by Julia Fox
Jane, however, felt she had achieved a fairer settlement, for the time being anyway. In the long term, a new accommodation might well be possible. Cromwell had brokered the new deal, and he had done so because of her own prompting. Now in her early thirties, she was still reliant on the power of men but that was to be expected in her society. The difference, however, was that this time the aid had come because she herself had initiated it. She had not quietly taken the hundred marks and settled into genteel obscurity, hoping that Lord Morley might stir himself sufficiently to arrange a second marriage for her. As a widow with an assured income, she was not a bad catch, possibly for a younger son, but she was not a good one either. Unlike Brereton’s widow, who had property from her first marriage, Jane had no lands of her own, her brother being first in line for the Morley estates. Only her jointure, hardly princely, stood between her and penury, or humiliating dependence on her family. So far she had produced no children, and that would also lower her worth in an age when the bloodline had to be perpetuated.
Jane had spent almost two decades at court. She had been at the heart of power. She had been present while the Boleyns had changed her world, and she had been there on those state occasions that flaunted their changes, and themselves, to the entire court. She had known the most powerful and influential figures of the country, including the king himself. Of course, the fallout from failure had been dramatic, the deaths of George and Anne were still raw but to leave all of that excitement behind forever would be yet another loss.
Perhaps there was an alternative. Jane’s hundred pounds brought her a measure of security. It was not huge but it was far more than the majority of the population, toiling away in isolated villages, would dream of in their lifetimes. Yet it would not give her all she had been used to, and it might mean that she would have to leave the environment where she had passed so much of her life. If there was a way to stay at court, to carve out a career for herself rather than as an appendage to a new husband, it would be worth considering. Cromwell had helped her once; maybe he would do so again. But there would need to be a quid pro quo.
CHAPTER 24
A New Beginning
HOW LONG CROMWELL took to position Jane in Jane Seymour’s privy chamber eludes us, but she was soon installed there and it was more than a case of déjà vu. When she had last strolled through those intimate rooms, it had been to greet and serve her own sister-in-law, whose vivacious presence could not yet have been entirely eradicated or forgotten. But Jane’s world had moved on. She had to forge a new life for herself, to draw a curtain over the ghosts of yesterday.
And by being back in the royal privy chamber, she had a chance to do just that. She was at court again and she had a role. It was up to her whether she would make a success of it, but perhaps a little of Anne’s singular grit and determination, which even Cromwell ruefully acknowledged to Chapuys when he extolled “beyond measure the wit and the courage” of both the dead queen and her dead brother, had rubbed off on Jane. She felt at home, despite the changes in personnel.
The main change was that Henry had married Jane Seymour, and with indecent haste. While Anne was taking her last few steps to the scaffold, delivering her short speech praising him for his gentleness and mercy and then fastidiously arranging her skirts, the king was waiting impatiently at Westminster for the news that the French executioner had completed his task. The moment he heard that Anne really was dead and he was free, the bereaved monarch rushed to his barge and went straight to Jane “whom he had lodged a mile from him, in a house by the river.” They were betrothed the very next day and married at the end of the month, a mere eleven days after Anne’s execution. The venue was the queen’s closet at Whitehall, Wolsey’s former palace of York Place that Anne had liked so much. Naturally, Henry did not want his people to believe that he had sacrificed Anne on the flimsiest of grounds to satisfy a personal whim. Instead, he wanted it known that he had only consented to a third marriage, and to Mistress Seymour, “the most virtuous lady and veriest gentlewoman that liveth,” because of the entreaties of “all his nobles and council upon their knees.”
