Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford

by Julia Fox

  Next it was the turn of those who had kept silent about Catherine’s “abominable” life. The elderly Dowager Duchess of Norfolk found herself in the Tower along with her daughter, her son, her son’s wife, Robert Davenport, and the queen’s various attendants. Only Mary Lascelles escaped detention, on the direct intervention of the king, as a reward for bringing the whole issue to light, even if somewhat tardily. The duchess was in especial trouble for breaking open coffers belonging to Dereham and Davenport once she had heard of their arrest. The council spent many hours trying to force the scared and confused woman to tell them precisely what she had read and what she had destroyed. There could have been love letters in the coffers or worse: maybe the jittery councilors were anxious about Dereham’s trip to the often rebellious Ireland. The grim fortress became so full that the harassed lieutenant, Sir Edmund Walsingham, ran out of rooms in which to house his prisoners and was forced to ask the king whether he could use the royal apartments. The king consented but there was a delay when Walsingham checked to see if Henry had the keys to the locks on the doors. When Henry could not remember, Walsingham had to change them all. Eventually the captives were freed but not before they were found guilty of misprision and frightened so much that they appeared physically changed by the rigors of their ordeal.

  While all of this was going on around them, neither Jane nor Catherine was brought to trial. Catherine was left at Syon, officially a pariah. Norfolk, terrified that he might be blamed for this second Howard niece’s immorality, wrote an abject letter to his sovereign to distance himself from her and to beg the king’s favor, without which he did not “desire to live.” To Marillac’s wry amusement at what he saw as an odd English custom, Catherine’s brothers rode ostentatiously through London “to show that they did not share the crimes of their relatives.” We do not know whether Jane’s brother did the same but any despair that he may have felt on his sister’s behalf did not hinder a property transaction he undertook with Lord Morley at the end of January. And James Boleyn, aware that Jane’s interest in Blickling was only valid during her lifetime, could anticipate its reversion to himself with some satisfaction.

  Meanwhile Jane was overwrought. It was just all too much. Conscious that the king’s officials were busily listing and valuing all her possessions and that her own life hung by a thread, “she went mad” on the third day of her incarceration, Chapuys tells us. In view of the trauma that she had suffered when the king had struck at Anne and George, finding herself in the firing line again, and this time at the epicenter, not the periphery, her breakdown is quite understandable. It did not suit Henry, however. While, grudgingly, he was to pardon the other women dragged into the affair, Jane was different. She alone had taken messages, she alone had stood guard, she alone had known the full extent of what had been going on. She might even have been laughing at him behind his back, just as her husband had done with Anne. None of that could be allowed to go unpunished, and that punishment should be public. His rightful justice must be properly witnessed. Therefore, she must be nursed back to health. He sent his own doctors to treat her, allowed her out of the Tower, and placed her in the care and custody of the admiral lord Russell’s wife, Anne. Jane knew the Russell family both from court and from the progress visit to their seat at Chenies in Buckinghamshire. Their London residence, Russell House, was on the Strand, so Jane could have been taken there by river at dead of night without anyone’s knowing. Then, once out of the bleak stone fortress with its haunting memories of Anne and George, and back into a familiar world of warm fires, wood paneling, tapestry hangings, rich food, and wine, Jane could recover her wits. Henry’s vengeance could wait until after Christmas, which he spent, as usual, at Greenwich.

  There was no trial for his queen or her attendant. Henry decided to proceed via Act of Attainder, such a neat and clinical method. He opened Parliament himself in January 1542. Audley outlined the case against the queen and “that bawd, the lady Jane Rochford.” In a speech that Chapuys considered “aggravated the Queen’s misdeeds to the utmost,” Audley was punctilious in omitting none of the more salacious and sordid facts. Jane’s father, Lord Morley, sitting in the Lords, listened impassively as his daughter’s life hung in the balance. The guilty verdicts, though, were a foregone conclusion. The king did not have a last-minute change of heart: Jane and Catherine were to die.

  All that remained was to have them taken back to the Tower. Gage went to Syon to break up Catherine’s household. She had lived through the past couple of months as though in a dream. Chapuys informed the emperor that she took care of her appearance and was both cheerful and demanding. She was, he wrote, “more imperious and commanding, and more difficult to please” than she had ever been. On Friday, February 10, 1542, however, when she was brought down to the waiting barge for her journey to the Tower, reality hit her. It was only after overcoming “some difficulty and resistance” that the councilors persuaded her to board the small covered vessel. There were three barges in total at the river’s edge. Southampton climbed aboard the first one, with other councilors and servants. Catherine, dressed in black velvet, sat in the second, together with four ladies and the four sailors whose job it was to row their queen to her prison. Suffolk brought up the rear, “in a big and well-manned barge, with plenty of armed men inside.” When the somber group arrived, Catherine was received “with the same honors and ceremonies as if she were still reigning.” And, although forced onto the boat, she soon regained her composure. When told on Sunday evening that she was to die early on the following morning, she asked that the block should be brought to her chamber so that she could practice what she would have to do on Monday. She would die as befitted her birth and her rank.

