The Tudor Villainess

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1:23I am so, so excited that in 2027, I will be partnering with Common Ground Pilgrimages again to lead a Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage in England. If you've been a longtime listener of the show, you're probably used to me talking about these, but they are honestly my favorite thing in the world. We pick a book and for a week, just gather a group of like smart, wonderful people together to talk about the book and go on long walks in the English countryside. And I could not be more thrilled that the next book I'm doing is Pride and Prejudice. So if you're at all interested in joining with us, I think we still have, depending on when this episode comes out, a few slots available.

2:07Google Common Ground Pilgrimages, Dana Schwartz, Pride and Prejudice. It'll come up. I have so much fun doing it, and it also makes the trip so special if podcast listeners and members of the Noble family are also coming along. So take a look at that. Let's get into the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manke, listener discretion advised. In 1542, Lady Rochford, lady-in-waiting to multiple queens and sister-in-law to one, was awaiting a trial, during which she would almost certainly be convicted of high treason. Certainly, King Henry VIII was determined for her to be found guilty and executed.

2:57But there was one problem. During Lady Rochford's interrogation, she suffered a nervous breakdown and, for lack of a better phrase, went insane. She had, quote, fits of frenzy and lost her connection with reality. Now this, of course, was a problem for Lady Rochford. No one wants to go mad. But it was also a problem for Henry VIII, because it wouldn't be legal for him to try and execute someone who was not mentally fit. And so Lady Rochford was brought from her imprisonment at the Tower of London to the home of Lady Russell, the wife of the Lord Admiral, in order to try to nurse her back to health and sanity for the goal of expediting her execution.

3:49But Henry wasn't content to wait. A bill was passed allowing the execution of the insane, and Jane was duly convicted by an act of attainder. When Jane, Lady Rochford, was told of her impending death, it seems her sanity returned to her. Maybe the lady had been faking it, trying to get a reprieve or postpone her death sentence. Or maybe the shock of the end arriving jolted her back into her right mind. But it didn't matter. Mad or sane, Lady Rochford was going to the scaffold. Lady Rochford was born Jane Parker, but most people are probably more familiar with her married name, Jane Boleyn. She was married to George Boleyn, the brother of Anne, the brother who incidentally was convicted of incest with his sister before they were both beheaded.

4:51If you are a frequent reader of Tudor-era literature or watcher of historical dramas, you probably know Lady Rochford as a villainess, a jealous, social-climbing shrew who testified against her own husband in a vindictive attempt to take down her hated sister-in-law. Tracy Borman, chief historian at Historic Royal Palaces, has characterized her as, quote, the most hated woman in Tudor England. But the truth about Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, is, unsurprisingly, more complicated, and modern scholarship has shed new light on Jane's terrible reputation. And whether or not she was responsible for the downfall of Anne Boleyn, she was certainly more involved in the downfall of another queen, Anne's cousin, Catherine Howard.

5:55Jane Boleyn would eventually lose her own head, and two of the five queens she served under suffered the same fate. The question then is, how much was really Jane's fault? I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Jane Boleyn was born Jane Parker, a well-connected girl from a good family. Her father was a baron, and her mother was the great-granddaughter of Margaret Beauchamp, the maternal grandmother of Henry VII. Though unfortunately a paucity of records means we don't know exactly when Jane was born, her early life reads as though she's a bit of the Forrest Gump of Tudor England, appearing at the most famous events in Henry VIII's reign.

6:49When Jane was a young woman, she joined the household of Catherine of Aragon, and she was with the court in 1520 when they journeyed to France for the Field of the Cloth of Gold, when Henry had a famous meeting with the King of France. Two years later, Jane appeared again at a pivotal moment in history at the famous Mask performance at York Palace, a performance of the Chateau Vert, which consisted of a giant imitation castle covered in green foil, and some of the most beautiful women in court playing virtues that needed to be rescued by crusading knights. Jane, one of the performers, portrayed Constancy alongside her future sister-in-law, Mary Boleyn, kindness, and Anne Boleyn, fittingly, perseverance.

