Yet, as the poet Thomas Wyatt once pointed out, saying something a thousand times doesn’t make it true if it isn’t.
So many books said so, they couldn’t all be wrong. I confess that until I started researching Jane’s life, I had always thought it was. Nemesis had caught up with her, the deaths of the innocent were avenged at last. So when she herself was executed for keeping watch while Catherine Howard met Thomas Culpepper, she deserved all she got. Who can blame them? Allegedly, she bore false witness against George and Anne, so bringing about their deaths together with those of Norris, Brereton, Weston and Smeaton, and was then handsomely rewarded for her lies. People think they know about Jane and don’t like what they think they know. Therefore, because like everyone else, I abhor injustice, I am happy to champion the cause of another maligned woman: Anne’s sister-in-law, George’s wife, Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford. Over the centuries, Anne and her fellow victims have been ably defended. Their deaths, and hers, were totally unjust. And because she was innocent, so was each and every one of the five men accused with her. She had committed neither adultery nor incest.
Let me nail my colours to the mast: I believe that when Anne Boleyn knelt before the Calais swordsman on that May morning in 1536 she was entirely innocent of the charges levelled against her. You can read my review of Julia’s book on Jane over at our review site – click here, but here is Julia’s guest article on Jane. I was fortunate enough to meet Julia, and her husband John Guy, on our recent Executed Queens Tour and I have to admit to giving her quite a grilling on Jane Boleyn as I too believe that Jane, like her husband and sister-in-law, has been maligned by history and popular fiction. Today we have a guest post from author and historian, Julia Fox, who wrote “Jane Boleyn: The Infamous Lady Rochford” and who has just released Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Archduchess of Burgundy. "The Lady Parker" a portrait once thought to be Jane Parker but which is probably Grace Newport, Jane's sister-in-law
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