PicoBlog

George Boleyn’s wife. We see her in this chapter, amused at the news that Bishop Fisher’s cook is to be boiled alive for poisoning.

Mary Boleyn says Jane and George hate each other, and George sits up all night with his sister playing cards.

At the Howard-Boleyn conference we see that hatred. George: “Say no more, or I may strike you.” and “I wish I could divorce you.” Lady Rochford makes it her duty to signal the severity of the situation for Anne, the Howards and the Boleyns.

Lady Rochford’s warning to Jane Seymour: “If your belly shows, mistress, we’ll have you bricked up alive.”

Jane Rochford on Cromwell: “A contusion on the body politic.”

Jane Rochford on the people of England: “Oh, but madam, they love Katherine because she is the daughter of two anointed sovereigns. Make your mind up to it madam — they will never love you, any more than they love … Cromwell here. It is nothing to do with your merits. It is a point of fact. There is no use trying to evade it.”

Lady Rochford offers Cromwell information for friendship. She believes her brother and Anne would try to poison her. She says Anne’s marriage is stale and she looks for novelty elsewhere. George assists in the process. Mark Smeaton is never far from the action.

Here is Jane Boleyn on her husband, and on Cromwell, and on sheep:

‘There is not a minx within thirty miles who has not had a set of Rochford’s verses. But if you think the gallantry stops at the bedchamber’s door, you are more innocent than I took you for. You may be in love with Seymour’s daughter, but you need not emulate her in having the wit of a sheep.’

Cromwell suspects it is Jane who detected Mary’s pregnancy. “With her husband George away, she had no one to spy on.”

Mary lashes out at Jane: “This is better than your wedding day, Rochford. It’s like getting a houseful of presents. You can’t love, you don’t know what love it, and all you can do is envy those who do know, and rejoice in their troubles. You are a wretched unhappy woman whose husband loathes her, and I pity you and I pity my sister Anne.

Lady Rochford told Gregory that Cromwell liked Jane Seymour.

Who in the name of God gave you, Lady Rochford, a license to speculate about my intentions?

Jane Rochford tells Cromwell that Anne is pregnant again. But she has to tell him twice that Harry Norris has been delivering love letters from the king to the queen.

Rochford says Anne is losing her looks. ‘She looks every day of her age and more. Faces are not incidental. Our sins are written on them.’

When Anne wears yellow to celebrate Katherine’s death, Rochford says, ‘I don’t think it suits any complexion, myself. And Anne should stick to black.’

Jane Rochford: ‘If, as it may happen, some person visits the queen after the lights are out, then it is an event over which we should draw a veil… The queen knows how to keep her secrets.’

 'Jane,' he says, 'if the time comes when you wish to disburden your conscience, do not go to a priest, come to me. The priest will give you a penance, but I will give you a reward.'

After Anne’s miscarriage, Rochford says, ‘It was a boy, Mr Secretary. She had carried it under four months, as we judge.’ She implies it may not have been Henry’s.

Lady Rochford: Anne ‘thought that when she was queen, she would take comfort in going over the days of her coronation, hour by hour. But she says she has forgotten them. When she tries to remember, it’s as if it happened to someone else, and she wasn’t there. She didn’t tell me this, of course. She told brother George.’

Lady Rochford invents things, says Mary Shelton. Shelton tells Cromwell about a row between Rochford and Anne. Rochford comes to Cromwell. She tells him that Anne has many lovers among the gentlemen, including her own brother.

Cromwell warns her about the implications of her allegations for herself. He notes that she has no other avenues open to her. She says he should talk to Mark Smeaton.

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