The King's Damsel (37 page)

Boleyn, Anne (later Lady Anne Rochford; Anne, Lady Marquess of Pembroke; Queen Anne) (c.1501–1536)

Does Anne Boleyn really need any introduction? She was a maid of honor to Queen Catherine, married Henry VIII, and was executed on trumped-up charges of adultery. For further reading I recommend Eric Ives’s
The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn
and G. W. Bernard’s
Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attraction
.

Boleyn, Jane (née Parker), Viscountess Rochford (c.1505–1542)

A maid of honor to Queen Catherine, she married George Boleyn and as Lady Rochford served in the households of Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Jane Seymour, Queen Anne of Cleves, and Queen
Catherine Howard. She was banished from court in 1534 for picking a fight with the unknown damsel in whom the king was interested. She was executed for helping Catherine Howard meet in secret with her lover.

Boleyn, Mary (c.1498–1543)

Anne Boleyn’s older sister, she was one of the many mistresses of King Francis I of France before returning to England to be married to William Carey. As Mistress Carey, she became Henry VIII’s mistress. Her two children, Henry and Catherine, are sometimes said to have been the king’s but probably were not. After her husband’s death, she was at court in her sister’s household. Mary’s secret marriage to a minor courtier, Sir William Stafford, led to her banishment.

Butts, Margaret (née Bacon) (d.1545+)

Lady Butts, wife of Dr. William Butts, was in the household of the Princess of Wales by 1525.

Butts, William (c.1485–1545)

As one of the royal physicians, Dr. Butts appears to have been part of the household of the Princess of Wales in 1525. Later he was physician to the king. He was sent to look after Anne Boleyn when she fell ill of the sweating sickness in 1528.

Catherine of Aragon (1485–1536)

Queen of England until Anne Boleyn displaced her, she never recognized the annulment of her marriage or the illegitimacy of her
daughter. An excellent account of her life is
Catherine of Aragon: The Spanish Queen of Henry VIII,
by Giles Tremlett.

Cromwell, Thomas (c.1485–x.1540)

A lawyer, Cromwell became the king’s chief advisor after the fall from power of Thomas Wolsey. He remained high in royal favor until he arranged the king’s marriage to Anne of Cleves.

Dabridgecourt, Cecily (1506–1558)

A maid of honor to the Princess of Wales, she was probably part of that household from 1525. She married Sir Rhys Mansell on June 19, 1527.

Dannett, Mary (d. before 1562)

A maid of honor to the Princess of Wales, she was probably part of that household from 1525. She married George Medley after 1526.

Egerton, Sir Ralph (c.1468–1528)

Treasurer of the Princess of Wales’s household in 1525, he was by that time a very old man by the standards of the day. He was about fifty-seven. The story of the kidnapping of his future wife is true. She survived him. Some accounts identify him as Princess Mary’s “valentine” on February 14, 1526.

Fitzherbert, Mary (d.1532+)

A maid of honor to the Princess of Wales, she was probably part of that household from 1525. Little is known about her except her
name. She probably came from a Derbyshire family. In 1532, Princess Mary gave her a marriage gift but her husband’s name is not recorded.

Gordon, Lady Catherine (c.1474–1537)

The daughter of a Scottish earl and his third wife, Lady Catherine was married to a man claiming to be Richard, Duke of York, son of Edward IV. Following their capture during an unsuccessful attempt to invade England in 1497, he was revealed to be one Perkin Warbeck, a commoner. King Henry VII imprisoned Warbeck but sent Lady Catherine to his wife, Elizabeth of York, to be a member of the queen’s household. She remained in that position until the queen’s death and later was one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies. She married three more times. During her third marriage, she was chief lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales from August 1525 until around 1530.

Henry VIII (1491–1547)

King of England from 1509. His love for Anne Boleyn prompted him to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, ruin his former friend and advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, and break with the Roman Catholic Church to declare himself supreme head of the Church of England. The only two women it is certain were his concubines were Elizabeth Blount and Mary Boleyn. About all other women linked to him romantically, other than those he married, there is doubt as to whether the relationships were ever consummated. In the convention of the time, a knight referred to a lady not his wife as his “mistress” in the “game of love” but these liaisons were, more often than not, purely platonic.

Holland, Elizabeth (d.1554+)

A maid of honor to Anne Boleyn both before and after she became queen, Bess Holland had been the mistress of Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, since about 1526 and was still his mistress twenty years later. In spite of claims made by the duchess, Bess was a gentlewoman by birth and related to Lord Hussey. She may also have served in Queen Jane’s household, since she rode in that queen’s funeral procession in 1537.

Mary, Princess of Wales (1516–1558)

The future queen of England was never formally created Princess of Wales, but she was called by that title in documents and referred to herself that way. She was sent to the Marches of Wales in 1525, living at various houses but not, as is so often stated, at Ludlow Castle, which was in a state of extreme disrepair. David Loades’s
Mary Tudor: A Life
should be read along with more recent biographies by Linda Porter and Anna Whitelock.

