The Boleyns: The Rise & Fall of a Tudor Family Read online

  This edition first published in Great Britain 2011

  Copyright © David Loades 2011, 2012

  This electronic edition published 2012 by Amberley Publishing

  Amberley Publishing

  The Hill, Stroud

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  The right of David Loades to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  eISBN 978-1-4456-0736-8

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  CONTENTS

  Preface

  1 Origins – the Blickling Years

  2 Thomas at Court – the Hever Years

  3 Mary & the King’s Fancy – in & out of Favour

  4 Anne & the Grand Passion – the Paris Years

  5 Thomas, Earl of Wiltshire – the Westminster Years

  6 The Boleyns as a Political Faction – the Whitehall Years

  7 George & Jane – the Grimston Years

  8 The Fall of the Boleyns – the Tower Days

  9 Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon – the Berwick Years

  10 Elizabeth I, the Boleyn Daughter – the Dudley Years

  Conclusion: A Political Family?

  Notes

  Picture Section

  List of Illustrations

  Bibliography

  PREFACE

  The Boleyns were not a great family. They traced their origins to Geoffrey and Alice, parish gentry in Norfolk at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They made their way by a mixture of business acumen and well planned marriages, which gave them access to the court. Sir Geoffrey, Lord Mayor of London and the founder of their fortunes, married (as his second wife), Anne the daughter and co-heir of Lord Hoo and Hastings. His son, William, married Margaret, the daughter of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, and their son, Thomas, married Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard Earl of Surrey. This last marriage brought them into the ranks of the higher Tudor nobility, because Surrey became Duke of Norfolk in 1514, and his son, Elizabeth’s brother, became the third Duke in 1524. The second daughter of this marriage, Anne Boleyn, notoriously became Henry VIII’s second queen in 1533, a circumstance which spelled first triumph and then disaster for her family. There they might have remained, among the wreckage of Tudor politics, if the accidents of mortality had not brought Anne’s daughter to the throne as Queen Elizabeth I in 1558. Although not Boleyn by name, Elizabeth was very much a Boleyn in her behaviour, and particularly in her sexuality. She reigned in the way which no king could have done, and left a dazzling image to posterity. The other third generation Boleyn was Henry Carey, Elizabeth’s cousin by way of his mother Mary, who was Anne’s sister. Henry served his kinswoman faithfully, and it was through him that the Boleyn genes were transmitted into the seventeenth century and beyond.

  It was through the sexuality of his daughters that Sir Thomas Boleyn became a great man – temporarily at any rate – and by the same means that he was brought low. This was not typical of the Tudor nobility, but it does make them a fascinating study for the twenty-first century, and a source of endless entertainment. Philippa Gregory has colonised this territory in a number of books, and at least one film, but those are fiction and her chronology is imaginative. This work is history, and is an attempt to reconstruct the fortunes of a remarkable family from the records. It will, hopefully, be none the less interesting for that, because the marriages and sexual adventures which lay at its heart were real enough. These exploits caused fascination and scandal at the time, and Henry’s relationship with Anne not only brought about a political revolution at home, but outrage all over Europe. It was not by accident that ‘Anna Boleyna’ featured as a carnival demon in Spain until well into the twentieth century.

  In a sense a lifetime of working on Tudor history lies behind it, and I have incurred more debts of gratitude that I could possibly list. The most recent is to the History Faculty of Oxford University, which has extended its hospitality to me, and to the graduate seminars which I have been privileged to attend. My thanks are also due to my wife, Judith, who has been an unfailing source of inspiration, and to Jonathan Reeve of Amberley Publishing who suggested this as a subject worthy of attention.