  Jane was rowed back to the Tower on Thursday, the day before her mistress, each stroke of the oars bringing her closer to her destiny. For her, there was no formal reception committee but she too would have been treated with courtesy and consideration. She had almost three days in which to consider the enormity of what was about to happen before Gage, or possibly Walsingham, brought her the news that her execution had been fixed for early the next morning. Now only hours remained.

  CHAPTER 32

  Royal Justice

  AS THE LONG NIGHT slowly turned to day, the anguished waiting was almost over for Jane and for Catherine, the last of the queens she had served. It was time for them to make their final preparations. As the two women began to don the clothes they had carefully chosen, the executions of Anne and George less than six years before must have crossed their minds. Jane and Catherine knew exactly what to expect; they came from families only too familiar with the horror of decapitation. They also knew that they would die well. They would hide their terror and accept their fate. Their birth and their honor demanded it. They would play their part in the ritual to come, a ritual that required compliance, not resistance, from the victims.

  So mistress and servant, each in her separate chambers in the royal lodgings, rooms that were comfortable without being comforting, gradually made ready to face the world for the last time. Catherine had her four ladies to assist her into a plain velvet dress, one of those allowed her by the king. Her nightdress was removed and she put on her silk chemise. Then there were the underskirts to give her gown the fashionable shape she liked, a velvet kirtle, separate embroidered sleeves, a hood with gold edging, silk stockings, soft leather shoes and leather gloves. Finally, for Tower Green was in the open air, a mantle was slipped around her shoulders to protect her against the cold and frost of that early February morning. She would be the queen just once more.

  Jane too was helped to dress. As Lord Morley’s daughter, she expected this. Servants had been around her since her childhood, women who would see to her every need. Now, although a convicted traitor, she remained a viscountess. She could not be treated as an ordinary prisoner. The formalities had to be preserved. So she took off her black damask nightdress and, over her chemise and kirtle, put on a velvet gown, again in the black she usually wore as
a lady of the bedchamber. Her black shoes and gloves were leather, but her stockings were probably plain. She was not going to a masque.

  Sir John Gage had much to do.*21 The execution of a queen was hardly an everyday occurrence. There could be no mistakes. This was too important a task to be left solely to Sir Edmund Walsingham. Gage was very conscious that the king was waiting to hear that Catherine and Jane had paid the ultimate price for their wicked betrayal. At least Gage and Walsingham had the precedent of Anne’s death to follow, and Anthony Anthony was still in his post as surveyor of the ordnance at the Tower. That made it easier; there was no need for constant consultation with the council. And Walsingham had been lieutenant then too, so he knew exactly what to do. They checked that the scaffold was ready. Draped in black, some three or four feet high and covered with straw to soak up the blood, it stood starkly on the grass. Upon it rested the block on which Catherine had practiced the night before in her bizarre dress rehearsal. When she laid her neck on it this time, it would be for real. The headsman had arrived; no swordsman was coming from Calais for this queen. The guards were prepared. All that was lacking were the king’s councilors and the small group of Londoners who were also to watch royal justice administered. Gage waited for them to arrive, for this was, after all, a ceremony, a performance. It would not be complete without an audience.

  The councilors had spent the night at Westminster, close to Westminster Hall where Jane had banqueted with Anne on the day of her sister-in-law’s coronation, and near to St. Peter’s Church, where the king’s son, Prince Henry, slept peacefully. Had he lived, the tragedy that was about to unfold would most likely never have happened. When it began to get light, the councilors boarded the barges that were bobbing up and down on the dark waters of the Thames, waiting to take them to the Tower, about two and a half miles downriver. Norfolk was not with them. We do not know why. Perhaps watching Catherine die was too much even for him; maybe he had been excused or chose to be unwell. The Duke of Suffolk was not there either. He was ill, Chapuys tells us. Whatever had laid him low, it was not serious enough to prevent his attending the council meeting the next day, along with Norfolk. The other councilors all knew that they had no choice but to attend. For some, like Sir Richard Rich, that key witness against More and Fisher who had risen to be chancellor of the Court of Augmentations overseeing the administration of ex-monastic lands, it was simply a job to be done. For Sir John Russell, perhaps, whose houseguest Jane had so recently been, the coming hours would be more taxing.

  The councilors were accompanied by Catherine’s cousin, Norfolk’s proud son and heir, the Earl of Surrey, himself destined to die in a similar fashion within five years. In his dispatch to Charles describing the event, Chapuys referred to “various lords and gentlemen” being present among the official party but their identities are unknown. All of them, though, would have been acquainted with the queen and with Jane. They were there to see what befell those, no matter what their rank, who displeased the king, and to learn from their experience. As Jane was only too aware, the luxury, the wealth, the power, and the exhilaration of Henry’s court carried its own price tag. This was about to be made crystal clear to every member of that court party on that chill February morning. And, as the grim walls of the Tower, gradually appearing through the lingering mist, came ever closer with each rhythmic stroke of the oars, they hoped that their duty would be accomplished quickly so that they could try to put the terror of what they were about to see out of their minds.

