Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (9 page)

I
T WAS
S
HROVE
T
UESDAY
1526 when the Boleyns, Jane’s new family, witnessed a tangible hint of what might be to come. Henry’s Christmas celebrations had been so muted that the season was called the “still” Christmas. When plague broke out in London, the king, in line with his usual terror of sickness, retreated to the seclusion and comparative safety of Eltham for almost five weeks, accompanied by just a “small number” of “such as were appointed by name.” Only with the worst of the sickness over did a cautious Henry venture out, eager to start living again. Since, for him, there were few things more exhilarating than jousting, especially before an admiring audience, Shrove Tuesday provided the perfect opportunity to indulge in diversion and pleasure. This particular occasion, though, was unique: amid the fun and frivolity, for those shrewd enough to realize it, was a glimpse of the future. For Jane, who had every right to attend the festivities, there were echoes of another Shrove Tuesday event four years earlier when she had played Constancy on the mock battlements of Château Vert. Two of her fellow performers were by now her sisters-in-law. If, in the intervening period, Mary had epitomized Kindness in reality as well as in jest, so Perseverance was soon to become Anne’s middle name.

As the court cheered and clapped, their king entered the lists. Thoroughly enjoying himself, and reveling in the acclaim, he gave a spirited performance at the head of his band of eleven other jousters. He looked stunning. Henry and his men shone in cloth of gold and silver, with their horses draped in similar fabric. His emblem, a man’s heart gripped inside a press and surrounded by flames, was significant, but it was his motto that resonated with meaning. Embroidered in French, it can be translated as “Declare, I dare not.” Arrayed in costumes of green velvet and crimson satin, the Marquis of Exeter’s company opposed the king. Their emblem, burning hearts on which silver droplets of water trickled from cans held by ladies’ hands descending from clouds, was a perfect example of romance and chivalric values. Unfortunately, the day was almost spoiled by a freak but grisly accident. To the horror of the spectators, a spear shattered as it hit Sir Francis Brian, who lost an eye. Never one to be perturbed by the sufferings of others, however, a carefree Henry, his own eyes intact, rounded off the evening with a banquet, himself waiting on Katherine and her ladies.

The precise moment when Henry fell in love with the woman who was to mesmerize and unsettle him for so many years is hotly disputed but for Jane and the other Boleyns, the date was immaterial. What mattered was that fall in love he did. Completely. Henry’s enigmatic motto on that Shrove Tuesday said it all. Having dropped one sister, he yearned for the other, even if he was not yet ready to proclaim it to the world. And Anne was unmarried and available.

Whether she would stay so for long was another matter. Jane and Anne had come into close contact when they had rehearsed the complicated choreography needed for the Château Vert pageant. Even then, Anne had been no retiring wallflower. Her looks were unconventional: a natural brunette with an unremarkable figure, she lacked the pale, translucent, fragile beauty then in vogue. The Venetian ambassador wrote scathingly that “Madam Anne is not one of the handsomest women in the world; she is of middling stature, swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised.” But there was more to her than that. Her intelligence, her wit, her repartee, her sheer vivacity, her ability to light up a room, together with the charm and polish gained through her years in Mechelen at the renaissance court of Charles V’s aunt, the regent Margaret, and in France with Mary Tudor and Queen Claude all combined to make Anne highly noticeable. And they made her different. Even the Venetian ambassador appreciated her most obvious asset—the dark, flashing eyes that, he said, were “black and beautiful” and that she so clearly used to advantage, for they took “great effect on those who served the Queen when she was on the throne.” Such a woman soon attracted admirers.

Long before Jane’s wedding, Thomas Boleyn had considered suggestions for a marriage for his second daughter. Never a man to be fastidious or squeamish where property was concerned, he had pondered using Anne to settle problems over his Ormond inheritance. While he had acquired his father-in-law’s English lands without too much trouble, he had not gained his title, and Thomas’s claims in Ireland were contested by Piers Butler, Ormond’s cousin. To marry Anne to Piers’s son, James, was ostensibly an ideal solution to the rather messy dispute, but although talks dragged on for some time, they finally petered out. Jane heard about the scheme, though, for it was still festering away when she joined the Boleyn family. She certainly knew about Anne’s other swains, the poet Thomas Wyatt, and Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland. Both were probably on the scene when the king first experienced what he was later to call “the dart of love” and which he was to intimate at the Shrove Tuesday joust.

