The Other Tudors (26 page)

In around 1980, an elderly man named Robert Perrot bought the ruined castle at Narbeth in Pembrokeshire, once the home of Sir John. He lived there less than 10 years, and was found dead one day. He had tried to excavate and rebuild parts of the castle of his ancestors. Robert’s heir, his sister’s grandson, a dentist from Chelmsford in Essex, inherited the castle – and the bloodline of Henry VIII.

T
he Boleyns came from humble beginnings to rise to the lofty and dangerous heights of producing a queen of England. In the mid-15th century Geoffery Boleyn began the family’s social advance when he married the daughter and co-heiress of Lord Hoo and Hastings. Geoffery was a farmer’s son and had come to London to make his fortune, rising to the trade of hatter and then mercer (trader in fine cloth, often imported). By 1446, he was Sheriff; by 1457, he was Alderman and Lord Mayor. He made his fortune and bought Blickling Hall in Norfolk and also Hever Castle with its manor, in Kent. His son, Sir William, went one better and married Margaret Butler, the daughter and co-heiress of the Anglo-Irish Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormonde. Sir William was one of the newly made Knights of the Bath at Richard III’s coronation in 1483. He had a daughter Margaret who married Sir John Shelton, and two sons – James who married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of John Wood, and Thomas.
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Birth and marriage into the nobility, coupled with considerable wealth, meant that young Thomas Boleyn was able to marry Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who later became Duke of Norfolk. Thomas Boleyn had more than noble relatives and wealth to commend him; he showed enormous social talents and began an impressive diplomatic career when he was quite young.

Thomas Boleyn’s position was advanced by the fact that he was related by marriage to a number of prominent English noble families. His father-in-law, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, had married twice. By his first wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, his children and grandchildren married into the families of Bryan, Carewe, Guildford, Culpepper and Boleyn. By his second wife, Agnes Tylney, his offspring gave him connections with the Radcliffes and Stanleys.

Thomas and Elizabeth Boleyn settled down to raise their family. It is assumed that Anne was their third child, born around 1507, after Mary and George. Given the extent of the Boleyn estates, it is also not known for certain where the Boleyn children were born. Anne was most probably born at Blickling. Eventually, Hever Castle became the family’s principal residence. Although Anne’s mother did not have a large dowry – as the Howards were short of money at the time – her father managed to get a place at Court. Thomas Boleyn attended Prince Arthur’s wedding to Catherine of Aragon, and was one of the escort that took Princess Margaret to her marriage to James V of Scotland in 1503. He spoke excellent French and was a good jouster; he ran a course against the young Henry VIII at Greenwich in May 1510.

Apart from his sporting prowess, Thomas Boleyn was also a skilled and easy negotiator, a man of enormous charm. In 1512 he went on a diplomatic mission to Brussels. Shortly after his arrival he made a bet with the Regent of the Netherlands, Margaret of Austria, that within 10 days they would make progress in their negotiations. So easy was their relationship that Thomas bet his horse against Margaret’s fine Spanish mount, and they were seen to ‘clap hands’ (shake hands) on the bargain.
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Back at the English Court, Henry VIII had his ‘chamber’, divided into three parts – the Privy Chamber, his private suite of rooms, with access only for the Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber; the Presence Chamber, for the principal courtiers, and where the King held his audiences; and the Great or Watching Chamber, which all his household ‘above stairs’ had access to. The Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber were his tight group of favourites; his chosen companions and had the most influence with him. Thomas Boleyn was one of this inner circle, his son George was the King’s page and his wife, Elizabeth, was one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies.

In 1513, Thomas Boleyn placed his younger daughter, Anne, at the court of Margaret of Austria with whom he had established a friendly and respectful relationship. Margaret was bringing up her nephews and nieces, and her Court was home to the highest born children in Europe who would be brought up alongside its future rulers. Margaret of Austria was Catherine of Aragon’s sister-in-law, and had taught her French. If Anne Boleyn were brought up in such a court, it would place her in a good position to get a post with Catherine at the English Court, and to be at the forefront of Court life. Margaret of Austria wrote to Sir Thomas: ‘I have received your letter by the Esquire Bouton who has presented your daughter to me, who is very welcome, and I am confident of being able to deal with her in a way which will give you satisfaction, so that on your return the two of us will need no intermediary other than she. I find her so bright and pleasant for her young age that I am more beholden to you for sending her to me than you are to me.’
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Anne was aware of the importance of learning all she could. She wrote to her father, in French, from La Vure, the palace near Brussels: ‘Sir, I understand from your letter that you desire me to be a woman of good reputation when I come to court, and you tell me that the queen [Catherine of Aragon] will take the trouble to converse with me, and it gives me great joy to think of talking with such a wise and virtuous person.’
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It was essential in any Court that had pretensions to greatness that the ladies were its ornament. They had to dance, sing, play musical instruments, ride, shoot with a bow, write poetry and prose, thus providing the stately court entertainment. A lady should be able to perform the dancing, singing and reciting necessary for a masque or ‘disguising’. These performances were relatively new to England, but part of the European courts; Margaret of Austria was recognised as a skilled planner, director and performer of such events. Margaret kept a strict eye on the behaviour of her ladies. Whereas she would not allow immoral behaviour, she was someone who enjoyed courtly love – forlorn and chaste devotion of a lady by her gentleman admirer. Under Margaret’s supervision, this was all very romantic and entirely harmless, however.

