Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (48 page)

The councilors were accompanied by Catherine’s cousin, Norfolk’s proud son and heir, the Earl of Surrey, himself destined to die in a similar fashion within five years. In his dispatch to Charles describing the event, Chapuys referred to “various lords and gentlemen” being present among the official party but their identities are unknown. All of them, though, would have been acquainted with the queen and with Jane. They were there to see what befell those, no matter what their rank, who displeased the king, and to learn from their experience. As Jane was only too aware, the luxury, the wealth, the power, and the exhilaration of Henry’s court carried its own price tag. This was about to be made crystal clear to every member of that court party on that chill February morning. And, as the grim walls of the Tower, gradually appearing through the lingering mist, came ever closer with each rhythmic stroke of the oars, they hoped that their duty would be accomplished quickly so that they could try to put the terror of what they were about to see out of their minds.

A select group of Londoners also set off for the Tower that day. They went on foot. Some walked along Tower Street, passing the houses of wealthy merchants in which servants were beginning to stir for a day that, to them, would be like any other. Along their route lay the Clothworkers’ Hall in Mincing Lane; the Bakers’ Hall, hidden in the maze of buildings between Harp Lane and Water Lane; and, on the corner of Seething Lane, the church of All Hallows, with its large churchyard and chapel, where it was believed that the heart of Richard I was buried. Clearly visible now was the public scaffold erected on Tower Hill, just outside the walls of the fortress, a permanent fixture now, always waiting to receive and dispatch the king’s less important enemies, like George Boleyn. Some walked along Thames Street, through the parish of St. Dunstan, where rich importers, salters, and ironmongers had their warehouses or lived comfortably in their large timber-framed dwellings, a stone’s throw from the river with its wharfs and customs house.

Eventually, they all reached the western entrance of the Tower, the place at which the wide, deep moat could be crossed via the Bulwark Gate. This, the main land gate, was used by visitors and tradesmen alike. Usually guarded, it was open that morning for witnesses to the executions of Jane and Catherine. Although Henry had decided that the woman he had once loved should have the privilege of a private end, which meant that it would be carried out inside the walls, just as Anne’s had been, it still needed spectators. Among them was a cloth dealer and victualler, Ottwell Johnson, whose customers had included the officials of the queen’s household. In his letter to his brother, scribbled almost immediately after the event, we have the only genuine eyewitness account of the deaths of Jane and the queen.

As streaks of dawn appeared in the sky, the small crowd crossed the drawbridge over the first section of the moat toward the Lion Tower, where the slumbering lions, lionesses, and leopards of the king’s menagerie were housed. Once they reached the Middle Tower, protected by a portcullis at each end, they were halfway across the moat, but there was another section of the bridge to cross before they were allowed through the iron portcullis of the Byward Tower and inside the precincts of the walls. Getting this far was a major undertaking. The Tower, combining the functions of citadel, palace, prison, armory, and jewel house, had been designed to withstand long sieges and ferocious attacks. It could not be entered easily. Ottwell Johnson and his companions had to pass through three security gates and still had to make their way past the Bloody Tower before they could gain admittance to the Inner Ward. Eventually, they saw the huge square walls of William the Conqueror’s White Tower, recently repaired, on their right and the Beauchamp Tower on their left. Walking along the west side of the White Tower, as they turned the corner they saw the scaffold Walsingham had made ready. It stood between the north side of the White Tower and the royal armory opposite.
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To the left of the Londoners, some fifty yards away, stood the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, to which the bodies of both women would shortly be taken. The decaying corpses of Anne, George, and the Countess of Salisbury, interred there already, would soon become their neighbors.

As the Londoners gazed curiously around, the barges from Westminster drew up at the water gate of the Tower. Sir John Gage received his fellow councilors and the other members of the court as they disembarked, then led them through the security cordon. He escorted them to their places in the wooden stands beside the scaffold, probably the specially constructed stands left over from Anne’s execution, where they sat huddled in their fur-trimmed robes. One thousand people had attended then; this was to be a paltry spectacle by comparison.