The problem with Wyatt was that he was already married, albeit miserably, to an equally unhappy Elizabeth Brooke, and the couple had two children. Handsome and cultured though he was, and Anne was no doubt flattered and excited by his attentions, all he could offer was an affair and perhaps the prospect of immortality through poetry. For the ambitious Anne, such enticements were simply not enough. Henry Percy was a much more realistic proposition. Heir to the vast Percy estates, he was about Anne’s age and, to Anne at least, personable. They met at court when Percy resorted “for his pastime unto the queen’s chamber” where he fell “in dalliance among the queen’s maidens.” Soon he dallied with one maiden in particular. “Being at the last more conversant with Mistress Anne Boleyn,” the pair decided to marry when “a secret love” developed between them. Or so we are told by George Cavendish.

What Anne divulged about how far her “secret love” had progressed goes unrecorded, but it is inconceivable that her family knew nothing at all of what was going on. If she confided in anyone, it was most probably her “sweet brother,” for she and George were always close. There is no evidence of that practiced negotiator, Thomas Boleyn, entering into tentative discussions with Percy’s father so any “secret love” did not translate into action. In fact, Northumberland decided that his son should marry Mary Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who would be a much better match for him than Anne. Her hopes, if hopes there were, were dashed. According to Cavendish, they were dashed in spectacular fashion. He asserts that the relationship between Anne and Henry Percy was broken up by the cardinal himself, acting on the king’s personal order. Henry, Cavendish writes, was “much offended” by Anne’s relationship because he already had a “secret affection” for her himself, which he was forced to “reveal” to Wolsey. Having soundly berated Percy, Wolsey is alleged to have sent for the formidable Northumberland who did the same. The earl then sorted out the final details for the wedding to Mary Talbot. The result, Cavendish firmly declares, was Anne’s lasting hatred for Wolsey. She was determined that “if it ever lay in her power, she would work the cardinal as much displeasure.” Whatever the truth, Anne was sent back to Hever, out of harm’s way, to come to terms with her disappointment or, maybe, to plot her revenge.

For Jane and the other Boleyns, court life continued much as usual despite the complexities of Anne’s emotional upheavals with Wyatt and Percy. George waited on the king when he dined in state, William Carey served him within the confines of the privy chamber, and Thomas remained close at hand. But with Anne’s two suitors eliminated and the marriage negotiations with Butler running into the sands, the way lay open for the king. He did something he normally detested: he took up his pen.

Thus began a courtship that changed not only Anne’s life but the lives of everyone around her. At first, no one, probably not even Anne herself, appreciated just how far Henry would go to gain the object of his desire. Until now, he had been denied nothing. Yet, to his bewilderment, Anne not only resisted him, she did so with consummate ease. In the seventeen letters that are extant in the Vatican archives, the king poured out his innermost feelings, his devotion, and his love to the woman he thought of as his “own sweetheart.” The letters are tender, filled with concern for her, revealing the torment of a man whose heart was genuinely gripped by passion and yearning. For a Tudor daughter, even one as high spirited and independent as Anne, to have concealed such missives is unthinkable. And, like the rest of the family, Jane was there from the beginning, as Anne’s dark eyes focused on the pleadings of the king.

