Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (6 page)

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began talks that were to determine the direction of Jane’s life until the day she died: it was time for him to arrange her marriage. Wedlock was the most serious step any Tudor woman could take. Jane knew that once she left the safety of her own family, she would be dependent upon her husband for her status, her role in society, her financial security, her domicile, even for the clothes on her back and the food she ate. Under the concept of coverture, her very identity would be subsumed in his: he was her lord and she was required by convention and religious duty to submit to his will. Her vows at the ceremony included her promise to be “buxom at bed and board.” In reality, of course, marriage was not an appalling fate; it was a career. To be unmarried was unthinkable. Most couples rubbed along quite well but were clear that the purpose of their union was primarily the creation of a property settlement that was advantageous to their families and the birth of children to continue the dynasty. This did not preclude comfortable companionship, affection, love, even sexual attraction. But these were bonuses to be hoped for, not expected as a right.

Such serious matters were not meant to trouble the minds of adolescent girls. Jane relied on her father to sort them out for her. Once the decision concerning who was going to marry whom was taken, the hard bargaining over the bride’s settlement and jointure would begin in earnest. Mundane details such as coping with the banns, the church service, and the bridal feast were easy in comparison. In fact, Lord Morley was becoming reasonably experienced in all things matrimonial. In 1521, he was concerned with a deed relating to the estates of his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Edgecombe, and then, more significantly, in May 1523, Henry Parker, his son and heir, was married to Grace Newport. This was, in every way, a most satisfying alliance. Grace was the daughter of John Newport, a landowner whose estates were within twelve or so miles of the Morley seat at Great Hallingbury. The two families were virtually neighbors—always an excellent reason for a marriage. Then, Grace was also Newport’s only heir so would bring his lands to the Morleys. As her father died within eight days of the ceremony, she brought them sooner than anticipated. Admittedly, the girl was only eight years old, but that was not an insuperable obstacle; it just meant that consummation would have to wait a while. In normal circumstances, Grace would have lived with her father until puberty, keeping in touch with her young spouse via the occasional social meeting, but as things stood, she probably grew up within the Parker household instead.

Having successfully settled his son’s affairs, Lord Morley turned his attentions to those of his daughter, Jane. The first decision concerned the bridegroom. In this, Jane was lucky for she already knew him. Her father’s choice was George Boleyn, Sir Thomas Boleyn’s only son. Again, Lord Morley’s selection made sound economic sense. By the 1520s, Thomas and his wife were affluent, influential at court, and highly regarded by the king. Like the Newports, they were also near neighbors—so convenient.

The Boleyns began to be important in the fifteenth century when Geoffrey Boleyn, an astute and clever London merchant, made money as a mercer, trading in fine fabrics like velvet and silk. He was soon very prosperous indeed. Not only was he knighted, becoming lord mayor of London in 1457, he prudently invested in property, buying, among other lands, large country estates at Hever in Kent and at Blickling in Norfolk. He knew how his world worked: social standing and respect came only from the possession of land. But it was his wealth that made him sufficiently eligible to marry a nobleman’s daughter. The family fortunes continued to rise following the wedding of his heir, William, to Margaret, the daughter of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, an Anglo-Irish peer, with substantial lands in England. What made this marriage potentially significant was that Ormond had two daughters, Margaret and her sister, Anne, but he had no legitimate son. Unless there was a surprise arrival in the Butler family, Margaret and Anne would one day share a fortune. Since the control of a woman’s property was in the hands of her husband, all this boded well for the Boleyns.

