Jane Boleyn

Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, gave evidence that helped convict her husband and her sister-in-law Anne Boleyn of incest, and was beheaded seven years later for arranging the meetings that destroyed Catherine Howard. She was the daughter of a diplomat, Lord Morley, married George Boleyn around 1525, and served in the households of Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and every queen after them, which is a career in itself: she survived four changes of regime at the centre of the court before the fifth killed her. The long-standing account that she was the principal accuser in 1536, motivated by jealousy of a happier marriage than her own, comes largely from later chroniclers; what the record shows is that she supplied information about Anne and George and that the charge of incest rested partly on it. She was left a widow with debts, petitioned Cromwell for support, and got a place again. Under Catherine Howard she carried messages, kept watch, and arranged the private meetings with Thomas Culpeper - by her own confession, though she also said the queen had ordered her to. When the affair broke in 1541 she suffered what contemporaries described as a collapse into madness, which under English law should have prevented a trial; Henry had parliament pass an act specifically allowing the execution of the insane, and she was beheaded on Tower Green on 13 February 1542, minutes after Catherine. She is buried in St Peter ad Vincula with both Boleyns and both queens. Her father Lord Morley translated Petrarch and dedicated works to Henry VIII. The act permitting the execution of the insane was repealed under Edward VI. Julia Fox published a revisionist biography of her in 2007 arguing that the accuser story is unsupported.

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