by Mike Poulton
There is no emotional compensation. You write ‘These bloody days have broke my heart.’ In the years after Anne’s death, England is an uncomfortable place for you. Cromwell sees you as a very clever man, but a man who feels too much. He sends you abroad on diplomatic missions, all of them uncomfortable and some of them dangerous. When you are away he looks after your business affairs. You come back to find yourself solvent and your papers in order. Soon you are in debt and disorder again.
When Cromwell walks to execution, you stand by the scaffold. He takes your hand and begs you to stop crying. You are the last person he speaks to. You go home and write a poem about it.
You are broken, disillusioned and worn out. You are dead before you’re forty.
GREGORY CROMWELL
You are in your late teens as this story unfolds. You are Thomas Cromwell’s only surviving child, and you are brought up as if you were a prince. You will be known to your contemporaries as ‘the gentle and virtuous Gregory’. Implacably sweet-natured, you seem to be bowed under the weight of all that is invested in you.
You spent your first years away from home under the indulgent care of a Benedictine nun, who lobbied for you to stay with her until you were twelve. But at some stage your father decided you had to grow up and learn proper Latin, and everything else his son was going to need to know. A distracting series of tutors follow. You are being prepared for a career in public life. You are really only interested in hunting and going out with your dogs.
Your father ascends the career ladder and you have to turn into a courtier. You are surprisingly good at this, a perfect young gentleman and a star in the tiltyard. (Your elder cousin Richard is also a formidable jouster, which must be a source of grief to the young noblemen who have prepared for the dangerous sport all their lives, and feel born to win.) The important thing is, the King likes you.
You will marry the sister of Jane Seymour. (So the blacksmith’s grandson is related to the King.) This family connection saves you when your father is executed. Richard Cromwell is a tougher character than you are, much more of a player, and his career is over, but though you do not inherit your father’s title of Earl, you are granted a baron’s title, and as Lord Cromwell you live and die a country gentleman, fathering many children and making a negligible impact on national life.
How could you possibly have lived up to expectations? In the third Cromwell novel, you will say to your father, ‘You know everything. You do everything. You are everything. What’s left for me?’
JANE BOLEYN, LADY ROCHFORD
We have to read you backwards, from your death on the scaffold eight years after the action of these plays. Possibly we are being unfair to you. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that you were a strange and dangerous woman.
You are about thirty at the time of the death of Anne Boleyn, and have by then been at Court for fifteen years, so you know better than anyone the rewards and pleasures and dangers of Court life. You are the daughter of the scholarly Lord Morley, whose family seat is in Norfolk and who marries you into the Boleyn family, who have extensive property in the district. You are about twenty at the time of your marriage. You and George Boleyn live on a lavish scale in both Court and country, and after serving Katherine of Aragon, you become a lady-in-waiting to Anne. If George was as promiscuous as rumour suggested, you must have been embarrassed and miserable. You have no children.
When George was in court, accused of treason, he said that he was being convicted ‘on the word of one woman’. (There are no trial records to help us, only sound bites.) It is difficult to see who he meant, if not you; ever since, it’s been assumed that it was you who alleged that he and his sister Anne were lovers. This assumption receives support from near-contemporary sources, who refer to you as someone who hated your husband and wanted to be rid of him by any means. The incest accusation is so strange, and so de trop, that it seems unlikely that Thomas Cromwell dreamed it up; he had enough to convict George of treason, without any lurid additions.
After the executions, the whole Boleyn family were in disgrace. You left Court and, as the childless widow of a convicted traitor, your financial situation was shaky. Your former father-in-law turned his back on you, but Cromwell persuaded/bullied him into making you an allowance and you were soon back at Court as lady-in-waiting to Jane Seymour. It’s this that has suggested to later generations that, at the time of the Boleyns’ fall, you cut a deal with Cromwell: your testimony, in return for his protection.
