WEBVTT - The Tudor Villainess 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.040 One quick bit of housekeeping before we begin. I am 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:08.360 so so excited that in twenty twenty seven I will 0:00:08.360 --> 0:00:12.560 be partnering with Common Ground Pilgrimages again to lead a 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:17.639 Pride and Prejudice pilgrimage in England. If you've been a 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.079 longtime listener of the show, you're probably used to be 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:23.000 talking about these, but they are honestly my favorite thing 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:25.680 in the world. We pick a book and for a 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:28.800 week just gather a group of like, smart, wonderful people 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:31.840 together to talk about the book and go on long 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:35.040 walks in the English countryside. And I could not be 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:37.559 more thrilled that the next book I'm doing is Pride 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:41.559 and Prejudice. So if you're at all interested in joining 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:44.120 with us, I think we still have Depending on when 0:00:44.159 --> 0:00:48.159 this episode comes out, a few slots available google Common 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.480 Ground Pilgrimages, Danish worts Pride and Prejudice. 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:52.280 It'll come up. 0:00:52.760 --> 0:00:54.880 I have so much fun doing it, and it also 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.920 makes the trip so special if podcast listeners and members 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:02.120 of the Noble family are also coming along, So take 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:02.680 a look at that. 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:05.919 Let's get into the episode. 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:11.040 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm 0:01:11.040 --> 0:01:17.520 and Mild from Aaron Manky Listener discretion advised. In fifteen 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.920 forty two, Lady Rochford, lady in waiting to multiple queens 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:25.320 and sister in law to one, was awaiting a trial 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:31.560 during which she would almost certainly be convicted of high treason. Certainly, 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.720 King Henry the Eighth was determined for her to be 0:01:34.800 --> 0:01:40.520 found guilty and executed. But there was one problem. During 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.760 Lady Rochford's interrogation, she suffered a nervous breakdown and, for 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.360 lack of a better phrase, went insane. 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:51.400 She had quote fits. 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:55.520 Of frenzy and lost her connection with reality. Now this, 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.920 of course was a problem for Lady Rochford. No one 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:02.520 wants to go mad, But it was also a problem 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.280 for Henry the Eighth because it wouldn't be legal for 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:10.640 him to try and execute someone who was not mentally fit. 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:15.240 And so Lady Rochford was brought from her imprisonment at 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:18.680 the Tower of London to the home of Lady Russell, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.960 the wife of the Lord Admiral, in order to try 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.400 to nurse her back to health and sanity, for the 0:02:25.480 --> 0:02:31.640 goal of expediting her execution. But Henry wasn't content to wait. 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.200 A bill was passed allowing the execution of the insane, 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:40.680 and Jane was duly convicted by an act of attainder. 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:46.080 When Jane, Lady Rochford was told of her impending death, 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.640 it seems her sanity returned to her. Maybe the lady 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.840 had been faking it, trying to get a reprieve or 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:58.040 postpone her death sentence, or maybe the shock of the 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:03.000 end arriving jolted her back into her right mind. But 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:08.040 it didn't matter, mad Or saying Lady Rochford was going 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:13.560 to the scaffold. Lady Rochford was born Jane Parker, but 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.600 most people are probably more familiar with her married name, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:23.120 Jane Bolin. She was married to George Bolin, the brother 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:28.000 of Anne, the brother who incidentally was convicted of incest 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:32.360 with his sister before they were both beheaded. If you 0:03:32.520 --> 0:03:37.360 are a frequent reader of Tudor era literature or watcher 0:03:37.440 --> 0:03:42.960 of historical dramas, you probably know Lady Rochford as a villainous, 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:48.320 