Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (18 page)

Katherine’s obstinate refusal to accept what appeared to be a fait accompli was exasperating. She would not be addressed as Princess Dowager, her new title, rather than queen. She would not agree that her marriage was over. She still believed that Henry, whom she professed to love, would come to his senses and save his immortal soul by returning to her. She had “perfect confidence,” she told Henry’s messengers when they informed her she must acquiesce to his will, that God would effect a miracle in the king as he had done when turning St. Paul “from a persecutor into a preacher,” and would so “inspire the king’s conscience” that he would not “continue in error, to the slander of Christendom and ecclesiastical authority.” Such brave defiance worried Chapuys. “The moment this accursed Anne sets her foot firmly in the stirrup, she will try to do the queen all the harm she possibly can,” he had informed Charles even before the coronation. Without the emperor’s intervention, Chapuys believed that Anne would “not relent in her persecution until she actually finishes with Queen Katherine, as she did once with Cardinal Wolsey, whom she did not hate half as much.” Katherine herself feared that Anne’s vengeance would fall upon her daughter, Mary, a girl whose determination and courage matched that of her mother.

Grassroots support for the former queen and princess disconcerted the Boleyns. An innate sense of self-preservation ensured at least outward conformity to the new regime from most courtiers, but winning over the general populace was proving an uphill struggle. Both Katherine and Mary were, according to Chapuys, greeted everywhere with outpourings of affection and allegiance. When the former queen was spotted as she was moved from one residence to another, the local people wished her well, “filling the air with their acclamations” and hoping that “mishap” would befall her enemies. As she made a similar journey, Mary too aroused such love from the ordinary people that Anne was reported to have complained to Henry that it was “as if God Almighty had come down from heaven.” Neither she nor the king would countenance disobedience from Katherine and Mary forever, although bringing them to heel would be no easy task.

It would be far easier to silence the seditious words of those who did not have such powerful friends. Most of Henry’s courtiers would have heard of Mrs. Amadas, who was married to the master of the king’s jewels. She recklessly predicted that Anne, “a harlot,” would be burned and the king lose his throne. Sir Henry Norris, so powerful within the king’s privy chamber, she maintained, had acted as a pimp for Henry, bringing Anne to him. Furthermore, she accused Thomas Boleyn of prostituting both his own wife and Mary Carey, in addition to Anne herself. Since Mrs. Amadas also alleged that the king “had often sent her gifts” and had slept with her at “Mr. Compton’s house in Thames Street,” it is hardly surprising that she was considered mad. A little more worrying were the words of a priest in Lancashire who declared that he would “take none for queen but Queen Katherine.” Anne, he said, was a nobody and an immoral nobody at that. “Who the devil made Nan Bullen, that whore, queen?” he inquired. Fortunately, the Earl of Derby was equal to silencing him. More dangerous were the utterings of Elizabeth Barton, the Holy Maid of Kent, who also prophesied that only disaster would come to the king from his marriage to Anne. The entire court knew about her; some had even listened to her words. She could not be ignored forever. She, and her followers, would soon be crushed with all the force that Cromwell could muster.

So, as Jane knew, the Boleyn sky was not entirely cloudless. But as long as a pregnant Anne retained the king’s affections, there was no need for too much concern. His love should see them through any repercussions that could result if Clement finally gave his verdict in Katherine’s favor, a nagging anxiety that so frequently sent George rushing off to negotiate with Francis. Chapuys, optimistically, informed Charles that the king’s affection was waning already, and he had fallen in love with someone else. The ambassador reported a fierce quarrel between the royal couple when Anne, though “not without cause,” berated the king so soundly that he ordered her to behave as her betters had done before her. Furiously, Henry threatened that he could easily “humble her again in a moment more than he had exalted her.” Overcoming his own wishful thinking, however, Chapuys was forced to concede that “these things are lovers’ quarrels, to which we must not attach too great importance.” And that was the rub. The relationship between Henry and Anne was, for the king at least, achingly intense, passionate, and all-consuming. His devotion had not faded; he had no regrets. For her sake, he had risked religious discord, rebellion, and war, dangers that were still far from overcome, but it was worth it. He had the woman he truly adored at his side. And the child she carried was, he was certain, the son and heir he craved. His physicians and astrologers promised him that this was true. Anne, they asserted, would give birth to a boy. He had already chosen Edward or Henry as the baby’s name. Letters announcing the “deliverance and bringing forth of a prince” were ready to be sealed and sent. So the king watched and waited impatiently, like everyone else, as the weeks passed.

In the meantime, Anne presided over her new household as queen, a vastly different role for her. She was determined to enjoy every minute, filling her apartments with the sounds of laughter and music. Or so it seemed to Sir Edward Baynton when he told George that there was so much “dancing and pastime” in her chamber that any absent gentlemen who had ladies “they thought favored” them, and “would mourn at parting” from them, should think again. Not, of course, as Baynton pointed out, that every man was flocking toward the girls immediately. “There is a hawk called a [merlin] that I think is not yet ready to fly at the larks in this country,” he added tantalizingly. As Anne’s vice-chamberlain, with constant access to her, he was certainly in a position to know just what was happening. And Jane, so often in her sister-in-law’s society, was soon familiar with the many young gentlemen who joined Anne and her attendants. Some, like Henry Norris, groom of the stool
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and a particular favorite of the king, whose coat of arms, coincidentally, featured a merlin, were old acquaintances. An accomplished man, equally at home in the tiltyards and in the masques, he was always welcome in Anne’s rooms. Sir Francis Weston, knighted with Jane’s brother, was another who dropped by and was quick to join in the hum of merriment on which Baynton remarked. Skillful at dice and cards, Weston had sometimes partnered Anne when she was Marquess of Pembroke in card games against the king, with Henry usually losing. Anne’s former love, Thomas Wyatt, who had served her at her coronation, was also at court sometimes. It is tempting to conjecture that in her paneled and candlelit quarters, he and Anne occasionally reminisced over those bygone years but it is more likely that music and poetry formed the basis of any personal discourse they may have had.

