Among the Wolves of Court

The Untold Story of Thomas and George Boleyn

Lauren Mackay

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781350147058
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786725523
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

The tragic story of Anne Boleyn has been retold over the centuries, yet two key figures in Anne's life-her father Thomas and brother George- are often relegated to the margins of Henry VIII's turbulent reign. Well before Anne's coronation in 1533, Thomas was regarded as one of Henry's most skilled and experienced ambassadors, and George was a talented young courtier on the rise. But Anne's downfall was to have a devastating effect on her family – ultimately costing her and her brother their lives. A family whose success and prestige had been shaped over generations was destroyed in a violent and brutal episode as the king sought a new wife and a male heir.
In this first biography devoted to the Boleyn men, Lauren Mackay takes us beyond the stereotypes of Thomas and George to present a story that has almost been lost to history. This book follows the Boleyn men as they negotiated their way through the ruthless game of politics among the wolves of the court, and establishes their place in Tudor history.

CHAPTER ONE

Men of Mark

In no country but England could a race of merchants have risen in the feudal times to the highest rank under the Crown, have become the mark of more than one Parliamentary impeachment, and have wedded ladies of the blood.

– T. L. Kington Oliphant

In death, the remains of the Boleyns are scattered across England. The clever, vivacious Boleyn children, Anne and George, lie close to where they met their fates in the Tower. Their mother Elizabeth, who hailed from one of the most powerful families in England – the Howards – is buried among her ancestors in the family vault in the parish church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, London, as was customary for the family.¹ Where the church once stood is now the Garden Museum, adjacent to Lambeth Palace, dedicated to the art, history and design of gardens. Many of the visitors here, sitting in the cafe near what was once the high altar, may be unaware that beneath their feet lies the mother and grandmother of two of England's arguably most famous queens. The whereabouts of the remains of Mary Boleyn, eclipsed in life and in death by her sister, is a mystery. But what has united this family for over 500 years, in all these locations, is their connection to Hever Castle in Kent.

The town of Hever is best known for its gothic turreted castle, accessible only by the small drawbridge across its moat, which carries thousands of tourists every year. Dating back to the 1270s, it was built as a defensive castle, with a gatehouse and walled bailey: later additions of Tudor-styled dwellings came in the fifteenth century. Today, it is arguably the family's most defining symbol when we think of their role in Tudor history – certainly for the followers of Anne Boleyn.

Some visitors to the castle might forego a visit to the small unassuming St Peter's Church, tucked away on the right of the main entrance to the castle grounds. It faces a rather more popular venue, a local pub, once a hunting lodge visited by Henry VIII. Vines clamber over the cracked stone tombs in the small gardens surrounding the building and, if you were to venture inside, you are likely to tread over centuries of graves beneath the stone floor. At the front of the church, in the Boleyn Chapel added to the original church in the middle of the fifteenth century, lies a large chest tomb inlaid with the brass effigy of Thomas Boleyn, dressed in his knightly robes and collar of the Order of the Garter, which Henry VIII awarded him in 1523. The arms of the Order is a cross of St George circumscribed by a garter with the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense (evil be to him that evil thinks). A coronet crowns his head, with a falcon to his right, entwined with icanthus leaves (or oak leaves) and braided cord; on his left knee is the garter of the Order just above his jousting armour – chausses protecting his legs and sabatons covering his feet – common features on knightly tombs. They also testify to Thomas Boleyn's jousting prowess: He stands on a prostrate gryphon, its claws fully extended. His only immediate family in this eternal grave is his infant son Henry who lies nearby: his tomb marked by a plain brass cross.

Hever is synonymous with the Boleyn family, Anne Boleyn, specifically, as it was her childhood home and where she was pursued by Henry VIII. But Anne was not a Kentish woman, nor was her father a Kentish man. The Boleyns were proud East Anglians, and to understand their trajectory is to trace their ancestry over a couple of hundred years back to the early years of the Norman conquest; they hailed from over 150 miles north-east of Hever, somewhere between the cathedral city of Norwich and the sandy coast of Cromer and Sheringham, looking out over the North Sea.

In exploring the Boleyn family history, we face an immediate challenge. Firstly, it is not until shortly before Thomas' generation that the Boleyns become visible in the extant records, when they had already become quite politically significant and financially successful: prior to this, there is limited available information that can shed light on the family. Thankfully, court records do provide some insight into the histories of non-noble lineages such as that of the Boleyns.

