The Boleyns (4 page)

While engaged in this high social and political activity, Sir Thomas did not neglect his own interests. He had apparently been promised the office of Comptroller of the Royal Household, but Wolsey secured the office for Sir Henry Guildford. Whether this was the result of a misunderstanding, or evidence of some hostility on the Cardinal’s part is not apparent. He may have held the post briefly in 1520 before being persuaded, or compelled to step aside in Guildford’s favour. This could have been on the understanding that he received the reversion to the superior position of treasurer. That became vacant on the death of Sir Thomas Lovell in 1522, when Boleyn was duly appointed in his place.
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At the same time he was pursuing the marriage negotiation between Anne and James Butler. James was resident at the English court at the time, but it was no use trying to put pressure on him, because it was his father who was in control, and in September 1520 the King himself wrote to the Earl of Surrey, the Lord Deputy in Ireland, urging the expediency of the match and offering to ‘advance the matter’ with Sir Thomas. Surrey replied to Wolsey on 6 October, agreeing about the advantages of the match, but referring to Sir Piers as the Earl of Ormond, which must have given the cardinal pause for thought.
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Meanwhile, Margaret Boleyn, Sir Thomas and Elizabeth his wife were granted a pardon in September 1520 for the alienation of Fritwell manor in Oxfordshire, a parcel of the Ormond estate, which suggests that the legal status of the lands was still unsettled. As late as November 1521 Wolsey could write to the King about the desirability of the marriage, and offering to talk to him about the matter ‘on his return’, because he was in Bruges at the time.
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Whether Anne herself had been consulted at this stage is unclear, because her residence in France might have made that difficult. It was a delicate matter to be entrusted to paper, and as far as we know she was not written to upon the subject. All that was about to change, because Sir Thomas was well enough aware that Wolsey’s negotiations in Bruges had resulted in a treaty with the Emperor committing Henry to war with France in 1522. In January, Francis wrote suspiciously to his envoys in England that ‘the English scholars have returned home, and also the daughter of Mr. Bullen’. Something was clearly brewing, and Sir Thomas had retrieved Anne about Christmas 1521.
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There would now be a chance for her to express herself directly about the Butler marriage proposal, and the indications are that she did not like what she saw.

In May 1521 Sir Thomas served on the juries for London and Kent which had indicted the Duke of Buckingham of high treason, which was not any particular indication of favour, but simply that he was regarded as a safe pair of hands. In September he returned to his favourite occupation when he was sent on mission to the Emperor in preparation for Wolsey’s trip to Bruges, and stayed to take part in those discussions, which is how he came to know about the intention to make war before the King of France was aware of it. However, the preparations for war hung fire. Henry was short of money, and Scotland was again causing concern, so apart from a plundering expedition by the Earl of Surrey against Brittany, nothing was done.
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In May the Emperor came on a visit, ostensibly one of goodwill, but in fact to assess the situation in England and the reasons for the delay. Sir Thomas was among those who welcomed him at Canterbury, and was a signatory of the agreement eventually concluded on 20 June, whereby Charles acknowledged that there would be no English campaign in 1522, and Henry renewed his commitment to hostilities in 1523. At the end of August Sir Thomas followed the Emperor back to the continent, where he had the unenviable task of trying to keep Charles in a good mood while Henry struggled with his financial problems.
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In that he was no doubt aided by the breakdown in relations between Francis I and one of his chief vassals, the Duke of Bourbon, which resulted in the Duke putting out feelers to the Anglo-Imperial alliance. Unfortunately, his chief need was for money, and that neither Henry nor Charles was in a position to supply. In March 1523 Sir Thomas and Richard Samson, his colleague in the mission, followed Charles to Spain, but on 6 May the former was recalled, an event which attracted a letter of commendation from the Emperor to Cardinal Wolsey.
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At least by the time of his return Bourbon’s pretensions had become sufficiently convincing to persuade Henry that he must make a supreme effort to return to the continent in military guise before the year was out. Meanwhile, he may have been raised to the peerage. A letter from Richard Hales to Lord Darcy, dated 28 April 1523 states unequivocally that in the parliament then sitting Sir Arthur Plantagenet had been created Viscount Lisle, and Boleyn, with several others had been made barons.
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Unfortunately, there is no confirmatory evidence for that, and he continued to be referred to as Sir Thomas, even in official documents until 1525.