You served Anne of Cleves and the fifth Queen, Katherine Howard, Anne’s cousin, who was a feather-headed teenager. You were an experienced courtier and you knew what Henry would do to a wife he suspected of infidelity, and yet you helped Katherine meet her lover, and watched with every appearance of relish as she destroyed herself. It’s hard not to believe you took a voyeur’s pleasure in other people’s disasters. But by this time your survival instincts had deserted you (or perhaps Thomas Cromwell had, as he was dead). After suffering some sort of breakdown, you were beheaded with Katherine.
MARY BOLEYN
You are the elder Boleyn daughter, the beauty of the family, a sweet-natured but brave and passionate woman, and in your later twenties when this story starts.
You are only about fifteen when the King’s young sister Mary goes to France for a short-lived marriage to Louis XII; you are part of her entourage, and you stay in France after Mary is widowed and returns to England. You become the mistress of the new King, Francis I, and allegedly are involved with several other courtiers; Francis later refers to you as ‘a great and infamous whore’.
Back in England, you are married to the young courtier William Carey, one of Henry’s favourites. You become Henry’s mistress and your husband profits from this by receiving grants and titles. You have two children, Henry and Katherine, who may or may not be the King’s; propriety dictates that they are spoken of as your husband’s. You are not calculating and you are not greedy. For which your family never forgive you.
You attend your sister through the period of her rise in the world, but she possibly finds your notorious past an embarrassment, as she has set herself up as a woman of unimpeachable chastity. William Carey dies during the sweating sickness epidemic of 1528, and you find you have no money. Anne assumes the wardship of your son, which means she will look after his education, but otherwise you’re on your own.
In 1534, you turn up at Court visibly pregnant. You have made a secret marriage to William Stafford, a young soldier in the Calais garrison, who is well-connected but poor. Your uncle Norfolk, your father and your sister are outraged, and you are told to take yourself off to the country and not come back; your father cuts off the small financial support he has given you. You write a brave and heartfelt letter to Cromwell, telling him of your feelings for your young husband, complaining of the neglect you have felt in recent years, asking for his ‘good help’ and wishing him ‘heart’s ease’. You want to get back into the good graces of your family but you are unrepentant, saying of Stafford that ‘I would rather beg my bread with him than be the greatest queen christened.’ It sheds some light on your sister’s marriage, which you have seen at close quarters; you’d rather be disgraced and forced into obscurity than endure her life as it is now.
You live quietly, your finances improve, you have several children with Stafford, and you survive your sister by seven years.
ELIZABETH, LADY WORCESTER
You’re the women who knows all the secrets. Unfortunately we don’t know yours.
You are the wife of Henry Somerset, Earl of Worcester, and the sister of a prominent and well-informed courtier called Sir Anthony Browne. You are one of Anne Boleyn’s circle, an attractive woman and much gossiped about. You have children with the Earl, but in the spring of 1536 you are pregnant with a baby the Earl suspects is not his. Your brother berates you, whereupon you say, ‘Why are you pointing the finger at me? You should see what the Queen gets up to.’ Or words to that effect.
Your bro
ther tells Master Treasurer, William Fitzwilliam, and he tells Thomas Cromwell.
This happens in the fevered, poisoned days leading to the fall of Anne Boleyn. At the end of April, or early in May, you talk to Cromwell alone. By this time you are scared and so are the other women who are with Anne on a daily basis. You have debts your husband doesn’t know about, which makes you feel vulnerable. And if Anne has a lover, or if the King thinks she has a lover, you are going to be in trouble for concealing her conduct.
But you are thirty-five, you are not a silly, defenceless girl. You want to distance yourself. You have been part of the tight little circle around Anne but you have to break out of it to save your reputation and possibly your life. Exactly what you tell Cromwell about the Queen is unknown, but it may be a great deal more than ever made its way on to the historical record. And the reward would be your immunity. Whatever bargain is struck, you come out of the process undamaged. You and the Earl are apparently reconciled and have several more children.