Perky (also spelled Purkoy and Purquoy)

Probably a bichon frise, a breed much in favor at sixteenth-century European courts, Perky belonged to Lady Lisle, wife of the Lord Deputy of Calais. She sent him to England as a gift for Queen Anne in mid-January 1534. On December 18, 1534, Margery Horsman reported that Perky had died in a fall and that because Queen Anne had “delighted so much in little Purkoy,” the king was the only one who dared tell her what had happened to him. This story is found in
The Lisle Letters,
edited by M. St. Clare Byrne. Additional details surrounding Perky’s demise are my own invention but are not beyond the realm of possibility.

Pole, Margaret (née Plantagenet; Countess of Salisbury), (1473–x.1541)

The daughter of George, Duke of Clarence, reputedly drowned in a butt of Malmsey, she was married to Sir Richard Pole. In 1513, during her widowhood, she was granted the title Countess of Salisbury in her own right. She was lady mistress of Princess Mary’s household from 1516 to 1533. She was executed on trumped-up charges of treason. She was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1886.

Rede, Anne (c.1510–1585)

A maid of honor to the Princess of Wales in 1525, she was courted by Sir Giles Greville in 1526 and 1527 and married him shortly before his death in 1528. Letters from the Countess of Salisbury and Lady Rede on the subject of this courtship still exist. Anne went on to marry twice more and to serve in the households of both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. She retired from court life in 1566.

Savage, Anne (1506–1564)

A maid of honor to Anne Boleyn, she is said to have been a witness to her marriage to Henry VIII on January 25, 1533. Anne Savage married Lord Berkeley in April 1533. Numerous letters by and about her are extant.

Seymour, Jane (c.1508–1537)

A maid of honor to both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Jane attracted King Henry’s amorous attentions in 1536 and became his third wife after Anne Boleyn’s execution. She died shortly after giving birth to the future Edward VI.

Shelton, Margaret (Madge) (1505+–1583)

A maid of honor to and cousin of Queen Anne Boleyn, she allegedly seduced the king at the queen’s command to distract him from his interest in the unnamed mistress of 1534. Although some believe this was her younger sister, Mary Shelton, Margaret is the more likely candidate. In addition to the king, she was romantically linked to Sir Henry Norris, a widower, and Sir Francis Weston (although Weston was married), both of whom were later executed on the charge they were among Queen Anne’s lovers. Margaret later married a country gentleman by whom she had a large family. In 1538, Christina of Milan, then being considered as a possible fourth wife for Henry VIII, was described as greatly resembling the king’s former mistress, Mistress Shelton.

Vittorio or Victoria, Mary (d.1536+)

A Mary Victoria was a member of the household of the Princess of Wales from 1525 until at least 1533. Her identity is uncertain. Dr. Fernando Vittorio was Queen Catherine’s Spanish physician. In 1518, he brought his wife to England. They had a son and may well have had other children, including a daughter named Mary. The doctor’s wife seems to have remained in Queen Catherine’s household, along with her husband. She was left £10 in Catherine’s will.

Wilkinson, Joan (née North) (c.1498–1556)

As the widow of a London alderman, Joan pursued a career as a silkwoman from her house in Soper Lane. She held the post of silkwoman to Queen Anne Boleyn from 1533 to 1535 and during that time was also engaged in smuggling banned Lutheran books into
England. During the reign of Mary Tudor, she went into exile. She died in Frankfurt am Main.

Wolsey, Thomas (later Cardinal) (1471–1530)

Henry VIII’s chief advisor until he failed to secure Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. When Wolsey fell from power, the king seized his property, including Hampton Court and York Place. The latter became “the king’s palace at Westminster” and later came to be called Whitehall Palace.

For more information on the women listed above and to see portraits of some of them, please visit
http://www.KateEmersonHistoricals.com/TudorWomenIndex.htm

READING GROUP GUIDE

BY
K
ATE
E
MERSON

The real identity of “the king’s damsel” is unknown, but Kate Emerson has chosen to make her a fictional gentlewoman from Glastonbury named Thomasine Lodge. Thanks to the machinations of the stranger who becomes her guardian after her father’s death, Thomasine is placed in the service of Princess Mary, only surviving child of Henry VIII and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Thomasine soon becomes one of her young mistress’s confidantes. Later, when Mary asks her to go to the king’s court to spy on Anne Boleyn, soon to be King Henry’s bride, loyalty obliges Thomasine to agree.

At court, Thomasine not only finds favor with the queen, but also with the king, and experiences both the benefits and dangers of having done so. She also begins to realize that there is a wider world beyond the court, in particular that inhabited by Rafe Pinckney, the son of one of the royal silkwomen.

Thomasine’s time as a royal mistress is brief, but it takes place at a particularly tempestuous time during the reign of Henry VIII—his marriage to Anne Boleyn. Thomasine leaves court before Anne’s arrest and execution, but it is while she is there that the seeds of future disaster are sown.

1. What is your impression of Thomasine’s stepmother? Should she have done more to protect her husband’s daughter? If so, what could she have done?

2. The definition of loyalty instilled in Thomasine at a young age by old Lady Salisbury, summed up as “be loyal to Princess Mary and willing to die to protect her,” guides her during all her time at court. What do you think of this philosophy and of Thomasine for believing in it?

3. Thomasine also believes what her guardian tells her, some of which later proves to be untrue. Do you think she was naïve to accept his word, or just a product of an upbringing that taught girls to be guided by a man, even one they neither liked nor trusted?