a jealous social climbing shrew who testified against her own 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:52.680 husband in a vindictive attempt to take down her hated 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:57.600 sister in law. Tracy Borman, chief historian at Historic Royal 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:02.760 Palaces has characterized her as quote the most hated woman 0:04:03.000 --> 0:04:08.320 in Tudor, England, but the truth about Jane Boln, Lady 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:15.800 Rochford is unsurprisingly more complicated, and modern scholarship has shed 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:21.280 new light on Jane's terrible reputation and whether or not 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:26.359 she was responsible for the downfall of Anne Boleyn. She 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:31.480 was certainly more involved in the downfall of another queen 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:38.120 and cousin, Katherine Howard. Jane Boln would eventually lose her 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:42.120 own head, and two of the five queens she served 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:47.400 under suffered the same fate. The question, then, is how 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:53.000 much was really Jane's fault. I'm Danish Schwartz and this 0:04:53.320 --> 0:05:00.240 is noble blood. Jane Bolin was born Jane Parker, a 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:03.880 well connected girl from a good family. Her father was 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:07.080 a baron and her mother was the great granddaughter of 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:11.920 Margaret Beauchamp, the maternal grandmother of Henry the Seventh. Though 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:16.440 unfortunately a paucity of records means we don't know exactly 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.520 when Jane was born, her early life reads as though 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:24.360 she's a bit of the forest gump of Tudor England, 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:29.279 appearing at the most famous events in Henry the eighth's reign. 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.200 When Jane was a young woman, she joined the household 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.400 of Catherine of Aragon, and she was with the court 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.719 in fifteen twenty when they journeyed to France for the 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:44.480 field of the Cloth of Gold, when Henry had a 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:49.080 famous meeting with the King of France. Two years later, 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:53.360 Jane appeared again at a pivotal moment in history at 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:58.440 the famous Mask performance at York Palace, a performance of 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:03.679 the Chateau Verre, which consisted of a giant imitation castle 0:06:03.800 --> 0:06:07.560 covered in green foil and some of the most beautiful 0:06:07.600 --> 0:06:12.360 women in court playing virtues that needed to be rescued 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:18.400 by crusading knights. Jane, one of the performers, portrayed Constancy, 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:24.479 alongside her future sisters in law Mary Bolin Kindness and 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:30.039 Anne Bolin fittingly perseverance. A few years later, as the 0:06:30.120 --> 0:06:37.640 Bolins continued to rise at court, Jane married the Bolan brother, George. 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:42.159 It was a fitting match, with George's sister favored by 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:45.919 the king, obviously not yet queen, but certainly being paid 0:06:46.080 --> 0:06:50.800 special attention to the Bolan family star was on the rise. 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:56.320 George was given the sinisterly named Grimstone Manor as a 0:06:56.360 --> 0:06:59.560 wedding gift, and a few years after they were married, 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:05.400 Jane became not just Jane Bolin but also the Viscountess Rochford. 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:07.240 Why was the. 0:07:07.120 --> 0:07:11.600 Bolin star on the rise? Well, I assume you probably 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:16.200 know this story. First, Henry had had an affair with 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:22.080 Mary Bolin, actually the married Mary Carrie, but when given 0:07:22.520 --> 0:07:27.520 what he wanted, he lost interest fairly quickly, and then 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:32.120 King Henry the Eighth became enchanted by dark, quick witted, 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:37.200 charming Anne. As he fell deeper in love, he became 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:41.920 more frustrated that his decades long marriage with Catherine of 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:47.040 Arragon hadn't produced any male heirs, and he became more 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.720 convinced that that was God's way of showing him that 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:55.800 the marriage had actually been invalid the entire time. Henry 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:59.520 began his maneuvers to do whatever he could to get 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.400 thee to annul his first marriage so that he could 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:08.160 marry Anne. In the meantime, the king showed the Bolens 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:13.720 whatever favor he could. They were given the luxurious palace 0:08:13.800 --> 0:08:18.800 of Bullieu, which had hot and cold running water. As 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:22.680 if the symbolism couldn't be more obvious with regards to 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:28.480 the changing of fortunes. The palace had formerly belonged to Mary, 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:33.959 Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon. She Mary was banished 0:08:34.120 --> 0:08:39.120 to less luxurious digs, and the Bolins swept into place. 