We also owe a great debt to the research undertaken by the eighteenth-century antiquary, Francis Blomefield, who compiled and published detailed accounts of the city of Norwich and numerous villages throughout the county of Norfolk, and W. L. E. Parsons, the Rector of Salle Church, whose 1935 work, modestly titled, ‘Some Notes on the Boleyn Family’, was published in the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society's journal.² Both men drew on a variety of primary sources including the Court Rolls of the manors of Salle and Stinton, and contemporary wills, to try to establish the roots of the Boleyns. Relying on the surviving official court and county records available, helpfully enlisted and (in some cases) reproduced by these two writers, we become acquainted with members of the earlier generations of the family, and how they rose generation by generation to accumulate wealth, position and prestige. Tracing the Boleyn family and the nature of their trajectory over time allows us to consider the kinds of records in which they appear, and those in which they do not appear, that is, documents relating to established elites with ancient noble lineage, and reveals that the Boleyns of the fifteenth century prior to Thomas' birth were not born to wealth and privilege, but were among those who achieved it.

There are two other slight difficulties: the different spellings of surnames and the repetition of Christian names across the generations can play havoc with constructing a family tree and the Boleyn lineage is no different, having suffered from historians' misinterpretation, confusion and entanglement.³ There is considerable debate among genealogists as to how many members were named Geoffrey, Nicholas, Thomas or John, or how many men with each name there actually were.⁴ Then there are countless spellings of the name: Bolleyn, Boleyne, Boulen, Bulleen, Bullyn, Bollayne and Bolen.⁵ The name – in one of its forms – probably appeared in England in the wake of the conquering Normans who, under Duke William's banner, defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold at Hastings in 1066.⁶ One Norman who fought with William was Eustace II (c.1015–c.1087), Count of Boulogne from 1049 to 1087, who was well rewarded for his service, receiving large grants of land and honours.⁷ He is one of the few proven companions of William the Conqueror, and some historians believe that Eustace commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry to commemorate this extraordinary victory in which he had a starring role: in the tapestry's narrative, Eustasius appears above the figure, next to William, dressed in blue.⁸

Areas in northern France during the medieval period – Boulogne, Normandy, Anjou, Flanders – have interested historians for a number of years because of their kin-based model of government. Boulogne was a particularly successful region as it was based on shared territorial and common interests of its kinfolk, through blood, marriage, amity and patronage ‘with a highly fluid constituency, including anyone with some social bond to its central figures, direct or indirect’.⁹ This may well be the source for the view that the Boleyns hailed from Boulogne, possibly directly related – as kinfolk – to its central character, Eustace. We cannot prove it, but we do know that many of the great Norman families which settled in England used French toponymic names: Aubigny, Beaumont, Bully Montfort, Tosny, among others.

For the early part of the twelfth century English and French influences were spread across the country as the importance between localities and the central government of the king in London began to emerge, and the famous ‘self-government at the king's command, provided the seed bed from which the gentry grew’.¹⁰

The expansion and advancement in population and agriculture saw the growth of the market economy with a large amount of trade through eastern towns including London, York, Winchester, Lincoln, Ipswich and Norwich. Norwich became the most prosperous city and port, second only to London, with the River Wensum its artery to the sea providing the vast prospect of international trade.

We can say with some certainty that the ancestors of the Boleyns were firmly rooted in the county of Norfolk during this period because our first reference to the Boulen family was found on a deed for the sale of a messuage (a small plot of land) in Woodrising, Norwich, sometime in 1188. Prior to this, information is speculative but this deed provides a crucial link to future generations.¹¹

The branch of the large Boleyn family from which Thomas was descended can be traced back to one John Boleyne of Salle, from where the Boleyn story begins to take shape and is on much stronger footing. Salle, a village and civil parish in the county of Norfolk, made much of its wealth in the wool trade. Wool for export or for the domestic cloth trade was a commodity that brought a general rise in the standard of living in rural communities in the mid to late Middle Ages.

Salle was a close-knit community of four to five hundred people, dominated by four manors belonging to several ‘great and less-than-great gentry families’.¹² Much like Hever today (its local pub notwithstanding), there is no town or village to speak of, only a large parish church that stands alone amongst the fields, a testament to an earlier time. This is perhaps the most curious feature of the town. In these early centuries, the church underpinned the world of villagers and townspeople: it is where every aspect of their lives took place and was recorded – baptism, confirmation, marriage, Holy Communion, confession and the last rites. The church gave meaning to this life and promised the afterlife, if one lived by its teachings. Although the local parish records tell us that either John or Simon Boleyn had two sons, John and William, we must look elsewhere for the rich and informative commentary of their lives. Our next reference to the Boleyns is in 1318, when we become acquainted with Nicholas Boleyn of Salle who was likely born just before the turn of the century.¹³

Misdemeanours and misdeeds now become the order of the day, as rough-natured Nicholas was accused of theft in 1318, and his poor reputation continued because he was later accused of robbing a man in Lincoln in 1333.¹⁴

