Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford (29 page)

“M
R
. K
INGSTON,
shall I die without justice?” asked Anne shortly after her arrival at the Tower. His sanctimonious reply that “the poorest subject the King has, has justice” prompted merely her laughter. Jane, anxiously waiting for the trials to take place, did not hear this exchange. Had she done so, she could only have trusted that Kingston was right and Anne wrong. The fate of every Boleyn was at stake. Jane had once been sent from court but had otherwise reaped nothing but benefits from her marriage. She had attained a higher status than that of her own mother, she had moved among the most influential in the land, she had lived in unbridled luxury. Now her world was on a knife’s edge. The family to which she now belonged could be totally ruined, her husband condemned as a traitor, likely to die with his sister, the woman with whom Jane had shared confidences and who was currently branded a whore. Based on Cromwell’s questions, she had an uncomfortable knowledge of the almost unspeakable charges that George and Anne would face.

For the whole of her life, Jane had been accustomed to revere her monarch. Whatever he decided had to be correct. He did not have to reveal his reasons but they were bound to be sound. Chronicler Edward Hall understood this concept perfectly when he stated that “the affairs of Princes be not ordained by the common people, nor were it convenient that all things were opened to them.” Cranmer, so very much one of Anne’s bishops, grasped this too. Shocked by the revelations about her, for he “had never better opinion of woman,” he accepted that Henry “would not have gone so far if she had not been culpable.” Neither man was emotionally involved, unlike Jane, who had to balance allegiance to her king with her loyalty to her husband. Nothing remains extant about her feelings at this time. For contemporary reporters, if not for those writing soon afterward, she was a bit player, hidden in the chorus as she had been so frequently over the years, someone who was always present but who was not the star. In any case, Jane had been born into a family who appreciated the advantages of silence. Her father was never prone to speak out and invite retribution, nor was she. Jane had become practiced in keeping her personal views private, like so many who surrounded the king, and the situation in which she found herself was not one in which it would be wise to break the habit of a lifetime. There was no queue to follow in the footsteps of Fisher and More. If Thomas dared not speak in his children’s defense, then neither did she. She had already said more than she would have wished.

When the trials began, therefore, Jane could but watch and listen as the events unfolded and the revelations tumbled out. Prominent among the commissioners of Oyer and Terminer were Cromwell, who intended to keep a firm eye on all proceedings; Suffolk, getting older but still ambitious; and Norfolk, who had no intention of being pulled down by his sister’s errant offspring. Norfolk, indeed, was officially put in overall charge of the whole operation. Among the others were Sir John Spelman, who has left us his notes on what happened, and Sir John Baldwin, a lawyer whose business dealings were to be linked to Jane’s future security. They, with the rest, could be counted on to do their duty. With the preliminaries complete, the trial of the four commoners—Norris, Smeaton, Brereton, and Weston—began on Friday, May 12, in Westminster Hall, the site of Anne’s triumphant coronation dinner just three years earlier. Page and Wyatt were not charged; later they were released thoroughly frightened but unscathed. Wyatt never forgot his experience, however, a vivid stanza in one of his poems expressing how deeply it had affected him:

These bloody days have broken my heart;

My lust, my youth did then depart,

And blind desire of estate;

Who hastes to climb seeks to revert:

Of truth, circa Regna tonat.
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This was a sentiment with which Jane, desperately watching from the sidelines, would agree.

Already greedy eyes were cast on the offices that would be there for the taking once the expected guilty verdicts were returned. The mysteriously compiled list of Boleyn grants would prove very handy but all of the prisoners had offices and lands worth fighting over. Richard Staverton rushed to put pen to paper, writing to Cromwell for his “remembrance” when the “various rooms in the parts” near him in Windsor became available. Staverton was keen to point out that he had fourteen children so was very interested in “the Little Park, the Park of Holy John, Perlam Park, and the room of the Black Rod in Windsor Castle.” Although Thomas More’s nephew, Staverton had fitted into the new regime fairly easily. He was not the only man with expectations. On the day before the first trial started, the abbot of Cirencester wrote to Cromwell confirming that he had promised the stewardship of the monastery at Cirencester, currently held by Norris, to Sir William Kingston “when it is void.” Kingston, of course, was the constable of the Tower, where Norris was incarcerated.