7:48A few years later, as the Boleyns continued to rise at court, Jane married the Bolin brother, George. It was a fitting match. With George's sister favored by the king, obviously not yet queen, but certainly being paid special attention to, the Bolin family star was on the rise. George was given the sinisterly named Grimston Manor as a wedding gift, and a few years after they were married, Jane became not just Jane Boleyn, but also the Viscountess Rochford. Why was the Boleyn star on the rise? Well, I assume you probably know this story. First, Henry had had an affair with Mary Boleyn, actually the married Mary Carey, but when given what he wanted, he lost interest fairly quickly.

8:46and then King Henry VIII became enchanted by dark, quick-witted, charming Anne. As he fell deeper in love, he became more frustrated that his decades-long marriage with Catherine of Aragon hadn't produced any male heirs, and he became more convinced that that was God's way of showing him that the marriage had actually been invalid the entire time. Henry began his maneuvers to do whatever he could to get the Pope to annul his first marriage so that he could marry Anne. In the meantime, the king showed the Boleyns whatever favor he could. They were given the luxurious Palace of Beaulieu, which had hot and cold running water, As if the symbolism couldn't be more obvious with regards to the changing of fortunes, the palace had formerly belonged to Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon.

9:52She, Mary, was banished to less luxurious digs, and the Bolins swept into place. A lot of our information with what was happening with Jane at this point is filling in whatever gaps we can with our best educated guesses. The conventional wisdom is that Jane and George had a poisonous, unhappy marriage, and that Jane was jealous and bitter toward Anne Boleyn. It's certainly possible to read the story that way, but the evidence isn't exactly airtight. And in recent years, historians, particularly Julia Fox, have begun a bit of a reclamation project. People historically have pointed out that George and Jane didn't have any children, as evidence for the fact that their marriage was unhappy.

10:51But there are plenty of reasons why people might not have been able to have children. And all contemporary writing seems to indicate that Jane really cared for George, even when, as you'll soon see, trouble came for them. It certainly wasn't a love match, but that doesn't mean by Tudor standards it was an unsuccessful marriage. Another central piece of evidence in favor of Jane's resentment for the Boleyns is apparent writing that indicates Jane allegedly participated in a group of ladies protesting against Anne after she became queen, a public show of support for Henry's daughter, Mary, from his first marriage.

11:36Except, did Jane actually attend that protest? The evidence comes from handwritten marginalia, a contemporary source documenting the protest, who wrote down Milord Rochfort and Milord Guillaume, indicating George Bolin, Lord Rochfort, and William Howard. In the 19th century, a biographer interpreted that as meaning their wives had been among the women protesting. But modern scholarship indicates that that almost certainly was not the case. As Sylvia Barbara Sorberton points out, William Howard's wife actually died a few months before the protest, and he wouldn't marry again until the next year.

12:26So he didn't even have a wife at the time who could have attended the protest. And for Jane, in Sorberton's words, quote, to break the habit of a lifetime and speak out, particularly against her husband's family, would be most uncharacteristic. Her fortunes had risen with the Bolins. It would have been outright foolish and probably far more notable than just a scribble in a margin if she had taken such a public stance against her very powerful sister-in-law. It is more likely, Saberton posits, that George Boleyn and William Howard had been the men tasked with disciplining those involved. Being married to George Boleyn had only made Jane more prominent and important at court.

13:23George was at the heart of courtly culture, with a flourishing career and an expanding portfolio of properties. It stands to reason that Jane would have been perfectly content to rise with him and his sister. But unfortunately for Jane, history would have other ideas. It didn't take long after King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn were married for trouble to begin to brew for the new queen. Anne's greatest problem was that she did not deliver Henry the son she had promised. She gave birth, but the prince everyone was expecting turned out to be a princess. And then, though Anne became pregnant again, she suffered a miscarriage.