Jane was not the only courtier to see that Henry adored Queen Jane as he had formerly adored Anne, even if, perhaps, his love was softer and less intensely physical this time. And most of the court approved of the substitution. On the very day after Anne’s death, Cromwell made a note to remind himself to contact Sir William Kingston and Anthony Anthony, presumably to thank them for all they had done to make her execution run smoothly, and to contact Sir John Gage, a man who would play an important role at the end of Jane’s life. Gage was a capable soldier and administrator but not a supporter of Anne Boleyn. In fact, he had resigned his post as vice-chamberlain of Henry’s household and had kept an extremely low profile while she had been queen. With Anne now safely dead, however, he was notified that his return to mainstream politics would be welcome and was quickly ensconced in the Queen’s Council. Sir John Russell summed up the feelings of many when, in a letter to Honor Lisle’s husband, he said that the king had “come out of hell into heaven for the gentleness in this and the cursedness and the unhappiness in the other.” Russell went on to advise Lord Lisle to be sure to congratulate Henry on being “so well matched with so gracious a woman as is reported,” a comment that, Lisle was informed, would “please the king.” No doubt Honor busied herself in deciding on the most appropriate presents to send to the current queen as she had done to the former. She would choose with care, for she was keen to place her two daughters at court.
Cromwell too knew that the royal couple seemed well suited. And that was the rub. Once he had realized the extent of Henry’s involvement with Mistress Seymour, he had been prepared to act against Anne. As a living reminder of Katherine’s humiliation and with her advanced ideas on the proper use of monastic funds, she was somewhat of a problem anyway as royal policies shifted. Cromwell took the sole credit for bringing about Anne’s fall when he chatted to Chapuys, whereas in fact he had worked with Nicholas Carew and supporters of Princess Mary to engineer it. If the king wanted Jane Seymour, he must have her, and Cromwell had been willing to join forces with those who were working to the same end, particularly if it would cool their antagonism toward him personally. The trouble was—and this was where Jane Rochford might be useful to him—Mistress Seymour would not come alone. Cromwell would deal ruthlessly with Mary, Carew, and their allies in due course but he would not be able to take the same measures with the highly ambitious Seymour brothers who were at court with their recently elevated sister. No sooner had Thomas and George Boleyn disappeared from the scene, along with the ever-present and influential Norris, than Edward and Thomas Seymour surfaced. Edward, the elder, had been at court for some years, first as a page of honor to Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, on her marriage to Louis XII, then as an esquire of the king’s household, an esquire of the body, and then a gentleman of the privy chamber. An able soldier, he had the makings of a particularly able courtier. And his brother came too. Although younger and less capable than Edward, Thomas was just as thrusting and ambitious and, within five months of his sister’s wedding, joined Edward in the king’s privy chamber. They quickly gained offices, perquisites, and in Edward’s case, titles. Five days after Henry lovingly looked into Jane Seymour’s eyes at the wedding ceremony, he bestowed the title of Viscount Beauchamp on her brother. Chapuys found Edward Seymour conducting him to the king’s chamber just as George Boleyn had done such a short while before.
Cromwell could keep a wary eye on the Seymours only up to a point. And he could not wander in and out of the queen’s private rooms. Jane could. When she had begged him for help with her jointure payments, Jane had promised Cromwell her prayers and her “service.” A source of information from behind closed doors might well be invaluable to the minister. To build up intelligence through personal contacts was sensible; after all, it was how Chapuys often operated. While we have no concrete evidence that Jane was reinstated as a lady of the bedchamber throug
h Cromwell’s machinations, it is certainly likely. The bargain would have suited both of them. She would be content to be back, despite the horrific events she had endured, and he would gain insider knowledge that could be invaluable.
So Jane returned to familiar territory. She was very well acquainted with her new mistress from their days as Anne’s ladies. She has left us no clues about her own feelings as she performed her duties and made obeisance to Queen Jane, previously her equal, as she had done to Queen Anne. Maybe the differences between the two queens made the transition easier for her. Queen Jane was quieter, demure, and of no “great wit,” according to an intrigued Chapuys. Her privy apartments would be calmer and more peaceful, but decidedly less vibrant and exciting, than those presided over by Anne. Nor was Queen Jane a beauty. Of middle height, she was “so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise,” Chapuys reported to Charles, and she was not in the first flush of youth. “Over twenty-five,” sneered the ambassador, before ruminating waspishly on the poor morals of Englishwomen, which, he felt, might be shared by Queen Jane. This would be useful should Henry ever want to divorce her, because he would soon find “enough of witnesses” to testify to her premarital sexual romps. Whether the ambassador believed any of this is more doubtful; certainly the new queen had behaved with conspicuous propriety during Henry’s courtship, as Jane was fully aware. And Henry loved her. It would be as well to remember that, and not dwell on the past, if Jane was to stay at court.