Following up Boleyn’s efforts, at the end of June the ambassador in the Low Countries was instructed to contact Bourbon and to offer him an English subsidy in return for a joint campaign. This was just what Charles had been pressing for, and at the end of August the Duke of Suffolk led an army of some 10,000 men out from the Calais Pale as England’s contribution to the united effort. Henry Jerningham, Sir Thomas’s replacement in Spain, did not arrive until late July, and in reporting this to the King, Wolsey observed that the Emperor was planning an expedition against Langedoc in support of Bourbon, which was not at all the kind of collaboration that Henry had in mind.
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Whether Jerningham was right or not, the Imperial thrust from the east towards Paris, which Suffolk was expecting, never materialised, and Bourbon, of whom great things were expected, similarly failed to show up. This left the Anglo-Burgundian army in the north to its own devices, and faced with heavy French mobilisation north of Paris, they decided to retreat. By the time that they reached this decision, they had crossed the Seine and encountered only sporadic resistance, but it was already October and in view of the lateness of the season, it was the only rational decision to make. Even so, they got caught in a ferocious cold snap during November, which must have been one of the worst freezes of the century. Men and horses died of the cold, and others lost fingers and toes to frostbite – not at all the kind of conditions one expects in northern France before the turn of the year.
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The Burgundians simply went home, and discipline collapsed. Having led out a well equipped fighting force, the Duke of Suffolk returned at the head of a demoralised rabble, which shipped itself back to England in dribs and drabs as shipping became available. Henry was both distressed and annoyed by this debacle, which had cost him money which he could not afford, but he did not blame the Duke. The Emperor was responsible and relations between the allies became frosty. However, his mood fluctuated, and by Christmas he was upbeat again, talking of a new campaign by Bourbon, and of leading an army to France in person. He was, reported the Spanish ambassador, confident that he could conquer the northern provinces of France – even as far as Paris – irrespective of what the Emperor might do.
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However, as 1524 wore on, nothing happened, and unofficial peace feelers from France were even entertained. The problem, as Wolsey knew full well, was money. He had attempted to get a double subsidy out of the 1523 parliament, but had been forced to settle for a single one, and that spread out over two years. Even the subsidy to that most useless of allies the Duke of Bourbon, had had to be borrowed on the Antwerp market. Henry was in no position to lead an army royal to France, no matter how belligerent he might be feeling.

Sir Thomas Boleyn had contributed in a small way to this standoff between the allies, because when he returned from Spain, he had been accompanied by some kind of special envoy from Charles. This person, whose name was Bewreyn, cannot have been an official ambassador, because if he had been he would have gone straight to court, presented his credentials and been assigned accommodation. Instead he was apparently abandoned by Boleyn in London, and left to find his own lodgings. Not surprisingly, he complained, and when Jerningham wrote to the Duke of Suffolk in October, he passed on these complaints.
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It seems that the ambassador felt bound to tell someone, but was reluctant to be thought bearing tales to Wolsey against one so high in the King’s favour. It may be that Sir Thomas felt that Bewreyn had been foisted on him, and felt no responsibility for him. The whole episode is mysterious, because Boleyn clearly lost no favour as a result. Shortly after the complaint was lodged he received £100 towards the expenses of his mission, and livery of the lands of Anne Tempest, whose wardship he had been granted. By the beginning of 1524 Sir Thomas was a very rich man. When the household was assessed for the subsidy in February, he was rated as treasurer on lands, wages and fees at £1,100.
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This was to place him in the same league as the major nobility. By comparison, the Comptroller of the Household, Sir Henry Guildford, was assessed at £300. In December 1524 he appears for the first time on the commission of the peace for Sussex, an indication of how far his landed interests then extended.