14:14Henry began to get anxious and impatient, and Anne felt the tenuousness of her position. When Henry began to flirt with someone else at court, Anne asked her sister-in-law, Jane, to scheme with her to find a way to get that woman sent away from court. Apparently, Jane picked a fight with that woman, hoping that Henry would dismiss her from court to avoid any public drama. But the plan backfired, and Jane herself alone was temporarily exiled. It became more urgent than ever that Anne Boleyn become pregnant, but as she confided to Jane, there were some challenges with that. Or rather, one main challenge, being that the king had performance issues in bed.

15:10Jane shared the gossip with her husband. Though, again, you can characterize Jane as a Machiavellian and double-faced schemer here, it seems equally or more likely that she was just an involved family member who shared her family's concern with their precarious position. The writing was on the wall with regards to the Bolins when a position opened up for a new Knight of the Garder, and instead of the honor being awarded to George Boleyn, the king had the position go to Sir Nicholas Carew, a relative of Jane Seymour, the lady-in-waiting Henry had recently turned his attention to. The queen, Anne Boleyn, couldn't get her own brother elected.

16:02It seemed obvious her days in power were numbered. In 1536, Anne Boleyn and her brother George were suddenly arrested and taken to the Tower of London, along with four other men, accused of adultery and therefore treason, and in George's case, incest. This is where the climax comes in the legend of Jane Boleyn's villainy. The popular story is that Jane Boleyn finally had an opportunity to turn on her hated husband and sister-in-law, and that she took it to give testimony against both of them that sent them to their deaths. But the reality is a lot more nuanced, and by actually looking directly at the primary sources, it's much harder to make the case for Jane as a villain.

16:56As I mentioned, the historian Julia Fox has been among the most prominent voices in redeeming Jane's character. As she writes in Jane Boleyn, The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford, Jane, quote, had reaped nothing but benefits from her marriage, which had allowed her to live in, quote, unbridled luxury. Outside of purely speculative motives, there's no actual textual reason she would have to drag down her own stature at court by disgracing her husband and sister-in-law. Instead, Fox paints a picture of what actually happened. After her husband was suddenly arrested, Jane was, like everyone in their circle, interrogated in an incredibly high-pressure environment, an interrogation during which she was almost certainly terrified and confused as to what was going on.

17:58As Fox writes, quote, the arrests had been so sudden and unexpected that there was no time to separate out what testimony might be damaging, what could be twisted to become so, or what could only be innocuous no matter what the interpretation, end quote. And while her husband of 11 years was in the Tower, Jane was actually the only person to attempt to send him a letter in support. She promised in the letter to, quote,

18:39Jane's testimony came up only once during her husband's trial, the only evidence we actually have of Jane's so-called betrayal. During the trial, Cromwell handed George a piece of paper while he was on the stand, paper with a question on it. Cromwell instructed him to answer the question with a simple yes or no. George instead read the note aloud, a question which had been about whether Anne had mentioned to Jane the king's indelicate troubles in the bedroom. It is damning, but it's also information that had been pulled from Jane by expert and determined interrogators. Hardly mustache-twirling sabotage.

19:29Fox writes of Jane's inquisition, quote, Faced with such relentless, incessant questions, which she had no choice but to answer, Jane would have searched her memory for every tiny incident that occurred to her. Jane had not been quick to tell tales, but she had buckled under the pressure of relentless questioning. End quote. Perhaps even more tellingly, Sorberton points out no contemporary sources named Jane in their list of Boleyn accusers. If Jane Boleyn had willingly turned on her husband and sister-in-law, Sorberton writes, quote, such explosive information would have been shared at court, end quote.

20:20So if it was betrayal on Jane Boleyn's part, it was very subtle betrayal. It's only decades later that Jane's character assassination begins in earnest. The historian George Wyatt, writing in the 17th century, called Jane, quote, wicked wife, accuser of her own husband, even to the seeking of her own blood. And Jane became an especially useful scapegoat when Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, eventually became Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth couldn't say that her father was a murderer, and she couldn't say that her mother was a treasonous adulteress, and so who was there to blame? As Julia Fox writes, quote, it was Jane's weakness under interrogation that gave her future detractors, happy to find a scapegoat to exonerate the king from the heinous charge of callously killing his innocent wife, the ammunition to maintain that it was her, Jane's evidence, that had fooled Henry and destroyed Anne and George.