It seems to have been a historian, rather than a contemporary, who started the rumour that your baby was Thomas Cromwell’s. It adds a nice complicated spin. In any event, the baby was a girl, Anne, who later became Countess of Northumberland and rode in a rebellion against Elizabeth I, actually taking the field herself, though she was pregnant at the time. So whoever’s daughter she was, she was one of the more memorable products of this miserable year.
MARY SHELTON
You are a younger cousin of Anne Boleyn and one of her ladies-in-waiting. You are an editor and contributor to the book of court poetry known as the ‘Devonshire MS’. You are pretty and sweet-natured, and several men, including the King, are a little bit in love with you. You may have been Henry’s temporary mistress during one of Anne’s pregnancies. For a few weeks in 1536, what you say and what you do is of crucial importance. But verifiable facts about you are scant and you remain as elusive as a smile in the dark.
In 1536, you are engaged to be married to Harry Norris, a widower and head of the Privy Chamber staff, who is jealous that Francis Weston is paying attention to you. It is when Anne asks Norris why he doesn’t go ahead with your marriage that a quarrel between Anne and Norris explodes in the face of startled courtiers. It is public and can’t be hushed up, and after it, Anne is panic-stricken. If she’s not guilty, she looks and sounds guilty. Like Lady Worcester, you have to extricate yourself from a situation where you might be accused of complicity with an adulterous queen.
You talk to Cromwell, but whatever you say does not survive in a written form. If you and Elizabeth Worcester have offered evidence against Anne, Anne never knows it.
Your feelings about the death of Norris and Weston are unknown, but you will survive, marry a cousin and have seven children.
SIR JOHN SEYMOUR
You are a member of an ancient family who came over with the Conqueror and have held their lands in Wiltshire ever since. You are also, if rumours are true, a disreputable old rogue. You fought for Henry VII against Cornish rebels at the Battle of Blackheath (not much of a battle) and for Henry VIII in his French campaign of 1513 (not much of a war). You married Marjorie Wentworth, a famous beauty from a good family. But your chief distinction is that, in your fifties, you had a long-running affair with the wife of your son, Edward.
This was great fun for gossips but grim for your daughter-in-law, who was packed off to a convent and kept there until she died. Grim for Edward, who was obliged to disinherit his two eldest sons, on the grounds that they might be yours.
It seems you were still in royal favour, because you were host to Henry VIII’s hunting party at Wolf Hall in September 1535. You were probably incredulous when he showed an interest in your daughter Jane, the girl you had not managed to marry off. You made no objection to her new situation, but died before you could really capitalise on her position as Queen. She did not come to your funeral.
JANE SEYMOUR
Historians always seem to suggest that you were the stupid wife. You may have been the smartest of all. Certainly you are the most mysterious.
You were brought up in the country and given only a rudimentary, feminine education: no Latin, no French, just sewing and music. You were allowed to ride and hunt, which you did very well. You were well-connected in several family lines, and became one of Queen Katherine’s ladies when you were about twenty. The King didn’t even seem to notice you. Nor did anyone else. You were pale and small and presumably very observant.
You were with Katherine through the protracted process of her rejection by Henry, and transferred to Anne Boleyn’s service when Katherine was sent away from the Court. Despite the superheated atmosphere that built up around Anne, you were never touched by a breath of scandal. When the King finally noticed you and begged you to be his mistress, you were supremely oblivious. You never thought of giving in to him. It is impossible to know whether, with Anne’s example before you, you were playing your hand very cleverly, or whether you really just wished he would go away. A faction formed around you: the supporters of the dead Katherine, the supporters of her daughter Mary, all the anti-Boleyn courtiers, the ‘old families’. At some point, after talks with your brother Edward, Thomas Cromwell decided to facilitate your rise in the world.