  DL

  Burford, Oxfordshire

  January 2011

  1

  ORIGINS – THE BLICKLING YEARS

  The founder of the family fortune was Sir Geoffrey, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1457–8. Geoffrey was the son of another Geoffrey and Alice his wife, who were parish gentry at Salle, between Aylsham and Reepham in Norfolk.[1] He was born in 1405, but nothing is known of the circumstances, or whether he had siblings. He may have been taught his letters at home, or by the local priest, and he was apprenticed to a hatter in the City of London at some time about 1420. This suggests that he was a younger son, and that his father had some contacts in the City, but the evidence does not survive. A grant of the manor of Stiffkey in Norfolk to Cecily Boleyn and Thomas Boleyn, clerk, in 1455 suggests the possibility of siblings, but the name was not uncommon and they may have been no relations.[2] Geoffrey must have prospered, because he appears for the first time in the records when he transferred to the more prestigious Mercer’s Company in February 1436. Unlike the hatters, the mercers were a Livery Company, and it was from the Livery Companies that the aldermen and other officers of the City were drawn. This move then suggests that Geoffrey, in addition to being prosperous, was also an ambitious young man. He became one of the aldermen for Castle Barnard Ward, and served as Sheriff of London in 1446–7. By that time he had also married, but nothing is known of his first wife beyond the fact that her name was Denise, and that she had died by 1448. In, or slightly before that year he had remarried and his second wife was Anne, the daughter and co-heir of Thomas, Lord Hoo and Hastings, through whom he established for the first time a link with the aristocracy.[3] How they encountered is not known, but by 1462 he was acting as trustee of the Hoo estates, presumably in the right of his wife, and it may well have been his business acumen which first attracted his Lordship’s attention. In the pardon roll of 1462 he appears as ‘Alderman of London, alias merchant, alias tenant of the manors of Lord Saye and Sele, alias late Sheriff, alias late Mayor, alias tenant of the lands of Sir Thomas Hoo deceased ...’[4]

  There are indications that he was also acting as a business agent for other well connected gentlemen at the same time, because in March 1448 he received a grant of some shops in St Clements Danes, which he passed on to Sir John Fortescue in July 1449. Also in February 1449, being an ex-sheriff and of sufficient seniority, he was elected as one of the four members to represent the City in the House of Commons.[5]

  In the mid-1450s Geoffrey appears frequently in the records going about the business of a wealthy citizen. For example, in February 1451 he was one of those
listed as contributing to a loan of £1,246 made to the King ‘towards the expenses of Sir Richard Wydville going to Gascony to resist the malice of the king’s enemies’, a fruitless expedition as it turned out. Whether the citizens ever got their money back is not recorded.[6] In 1457, for reasons which may have been connected with a change of residence, he moved his base of operations from Barnard Castle ward to Bassingshaw ward, and remained an alderman there until he died in 1463. In 1457–8 he served his turn as lord mayor, and was duly knighted. On 28 November 1457 he was commissioned as mayor to raise 1,100 archers from the city and its suburbs for the service of the Crown. Nevertheless, he is described as being a man of Yorkist sympathies, and that would fit with his appearing as a representative on a delegation which was sent by the city to Henry VI in 1460 in an attempt to dissuade him from raising an army against the Duke of York. Since the army deployed at Wakefield was already in the north at the time, it may be presumed that these representations were (in a sense) successful.[7] Sir Geoffrey was by this time an elder statesman of the City, and may have been entertaining thoughts of retirement. At some time before 1460, probably while he was mayor, he had purchased the manor of Blickling from Sir John Fastolf, having rented it for several years, and by the end of that year had replaced the existing dwelling with ‘a fair house of brick’.[8] The citizens of London were generally sympathetic to the Duke of York and his sons, or perhaps more accurately, were appalled by the lack of justice under Henry VI’s partisan regime. It was the unwillingness of the City to admit them which turned Margaret of Anjou and her northern army back after their victory at St Albans on 16 February 1461. On the other hand they welcomed the advent of Edward, Earl of March on 27 February, and that was the turning point of the campaign. As King Edward IV he took pains to cultivate that loyalty. He was generous with pardons in the first year of his reign, and carefully entertained the aldermen and their wives at court. It may be presumed that Anne, with her aristocratic background was particularly welcome. Several years later this generosity was repaid when the city supported him on his return from exile in 1471.[9]