21:40End quote. Anne, George, and the four other men accused were all found guilty. Most historians today are in agreement that the charges were trumped up against Anne in order to dispose of her, and to allow Henry to marry the new woman he had set his sights on. But Anne Boleyn would not be the last queen Jane served who would go on to lose her head. After a temporary retreat from court, Jane Boleyn would eventually return, only to find herself embroiled in another scandal. This time, however, she would certainly have her fair share of blame. Jane Boleyn was only away from court for a few months after her husband was killed, during which time she was in tense negotiations with her former father-in-law, and with Thomas Cromwell, about what she was owed as a widow.

22:44Her income would be significantly decreased, but she was eventually allocated£100 a year, enough to return to court as a lady in time to serve the brand new queen, Jane Seymour. As you're probably aware, turnover in the King Henry VIII wife business, was astonishingly high. Jane, Lady Rochfort, served Queen Jane Seymour until the queen died, after complications following the birth of Henry's much-sought-after son. The next queen was a princess imported from Germany for political reasons, Anne of Cleves, whom Henry disliked almost as soon as he laid eyes on her. It's during this period that Jane's character as a sort of impulsive gossip comes into clear focus.

23:37At risk of being anachronistic, reading about her during this period, particularly in the books of Julia Fox and Gareth Russell, put to mind a sort of Tudor-era real housewife, having whispered conversations that absolutely would be made public, and apologies living for the drama. Anne of Cleves, whether innocent or obtuse, told her ladies-in-waiting that Henry did do his husbandly duty, you know, by kissing her goodnight and then letting her fall asleep. It was Jane among the women remarking that Anne wasn't going to get pregnant with a little prince that way. After Henry found a way to dispatch with Anne of Cleves, just legally this time, thankfully not mortally, his next queen was the charming teenage Catherine Howard.

24:34Once again, Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was put into the queen's intimate service. In fact, with Catherine Howard. Despite the fact that the two ladies were decades apart, the two became the closest of friends. Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, was Catherine Howard's confidant and, eventually, her conspirator. Plenty has been written on the life of Catherine Howard. In fact, we've done an episode on her on this very podcast during our series on the wives of King Henry VIII. But the short version of her sad story is that, months after she arrived at court, she caught the eye of the king who was determined to make her his latest queen.

25:23Unfortunately for everyone involved, there was a ticking time bomb when it came to Catherine, a secret that the king could absolutely not discover about his virginal new bride. Catherine had already had two liaisons with men in her grandmother's household where she had grown up. The topics of those early relationships with regards to the question of consent in the context of the era require far more nuance than we have space for in an episode on Jane Boleyn, but if you're interested in the details of Catherine's life, I would direct you to the excellent biography by Gareth Russell. But suffice it to say, those former relationships were, once Catherine was queen, embarrassing, and arguably treasonous episodes that she needed to remain secret.

26:23All of that would have been bad enough, but Catherine soon had another secret. The new queen began a flirtation with a courtier named Thomas Culpepper. Whether this relationship was ever consummated remains an open question, but Catherine certainly enjoyed his company and sent him gifts and food when he was sick, made flirtatious comments to him, and, most damning of all, when the court was on procession through England, Catherine and her trusted lady-in-waiting Jane Boleyn made arrangements for secret meetings. At every new castle or manor along the Queen's procession, Jane found, quote, back doors and back steps where Culpepper could sneak in to meet the Queen without anyone else from the household knowing.

27:24Jane sent her own servant to check to see if the king's night watchman was nearby, and Jane herself would literally hide keeping a lookout to make sure Catherine and Culpepper weren't discovered. Maybe this is the most shocking part of all. These secret meetings with Culpepper continued all summer, and that wouldn't actually be Catherine's downfall. Instead, Catherine's downfall came because a random courtier had told his sister that she should try to join the queen's household for social advancement, and then the sister scoffed and told her brother that she thought Catherine had low morals. After all, the sister said she had been there at Catherine's grandmother's estate during those early years when she had had those pre-king relationships.