In some ways, it was easy to think well of Queen Jane. She clearly portrayed contrasting character traits and sympathies to the volatile Anne, at least in public. To Chapuys’ delight, she promised to do what she could for Mary, not an easy pledge to keep. The ever-hopeful ambassador saw light at the end of the tunnel for the former princess. If she would help Mary and persuade Henry to favor her, he affirmed, Queen Jane would realize Anne’s motto of the “Happiest of Women,” a feat now beyond the dead queen, and earn herself a reputation as a peacemaker in the process. As a Boleyn, Jane Rochford had never commented on Princess Mary’s fate. With George and Anne rotting in their makeshift graves, she still stayed silent. The circumspection she had practiced for so long would not be abandoned yet.
Mary’s rehabilitation in royal affection, however, was a popular assumption. It was surely simply a matter of time before Mary took her rightful place at her father’s side. Ostensibly the omens were good. Mary had viewed Anne as her chief enemy. Now that she was out of the picture, Mary could see no reason for continued persecution. She wrote several letters to both her father and to Queen Jane, receiving “kind words and encouraging hopes,” although significantly not from the royal couple themselves, that tempted her to believe her troubles were over. She was even able to receive the odd visitor, although that was not to last. It was not long before Lady Shelton, still in her post as lady governess despite her niece’s fall, was ordered to keep her incommunicado. Before Lady Shelton received that instruction, Lord Morley visited Mary at Hunsdon at Whitsun in early June, about three weeks after the executions.
As Hunsdon was only six miles away from Great Hallingbury, a courtesy call was unremarkable, although Jane’s father had not visited the princess at Beaulieu or Hatfield, neither of which were too far for a day’s trip. Plainly, Morley, ever careful where personal security was involved, felt that the fall of the Boleyns had changed the political landscape, as indeed it had, although not quite as much as he seemed to think. Mary and Morley hit it off. A friendship developed that was to last for many years and involve gifts on both sides. Mary even became godmother to Jane’s nephew, and gave fifteen shillings (seventy-five pence) to the baby’s midwife and nurse. Lord Morley had the useful knack of being agreeable to all, of course. He had already sent Cromwell a greyhound “for a gentleman to disport withal,” hoping that the dog would be “the best.” Cromwell so much deserved relaxation, an obsequious Morley wrote, after his “great labors” that he “hourly take for the wealth of many.” A little later, he sent the minister, somewhat appropriately, copies (in Italian) of Machiavelli’s History of Florence and The Prince. For a man like Morley, approaching Mary was a rational move.
Jane’s father did not go alone that June Sunday. His wife and daughter accompanied him. The daughter’s name is not mentioned in the documents, but since Jane was much too busy trying to sort out her jointure problems, the daughter referred to was far more likely to have been her sister Margaret, who was probably a year or two younger than Jane and was married to John Shelton, Lady Shelton’s son, a staunch Catholic who would later prove his devotion to Mary’s cause. For Margaret to go with her parents and take the opportunity to chat with her parents-in-law was perfectly natural, and the princess came to like her. Mary gave one pound to the midwife and nurse at the christening of the Sheltons’ baby and paid eight shillings for a frontlet as a present to Margaret. For Jane, the wife of a convicted traitor, to call on Mary before the princess’s official reconciliation with the king was the sort of risky move of which she was wary. Once Mary was back in favor, it was to be a different story. Then, being on good terms with the king’s elder daughter was a shrewd move. Watching one’s back was as entrenched in the Parker family as it had been with the Boleyns.