0:08:40.440 --> 0:08:43.800 A lot of our information with what was happening with 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:48.200 Jane at this point is filling in whatever gaps we 0:08:48.320 --> 0:08:54.160 can with our best educated guesses. The conventional wisdom is 0:08:54.200 --> 0:09:00.120 that Jane and George had a poisonous, unhappy marriage, that 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:05.560 Jane was jealous and bitter toward Anne Boleyn. It's certainly 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.560 possible to read the story that way, but the evidence 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:15.960 isn't exactly air tight, and in recent years, historians, particularly 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:20.599 Julia Fox, have begun a bit of a reclamation project. 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:26.120 People historically have pointed out that George and Jane didn't 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.559 have any children as evidence for the fact that their 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:33.680 marriage was unhappy, but there are plenty of reasons why 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.920 people might not have been able to have children, and 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:42.079 all contemporary writing seems to indicate that Jane really cared 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:46.560 for George, even when, as you'll soon see, trouble came 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:50.439 for them. It certainly wasn't a love match, but that 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.640 doesn't mean by Tudor standards it was an unsuccessful marriage. 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:59.280 Another central piece of evidence in favor of Jane's resentment 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:04.400 for the Bolet is apparent writing that indicates Jane allegedly 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:09.560 participated in a group of ladies protesting against Anne after 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.840 she became queen, a public show of support for Henry's 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:19.800 daughter Mary from his first marriage, Except did Jane actually 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:26.040 attend that protest? The evidence comes from handwritten Marginalia, a 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:32.160 contemporary source documenting the protest, who wrote Downmu Lord Rochfort 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:37.360 and Meu Lord Guillaume, indicating George Bolin, Lord Rochfort, and 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:42.840 William Howard. In the nineteenth century, a biographer interpreted that 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:47.360 as meaning their wives had been among the women protesting, 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:53.040 but modern scholarship indicates that that almost certainly was not 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:58.640 the case. As Sylvia Barbara Sorberton points out, William Howard's 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.880 wife actually he died a few months before the protest, 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:07.200 and he wouldn't marry again until the next year, so 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:10.400 he didn't even have a wife at the time who 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:15.520 could have attended the protest. And for Jane, in Sorberton's 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:19.760 words quote, to break the habit of a lifetime and 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:25.280 speak out, particularly against her husband's family, would be most 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:31.839 uncharacteristic her fortunes had risen with the Bolins, it would 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:37.080 have been outright foolish and probably far more notable than 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:40.080 just a scribble in a margin if she had taken 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.240 such a public stance against her very powerful sister in law. 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:46.160 It is more likely. 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:51.199 Syburton posits that George Bolin and William Howard had been 0:11:51.240 --> 0:11:56.640 the men tasked with disciplining those involved. Being married to 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:01.880 George Bolin had only made Jane more prominent and important 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:06.120 at court. George was at the heart of courtly culture, 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:11.319 with a flourishing career and an expanding portfolio of properties. 