With everyone settled, Gage could at last fetch the prisoners. Catherine, as befitted her rank, would be the first to die. The agony would be prolonged for Jane. Gage walked the few hundred yards to the queen’s lodgings, which stood to the southeast of the White Tower. The only access was through the Cole Harbor gate leading to the courtyard of the palace area. He climbed the stairs and knocked politely on the door of Catherine’s chamber. She deserved that courtesy. Catherine was ready for him. Wrapped up warmly and followed by her small group of ladies, she left her rooms. There was no point in looking back. Passing through the apartments rebuilt by a devoted Henry to please her once-beloved cousin Anne, she came down the stairs to the ground floor and, walking through the gateway and around the White Tower in the footsteps of the spectators, reached the foot of the scaffold.

It was over very quickly. Catherine glanced at the assembled councilors and courtiers, recently so respectful of her and eager to do her bidding, all unable to help her now. She mounted the scaffold with Gage and her ladies still beside her. Ottwell Johnson watched transfixed as the process took its established course, one of the many onlookers who would live to tell their children and their grandchildren all that they had seen that day. In Marillac’s report to Francis, he said that Catherine “was so weak that she could hardly speak.” But he was not there; Johnson was. And, in his letter to his brother, he gave unstinting praise to Catherine for her bravery. He particularly noted her “steadfast countenance” and “constancy.” There was no suggestion of fear or trembling. She was a Howard, and a queen, and she would die as such.

The masked executioner stood there silently, his ax resting on the block. As was customary, he knelt to ask his victim’s pardon for what he was about to do. Catherine forgave him and handed him a few coins, as tradition demanded. She was playing her part in the charade, and playing it well. She knelt in prayer and then turned to those watching. In a clear voice, she spoke the words that she had rehearsed. She acknowledged her faults, stated her belief in Christ, and asked everyone to pray for the king. There were no recriminations, no protestations of innocence, no last references to Culpepper, merely a regal acceptance of her fate.

Her ladies stepped forward to help her. They removed her mantle, put a linen cap over her hair and bandaged her eyes so that she would not see the ax fall. They gently positioned her head on the block—she already knew what that would feel like—and arranged her skirts modestly around her feet. Then the headsman struck. Mercifully, Catherine’s head came off in one blow; the executioner raised it by the hair for all to see. It was done.

But it all had to be done again. Once the queen was dead, Gage instructed the guards to throw water over the scaffold, which was then covered in fresh straw. No one wanted the new victim to slip in the blood of the last. Gage then walked back to the royal lodgings. Jane was probably kept either in the king’s or in the queen’s apartments since Walsingham had run out of suitable accommodation for his horde of illustrious prisoners, most of whom, including the Duchess of Norfolk, were still incarcerated.

It was now Jane’s turn to die. Gage knocked on her door and escorted her down the stairs, past the White Tower—that symbol of royal power, dominating the skyline and meant to overawe London as much as to protect it—and thence to the scaffold. Those watching had a second death to witness and the executioner another task to perform.

Jane was not a queen, but for this last walk, she was treated royally. Gage conducted the affair with civility and with deference. She had seen nothing of Catherine’s death and, by this time, there was little to see. The queen’s ladies had already wrapped her head in a white linen cloth and laid her small body in a black cloak before carrying her remains, dripping with blood, into St. Peter’s and to her grave.

From her room in the royal lodgings, Jane had almost certainly heard the cries and gasps of the spectators as Catherine’s head was held up by the executioner. Those last few minutes, while she waited for Gage’s polite tap on the door, were the longest she had ever experienced. But the waiting was finally over and she faced her end with the bravery and composure faithfully recorded by Ottwell Johnson. Like Catherine before her, Jane was met by a sea of familiar faces, people with whom she had once laughed and danced but who now stared impassively, not meeting her eyes. With calm dignity, she ascended the scaffold as Catherine had done before her. The executioner moved forward to seek her pardon, which she gave graciously.