He appears again in the same year and was ordered by one of the manorial courts in Salle to repair the bank between his land and that of the lord of the manor after he had damaged pastures and trees, although it is unclear what he had done to cause the damage. Records are irregular and incomplete at best, but we have to persevere and eventually we find a reference to John Boleyn in court records in 1369, but he dies soon after. Our first Thomas Boleyn appears in the records in 1370, holding much of the same land as the recently deceased John Boleyn, and this leads us to presume that he was the latter's son. This Thomas was a modest landowner and member of the community, but he was also connected to the wool trade and agriculture of the region. We may assume that he was buried in Salle Church, but the first church was destroyed, to be rebuilt during his son's lifetime. Upon his death he bequeathed his six-and-a-half acres of land to his son, Geoffrey, and it is with this individual, Thomas Boleyn's great-grandfather, that the Boleyn family starts to take shape.

Geoffrey Boleyn was not a lord of a manor, presiding over land and tenants – instead, like his father, he worked on the land, involved in farming and the wool trade. He extended the family's local prominence but not significantly. He was very much an ends justifies the means sort of man, and somewhat reckless, if his appearance in numerous court hearings is any indication. Our first encounter with him is in 1408 when he was among six other men accused of two incidents of trespassing and storing timber that they had been keeping to help rebuild the church in Salle. The men had destroyed a small building on the same land, probably for building material, but more seriously, they had also ransacked one of the four manor houses, which they could not explain away as being for the greater good of the town. It was left to the lord and his council to determine the punishment – it is unclear what the lord decided.¹⁵

Later that year, Geoffrey was once again before the court, this time with the parson of Salle Church, with both men accused of occupying a ditch or bank belonging to the lord of the manor, without permission. It seemed that they were trying to store an ash tree to preserve the wood, which they claimed was required for the church. They must have been convincing because on this occasion Geoffrey and the parson were dealt with more leniently and merely ordered to remove the tree within seven days or face its forfeiture.¹⁶ However, there were three other charges unrelated to the church; on one occasion, Geoffrey failed to pay what was owed for property he had purchased; on another he was charged with drawing water from a well without permission or payment.¹⁷ Later, in 1412, he was accused of ploughing over a field division, effectively extending his own land illegally.¹⁸

So, at first glance, Geoffrey would appear to be lacking somewhat of a moral compass, or at least seems to have been an opportunist, although these sorts of misdemeanours were commonplace at the time. But the crimes related to the building of the church, assisting it rather than taking from it, indicates that the church was clearly an important part of his life, so much so that he was willing to break the law, and this points to some degree of piety. The Church of St Peter and St Paul, dating from the first part of the fifteenth century, was quite large for a village the size of Salle, and was the barometer by which the local community could measure its rising prosperity. The Boleyns were among several families vying to fund its construction. The townspeople of Salle loved it, as did the Boleyns, who were not just patrons of the church but benefactors and contributors to its creation. It remains a perfect example of a late medieval East Anglian parish church, containing ‘one of just about every architectural feature and interior furnishing’.¹⁹ Historian Eamon Duffy elegantly describes the interior: ‘this huge building was never full and was never intended to be full; its space was intended as the setting for elaborate liturgy and processions, involving the whole parish, but also for the smaller-scale worship in screened-off side chapels, which housed the daily and occasional activities of the guilds and family chantry-chapels.’²⁰

The church tells us a great deal about the Boleyn family's social distinction within the community. A memorial brass, commissioned by Geoffrey for both him and his wife, Alice, stands prominently in the middle aisle a testament to his importance to the church and its congregation. Geoffrey and Alice rest side by side, both fashionably dressed, Geoffrey wearing a cap and knee-length gown, and large sleeves. His wife is wearing a pleated floor-length gown, with draping sleeves, and a large cloth head-dress that covers her hair is draped over her shoulders. Above the couple is written: ‘God be merciful to us sinners.’ These brasses demonstrate that the couple saw and asserted themselves as local dignitaries, that the church was very important in their lives, just as important as they were in the life of this parish and surrounding area. Equally significant is the fact that the town honoured the Boleyns by calling a narrow street Old Boleyn's Lane and a field Boleyn's Croft.²¹

Geoffrey and Alice had numerous children, but their two sons, Geoffrey and Thomas, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Epigraph
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Men of Mark
• 2. Fortune Ruleth our Helme
• 3. A Courtier to his Fingertips
• 4. Fortune, Infortune
• 5. The Picklock of Princes
• 6. Betwixt Two Princes
• 7. The Balance of Power
• 8. Declare, I Dare Not
• 9. Treasonous Waters
• 10. The Boleyn Enterprise
• 11. Ainsi sera, groigne, qui groigne
• 12. Nowe Thus
• 13. Turning Tides
• 14. Trying a Queen
• 15. Aftermath
• Appendix I
• Appendix II
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• eCopyright