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:15.880 It stands to reason that Jane would have been perfectly 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:21.760 content to rise with him and his sister, But unfortunately 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:27.760 for Jane, history would have other ideas. It didn't take 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.720 long after King Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn were 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.760 married for trouble to begin to brew for the new queen. 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.760 AND's greatest problem was that she did not deliver Henry 0:12:39.840 --> 0:12:44.040 the son she had promised. She gave birth, but the 0:12:44.160 --> 0:12:48.199 prince everyone was expecting turned out to be a princess, 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:52.840 And then though Anne became pregnant again, she suffered a 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:58.600 miscarriage Henry began to get anxious and impatient, and Anne 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:03.240 felt the tenuousness of her position. When Henry began to 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:07.440 flirt with someone else at court, Anne asked her sister 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.520 in law Jane, to scheme with her to find a 0:13:10.559 --> 0:13:15.160 way to get that woman sent away from court. Apparently, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:19.320 Jane picked a fight with that woman, hoping that Henry 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:23.320 would dismiss her from court to avoid any public drama, 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:30.000 but the plan backfired and Jane herself alone was temporarily exiled. 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:35.040 It became more urgent than ever that Anne Boleyn become pregnant, 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:40.680 but as she confided to Jane, there were some challenges 0:13:40.800 --> 0:13:45.600 with that, or rather one main challenge being that the 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:52.120 king had performance issues in bed. Jane shared the gossip 0:13:52.200 --> 0:13:56.840 with her husband. Though again you can characterize Jane as 0:13:56.920 --> 0:14:02.240 a machiavellian and double faced schemer here, it seems equally 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.640 or more likely that she was just an involved family 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:11.199 member who shared her families concerned with their precarious position. 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.880 The writing was on the wall with regards to the 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.920 Bolins when a position opened up for a new Knight 0:14:19.080 --> 0:14:22.640 of the Garter, and instead of the honor being awarded 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.520 to George Bolin, the King had the position go to 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:32.920 Sir Nicholas Carew, a relative of Jane Seymour, the lady 0:14:32.960 --> 0:14:38.440 in waiting. Henry had recently turned his attention to the Queen. 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:43.800 Anne Bolen couldn't get her own brother elected, it seemed 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:50.200 obvious her days in power were numbered. In fifteen thirty six, 0:14:50.480 --> 0:14:53.760 Anne Bolin and her brother George were suddenly arrested and 0:14:54.000 --> 0:14:57.920 taken to the Tower of London along with four other men, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:03.720 accused of adultery and and therefore treason and in George's case, incest. 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:08.200 This is where the climax comes in the legend of 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:13.160 Jane Boln's villainy. The popular story is that Jane Bolin 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.360 finally had an opportunity to turn on her hated husband 0:15:17.400 --> 0:15:19.880 and sister in law, and that she took it to 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:23.120 give testimony against both of them that sent them to 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:24.160 their deaths. 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.040 But the reality is a lot. 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:31.360 More nuanced, and by actually looking directly at the primary sources, 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:35.280 it's much harder to make the case for Jane as 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:39.280 a villain. As I mentioned, the historian Julia Fox has 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:43.800 been among the most prominent voices in redeeming Jane's character, 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.880 As she writes in Jane boln The True Story of 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:52.640 the Infamous Lady Rochford. Jane quote had reaped nothing but 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.080 benefits from her marriage, which had allowed her to live 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:04.000 in quote unbridled luxury side of purely speculative motives. There's 0:16:04.040 --> 0:16:08.680 no actual textual reason she would have to drag down 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:12.640 her own stature at court by disgracing her husband and 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:17.480 sister in law. Instead, Fox paints a picture of what 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:23.360 actually happened after her husband was suddenly arrested. Jane was, 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:28.520 like everyone in their circle, interrogated in an incredibly high 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:34.200 pressure environment, an interrogation during which she was almost certainly 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:38.000 terrified and confused as to what was going on. 