The real beneficiary of this shrewd alliance was Sir Thomas Boleyn, the eldest son of Sir William and Margaret, Jane’s future father-in-law. In 1511, four years before the Earl of Ormond’s death, Thomas came to an arrangement with his by then widowed mother, Margaret. They agreed to an indenture between them by which Thomas would have everything that would come to Margaret from the Ormonds in exchange for an annual annuity of two hundred marks and some manors in Norfolk, including Blickling, as well as land in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The money was to be paid twice a year in the pretty parish church of Blickling between the hours of 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. The church is still there, altered by the Victorians but not dissimilar to how it was when Thomas’s agent doled out the coins. While Margaret was certainly not left penniless, it was Thomas who gained by far the most. The wily Sir Geoffrey would have been proud of his grandson. On the death of Ormond, his fabulous estate of New Hall in Essex was part of Thomas’s haul, although he was swift to sell it to the king for a breathtaking one thousand pounds.
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Thomas retained other property in Essex, including the manor of Rochford with its comfortable house, as well, of course, as his vast acres in Norfolk, counties in which the Morleys also owned land. A union between the two families would benefit both and provide admirably for Jane. No father could have done more for his daughter.

And George himself seemed an ideal match for Jane. The date of his birth is not recorded but he was probably about her own age. Here too luck was on Jane’s side: she was not to be married to a man old enough to be her father, the destiny of many women. Indeed, the king’s own sister, Mary, the French queen, gained her title from her political marriage to Louis XII of France. He was over thirty years her senior, had not worn well, and could scarcely believe his eyes when he first saw his lovely young bride. Mary’s response to her sacrifice was to exact a promise from her brother that, should she outlive Louis, her next husband would be one she had picked for herself, and when Louis died she chose the Duke of Suffolk, then a rather dashing man of action, a second marriage that lasted until Mary’s own death many years later. At least Jane was able to marry a young man. To Lord Morley’s gratification, she was also marrying into a family in which knowledge was valued. Thomas, while a competent soldier and good jouster, was keen to foster links with the humanist scholar, Erasmus, and wrote to him frequently. Thomas’s brother, Sir James Boleyn, learned Hebrew, a rare accomplishment for a busy man like himself who was involved in the law. Additionally, George’s love of music and poetry and his deep and genuine interest in theology, especially in the new religious ideas that were buzzing around Europe, combined with his fluent French and undoubted skills in diplomacy, indicate that he too was well educated; Thomas would have chosen his only son’s tutors with considerable care. Unfortunately, George’s physical characteristics elude us; there is no surviving portrait.

Like Jane, George was no stranger to Henry’s court. While still a little boy, he played a part in a mummery at the Christmas revels and became a royal page. He obviously impressed the king as he was admitted to the privy chamber, although we are not sure precisely when. What we do know is that he shared in his father’s rewards following the execution of Buckingham. Since the property of convicted traitors was subject to automatic and systematic confiscation, and the duke had been a very rich man with a yearly income in the region of five thousand pounds, the king had plenty of lands to redistribute or keep for himself. The Boleyns were given various offices centering around Tonbridge in Kent, so handy for their estate at Hever. In the inventory taken of Buckingham’s possessions, the town of Tonbridge was said to be “large and well inhabited with people, having plenty of water running through in sundry places.” It also had a castle graphically described as a “strong fortress” with towers, gatehouses, and stone battlements. The Boleyns, therefore, did well. Then, significantly, in 1524 George was granted the manor of Grimstone in Norfolk, in his own right. Another factor in his favor was that as the only son, he was Thomas’s sole heir. George’s financial position was certainly most promising. Jane had nothing to complain of with her father’s choice, nor had George with his. Jane’s family may have fought on the losing side at Bosworth but they were loyal subjects now. George could marry the daughter of a respected peer, thus maintaining what was fast becoming a family tradition, without facing the daunting prospect of taking a stranger as his bride.

Once Lord Morley and Sir Thomas Boleyn agreed that their children should marry, they settled down to some determined haggling. A legal prenuptial contract was drawn up on October 4, 1524, to cover the financial aspects of the alliance. Jane’s jointure, exactly what she was entitled to should George predecease her, was at the heart of it, for estates passed to children, not to bereaved widows. Jane’s parents did not want her to depend on whatever she might inherit from George’s will; at best, that might be her clothes, her jewels, a few pieces of furniture, and if she was really loved, some silver or gilt plate. If she relied solely on his bounty, her outlook could be bleak. Her jointure would ensure that in return for a fixed amount, paid in land or money by Lord Morley, Sir Thomas guaranteed to convey the rents of particular manors, or a specified annual sum, to her for the rest of her life. Neither she nor George were consulted about these delicate arrangements, although they may have been informed about them. What Jane did not know then was just how crucial the precise terms of her jointure would one day prove to be. Indeed, even today, her story can only make sense in the context of these pivotal documents, hidden in the archives for almost five hundred years.

