The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (20 page)

Sir William Brereton (or Bryerton) of Aldford, who came from a leading Cheshire family, was clearly another member of Anne Boleyn’s inner circle, and, like Norris and Weston, a Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, who had been promoted from groom, a position he held since at least 1521.
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In 1531 there is a record of him delivering jewels to Anne Boleyn.
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Brereton, like Norris, was so trusted and liked by Henry and the Boleyn faction, whose staunch adherent he became, that he had been invited to witness Henry’s secret wedding to Anne in January 1533.
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That same year, he was involved in some dealings with Lord Rochford.
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Despite being a noted seducer of women,
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Brereton was married to the King’s cousin, Elizabeth Somerset, sister of the Earl of Worcester, and was thus highly placed at court and “flourishing in favor.”
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He had given Anne her beloved greyhound, Urian, who was named after Brereton’s brother, a groom of the Privy Chamber. William often accompanied the King and Anne on hunting expeditions, and enjoyed the patronage both of Henry’s bastard son, the Duke of Richmond, whose steward he was in the Welsh Marches,
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and of Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.
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Thanks to royal grants of extensive estates and Crown offices worth £1,200 (£401,850) a year,
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and the backing of Richmond, Norfolk, and Queen Anne, Brereton exercised virtually autonomous territorial power in Cheshire and North Wales, where he served as Richmond’s deputy, becoming notorious as an overmighty subject “both in town and field,
readily furnished with horse, spear, and shield.”
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Cromwell seems to have viewed Brereton’s power in the marches as a threat to his planned administrative reforms, through which he intended to replace feudal control in Wales by the establishment of English-style shires; these plans were well-advanced by March 1536.
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The elimination of Brereton, and the breaking of his alliance with Richmond and Norfolk, would certainly remove significant barriers to these reforms.
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At nearly fifty, Brereton could hardly be cast in the guise of court gallant,
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but his reputation was such that people would not find it difficult to believe him a villain. He was a constant irritant to the Privy Council.
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George Cavendish paints a picture of him as a persecutor of the innocent, an administrator whose justice was rigorous and driven by personal animosity. He refers to the shameful hanging in 1534 of a Flintshire gentleman, John ap Griffith Eyton, whose death Brereton had contrived through sheer malice, “by color of justice,” and in defiance of Cromwell’s attempts to save the man. Brereton believed that Eyton had killed one of his own retainers, and it made no difference to him that Eyton had already been acquitted of that by a court in London.
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The contemporary Welsh chronicler, Ellis Gruffydd, states that Anne Boleyn helped Brereton to secure Eyton’s rearrest, which would not be surprising, given the growing rift between Anne and Cromwell, and it may have been one of the things that caused them to fall out. Later, Cavendish has Brereton lamenting his own ruin, reflecting that he “who striketh with the sword, the sword will overthrow,” and seeing his fall as divine punishment for his multitude of crimes and sins:

Brereton’s disregard for the niceties of the law had become apparent as far back as 1518, when Cardinal Wolsey and other councillors had examined him in the Star Chamber court about “maintaining and comforting” the
murderers of a Master Swettenham, whose brains had been spilled while playing bowls. Brereton and two other men had been accused of preventing Swettenham’s family from obtaining justice and helping the killers—one of whom was Brereton’s relative, another his servant—to escape arrest. For this, Brereton got off relatively lightly with a fine of 500 marks (£52,150), and suffered no loss of office or influence, which might explain why he was still disturbing the peace in Cheshire in the 1530s.
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In 1534, Brereton was supposed to be investigating bribery and corruption at Valle Crucis Abbey, near Llangollen in North Wales, but was himself probably as compromisingly involved as the abbot.
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The next year, Cromwell’s agent in the area, Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, alluding to Brereton’s dubious activities as Richmond’s steward, disapprovingly remarked that it was not to the young duke’s honor to have his badge and livery “worn upon strong thieves’ backs.” Again, Brereton was suspected of protecting murderers from trial and execution, this time, somewhat audaciously, in Richmond’s name.
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In May 1536, only days before his arrest, and evidently blithely unaware of Cromwell’s hostility, Brereton was pressing Master Secretary to grant him the spoils of dissolved abbeys in Cheshire.
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There were therefore several good reasons why Cromwell should have plotted his elimination. Even so, Brereton clearly had no idea what was imminently in store for him.

Brereton’s wife happened to be sister-in-law to the Countess of Worcester, the first person allegedly to lay evidence against the Queen, and there has been speculation that the relationship between these ladies was too close for coincidence,
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and that the countess may have got her information from Lady Brereton. However, that is unlikely, for, as will become clear, there can be no doubt that Elizabeth Somerset believed in her husband’s innocence.

These four gentlemen—Rochford, Norris, Weston, and Brereton—had all been members of the powerful Boleyn faction for some years. Yet the humble Mark Smeaton, the most remarkable inclusion among those accused of criminal association with the Queen, was to be the subject of greater scandal and comment than all the rest put together, for few were able to comprehend how Anne could so far have forgotten herself as to take this lowly musician to her bed.