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.720 As Fox writes, quote, the arrests. 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:46.120 Had been so sudden and unexpected that there was no 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:51.120 time to separate out what testimony might be damaging, what 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:55.280 could be twisted to become so, or what could only 0:16:55.320 --> 0:17:00.800 be innocuous, no matter what the interpretation end quote. And 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:04.119 while her husband of eleven years was in the tower, 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:08.639 Jane was actually the only person to attempt to send 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.399 him a letter in support. She promised in the letter 0:17:12.680 --> 0:17:17.199 to quote humbly make suit unto the King's Highness on 0:17:17.440 --> 0:17:23.400 his behalf Jane's testimony came up only once during her 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:27.880 husband's trial, the only evidence we actually have of Jane's 0:17:28.040 --> 0:17:33.240 so called betrayal. During the trial, Cromwell handed George a 0:17:33.359 --> 0:17:36.720 piece of paper while he was on the stand, paper 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.760 with a question on it. Cromwell instructed him to answer 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:45.320 the question with a simple yes or no. George instead 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:49.800 read the note aloud, a question which had been about 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:55.679 whether Anne had mentioned to Jane the King's indelicate troubles 0:17:55.760 --> 0:17:59.960 in the bedroom. It is damning, but it's also information 0:18:00.320 --> 0:18:05.520 that had been pulled from Jane by experts and determined interrogators. 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:12.800 Hardly mustache twirling sabotage. Fox writes of Jane's inquisition, quote, 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:18.399 faced with such relentless, incessant questions which she had no 0:18:18.600 --> 0:18:22.680 choice but to answer, Jane would have searched her memory 0:18:22.800 --> 0:18:27.120 for every tiny incident that occurred to her. Jane had 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:30.880 not been quick to tell tales, but she had buckled 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:36.560 under the pressure of relentless questioning end quote. Perhaps even 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:43.919 more tellingly, Sorburton points out no contemporary sources named Jane 0:18:44.320 --> 0:18:49.120 in their list of Bolin accusers. If Jane Boln had 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:54.320 willingly turned on her husband and sister in law. Sorburton writes, quote, 0:18:54.600 --> 0:19:00.239 such explosive information would have been shared at court end quote. 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:04.520 So if it was betrayal on Jane Boln's part, it 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:10.360 was very subtle betrayal. It's only decades later that Jane's 0:19:10.520 --> 0:19:17.080 character assassination begins in earnest. The historian George Wyatt, writing 0:19:17.200 --> 0:19:23.080 in the seventeenth century, called Jane quote wicked wife, accuser 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.360 of her own husband, even to the seeking of her 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:33.280 own blood, and Jane became an especially useful scapegoat when 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:39.640 Anne Boleyn's daughter Elizabeth eventually became Queen Elizabeth the First 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.879 Elizabeth couldn't say that her father was a murderer, and 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.760 she couldn't say that her mother was a treasonous adulteress, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:55.000 and so who was there to blame? As Julia Fox writes, quote, 0:19:55.400 --> 0:20:00.960 it was Jane's weakness under interrogation that gave her future detractors, 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:05.160 happy to find a scapegoat to exonerate the king from 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:09.840 the heinous charge of callously killing his innocent wife, the 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:15.199 ammunition to maintain that it was her Jane's evidence that 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:21.560 had fooled Henry and destroyed Anne and George end quote. 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:26.160 Anne George and the four other men accused were all 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:31.480 found guilty. Most historians today are in agreement that the 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:36.160 charges were trumped up against Anne in order to dispose 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:39.560 of her and to allow Henry to marry the new 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:43.679 woman he had set his sights on. But Anne Boleyn 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.880 would not be the last Queen Jane served who would 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:51.840 go on to lose her head. After a temporary retreat 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:57.320 from court, Jane Boleyn would eventually return, only to find 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:03.000 herself embroiled in another skin. This time, however, she would 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:10.159 certainly have her fair share of blame. Jane Boleyn was 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:13.399 only away from court for a few months after her 0:21:13.480 --> 0:21:17.119 husband was killed, during