  At the time of his death on 17 June 1463, Sir Geoffrey was a rich man, with lands in several counties in addition to his Norfolk estates. His heir at that time was his elder son, Thomas, who may have been Denise’s child. Thomas was still alive in 1466, when his father’s executors entered into a bond to deliver jewels to the value of £236 when he reached his twenty-fifth birthday. However, he disappears thereafter, and must have died, perhaps without achieving his majority, because Anne, who lived until 1484, administered the estate in the name of Geoffrey’s second son, William. William, born in 1451, would have achieved his majority in 1472, and that would be consistent with his appearing before the Court of Aldermen to acknowledge satisfaction for his patrimony as a citizen of London in May 1473.[10] Geoffrey also left a daughter, Alice, who in 1466 was also to have received £30 and ‘certain jewels’ on her marriage, or attaining the age of twenty-five, whichever came sooner. What happened to Alice we do not know. William’s upbringing and schooling are as obscure as his father’s, but his mother seems to have decided that he was more suited to the life of a country gentleman than to that of a London merchant. He was not apprenticed, and after suing out his freedom, seems to have had no further connection with the City. Anne may have introduced him to the court, but if so he never obtained any position there. What he did achieve was a good marriage, because in about 1475 he wedded Margaret, the daughter and co-heir of Thomas Butler, soon to be Earl of Ormond.[11] The Butlers were a family based in Ireland, but had many estates and properties in England and Wales, which Thomas was licensed to enter in October 1476. When he died in 1515 his son-in-law was to engage in a long legal battle for his mother’s inheritance. William Boleyn had properties in Kent as well as in Norfolk, and appears to have divided his time and attention between Hever Castle and Blickling. It is thought that his two sons, Thomas and James were born at the latter in 1477 and 1480 respectively. William served on various commissions in Norfolk, including one with Anthony Earl Rivers in November 1482 for the adjudication of certain disputes, which were presumably felt to be beyond the reach of the normal courts, and another with Sir William Hopton in September 1483 for the security of the sea coasts of Norfolk and Suffolk.[12] At some point between these two dates he was knighted, which may indicate that he was, or was thought to be, sympathetic to Richard of Gloucester’s coup of June 1483. The Duke of Norfolk, to whose affinity William Boleyn belonged, had served as Earl Marshall at Richard III’s coronation, and played an important part in frustrating the Duke of Buckingham’s supporters in East Anglia from linking up with those in Surrey when Buckingham rose in rebellion in the autumn of 1483. It may well have been for service in that connection that William received his knighthood.

  When the threat from Henry Tudor began to mount in 1484, Richard again called upon the Howard affinity for support, and commissions of array were issued to the Duke in both May and December of that year. To both these commissions Sir William Boleyn was named, as well as to the Commissions of the Peace for both Norfolk and Kent.[13] When the threat became real in July 1485, John Howard led his men from Norfolk to the King’s support, and it may be presumed that Sir William was among them. If so, his part in the decisive battle of Bosworth is obscure – probably deliberately so in view of the outcome. The Duke of Norfolk led the King’s vanguard, and perished in the fighting. He was subsequently attainted, and his massive estates were confiscated, but William seems to have returned quietly to Norfolk and laid low for a while. Because he never received a pardon, his very presence at the battle is uncertain, although how he could have avoided it is unknown. As early as December 1486 his wife was given custody of some of the Ormond lands in Devon, Somerset and Cornwall, and it is difficult to see how that could have been allowed if he had been under suspicion. In 1489 he served as Sheriff of Kent, and that even more argues that he was in good standing at that time.[14] On 29 October 1489 he also received a grant of the manors of Buxton and Hengham in Norfolk, in the King’s hands since the attainder of the Duke, and in 1490 served again on a commission of array for the county, although this time it was headed by John de la Pole, the Duke of Suffolk.[15]

