The Lost Voice of Elizabeth Boleyn
The name Boleyn is writ large across history.
For centuries, Anne Boleyn was the most well-known member of the family.
The second wife of Henry VIII, she was infamous for being executed for adultery and treason.
Yet, her legacy was her daughter, the long-reigning and respected monarch, Queen Elizabeth I.
The courtier, Sir George Throckmorton of Coughton Court, Warwickshire, wrote in a deposition, which was a record of statement to the Crown, the following question: ‘I told Your Grace I feared if ye did marry Queen Anne, your conscience would be more troubled at length, for it is thought that ye have meddled with the mother and the sister.’
The original deposition is housed in the Throckmorton family papers at the Warwickshire County Record Office and, while the record does not explicitly document the king’s response, the general consensus was he demurred and replied, ‘Never with the mother.’
The question which always came to me concerning this exchange was: why did Sir George Throckmorton make such a statement?
In the aftermath of the fall of Anne Boleyn, was this written to denigrate the entire family?
Or was there more to it? Then I considered it again and thought, what if rather than the king being mildly amused at being asked such a question, the emphasis on ‘Never with the mother’ was different.
What if it was anger? Regret? Unrequited love?
And, slowly, a story began to form in my mind.
What if Henry’s pursuit of the Boleyn daughters and the destruction of their brother, George, was never about love? What if it was about power and revenge?
Elizabeth Boleyn was born Elizabeth Howard and she was the daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey (who later became 2nd Duke of Norfolk) and Elizabeth Tilney.
Elizabeth Tilney had first been married to Sir Humphrey Bourchier, with whom she had three children.
After her death, Thomas Howard married Elizabeth’s cousin, Agnes Tilney, and they had seven children who lived into adulthood.
Elizabeth had eight full siblings, all of whom grew into adulthood.
Her eldest brother, Thomas Howard, would eventually become the 3rd Duke of Norfolk.
He was the man who sentenced two of Elizabeth’s children to death: Anne and George.
This was always my starting point with Elizabeth Boleyn: how do you cope with your eldest brother giving the order to execute your children?
It is a new level of cruelty and it was Henry VIII who ordered the duke to carry out this task.
Once again, I wondered, was it revenge? And, if so, for what?
During the research phase of this novel, I discovered there were no dedicated biographies of Elizabeth Boleyn, which I found strange (although I believe one has been published now). Why was the matriarch of the notorious Boleyn clan silent? Her story is, perhaps, the most interesting of them all.
She was born in 1480 under the reign of Edward IV and his queen consort, Elizabeth Woodville.
After Edward’s death in 1483, followed by the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower and the crowning of Richard III, the Howard family aligned with the new king.
When Richard set off to fight Henry Tudor at Bosworth, Elizabeth’s grandfather, John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, and her father, then the Earl of Surrey, were on the side of the king.
John Howard was killed at Bosworth and Elizabeth’s father, Thomas, was taken prisoner.
Her mother gathered her children and took sanctuary at the Benedictine Priory on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent.
From there, the Howards worked hard to prove their loyalty to the Tudor king, and were successful.
Several of the biographies I read during my research were of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey.
This gave me the story of Howard family life and where Elizabeth might have been at each important juncture in history.
Her brother, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk’s biography offered more clues, as did books by the brilliant historians, Elizabeth Norton, Amy Licence and Alison Weir.
Each piece of information I uncovered helped me to build an idea of Elizabeth Boleyn.
Her husband Thomas was part of the dashing Boleyn family and his mother had connections to the Butler family who held the earldom of Ormond.
This became hugely significant as the research about Elizabeth unfolded.
The emblem of the Ormonds was a white falcon and it was this Anne Boleyn adopted as her symbol when she married Henry VIII.
Elizabeth loved her family and was devoted to them throughout her life.
Her marriage to Thomas Boleyn appeared to be strong and loving, a true meeting of hearts and minds.
She was also compassionate, caring for her mother-in-law, Lady Margaret, after she had been diagnosed with insanity – perhaps today we would call it dementia.
My apologies for halting Elizabeth’s story before her daughters step into the limelight.
There were several reasons for this, the most practical was the fact this would have made the book twice as long.
The other was because I wanted to keep Elizabeth firmly at the centre of the tale.
Her daughters’ stories have been told thousands of times and I felt most readers would have an idea of what happened to both Mary and Anne Boleyn without having to stray too far away from Elizabeth’s own tale.
Where possible, I have stuck to verified historical facts, although as this is fiction, it has been necessary to create scenarios to tell the story in my heart and mind.
In piecing together Elizabeth’s story, I discovered a woman of courage, intelligence and wit.
Her voice deserves to be heard and, perhaps, one day, I shall return to tell more of her story.
Until then, thank you for reading The Boleyn Curse, I hope you enjoyed meeting Elizabeth and her bravery shone through.