In spite of his poverty, and of the peace negotiations which were quietly going ahead, news of the war continued to provoke moods of belligerence in Henry. In August, when the Duke of Bourbon appeared (at last) to be making some progress, he started talking again about an invasion, and of sweeping up the Rhone to link up with the Duke. It all fizzled out because Charles was not ready for any quick action, and because his own ministers were reluctant, having heard these outbursts before, but it should serve to warn us that Henry had not given up on the war, and still saw himself riding in triumph into Paris – a feat which not even Henry V had achieved.
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Consequently when Charles won his stunning victory at Pavia in February 1525, and captured Francis in the process, his ambitions were immediately rekindled. Let the allies seize their opportunity, and partition the leaderless kingdom. Charles could take what provinces he liked, Bourbon’s patrimony could be resurrected, and Henry would take the rest, as lawful King of France. Unfortunately the Emperor was unmoved by such extravagance. He had achieved his objective and would be able to squeeze a favourable treaty out of his captive. He had no money for further campaigning, and if Henry wanted to take advantage of the situation, then by all means let him do so – on his own.
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The King was mortified, and extremely angry, but he recognised defeat when he saw it, and Sir Thomas Boleyn was no longer in Madrid or Brussels to soften the blow. However, he did the only rational thing, and resurrected the peace process with France, finding the Queen Mother’s regency government only too willing to respond. Wolsey, and probably Boleyn, were relieved by this change of mood, because since Pavia it no longer made sense to be on the same side as so great a power as the Emperor had now become. Better by far to come to terms with France, and even to help her to modify the adverse treaty which Charles was bound to extract. In August 1525 a treaty was signed to that effect at the More, Wolsey’s residence in Hertfordshire, and Sir Thomas Boleyn was one of the English signatories.
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It was just as well that a settlement had been reached, because Henry’s finances were going from bad to worse. In March, Wolsey had tried to raise an ‘Amicable Grant’ on the basis of the subsidy assessments of 1523, the idea being to bypass the parliament which had been so obstructive in that year. Whether Sir Thomas approved of this levy or not we do not know, but as a councillor and treasurer of the Household he cannot escape a share of the responsibility. He was one of the commissioners named to collect the Grant in Kent, and one of the eighty commissioners who gathered in Canterbury on 2–3 May to report the difficulties that they were having.
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Many of those assessed at £20 or more had come in professing their willingness to pay, or to serve the King in many other ways, but alleging that they simply did not have the money. Warham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Cobham, Sir Henry Guildford and Sir Thomas Boleyn wrote a number of letters to Wolsey, making their case. The concessions already granted to London had done nothing, they pointed out, to make the situation in Kent any easier. It grew tense as the protesters turned out in force to make their point. Lord Cobham sent one man to the Tower for his evil words, and Sir Thomas Boleyn was roughly treated by an assembly at Maidstone.
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It was, the Duke of Norfolk reported, ‘almost a rebellion’, and in the event the King backed down, initially making concessions and finally cancelling the demand altogether. Wolsey, who had been the main manager of the business, loyally took the blame for this fiasco, but in fact it was the King who was responsible, and he learned a salutary lesson. The ‘taxpayers strike’ of 1525 demonstrated one of the limitations upon his power. It was all very well to claim that he was answerable only to God, when it came to money, the commons were in the driving seat. Forced loans were illegal, and this did not even pretend to be a loan. The Cardinal’s credit with the King was undoubtedly shaken by these events, but they seem to have done Sir Thomas no harm at all. In the midst of the crisis, in April 1525 he was appointed to yet another office of profit, this time the stewardship of the lordship of Swaffham in Norfolk, which was part of the honour of Richmond.
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His father had been a client of the first Duke of Norfolk, and later of the Earl of Surrey who became the second Duke in 1514. However, the third Duke, who succeeded to the title in 1524, was his brother-in-law, a friend and ally rather than a master, and in terms of their estates they must have been well nigh equal.