You were formally betrothed to Henry on the day of Anne’s execution, and married a few days later. As Queen, you took as your motto, ‘Bound to obey and serve.’ Your game plan was to look at what Anne had done, and do the opposite. Ambassador Chapuys thought you were very plain and said that, after so many years at Henry’s Court, it would be a miracle if you were a virgin. But others described the newly married King as ‘having come out of Hell into Heaven’. Given that you cannot be shown to have played any direct part in Anne Boleyn’s downfall, you do seem to have been a good woman. You admired Katherine and later did your best to act as a mother to her daughter Mary, to reconcile Mary with the King and persuade him to bring her to Court. You also worked hard to reconcile him to the existence of the small Elizabeth, a child whom he almost rejected after the execution of her mother. You bore no grudges, and acted with charity. Conservative in religion, you bravely asked Henry to restore some of the suppressed abbeys. His response was so terrifying that you never again questioned his policies or whims.
In your day, the Court was decorous. French fashions were no longer seen. There was a return to the correctness of Katherine’s day. However, times had changed; in a match that would have been unthinkable a few years before, your sister married Gregory Cromwell.
By early 1537 you were pregnant, and ferociously hungry for quail, which had to be sent by the dozen from Calais. In October, you endured a three-day labour, gave Henry his heir, and died several days later. Cromwell blamed your attendants. He was upset to the point of being irrational. Perhaps he was afraid of what your loss would do to Henry, or perhaps he thought the importance of his family connection would diminish; or perhaps he just liked you. After your death no music was heard at Court for months. Henry’s next marriage was a disaster.
EDWARD SEYMOUR
You are a clever, serious and prudent man in your mid-thirties when the King becomes interested in your sister, Jane. You take every advantage of the turn of events, and, at least initially, manage your rise in the world smoothly, without causing the offence that the Boleyn family caused in a similar situation.
You grow up in Wolsey’s household and at Court, and go to France as a page when Henry’s young sister marries Louis XII. In 1523, you are part of the military expedition to France led by Charles Brandon. You are a good commander and will later lead major military actions in France and Scotland. Early in your career, you are favoured by Wolsey and seen as a loyal and useful servant of the State. You give an impression of being calculating and self-controlled. Unlike your sister, you are a religious reformer. You get on well with Cromwell, personally and politically.
You will become Viscount Beauchamp and Earl of Hertford. Henry remains close to your family after Jane’s death. At He
nry’s own death in 1547, you emerge as Head of Government and Regent or ‘Lord Protector’ to Prince Edward. You are displaced in a coup in 1549, and executed, but not before you have executed your own brother, Thomas Seymour, for treason.
WILLIAM KINGSTON, CONSTABLE OF THE TOWER
You are a courteous elderly man of military bearing. You began your career as a yeoman of the guard, see much campaigning, are knighted after the Battle of Flodden, and serve as an administrator in peacetime. You have been Constable of the Tower for ten years. Always correct towards your prisoners, you exemplify the Tudor bureaucrat’s attitude to death; you need to get the paperwork right. When Anne Boleyn arrives at the Tower, you are told by Cromwell to report everything she says. You do this with meticulous care but remarkable obtuseness. When you hear her hysterical laughter you conclude ‘this lady has much joy and pleasure in death’.
HUMPHREY MONMOUTH and ROBERT PACKINGTON
You are two middle-aged city merchants, evangelical sympathisers and old friends of Thomas Cromwell.
Humphrey Monmouth is a highly respected and charitable city merchant who has been a high-profile target for Thomas More. Acting on his authority as a member of the King’s Council, in 1529 More searched his house and found nothing, but imprisoned him in the Tower and accused him of heresy, of importing Luther’s works, and having ‘maintained’ his fellow heretic William Tyndale before Tyndale fled the country. He was released on Wolsey’s orders, went on to become Sheriff of London, and as holder of that office led Thomas More to execution.
Robert Packington is a merchant and MP, a reformer and fiercely anti-clerical. In the November of 1536, at dawn on a foggy morning, he was shot dead after leaving his home for his guild chapel. Nobody was caught.