Margaret had spent her childhood in France, from the age of 3 to 13, as the proposed bride of Charles VIII. In the event, the marriage never happened; she married John, the only son of Ferdinand and Isabella, and, after he died, Philibert, Duke of Savoy. Both marriages left her childless, and she became her brother Philip the Fair’s Regent in the Low Countries for his infant son, Charles V. Margaret was a good musician, particularly on the virginals (a keyboard instrument); Anne may well have picked up or improved her musical skills here. Cavendish later said of Anne, ‘when she composed her hands to play and her voice to sing, it was joined with that sweetness of countenance that three harmonies concurred.’
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In 1513, when Henry and Maximilian met Margaret and her ladies at Lille, while campaigning in France, Anne was probably there; however, Henry was a powerful, lusty, 22-year-old man and she was little more than a child. He was probably not even aware of her. Henry took a companion, Etionette de la Baume and Anne Boleyn would most probably have watched from the sidelines.

On 14 August 1514, Thomas Boleyn wrote to Margaret of Austria to say that he was sending a messenger to collect Anne and bring her back to England. The long-arranged marriage between Henry VIII’s sister, Princess Mary, and Charles V was now officially cancelled, and Mary was to marry Louis XII of France instead. It was, therefore, important that she should have ladies about her who spoke French, such as Anne. Thomas was apologetic, as Princess Mary’s spurned suitor was Margaret’s nephew, but explained that it was Henry VIII’s wish that Anne Boleyn join Mary Tudor’s household in France.
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However, although Mary Boleyn was included as one of Princess Mary’s ladies, Anne was not. Anne may well have arrived late from the Netherlands, and since the French marriage lasted a mere 82 days, she was not in Princess Mary’s household for long. The new king, Francis I, supported Princess Mary in her marriage to Henry VIII’s friend, Charles Brandon, and by April 1515 Princess Mary, now the Duchess of Suffolk, was back in England. Anne, however, remained in France with her father, in the household of one of the French royal ladies. George Cavendish, a Gentleman Usher in the Cardinal’s household, wrote in his
History of the Life of Wolsey
, that Anne was ‘made one of the French Queen’s women’, but does not specify which queen.
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There were two possibilities – that she was either part of the household of Queen Claude, or that of the King’s sister, Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre. There is no direct evidence for either, however.

Queen Claude was the only surviving child of Louis XII by his second wife, Anne of Brittany, and was her father’s eldest surviving child. When her father married Princess Mary, Claude would have valued an interpreter in order to communicate with her stepmother and Anne Boleyn could have been such a person, arriving just in time to be taken into Claude’s service. The year before her father’s death, Claude married Francis, her cousin, and the heir to the throne. He confirmed his right to rule by marrying the royal heiress. Queen Claude gave her husband a succession of children and died in 1524. If Anne had been part of Claude’s household, she would have attended her at her coronation in St Denis in May 1516, and would have been under her protection, away from the looser morals of Francis I’s court circle.

Anne Boleyn would have acted as interpreter when the English came to Paris to finalise the marriage treaty between the infant dauphin Francis and Princess Mary (the future Mary I), Henry VIII’s daughter, in December 1518. Her services would also have been in demand at another event at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in France in June 1520. If Anne had indeed been present with the French household of Queen Claude, she would have been reunited with her father, her mother and sister (Queen Catherine’s ladies), and her brother as Henry VIII’s page.

In 1521 Anne left Paris on her father’s orders as France became involved in Scottish political affairs. The Imperial Ambassador recorded that Anne’s departure was mentioned by Francis I, and that she was one of Queen Claude’s ladies. The reason for Anne leaving may be indicated by a letter from Francis I complaining of England’s aggressive intentions towards France, as evidence for which he sites the English scholars leaving Paris and ‘Mr Boleyn’s’ daughter returning to England.
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If she was born in 1507, Anne would then have been 15 years old.

Back in England, Thomas Boleyn and Piers Butler were in conflict over the vacant Earldom of Ormonde. Thomas had right of inheritance through his mother, but Butler was in possession of it. The Earl of Surrey, Thomas’s brother-in-law, suggested that the whole matter could be settled if Piers’ son, James Butler, a young gentleman in Wolsey’s household, married Thomas’s daughter. Although this daughter is never mentioned by name, it is Anne who is referred to rather than Mary, who had already married William Carey in February 1520. Piers Butler approved; the Irish lords approved, Henry VIII and Wolsey approved. In October 1521, Wolsey wrote to Henry: ‘I shall … devise with Your Grace how the marriage betwixt him [ James Butler] and Sir Thomas Boleyn’s daughter may be brought to pass … ’
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As it turned out, the suggestion came to nothing. The marriage proposal foundered when each party thought he could succeed without it. Piers Butler succeeded in aligning the Irish lords with him and held the Irish estates, paying Thomas Boleyn a small rent. He surrendered the title of Earl of Ormonde in return for the title of Earl of Ossory. In 1529, after Wolsey’s fall, the Ormonde title was finally awarded to Thomas Boleyn.

From the time she was 6 until she was 15, Anne was brought up in the glittering Renaissance courts of Europe where she learned French manners that gave her a cosmopolitan sparkle amongst the English ladies. The French were leaders in fashion, and court ladies were expected to be elegant, learned, witty and talented. Like other ladies of her time, Anne Boleyn wrote poetry, played and sang her own compositions, and even assisted in the design of her own dresses. In March 1522 Anne’s first post at the English Court was with the Royal Wardrobe. Thanks to her father’s position, his closeness to Henry VIII, and her sister Mary’s relationship with the King, Anne soon became one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies-in-waiting. Although formally one of the Queen’s ladies, Anne also became part of the group who glittered around Mary, Duchess of Suffolk, Henry VIII’s beloved sister and one of the Court’s most merry and glamorous ladies. As the years passed, Catherine of Aragon’s immediate circle became older, more worthy and religious – Mary’s comprised gay and charming young people.