  A select group of Londoners also set off for the Tower that day. They went on foot. Some walked along Tower Street, passing the houses of wealthy merchants in which servants were beginning to stir for a day that, to them, would be like any other. Along their route lay the Clothworkers’ Hall in Mincing Lane; the Bakers’ Hall, hidden in the maze of buildings between Harp Lane and Water Lane; and, on the corner of Seething Lane, the church of All Hallows, with its large churchyard and chapel, where it was believed that the heart of Richard I was buried. Clearly visible now was the public scaffold erected on Tower Hill, just outside the walls of the fortress, a permanent fixture now, always waiting to receive and dispatch the king’s less important enemies, like George Boleyn. Some walked along Thames Street, through the parish of St. Dunstan, where rich importers, salters, and ironmongers had their warehouses or lived comfortably in their large timber-framed dwellings, a stone’s throw from the river with its wharfs and customs house.

  Eventually, they all reached the western entrance of the Tower, the place at which the wide, deep moat could be crossed via the Bulwark Gate. This, the main land gate, was used by visitors and tradesmen alike. Usually guarded, it was open that morning for witnesses to the executions of Jane and Catherine. Although Henry had decided that the woman he had once loved should have the privilege of a private end, which meant that it would be carried out inside the walls, just as Anne’s had been, it still needed spectators. Among them was a cloth dealer and victualler, Ottwell Johnson, whose customers had included the officials of the queen’s household. In his letter to his brother, scribbled almost immediately after the event, we have the only genuine eyewitness account of the deaths of Jane and the queen.

  As streaks of dawn appeared in the sky, the small crowd crossed the drawbridge over the first section of the moat toward the Lion Tower, where the slumbering lions, lionesses, and leopards of the king’s menagerie were housed. Once they reached the Middle Tower, protected by a portcullis at each end, they were halfway across the moat, but there was another section of the bridge to cross before they were allowed through the iron portcullis of the Byward Tower and inside the precincts of the walls. Getting this far was a major undertaking. The Tower, combining the functions of citadel, palace, prison, armory, and jewel house, had been designed to withstand long sieges and ferocious attacks. It could not be entered easily. Ottwell Johnson and his companions had to pass through three security gates and still had to make their way past the Bloody Tower before they could gain admittance to the Inner Ward. Eventually, they saw the huge square walls of William the Conqueror’s White Tower, recently repaired, on their right and the Beauchamp Tower on their left. Walking along the west side of the White Tower, as they turned the corner they saw the scaffold Walsingham had made ready. It stood between the north side of the White Tower and the royal armory opposite.*22 To the left of the Londoners, some fifty yards away, stood the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, to which the bodies of both women would shortly be taken. The decaying corpses of Anne, George, and the Countess of Salisbury, interred there already, would soon become their neighbors.

  As the Londoners gazed curiously around, the barges from Westminster drew up at the water gate of the Tower. Sir John Gage received his fellow councilors and the other members of the court as they disembarked, then led them through the security cordon. He escorted them to their places in the wooden stands beside the scaffold, probably the specially constructed stands left over from Anne’s execution, where they sat huddled in their fur-trimmed robes. One thousand people had attended then; this was to be a paltry spectacle by comparison.

  With everyone settled, Gage could at last fetch the prisoners. Catherine, as befitted her rank, would be the first to die. The agony would be prolonged for Jane. Gage walked the few hundred yards to the queen’s lodgings, which stood to the southeast of the White Tower. The only access was through the Cole Harbor gate leading to the courtyard of the palace area. He climbed the stairs and knocked politely on the door of Catherine’s chamber. She deserved that courtesy. Catherine was ready for him. Wrapped up warmly and followed by her small group of ladies, she left her rooms. There was no point in looking back. Passing through the apartments rebuilt by a devoted Henry to please her once-beloved cousin Anne, she came down the stairs to the ground floor and, walking through the gateway and around the White Tower in the footsteps of the spectators, reached the foot of the scaffold.

  It was over very quickly. Catherine glanced at the assembled councilors and courtiers,
recently so respectful of her and eager to do her bidding, all unable to help her now. She mounted the scaffold with Gage and her ladies still beside her. Ottwell Johnson watched transfixed as the process took its established course, one of the many onlookers who would live to tell their children and their grandchildren all that they had seen that day. In Marillac’s report to Francis, he said that Catherine “was so weak that she could hardly speak.” But he was not there; Johnson was. And, in his letter to his brother, he gave unstinting praise to Catherine for her bravery. He particularly noted her “steadfast countenance” and “constancy.” There was no suggestion of fear or trembling. She was a Howard, and a queen, and she would die as such.

  The masked executioner stood there silently, his ax resting on the block. As was customary, he knelt to ask his victim’s pardon for what he was about to do. Catherine forgave him and handed him a few coins, as tradition demanded. She was playing her part in the charade, and playing it well. She knelt in prayer and then turned to those watching. In a clear voice, she spoke the words that she had rehearsed. She acknowledged her faults, stated her belief in Christ, and asked everyone to pray for the king. There were no recriminations, no protestations of innocence, no last references to Culpepper, merely a regal acceptance of her fate.