28:18This brother, aghast, reported what his sister had said, and the open secret finally became open. And when the investigation began, once Culpepper's name was mentioned, the queen was already all but headless. In the autumn of 1541, when all of this came to a, apologies, head, Catherine was placed under house arrest at Scion Abbey. With regards to Catherine's investigation, the records are actually abundant, in direct contrast with the shady investigation into Anne Boleyn. It's as if the court wanted to prove that if Henry was going to execute another wife, he was going to do this one completely above board, with all of the proper paperwork intact.

29:18We do not have the actual record for Jane's testimony during the trial of Anne Boleyn, but we do have it for Catherine Howard. Jane was questioned, and while interrogated, she admitted that, quote, she thinketh that Culpepper hath known the queen carnally, end quote. But she maintained that she never saw or heard any actual proof of consummation. Culpepper said that he had not slept with the queen, but that he had planned to, which, unfortunately for Culpepper, was more than enough to condemn him. Planning on committing treason was still a death sentence. It is pretty undeniable that Jane had been involved.

30:08Five years after the death of Anne Boleyn, Jane was once again at the heart of a scandal that would lead to a headless queen. The French ambassador remarked that Jane, quote, all her life had the name to esteem her honor little, and has thus in her old age shown little amendment. During Jane's interrogation, she lost touch with reality. Under the pressure of knowing what was about to happen and realizing that there was no way out of it, Jane went mad after a nervous breakdown which manifested in, quote, fits of fancy. Though legally she couldn't stand trial for what she had done if she was insane, the king and his court was determined that this whole sordid Catherine Howard affair be dealt with completely and once and for all.

31:07A law was passed permitting the execution of the insane for high treason, and Jane was committed by parliamentary act of attainder. According to an ambassador, when Jane was told that she would finally be put to death, her symptoms of madness left her. We don't have a direct account of what exactly Jane and Catherine Howard might have said on the scaffold before their deaths, but one merchant who was an eyewitness to the executions wrote in a letter that, quote, they made the most godly and Christian ends. Because no one comments explicitly on Jane saying anything particularly notable, we have to assume that she just made her proper prayers, apologized for her sins, and begged for forgiveness from the king.

32:03As Nicola Clark writes in her book The Waiting Game, it's impossible to know why exactly Jane would have involved herself in such a deeply misguided scheme with Catherine Howard. Was she really just a real housewife type trying to stir up drama wherever she could? Clark writes, perhaps she really was as guilty as her colleagues made her out to be, encouraging the affair for nefarious reasons of her own, revenge on her family, or on the king who had taken and twisted her words to kill her husband and to annul his own previous marriage, ruining her life and condemning her immortal soul. Perhaps she simply misjudged the situation and made some bad decisions.

32:55Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. End quote. Whatever the reason, at the time, Jane was decried as immoral and bawdy. And then, years later, she was shamed as a traitoress for having turned against her own husband and sister-in-law. Why she did what she did is impossible to know. But it's always easier, and to be frank, usually more fun, to imagine a nefarious individual villain than it is to reckon with the complicated dynamics of power, autonomy, sex, and cultures of gossip and ultimately meaningless murder given the gloss of legality. After Jane's head was separated from her body, she was buried in the Tower of London with Catherine Howard, the final queen she served, near the bodies of Jane's husband, George Boleyn, and Jane's sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn.

33:56A family plot of headless bodies. That's the story of Jane Boleyn, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about a gruesome legend surrounding Henry VIII's ultimate end.

34:46Transcription by CastingWords 150 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The Summer Savings Event is here at Apple Vacations. It's the perfect time to bring everyone together for the getaway you've been dreaming about. Book between July 24th and August 27th and enjoy up to 55 % instant savings. From relaxing beach days to unforgettable moments with the people who matter most, your next vacation starts here. Travel through July 31st, 2027. Start your vacation today at AppleVacations.com or through your travel advisor.

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