For Jane, this was one of the best periods of her life. Her marriage was successful and there is no reason to believe it anything other than happy. Love matches were rare but they could happen and they could certainly develop. Then too Jane had every reason to feel proud of her husband’s blossoming career. Trusted by his king, emerging as a politician in his own right, George was the epitome of the flourishing, prosperous courtier. Jane, as his wife, was a woman of importance. Very much the grand lady, she acquired a scholar, William Foster, who later spoke warmly of her as the “most special patroness” of his studies. She either financed him completely or subsidized him at King’s College, Cambridge, a college close to Boleyn hearts since their supporter Edward Foxe was provost. Foster’s name first appears as a scholar there in August 1535. Jane’s father, never happier than when surrounded by his books or absorbed in his writing, would have been proud of his daughter. So would her husband. When he was given a copy of a French work on chivalry by Suffolk, he commissioned the transcriber, Thomas Wall, to translate it into English for presentation to the king. Wall was fulsome in his praise of George, whom he called his “especial good lord.” This hitherto overlooked handwritten document has crossings-out, underlinings, and corrections that may well have been made by George himself. His excellent and well-practiced French was more up to date than Wall’s and he would not have wanted his name to be associated with a shoddy piece of work that was meant to be a gift for Henry.

Jane, then, could feel satisfied that she was fulfilling her duties to her tenants, since it is very likely that her scholar, William Foster, came from her jointure manor of Aylesbury. And, on a personal level, she was at court, her home since adolescence; she was a member of the most powerful family in the land; and she was on intimate terms with the queen. She dressed well and expensively. Her sleeves were of velvet, damask, and satin. Her prayer book was edged with silver and gilt. The beads on her rosaries were of gold and pearls. There was so much to enjoy. If there were tourneys or banquets, there would be a place for her. She took part in the “pastimes and dancing” in Anne’s private rooms. When Henry came to dine with his wife, Jane may well have been privy to their conversation. And, accompanied by George if he was in England, Jane traveled with the royal couple in those months following the coronation. After the exertions of the festivities, Anne and Henry were rowed back to Greenwich where they spent the next three weeks before Henry indulged himself in a month or so’s hunting. Rarely, though, did he stray far from Anne.

It was during August that Henry was given news he did not want to hear: Pope Clement gave a pronouncement on the Great Matter. He censured Henry for his actions. Henry should return to Katherine and send Anne away. If he did not obey, Henry faced personal excommunication and his realm’s being placed under an interdict. Nothing would happen quite yet—the way was open for further negotiation—but it was just a matter of time before the pope declared fully in Katherine’s favor. The omens were there. The king was sufficiently concerned for Anne’s wellbeing to try to keep this from her. He pretended to go hunting but instead went to Guildford, where he met his council for crisis discussions, leaving her at Windsor.

The frantic negotiations that ensued did not concern Jane. She had other tasks ahead, for the time had come for Anne to get ready to give birth. There was a defined procedure for this, just as there was for everything associated with the royal family. Because it is all meticulously written down in the Royal Book, we know exactly what was required of Anne’s special lying-in chamber. Even Cromwell was involved in the preparations. Lord Mountjoy, Katherine’s chamberlain, a man with some experience in this matter, asked him to pass on to Anne’s chamberlain “certain remembrances of things to be provided against the queen’s taking to her chamber.”

Anne’s birthing rooms were luxurious, a scene of total opulence. The floor was carpeted. Splendid tapestries lined the walls and the ceiling, their bright colors and golden threads glowing in the candlelight. The room was kept warm but dark. As fresh air and daylight were thought to be dangerous for women in labor, the windows were covered, although one was “hanged that she may have light when it pleaseth her.” Carpenters had made a “false roof in the queen’s bed chamber for to seal and hang it with cloth of arras.” They also made a special cupboard “with three shelves for the queen’s plate to stand upon.” There were two sumptuous beds, one a “royal bed,” the other a daybed, each made up as the rules required. As Chapuys reported to Charles, “The king has taken from his treasures one of the richest and most triumphant beds which was given for the ransom of a duke of Alençon.” He was convinced that it was delivered to “the Lady” for her bedchamber. Doubtless he was right, and perhaps it really was the one chosen for her to lie upon as she brought the most important baby in the land into the world. After all, only the very best would do when Henry’s son opened his eyes for the first time.

Nothing was left to chance; all was planned. But the rooms remained unoccupied until the end of August. Then, a few weeks before the birth was expected and despite not yet feeling the slightest twinge of a labor pang, the time came for Anne to take up residence. Accompanied by the leading figures of the court, she walked in state into the chapel at Greenwich where she made her confession, before being escorted to the door of the carefully prepared chambers. There inside, alone with Jane, her other gentlewomen, and her midwife—for this was a mysterious, secret world reserved for women, not men—she could gather her strength for the ordeal ahead. Her women would support her, encourage her, talk about their own experiences of childbirth, perhaps play cards or sing to pass the time. Some would know the best herbs and potions to use to dull the pain, possibly making them up from lilies, roses, cyclamen, or columbine. Male servants could bring any necessary supplies only to the entrance, not beyond. Goods were taken in by her ladies whose jobs entailed acting as her cupbearer, her butler, and her server. Now all that was needed was for one of those ladies to bring the anxious king the news he was certain he would hear. Then, with the prince sleeping peacefully in his cradle, the Boleyns would reign forever.

CHAPTER
15

Birth of a Niece