  Meanwhile, Thomas Howard was trying to rebuild his father’s affinity. As Earl of Surrey he had been attainted with his father following the fiasco at Bosworth, but had earned remission by good behaviour, and in 1489 was restored to his title and precedence. He was not permitted to inherit the dukedom, and his lands were severely curtailed, but he still enjoyed a great deal of goodwill in East Anglia, and among those who welcomed his restoration was Sir William Boleyn. However, Sir William was a public figure, and a man with a career in the royal service to maintain, so it would not have done for him to commend himself to Surrey in the traditional fashion. Henry VII was very averse to his servants becoming the retainers of noblemen, and it is obvious from his selection for so many commissions that he regarded Boleyn as his own man. No nobleman was permitted to retain men outside his own household and family, but in this case Surrey found an original way around this difficulty. By offering his daughter Elizabeth to William’s son Thomas in marriage, he established a legitimate kinship between them that not even the King could object to. In about 1495 therefore Thomas, who was about eighteen at the time, married Elizabeth and thus brought the Boleyns into the family circle of one of the great noble houses of England.[16] It was a dazzling achievement for the son of a London alderman, and the foundation of much of the fortune and misfortune which subsequently overtook the family. Thomas was brought up to regard himself as a soldier and a courtier. Nothing is known about his education, except that it corresponded to the norm for a well connected young gentleman, and would have been conducted at home by a private tutor. He probably shared his lessons with his brother James, who was about two years his junior, and possibly with the sons of other gentlemen who were in Sir William’s service.[17] Someone also taught him arms, because later he was a skille
d jouster, although this may have happened only after his arrival at court in about 1500, when he joined the circle around the young Duke of York – the future King Henry VIII. In 1497 he served with his father against the Cornish rebels at Blackheath, which earned them both further commendations. William was Sheriff of both Norfolk and Suffolk in 1499 in spite of his close association with the Howards, but signed off that service in 1502 when he was granted a life exemption from the office.[18] He continued to sit on other commissions, such as Oyer and Terminer and Gaol Delivery until within a few weeks of his death in 1505.

  By that time Thomas, who had started his court career as Yeoman of the Crown had advanced to the status of Esquire of the Body. This was not a position carrying with it any access to the King’s more intimate moments; in spite of its title it was a second ranking chamber appointment, but it did carry with it the right to be fed at the royal table (bouge of court) and a salary of about £30 a year. Thomas later complained that his father had made him an allowance of only £50 a year, and that his wife had given him ‘every year a child’, but that was stretching the truth.[19] He also had the use of Hever Castle, which was conveniently situated for access to London, and his salary from the court. Elizabeth may have suffered from a number of miscarriages and still births, but the only three children that we know about were Mary, born in about 1499, Anne (c.1501) and George (c.1504). We do not know where these children were born. The natural assumption is that it was at Hever, but many years later Mathew Parker, who in Henry VIII’s reign was Anne’s chaplain, spoke of her coming from Norfolk, so perhaps she at least was born at Blickling.[20] About their education and early up-bringing nothing is known, but once Thomas had been licensed to enter all the lands which his father had held as tenant-in-chief of the Crown, an event which occurred on 3 February 1506, he would have been a rich man, well able to afford a suitably qualified tutor. The tradition is that they were brought up at Hever under the watchful eye of their mother. Thomas himself would have been frequently absent because of his duties at court. He is known to have been present at the celebration of the nuptials of Prince Arthur and Catherine of Aragon in November 1501, and to have accompanied Princess Margaret when she went to Scotland to marry James IV in 1503. In addition to the lands which he inherited directly, William appears to have left certain manors in Norfolk in trust for him by an arrangement known as feofment to use. This had presumably been done while he was still a minor, and on 15 May 1506 these foefees were licensed to alienate the lands concerned to Thomas, being of full age and compos mentis.[21] According to the writs of diem clausit extemum issued in November 1505, which would have constituted his original title, he held lands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Sussex, by a variety of different tenures and some in full ownership.[22] A considerable estate which bears witness to the acquisitiveness and management skills of his father and grandfather. William may not have been a courtier, but through marriage and patronage he had many of the advantages of that status, and had given his son a flying start in life.