Mark, a “very handsome” young man,
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and “one of the prettiest monochord players,”
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had been appointed a Groom of the Privy Chamber in 1529,
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so the suggestion that he was perhaps little older than twenty in 1536 cannot be correct.
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He was not of gentle birth, for his father was a carpenter:

A sixteenth-century Italian chronicler, Lodovico Guicciardini, who spent many years in the Low Countries and wrote a history of Europe covering the period 1529 to 1560, referred to Smeaton, when writing about Anne Boleyn’s fall, as “Mark the Fleming, her keyboard player.”
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But Smeaton was not Anne’s keyboard player; he was employed by the King. His Flemish surname may have been de Smet or de Smedt, and he probably changed it to Smeaton (or Smeton) when he came to England;
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this would explain how he knew French. It is possible that he was talent-spotted by, and came to England under, the auspices of Philip van Wilder, the celebrated Dutch lutenist, who was in charge of all the musicians of the Privy Chamber.
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It was perhaps Wilder who brought him to the attention of Cardinal Wolsey.

Mark owed his position at court to his musical talent, for he was skilled at playing the lute, the virginals, and the portable organ, as well as being a gifted singer and “the deftest dancer in the land”
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—abilities that were all rated highly at Henry’s court, and which were admired by Cardinal Wolsey, himself of lowly parentage, who recruited the young Smeaton for his choir. Cavendish knew him in those days as “a singing boy.”
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After the cardinal’s fall from favor in 1529, the youth transferred to the Chapel Royal, a preferment that would not have come his way unless he had an outstanding voice. “Being but a boy, [he] clamb up the high stage, that bred was of nought, and brought to felicity.”
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Yet not everyone was full of praise for his talents. The French reformist scholar and poet, Nicholas Bourbon, who admired Anne Boleyn and spent two years at
the English court, “granted” that Mark wrote good songs, but complained that he rendered them tedious by “so assiduously singing them; anything overdone is unwelcome. Even honey, if taken too much, becomes bitter.”

Despite Smeaton’s promotion to the Privy Chamber, where his duties would have included entertaining the King, he was still low down in the court pecking order, which is apparent from people addressing him only as “Mark.” But Henry VIII obviously thought highly of him: his privy purse expenses show that he supported Smeaton financially, gave him special rewards each Easter and Christmas, and, from 1529, provided him with shirts, hose, shoes, and bonnets, so he could present himself smartly. “Young Master Weston,” described as a lutenist, was given festive gifts along with Smeaton,
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which reveals that Francis Weston was one of his colleagues and played music with him in the Privy Chamber, all members of which were expected to turn their hands, when required by the King, to music-making, singing, dancing, or acting.

It was not long before the musician was befriended by Lord Rochford, who drew him further into the Boleyn circle. Rochford owned a manuscript of two poems, “Les Lamentations de Matheolus” and “Le Livre de Leesce” (or “Le Résolu en Mariage”), by the fifteenth-century French writer Jean Lefèvre. It is inscribed above the text in his own hand,
This book is mine. George Boleyn 1526
, but Smeaton’s signature,
A moy, M. Marc S. à moi
meaning literally “to me,” but effectively “mine”)—appears at the bottom. The emphatic inscription suggests that Rochford had given the manuscript to Smeaton.
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It has recently been suggested by Retha Warnicke that Smeaton was one of Rochford’s homosexual lovers. In fact, Warnicke suggests that all the men accused with Anne had indulged in illegal sexual practices and were thus easily framed, but the evidence is purely inferential, and her theory has been dismissed by most historians.
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However, she may have had a point where Rochford was concerned, as has been discussed.

A choir book now in the collection of the Royal College of Music in London was probably once owned by Anne Boleyn, and it has been suggested that it was perhaps compiled by Smeaton.
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This theory rests on the grounds that the handwriting on it is similar to his signature on the Lefèvre manuscript. This book contains a collection of motets and chansons, and bears an initial letter illustrating what is supposed to be a falcon, Anne’s armorial badge, attacking a pomegranate, the badge of Katherine of Aragon; however, the badge in the picture is very unlike Anne’s. Nevertheless,
the music book does carry the motto of her father, Thomas Boleyn, and her name, “Mres. A. Bolleyne,” but the use of the title “Mistress” dates the book to the period prior to Thomas Boleyn being created Earl of Wiltshire in 1529 (after which Anne used the courtesy title Lady Anne Rochford)—too early for it to have had any connection with Smeaton.
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Despite Smeaton’s “poor degree,”
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he appears to have enjoyed enviable status, to have kept horses at court and had servants who wore his livery. He had also become very grand—“I knew not myself, waxed proud in my courage, disdained my father, and would not him see,”
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which may have prompted him to discourage the use of his surname, for he is frequently referred to in the sources as Mark, Marc, or Marks.
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A contemporary life of Henry VIII known as the “Spanish Chronicle”—not always a reliable source—speaks of his overbearing manner and his insolence to his fellow courtiers. His comfortable financial status is attested to in a list of prisoners in the Tower of London in May 1536, detailing the charges of their maintenance, which shows that all, including Smeaton—the only one who was not of gentle birth—“had lands and goods sufficient of their own”
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to pay for their keep.

That Smeaton’s career had advanced steadily is obvious from the fact that at Christmas 1530 he received 40s (£750) from the King, yet on October 6, 1532, he got £3. 6s. 8d (£1,250).
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He may have been in Henry’s suite for the state visit to Calais that began five days later. Sadly, the King’s privy purse accounts for the years 1533-36 are lost, so we have few means of charting Smeaton’s later career.
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Of all the men who would be accused with Anne, Smeaton would be the only one to persist in his admission of guilt, which proved to some appalled contemporaries that he was no gentleman. Cavendish, of course, thought him guilty, and that he died “like a wretch” for his “presumption”: