He had his own scholar to whom he left ten marks a year for ten years providing he prayed for his soul, worked at his studies in divinity in Oxford or Cambridge, or preached. For Anne and Jane, supporting scholars really was in the family. Jane could feel a Boleyn in that also. Finally, if there was anything left of his vast fortune after his debts had been settled and the personal bequests to members of his family had been given, Geoffrey Boleyn ordered that the residue of his estate should be used for the relief of the poor, setting up schools for children, arranging the marriages of poor maidens, and in “other works and deeds of mercy and piety” according to the discretion of his executors.

As Jane watched Anne poring over plans to alleviate poverty and put her religious ideals into practice, she knew that the same ideals were in the queen’s blood too. Anne could carry on where Geoffrey had stopped. In her private apartments there was always music, song, dance, and fun, all taking place in the most splendid surroundings that her royal husband could provide, but Jane appreciated that there was more to Anne than mere hedonism. And now that the storm caused by Henry’s dalliance had passed, life continued much as before.

Chapuys dutifully conveyed to Charles the bad news that Anne was back in favor. If anything, she seemed more powerful than ever. Even before the executions of More and Fisher, she laid on amusements and banquets to divert Henry, a task that “she so well managed” that “the King loves his concubine [Anne] now more than he ever did.” Mary’s fears for her life may have become “considerably increased” but there were fewer sleepless nights for the Boleyns. Anne felt sure enough of Henry’s feelings to tell him how grateful he should be to her for rescuing him “from a state of sin.” It was through her, she told him, that he had become “the richest Prince that ever was in England” and that “he would not have reformed the Church, to his own great profit and that of all the people” without her encouragement.

Whenever she could, Anne went to see her daughter, Elizabeth, a toddler by now. There was talk of a marriage for the little girl with the Duke of Angoulême, one of Francis’s sons, a matter for George to bring up when at the French court. For the Francophile Anne, this was a delightful prospect. Keen for visiting French ambassadors to report back on just how perfect little Elizabeth was, she insisted they went to see her. The diplomats were kept well away from Mary, of course, even though she was still housed in her half sister’s establishment.

Jane had lived among the Boleyns long enough to anticipate that while the ultimate decisions were Henry’s, whatever was being planned for Elizabeth would be of considerable interest to Anne. Her hands-on approach to policy was not new to her family. It was her way; it always had been. Years earlier, Wolsey had been surprised that Anne sat in and became involved when he discussed matters of state with the king. Henry had accepted that she always wanted to be kept up to date on every development. In one of his own letters to her in those early, heady days of their romance, the king told her that George would give her all the latest information when he saw her. Thus, when George returned from a mission to France, it was natural for him to rush straight to his sister to let her know in minute detail exactly what had been said. He did so even before reporting to Henry. While in the queen’s privy chamber, Jane was used to seeing her husband and her sister-in-law totally engrossed in private conversation. This was quite usual; Anne had no reason to think it could ever be remembered and used against her.

So, as Anne set off with Henry on the summer progress, blissfully unaware that she would be in her grave by the time he embarked on such a journey again, she could feel satisfied that not only had she placated her husband, she was doing all she could to uphold and indeed propagate her beliefs and was living up to family traditions. If Jane was back at court by then, she would have joined Anne and the king. The trip, which lasted much of the summer and autumn, included parts of Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire. The couple often stayed with selected courtiers, men who would take pride in receiving and entertaining their monarch. They spent four nights or so with Lord Sandys, in his luxuriously rebuilt and refurbished home, The Vyne, with its wonderful carved-oak panels and sumptuously appointed royal apartments. Then there was Sir John Seymour, whose able son, Edward, served Henry and had been an honored guest at Anne’s coronation, while his daughter, Jane, was one of the queen’s ladies. Sir John courteously welcomed his king and queen for several days at his seat of Wolf Hall near Marlborough. The weeks passed pleasantly enough. Henry and Anne spent their time hunting, hawking, meeting the great and the good, and being seen by the general population. Although a planned visit to Bristol was canceled owing to an outbreak of plague, all else went well. Anne shone. If she wanted to, she could be all graciousness and charm, and on this progress, she wanted to.

A sudden demonstration in Mary’s support was the only cloud on the otherwise clear horizon. While Anne and Henry were on the progress, a group of women gathered at Greenwich where Mary was staying to catch a glimpse of her. As she left the palace, the women shouted out to her that “she was Princess, notwithstanding all that had been done.” They were quickly dispersed, of course, and their leaders imprisoned in the Tower, conveniently a short riverboat ride away. While the episode was a petty irritation to Anne and Henry, it was easily dealt with. The document recording the demonstration is intriguing, though, as there is a marginal handwritten note that reads, “Millor de Rochesfort et millord de Guillaume,” which suggests that one of the women involved and ferociously punished was Jane. To break the habit of a lifetime and speak out, particularly against her husband’s family, would be most uncharacteristic. Doubtless, she heard about the brouhaha but she knew her destiny lay with the Boleyns; to jump ship at this stage would have been folly. Only once in her life would Jane commit an act that was naive and foolish in the extreme. It was not this. She was much more likely to have been at court than protesting for what seemed a lost cause. In any case, if Henry and Anne were lovers again, the future most definitely lay with Anne, not with Mary.