And then she faced her audience. It was her last chance to speak. Marillac maintained that she gave a “long discourse” but Ottwell Johnson would tell a different tale. There is no word-for-word transcript of her final speech—she was not important enough for that—but Johnson has left us enough to reconstruct it. She began by declaring her complete faith and trust in God. “I have,” she said, “committed many sins against God from my youth upwards and have offended the king’s royal Majesty very dangerously, so my punishment is just and deserved. I am justly condemned by the laws of this realm and by Parliament. All of you who watch me die, should learn from my example and change your own lives. You must gladly obey the king in all things, for he is a just and godly prince. I pray for his preservation and beseech you all to do the same. I now entrust my soul to God and pray for his mercy.” Not once did she refer to the specific offenses that had brought her to the block. Neither did she have anything but praise for Henry, the man who had ordered her death. There were conventions governing final speeches. Anne and George had both adhered to them and so did Jane.

It was then her turn to have her cloak removed and her hair bound so that nothing would impede the ax. With a final prayer, she knelt down; her eyes were bandaged and the executioner severed her head. Blood stained the straw yet again as he held the head aloft.

The spectators were free to go home. Justice had been done and had been seen to have been done. They all knew the fate of traitors. The Londoners returned the way they had come, through the portcullises and over the drawbridge across the moat, and back into the narrow, rambling streets of the city, now teeming with glorious life. They had much to tell their families. Ottwell Johnson wrote his note to his brother, convinced that the souls of both Jane and Catherine were “with God, for they made the most godly and Christian’s end that ever was heard tell of (I think) since the world’s creation.”

The courtiers and the councilors returned to their barges to be rowed back to Westminster. It was already past ten o’clock; there was no need for the torches that had been so necessary on their outward journey. They could get on with their business. Henry was expected back in London within a matter of hours. Always reluctant to be close to any death he had ordered, he had spent the night at Waltham Abbey in Essex, a monastery that he had just confiscated but that had always kept special apartments for him in case he happened to be hunting in the area. He had been less than twenty miles from Great Hallingbury. Still stung by his ungrateful wife’s treachery, he would expect to hear a full account of all that had been done that morning. Chapuys was to say that the king was “in better spirits” after Catherine’s execution and to remark on the court’s “much feasting” in the buildup to Lent, but the strain of the whole affair had aged him. Two months later, Marillac noted, on seeing the king, how old and gray he had suddenly become. Chapuys too often found him “sad, pensive, and sighing,” despite his initial resurgence.

For Gage and Walsingham, there was the cleaning up to supervise. The scaffold was washed down again, then dismantled. The executioner was sent on his way with his fee and the victims’ outer clothes as a perquisite, and the guards dismissed to their quarters. Catherine and Jane were buried together, close to Anne, in the chancel beside the altar. With George nearby, Jane was finally reunited with the husband she had lost. It was a fitting destination.

His tasks completed, Gage was free to return to court and resume his duties as a trusted councilor and the comptroller of Henry’s household. Walsingham walked back to his newly constructed lodgings, which were located just inside the walls and to the south of St. Peter’s. Both men had fulfilled their duties honorably. Ordinary life could resume now. There would once again be processions, banquets, music, and dancing. Yielding to the entreaties of his grateful council, Henry would take a sixth and final wife in Katherine Parr. No tears would be shed for the king’s jewel of womanhood or for her confidante. They had to be banished from conversation and thought.

Like so many other families in Henry’s England, the Morleys had no choice but to accept their loss. With his daughter’s mangled body putrefying in its makeshift grave, Lord Morley settled down to what he did best: he shut himself away in his library and worked. The result was a translation of Boccaccio’s
De claris mulieribus.
Written between 1361 and 1375, Boccaccio’s Latin volume tells the story of 104 exceptional women, ranging from Eve to Queen Joanna of Naples. While praising some for their high moral standards or filial piety, Boccaccio castigates the majority for their immorality. Morley translated his accounts of forty-six of them, all classical figures.