And pleadings they were. Jane was at court with George when, in an ironic role reversal, Henry cast himself as Anne’s “true servant,” appealing for news of her “health” and “welfare.” He gently chided her for not contacting him as she had promised, for, he wrote, “it has not pleased you to remember the promise you made me when I was last with you—that is, to hear good news from you.” He sent her a present of a buck he had killed himself “hoping that when you eat of it you may think of the hunter.” Having George at his side was all very well but Anne was to know that the king “very often wishes for you instead of your brother.” Another present, much more costly, was certainly not one that Anne could conceal from her family. With the “pain of absence…too great” and knowing that he could not be “personally present,” Henry sent her the “nearest thing” to himself, his “picture set in bracelets” and with a “device,” which he knew she would understand. Since the gift has disappeared, we cannot know what the device actually was; perhaps it was a puzzle based on their intertwined initials or simply a string of letters similar to those he placed at the bottom of a further communication, which is still extant, and which he was also confident she would decipher.

Decode the cryptic messages, Anne did. But she refused to submit to Henry’s demands. Indeed, he began to wonder whether any of her hints that she might eventually succumb to his entreaties were groundless. “Since my parting from you,” he then wrote, “I have been told that the opinion in which I left you is totally changed, and that you would not come to court either with your mother, if you could, or in any other manner.” This, he felt, was “a very poor return for the great love” he had for her. He could not understand why, if she loved him, it was not “a little irksome” to be apart. This letter went further. Anne really did have to make up her mind. If she “voluntarily desired” their separation, he “could do no other than mourn my ill-fortune, and by degrees abate my great folly.” Even Henry’s patience was not inexhaustible.

How Anne responded we will never know, for all of her replies are lost. She certainly did not yield. So Henry tried once more. He had been, he said, “for above a whole year stricken with the dart of love” and still did not know where he stood. Did she love him “with an ordinary love” or a “singular one”? He was desperate to “know expressly” what she really felt “as to the love between us two.” Then came what for him was the supreme offer. If Anne would surrender both her “body and heart,” she would be his “only mistress” he would think of no one else and “serve” her alone. So desperate was he for her answer that if she did not want to reply in writing, he was ready to go wherever she wanted to “have it by word of mouth.”

To have the king so besotted with Anne presented the Boleyns with an acute dilemma. Henry’s lust for Mary had brought rich pickings for all of them but his craving for Anne, which had already lasted unrequited for over a year, was of an entirely different order. While the potential rewards were massive, so was the danger. Katherine had serenely ignored her husband’s extramarital entanglements but, so far, they had amounted to little. And the well-loved, universally respected queen had powerful friends to support her if they became more intrusive. Wolsey could not be disregarded either; he would not easily relinquish his intimate influence with his royal master to Anne or to her potentially grasping relations. To cross him was unwise. Rumor had it that he had played a shadowy part in engineering the execution of Buckingham, who had once insulted him. Neither Thomas nor George wanted to count him an enemy, despite Anne’s alleged bravado. More crucially, Henry remained a married man. An affair, even an exclusive one, would not last forever. Henry was surrounded by young and pretty women. Both Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn were living examples of Henry’s fickle nature. The intelligent Anne understood the situation: once she lost his affection, she would be married off to an obliging courtier. For Elizabeth Blount the payoff had been good, because she married Gilbert Tailboys whose family owned lands in six counties, but, equally, there was a risk that Anne might be offered a minor noble and then sink into comparative obscurity. And, whereas Mary had settled back into court life quite contentedly as Carey’s wife, Anne, a more extrovert and ambitious character than her sister, would have found the status of discarded mistress intolerable. Yet to refuse the king forever could be to give up the chance of a lifetime, not only for herself but also for Thomas and George. It was not a decision to be made lightly, nor was it one to be made alone. A free spirit in many ways, Anne, like Jane, was still a woman in a patriarchal society. She would be unwise not to ask the advice of her parents and, since she loved him, her brother. Finally, after countless hours of thought and, doubtless, family discussion, Anne made her choice. She gave in.

She did so in style and she did so symbolically. When she responded to the king, she gave him a token, one that required planning, thought, and some expense as it needed to be specially crafted. Since she possessed no lands in her own right, Thomas must have agreed to purchase it for her. The Boleyns were with her all the way. Intriguingly, there is a payment, which could be significant, listed among Thomas’s accounts “to Cornelys,
^*6
the king’s goldsmith, £4.” Four pounds was probably too small a sum to buy the whole present, but it might well have been an installment.