With his customary business acumen, Thomas secured a very profitable deal. Astonishingly, Jane came accompanied by a jointure of two thousand marks, over thirteen hundred pounds, more even than the price of New Hall. Lord Morley alone could not have raised so much. Indeed, there is a tantalizing reference to tell us that Morley’s servant paid Thomas thirty-three pounds, six shillings, eight pence for November and December 1525, which suggests that Morley was paying off a debt, possibly for the jointure, in installments. What we do know is that the other contributor to Jane’s jointure was no less a person than the king himself. This was not as unusual as it sounds. It does, though, indicate the regard in which Henry held Thomas and, perhaps, Lord Morley. That Thomas was a favored courtier is undeniable. His prowess on the jousting field and his martial exploits in the wars against France at the beginning of Henry’s reign endeared him to the king, but his excellent French also made him incredibly useful as an ambassador. Already treasurer of the royal household, he became a Knight of the Garter just before he began his talks with Jane’s father. George’s grant of Grimstone is further proof of royal approbation. Since he received it scarcely three months before the various legal papers were signed, it was conceivably a generous royal gesture, on the eve of his wedding, to a young man the king liked. Morley too was on good terms with Henry, and perhaps on his mind. Like Thomas, Lord Morley had been an emissary on a diplomatic mission. In December 1523, he had been one of the English ambassadors sent to present the Order of the Garter to the archduke Ferdinand of Austria, the younger brother of Charles V, a gift that delighted its recipient and marked England’s close relationship with the emperor. Although somewhat perturbed at the unrest caused by the spread of Lutheranism, Morley had rather enjoyed his foreign trip, writing back to the king at least once and to Wolsey three times, giving vivid descriptions of where he had been and whom he had met.

With the figure for Jane’s jointure agreed, Sir Thomas and Morley turned to the vexed question of exactly which lands would be designated for the settlement. The couple were barely twenty; there was no reason to suspect that the transaction would come into full fruition for many years to come, if at all. Barring the constant threat of sudden illness, Jane was more likely to die in childbirth than to outlive her husband. Nevertheless, her father was keen to assure her future. It was decided that she and George would be given the manors of Aylesbury and Bierton in Buckinghamshire and various other manors in Norfolk, including West Laxham. The newlyweds would be allowed to access the proceeds immediately after their nuptials, a common practice. Should George die first, Jane would receive the specified manors or one hundred marks (£66) a year. So far so good, except that the usual annuity for a widow was 10 percent of the original jointure price, which, in Jane’s case, would amount to just over £130 per annum. Lord Morley should have noticed such a blatant discrepancy. Clearly he did not and while Jane would be able to manage on £66, it would not be enough to maintain her in style: Jane needed George alive rather than dead.

What is immediately apparent, of course, is that much of this property was technically Margaret Boleyn’s Ormond inheritance and that Thomas had actually allocated many of the same spoils twice, once to his dependent mother and once to Jane. The final indenture accepted by Thomas and Lord Morley was indeed complex. But it was only complex if the natural order of things was disturbed. Providing George lived to a decent age, he would survive both Margaret, his grandmother, and Thomas, his father. He would then inherit all of the lands and there would be no problem. Should Jane die before her husband, there was no difficulty either, as her jointure died with her and George would be free to marry again. But the seeds for discord were certainly sown. If the unthinkable happened, and George’s life was cut short, then Jane would be free to demand her rights. Thomas would then face a major dilemma. Still, as the ink dried on the contract, all seemed fine. The deal was reasonable for both parties. All minds were now focused on weddings, not funerals.