Since the abbot referred to Cromwell’s previous correspondence on the subject, it would seem that the minister was confident of conviction. Jane’s chances of staying a wife rather than a widow appeared to be slim. To be certain that there were no slipups, Cromwell went further: some of the names on the juries are significant. Even in the early stages of these trials, Cromwell was remarkably thorough. Strictly speaking it was the role of the sheriffs to determine the composition of juries, but they were likely to be responsive to a quiet word from the minister. The commissions of Oyer and Terminer had been established for Kent and Middlesex, the counties in which the offenses were deemed to have been committed. In each county the grand juries,
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which agreed that there was a case to answer, included those with a grievance against some or all of the defendants. A key figure on the jury register in Kent was Edmund Page, one of the two members of Parliament for Rochester. The second member had been Robert Fisher, the brother of the executed bishop. Robert had died the year before Anne fell, but as he and Page were both elected for the 1529 Parliament, they were probably fairly close colleagues rather than mere acquaintances. The two of them had even been in some trouble as they had opposed the act ending appeals to Rome, the same act that had driven a coach and horses through Katherine’s right to have her case heard in the Eternal City. Page’s sympathies would not lie with the Boleyns. In Middlesex, there was a yet more palpable hit, an even more significant name, that of Giles Heron, which leaps from the list. He was married to More’s daughter, Cecily. Boleyn involvement in the condemnation of Henry’s two most famous opponents would not be forgotten.

A glance through the trial jury itself for the four commoners is equally revealing since Giles Alington was one of them. He too was linked to More, for he was the second husband of More’s stepdaughter, Alice, and she was particularly close to the former chancellor’s favorite daughter, Margaret Roper. In fact, no one in that jury was in the Boleyn camp; each man wanted to curry favor with the authorities or seek revenge. Sir William Kingston and Richard Staverton would soon enjoy the fruits of Norris’s offices. It all boded ill for Anne and George. As Jane waited for news, she knew that the fate of her husband and sister-in-law was largely dependent on the verdicts on the four men. If they were found guilty, then Anne and George were almost certainly doomed.

For the nature of the charges could mean nothing less. “By sweet words, kisses, touches, and otherwise,” the queen had enticed Norris into her bed, it was alleged. They had intercourse several times, with some dates and places known and others not. She used similar techniques with Brereton, Weston, and Smeaton. Again, some specific times and venues were stated, with the phrase “and divers other days” also included. Because the men grew jealous of one another, so it was said, she gave them presents and promised to marry one of them once the king, whom she would never love “in her heart,” was dead. She went, therefore, straight from “frail and carnal lust” to planning murder. If true, this was undoubtedly treason, the king lucky to escape unharmed. It was all astonishing. But only Mark would plead guilty. The others steadfastly maintained their innocence. It availed them nothing. Once the jury obligingly returned guilty verdicts on them all, the mandatory sentence of death was imposed. The four men were led to the waiting barge for the short voyage back along the Thames to the Tower. They would emerge only to meet the executioner, and they knew that they would have very little time to prepare themselves. For the fortress’s chief officials, Constable Kingston, Sir Edmund Walsingham, the lieutenant, and Anthony Anthony, surveyor of the ordnance, there would be arrangements to be made. They would not take long.

Once news of the judgment reached Jane, she knew that the odds against acquittal for the two principals were dramatically reduced. If the men were judged to have slept with Anne, the corollary was that she must have slept with them. She had, therefore, betrayed her husband and would deserve her fate. Despite her inherent faith in the king, Jane surely did not believe in Anne’s guilt. Even Chapuys, happy to disparage Anne if at all possible, thought that the four men had been “sentenced on mere presumption or on very slight grounds, without legal proof or valid confession.” Jane had known Anne for years. She had lived in claustrophobically close proximity to her, as had all of her ladies. That was how the court functioned. These women were constantly on hand to attend the queen’s slightest whim. To elude their vigilance and find suitable love nests would be no easy task. No, Jane, more than anyone, could appreciate that. Not, of course, that she would have the opportunity to say so. For the queen, the difficulty, as Anne said to Kingston, was how to prove herself innocent. All she could do was to deny any infidelity, unless there was a way to “open” her body to show her purity. Unfortunately for Anne, she only had words at her disposal. And she used them. When asking for the sacrament to be brought to her so that she could pray for mercy, she explained that she was eligible to do so. “For I am as clear from the Company of Man, as for Sin, as I am clear from you,” she affirmed to Kingston.