which time she was in tense 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:20.760 negotiations with her former father in law and with Thomas 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:24.640 Cromwell about what she was owed as a widow. Her 0:21:24.680 --> 0:21:29.480 income would be significantly decreased, but she was eventually allocated 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.920 one hundred pounds a year, enough to return to court 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:36.000 as a lady in time to serve the brand new 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:41.040 Queen Jane Seymour. As you're probably aware, turnover in the 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:46.879 King Henry the Eighth Wife business was astonishingly high. Jane 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:51.919 Lady Rochfort served Queen Jane Seymour until the queen died 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:57.000 after complications following the birth of Henry's much sought after son. 0:21:57.840 --> 0:22:01.280 The next queen was a princess in ported from Germany 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:06.600 for political reasons, Anne of Cleaves, whom Henry disliked almost 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:09.720 as soon as he laid eyes on her. It's during 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:14.480 this period that Jane's character as a sort of impulsive 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:20.120 gossip comes into clear focus. At risk of being anachronistic, 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:23.879 reading about her during this period, particularly in the books 0:22:23.880 --> 0:22:27.239 of Julia Fox and Gareth Russell, put to mind a 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:32.600 sort of Tudor era, real housewife having whispered conversations that 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:38.640 absolutely would be made public and apologies living for the drama. 0:22:39.280 --> 0:22:43.680 Anne of Cleaves, whether innocent or obtuse, told her ladies 0:22:43.720 --> 0:22:47.960 in waiting, that Henry did do his husbandly duty, you know, 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.480 by kissing her good night and then letting her fall asleep. 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:56.359 It was Jane among the women, remarking that Anne wasn't 0:22:56.400 --> 0:22:59.240 going to get pregnant with a little print that way. 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:01.960 After, Henry found a. 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:07.359 Way to dispatch with Anne of Cleaves, just legally this time, thankfully, 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:13.199 not mortally. His next queen was the charming teenage Katherine 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:18.960 Howard once again. Jane Bolen, Lady Rochford, was put into 0:23:19.000 --> 0:23:24.400 the queen's intimate service. In fact, with Catherine Howard, despite 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:27.960 the fact that the two ladies were decades apart, the 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:32.960 two became the closest of friends. Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:39.920 was Katherine Howard's confidante and eventually her conspirator. Plenty has 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:43.560 been written on the life of Catherine Howard. In fact, 0:23:43.680 --> 0:23:46.919 we've done an episode on her on this very podcast 0:23:47.280 --> 0:23:50.520 during our series on the Wives of King Henry the Eighth. 0:23:50.920 --> 0:23:54.320 But the short version of her sad story is that 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:58.200 months after she arrived at court, she caught the eye 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:01.119 of the King, who was determined to make her his 0:24:01.280 --> 0:24:07.120 latest queen. Unfortunately for everyone involved, there was a ticking 0:24:07.359 --> 0:24:10.919 time bomb when it came to Catherine, a secret that 0:24:11.119 --> 0:24:17.360 the King could absolutely not discover about his virginal new bride. 0:24:18.119 --> 0:24:22.600 Katherine had already had two liaisons with men in her 0:24:22.640 --> 0:24:27.199 grandmother's household, where she had grown up. The topics of 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:31.760 those early relationships with regards to the question of consent 0:24:32.040 --> 0:24:35.440 in the context of the era, require far more nuanced 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:38.560 than we have space for in an episode on Jane 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:43.200 boln But if you're interested in the details of Catherine's life, 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:47.720 I would direct you to the excellent biography by Gareth Russell. 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:53.439 But suffice it to say those former relationships were once 0:24:53.600 --> 0:24:59.879 Catherine was queen, embarrassing and arguably treasonous episodes that she 0:25:00.280 --> 0:25:04.560 needed to remain secret. All of that would have been 0:25:04.600 --> 0:25:10.040 bad enough, but Catherine soon had another secret. The new 0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:15.800 Queen began a flirtation with a courtier named Thomas Culpeper. 