Jane more than likely witnessed the reunion of father and daughter. This, however, took time. Henry did not welcome Mary back with open arms, all memories of her disobedience instantly erased. Before that happened, she would be forced to recognize the invalidity of her mother’s marriage and her own illegitimacy. Rumors of the pressure that was placed on her would have reached Jane’s ears. When Mary refused to accept her mother’s divorce with all its implications, she was viciously abused by Henry’s councilors and told that she was “an unnatural daughter” who deserved to have her head beaten against the wall until it became “as soft as a boiled apple.” Cromwell called her “the most obstinate woman that ever was.” Faced with such merciless treatment, and with the danger to her supporters so great, she finally capitulated.
Acknowledging her father as supreme head of the church and the pope merely as the bishop of Rome, she accepted that her mother’s marriage to Henry was “by God’s law and man’s law incestuous and unlawful.” She begged her father’s pardon for not conceding more quickly: “I do most humbly beseech the King’s Highness, my father, whom I have obstinately and inobediently offended in the denial of the same heretofore, to forgive mine offences therein, and to take me to his great mercy.” As Henry demanded total surrender, complete humiliation, Mary had to go still further. “I will never vary from that confession and submission I made to your Highness in the presence of the Council,” she had to promise. In a state of inner turmoil, finding the stress almost unbearable, a broken Mary pleaded with Chapuys to ask the pope for a dispensation for what she had been compelled to say.
Now that he had his way, Henry could find it in his heart to forgive her. He and Queen Jane went to see the twenty-year-old Mary in July 1536 with a small group of attendants. The reconciliation was highly emotional. Henry was at his most loving and magnanimous. “No father could have behaved better towards his daughter,” a relieved Chapuys told Charles. Queen Jane gave her a diamond ring, Henry gave her money, and immediately she was treated with more respect and reverence. It all boded well for the future, although Chapuys had to backtrack a few days later, when he informed the emperor that “mixed with the sweet food of paternal kindness, there were a few drachmas of gall and bitterness,” which he put down to the assertion of “paternal authority.” Most likely so.
With Mary no longer judged as inferior to Elizabeth, who had also lost her title and her legitimate status, she was able to join the king and queen at court. Jane had no need to distance herself from Mary. An assessment of the current state of the succession suggested that it might indeed be politic to be on good terms with her. All of Henry’s three acknowledged children had been bastardized. Because of his gender, the Duke of Richmond would probably have taken precedence but he died before his
eighteenth birthday, possibly from a lung infection. When he had witnessed the swordsman strike Anne’s head from her body, Richmond had little more than two months to live. That left Mary and Elizabeth, unless Queen Jane proved fruitful. Although the king allegedly told Mary that “he was getting old, and feared he would have no children by his present wife,” hope still sprang eternal in the royal breast. Just before Richmond’s early death, Parliament passed a new Act of Succession by which the children of Henry and Queen Jane would inherit, and if there were none, the king could name his own successor. Nonetheless, if the queen really did fail to produce an heir for him, there was always a possibility that Mary would gain the throne after all.
Perhaps it was with this in mind that Jane developed a relationship of a sort with her. The princess was on friendly terms with both the Morleys and the Sheltons, despite Lady Anne Shelton’s tempestuous years as her lady governess, and Sir John Shelton, Lady Anne’s husband, remained in charge of Mary’s household even after it was reorganized by the summer of 1536. Jane needed to make her own way. The Boleyn shield had disintegrated so building bridges was always prudent. Therefore she gave Mary a clock, probably as a New Year’s gift in 1537, although the princess had to pay five shillings to have it mended a few weeks later. A month later, Mary paid just over four pounds for twelve yards of black satin as a present to Jane and gave money to Jane’s servants and to one of her gentlewomen several times over the next few years. Mary and Jane met frequently at court during that time and the payments and gifts show that some kind of bond certainly existed between them, although we do not know whether it was close or simply politeness. Nor, of course, do we really know what Jane had thought about Mary during her own years as a Boleyn wife. She may have felt more innate sympathy for the princess than she had ever dared reveal, although she had been aware that her own true interests depended on Anne’s children ascending the throne one day. Since the chance that little Elizabeth would do so was now remote, maintaining a reasonable discourse with Mary was eminently pragmatic.