When the time for her trial came, there were no more ramblings. She was the old spirited Anne once more, ready to defend herself. By then, she knew the full extent of the charges. Not only was she accused of adultery with the four courtiers and of conspiracy to murder the king, she was alleged to have had intercourse with her brother, George. For Henry, this was horrifyingly credible. He was overheard saying that he believed “that upwards of 100 gentlemen have had criminal connection with her.” Later, he went further, reportedly telling the bishop of Carlisle that he had had a premonition a little while ago and had written a tragedy about it all. A tragedy it was. The allegations of incest were astonishing and very graphic. Anne had tempted her brother, according to the indictment, “with her tongue in the said George’s mouth, and the said George’s tongue in hers, and also with kisses, presents, and jewels.” Then he, “despising the commands of God, and all human laws…violated and carnally knew the said Queen, his own sister.” If the trial of the four commoners had been sensational, this was spine tingling. It was no wonder that a shocked John Husee wrote to Honor Lisle, whose presents to the queen had, naturally, suddenly ceased, that he felt that every evil thing ever written against women “since Adam and Eve” was “verily nothing in comparison of that which hath been done and committed by Anne the Queen.” He was almost too ashamed “that any good woman should give ear” to her “abominable and detestable” offenses. Because of the line of Cromwell’s intense questioning, little of this was entirely unexpected by Jane. She had been allowed no choice but to “give ear.” And she knew all too well what the wily minister had dragged out of her.

As was her right as Marquess of Pembroke, and a crowned queen, Anne would not be tried by jury but by a panel of peers. The same was true of George. This time, Jane had access to insider knowledge of every word said in their cases, for her father, Lord Morley, was among those who were to sit in judgment in what was undoubtedly the trial of the century. Thomas was excused, although as Earl of Wiltshire he would ordinarily have been present. Only a couple of days previously, he had sat with his fellow commissioners in Westminster Hall while Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeaton were tried but he was spared the sight of his own children as they fought to stay alive. Norfolk presided, all his family feeling rapidly dispelled. He had his own neck to protect. The Earl of Northumberland, Anne’s love in happier days, had no option but to be there too.

The peers traveled to the Tower for the trial. On Monday, May 15, Kingston escorted the queen from the Tower’s royal apartments where she had been kept into the King’s Hall where her judges were waiting. She was given no legal counsel; no one ever was. She was on her own. As was traditional, she held up her hand as the charges were read out to her and then declared herself not guilty. In addition to adultery with the four courtiers, the incest allegation, and plotting to murder the king, she was also accused of poisoning Katherine, of pondering doing the same to Mary, and last but far from least, laughing at her husband and ridiculing him. The most preposterous of accusations were treated as gravely as the most serious. With the eyes of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lord Morley, and the rest upon her, she defended herself with considerable skill.

While Lord Morley would most likely have told his daughter all that occurred within the crowded room in the Tower on that May day, we have no verbatim record. Much of what is extant comes from Chapuys, always so clever at finding those willing to brief him, but he was not present himself. Two men who were have both left us information. One was Anthony Anthony. A brewer, he owned an inn, the Ship, and was a churchwarden at St. Botolph’s Church in Aldgate. He also kept a journal covering the major events that he saw as “an eye-and ear-witness” while working at the Tower. The journal has long since disappeared but Thomas Turner, writing in the late seventeenth century, saw Anthony’s “old, original diary” and transcribed extracts from it. They make fascinating reading. It was Sir John Spelman, the second “eye-and ear-witness,” however, a man who had shared the same table with Lord Morley in Anne’s coronation banquet less than three years earlier, who recorded in his notebook that the “matter was disclosed” by Lady Wingfield, reporting that she had made accusations against the queen in a deathbed confession. Perhaps she did but quite what she said, and to whom, remains a mystery. Clearly whatever it was she was supposed to have divulged must have been damaging to Anne, but it could have referred to anything that had happened before she was queen. Equally, and perhaps most likely, it could have been a fairly minor indiscretion that was exaggerated out of all proportion.