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:21.760 Whether this relationship was ever consummated remains an open question, 0:25:22.359 --> 0:25:27.160 but Catherine certainly enjoyed his company and sent him gifts 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:32.240 and food when he was sick, made flirtatious comments to him, and, 0:25:32.840 --> 0:25:37.159 most damning of all, when the court was on procession 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:42.479 through England, Katherine and her trusted lady in waiting, Jane Boleyn, 0:25:43.280 --> 0:25:50.119 made arrangements for secret meetings at every newcastle or manor 0:25:50.320 --> 0:25:55.879 along the queen's procession. Jane found quote back doors and 0:25:56.080 --> 0:26:00.879 backsteps where Culpeper could sneak in to meet the Queen 0:26:01.280 --> 0:26:05.880 without anyone else from the household knowing. Jane sent her 0:26:05.920 --> 0:26:09.120 own servant to check to see if the King's night 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:14.800 watchman was nearby. And Jane herself would literally hide, keeping 0:26:14.840 --> 0:26:19.480 a lookout to make sure Catherine and Culpeper weren't discovered. 0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:22.840 Maybe this is the most shocking part of all. 0:26:23.359 --> 0:26:29.120 These secret meetings with Culpeper continued all summer, and that 0:26:29.359 --> 0:26:31.879 wouldn't actually be Catherine's downfall. 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:37.960 Instead, Catherine's downfall came because a random courtier had told 0:26:38.000 --> 0:26:40.560 his sister that she should try to join the queen's 0:26:40.560 --> 0:26:44.600 household for social advancement. And then the sister scoffed and 0:26:44.680 --> 0:26:48.280 told her brother that she thought Catherine had low morals. 0:26:48.760 --> 0:26:51.560 After all, the sister said she had been there at 0:26:51.640 --> 0:26:55.960 Catherine's grandmother's estate during those early years when she had 0:26:56.000 --> 0:27:01.960 had those pre king relationships. This brother, agast reported what 0:27:02.119 --> 0:27:07.280 his sister had said, and the open secret finally became open. 0:27:08.080 --> 0:27:13.440 And when the investigation began once Culpeper's name was mentioned, 0:27:13.920 --> 0:27:19.879 the queen was already all but headless. In the autumn 0:27:19.920 --> 0:27:23.639 of fifteen forty one, when all of this came to 0:27:24.440 --> 0:27:30.000 a apology's head, Catherine was placed under house arrest at 0:27:30.240 --> 0:27:35.920 Sion Abbey. With regards to Catherine's investigation, the records are 0:27:36.000 --> 0:27:41.840 actually abundant, in direct contrast with the shady investigation into 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:46.359 Anne Bolin. It's as if the court wanted to prove 0:27:46.800 --> 0:27:50.439 that if Henry was going to execute another wife, he 0:27:50.600 --> 0:27:54.840 was going to do this one completely above board, with 0:27:55.040 --> 0:27:59.520 all of the proper paperwork. Intact, we do not have 0:27:59.640 --> 0:28:03.760 the action uctual record for Jane's testimony during the trial 0:28:03.840 --> 0:28:07.640 of Anne Boleyn, but we do have it for Catherine Howard. 0:28:08.359 --> 0:28:13.200 Jane was questioned and well interrogated. She admitted that quote 0:28:13.480 --> 0:28:19.080 she thinketh that Culpeper hath known the Queen Carnalie end quote, 0:28:19.520 --> 0:28:22.840 but she maintained that she never saw or heard any 0:28:22.920 --> 0:28:28.040 actual proof of consummation. Culpeper said that he had not 0:28:28.280 --> 0:28:32.639 slept with the queen, but that he had planned to, which, 0:28:32.960 --> 0:28:38.080 unfortunately for Culpeper, was more than enough to condemn him. 0:28:38.440 --> 0:28:43.400 Planning on committing treason was still a death sentence. It 0:28:43.600 --> 0:28:49.440 is pretty undeniable that Jane had been involved. Five years 0:28:49.560 --> 0:28:53.360 after the death of Anne Bolen, Jane was once again 0:28:53.480 --> 0:28:56.400 at the heart of a scandal that would lead to 0:28:56.480 --> 0:29:02.280 a headless queen. The French ambassador rod that Jane quote 0:29:02.480 --> 0:29:05.640 all her life had the name to esteem her honor 0:29:05.720 --> 0:29:10.640 little and has thus in her old age shown little Amendment. 0:29:11.880 --> 0:29:17.680 During Jane's interrogation, she lost touch with reality under the 0:29:17.720 --> 0:29:22.040 pressure of knowing what was about to happen and realizing 0:29:22.120 --> 0:29:25.200 that there was no way out of it. Jane went 0:29:25.480 --> 0:29:30.520 mad after a nervous breakdown, which manifested in quote fits 0:29:30.600 --> 0:29:35.080 of fancy. Though legally she couldn't stand trial for what 0:29:35.160 --> 0:29:38.240 she had done if she was insane, the King and 0:29:38.320 --> 0:29:42.760 his court was determined that this whole sordid Catherine Howard 0:29:42.800 --> 0:29:46.440 affair be dealt with completely and once and for all. 0:29:47.200 --> 0:29:50.880 A law was passed permitting the execution of the insane 0:29:50.920 --> 0:29:55.560 for high treason, and Jane was committed by parliamentary act 0:29:55.720 --> 0:30:00.640 of attainder. According to an ambassador, when Jane was told 0:30:00.680 --> 0:30:04.200 that she would finally be put to death, her symptoms 0:30:04.280 --> 0:30:09.040 of madness left her. We don't have a direct account 0:30:09.160 --> 0:30:13.360 of what exactly Jane and Katherine Howard might have said 0:30:13.400 --> 0:30:17.479 on the scaffold before their deaths, but one merchant who 0:30:17.560 --> 0:30:20.920 has an eye witnessed to the executions wrote in a 0:30:21.000 --> 0:30:25.920 letter that quote they made the most godly and Christian ends. 0:30:26.600 --> 0:30:32.520 Because no one comments explicitly on Jane saying anything particularly notable, 0:30:33.080 --> 0:30:36.600 we have to assume that she just made her proper prayers, 0:30:37.120 --> 0:30:42.080 apologized for her sins, and begged for forgiveness from the King. 0:30:44.000 --> 0:30:47.400 As Nikola Clark writes in her book The Waiting Game, 0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:52.480 it's impossible to know why exactly Jane would have involved 0:30:52.520 --> 0:30:57.680 herself in such a deeply misguided scheme with Katherine Howard. 0:30:58.360 --> 0:31:02.200 Was she really just a real housewife type trying to 0:31:02.320 --> 0:31:07.240 stir up drama wherever she could? Clark writes, perhaps she 0:31:07.360 --> 0:31:10.600