Pod Insights Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society The Boleyn Who Betrayed Henry VIII About this episode She was executed on Henry VIII's orders alongside Catherine Howard, and was sister-in-law to Anne Boleyn and the King. She lived in the heart of the Tudor court, and almost made it out alive.
It was a time of huge danger, and such high stakes. But who was Jane Boleyn? Traitor, spy, a woman trying to surive?
In today's episode Kate's joined by the fantastic historian and author Philippa Gregory, author of Boleyn Traitor https://www.philippagregory.com/books/boleyn-traitor#, to help us get to know this fascinating woman.
This episode was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Kate Lister? Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithGemini.
1:12 Kate Lister? Hello, my lovely Betwixters. It's me, Kate Lester. This is Betwixt the Sheets and you are you. And boy, am I glad that you are here with me, listening to Betwixt the Sheets. Otherwise, what is this really? But before we can keep going, I do have to let you know, probably for the umpteenth billionth time, but let's face it, if I didn't do it now, you'd think that it was weird. I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, spoken by adults, other adults, bad adults, things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. I'm an adult as well. Oh, thank God. Right, let's cut on with it.
1:47 Kate Lister? Jane Berlin is playing a dangerous game. Yes, Jane, not Anne. It's 1541 and on the other side of this heavy oak door, inside the Queen's royal bedchamber, alas, Catherine Howard, yeah, that one, is holding secret meetings with a man that she loves. And it's not Henry VIII. I have some sympathy with her, I wouldn't love him either. She's in there with Thomas Culpepper. Oh Catherine, Catherine, Catherine, Catherine. I know that you're married to a fat miserable git, but you need to be smarter than this. And to make matters worse, Jane Berlin is keeping guard.
2:31 Kate Lister? Jane, what are you playing at? This woman, sister-in-law to Anne Berlin, has been on the sidelines of scandal at the Tudor court for years, but now she is thrust into the spotlight. And what will Henry do when he finds out? I think we all know the answer to that one, and really, Jane should have known as well. But, let's hear more about this fascinating woman's life and her terrible decision-making process.
3:05 Speaker 02 What do you want, honey?
3:06 Speaker 03 Oh, money, of course.
3:08 Speaker 04 You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.
3:10 Speaker 05 I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing it.
3:23 Speaker 04 Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.
3:25 Speaker 06 Goodness, what beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie.
3:34 Kate Lister? Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. Jane Berlin played such a unique and important part in the court of Henry VIII. She was married to George Berlin, Georgie, so she was sister-in-law to Anne. And we all know their fate, don't we? Off with their heads. And maybe you know a little bit about Jane as well. But what was her role in Henry's court? How did she fit back in once her husband and her sister-in-law were murdered? And was she really a spy for Cromwell? Well, to find out more about this woman, I am joined by the one and the only, the utterly magnificent Philippa Gregory, no less,
4:15 Kate Lister? historian and author of previous works like The Other Berlin Girl and Normal Women: 900 Years of Women Making History. Philippa previously came on the podcast to talk about the generation of women who thrived after the Black Death. So be sure to scroll back to listen to that one if you haven't heard it. But without further ado, let's meet Jane and let's meet Philippa.
4:37 Kate Lister? Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Philippa Gregory. How are you doing?
4:44 Speaker 05 Very, very pleased to be back with you, Kitty. Nice to see you.
4:47 Kate Lister? It's so nice to see you and obviously I'm doubly excited because not only do I get to talk to you again, but your latest book is on such a fascinating character. And I've been desperate for somebody to look in more detail at this woman, Jane Berlin, the infamous Lady Rochford. What was it that made you want to tell her story?
5:09 Speaker 05 Well, partly because she is known as the infamous Lady Rochford and she's one of the women who really exemplify how we like to bring stereotypes from our own time to characters of the past. So at the time, her time, the chroniclers hardly mentioned her. She was clearly executed for being an accessory to the adultery of the Queen of England, Catherine Howard. And she was clearly wife to George Boleyn, who was himself executed for adultery with the Queen of England, his sister Anne Boleyn. But at the time, it's not that she flies under the radar. She's acknowledged, everybody knows she's there, but in a sense, there's so much going on that people don't really go into her life very much.
5:53 Speaker 05 They're not that interested in her. Jump forward hundreds of years to the Victorian historians and they identify her with Victorian precision as a bad woman. And so she's a bad woman to the Victorian.
6:07 Speaker 02 And that's her reputation, which goes right the way up to the modern day. When we are much more inclined to a psychological explanation of female behaviour. And we say, she's crazy. She's literally been, you know, shoehorned into two really, really typical stereotypes about women. Bad or mad. And I think that she's much more nuanced, much more complicated, much more interesting than that. And that she's an agent of her own life. And that's why the time is right now. That, you know, well, we're so much more interested in women's history. Well, we now believe that women can indeed run their own lives and can be trusted to do so.
6:47 Speaker 02 That we start looking at not her, but so many other historical women and say, what's really going on here? It can't be the cliche that we've been told.
6:56 Kate Lister? The first time I ever heard of her was when I was reading about the execution of Catherine Howard. And it was just, as you say, it was just a passing note that Lady Rochford was executed alongside. And I remember at the time thinking, what? Pardon, go back. Who's this person? Like, how did this person manage to get executed alongside a queen? And then you find out that she was married to Anne Boleyn's brother. This person who was right there in the centre of this Tudor mess. Let's start right at the beginning. Where did she even come from? Where did Jane emerge from?
7:30 Speaker 02 Well, she has a pretty conventional childhood. She's the daughter of Lord Morley, who's a Tudor scholar, who's known to the Tudor court, but doesn't like to take part in the power breaking and the power struggles of the Tudor court. He's a translator of Renaissance texts. He's a really, really top flight scholar. And his gifts to the royal court. Every new year, he gives them a translation of an Italian text, which is part of the Renaissance library. So he's part of this sort of humanist European. Highly scholarly world. He sends his daughter Jane, his oldest girl, to the court of Catherine of Aragon to become a maid in waiting.
8:12 Speaker 02 And she works there and then he arranges a moderately good marriage for her to the oldest son of the Boleyn family, who are diplomats and courtiers and working at the Tudor court. So they're on the rise, they're not particularly interesting, but they're doing pretty good. You know, their lands are neighbouring, so they're worth putting the young people together. And she has, as far as we know, an unremarkable marriage to him, it's not for love. But certainly they were of the same age, they're both reasonably attractive, they knew they would be married to somebody not for love. So there's no problem there. And then, of course, the most extraordinary thing happens that nobody could have predicted,
8:52 Speaker 02 which is that Anne Boleyn pulls off this social bombshell of marrying the King of England. And all of a sudden, our Jane is married into the royal family and she is sister-in-law to the King of England, to the Queen of England and the King of England. So George Boleyn immediately becomes top courtier. He becomes the diplomat of choice to send to France, though he's very young and very inexperienced. And he is part of the circle of handsome young men that circulate the handsome young prince, Henry the Eighth. And Jane becomes top lady in waiting to her sister-in-law. I mean, you can't compare it to anything, you can't imagine that the sort of leap into wealth and
9:35 Speaker 02 power and status that she experiences just because her sister-in-law makes it to the very, very top. And then, of course, there is a equally catastrophic fall in the reverse direction when Anne and George are accused of adultery and incest and therefore treason, plotting the king's death. And they are beheaded and you would expect Jane to fall like a stone. So all the Bolins disappear from court, they retire, they neither of them, neither mother nor father do anything effectual at court anymore, they just go back to their country estates and they're
10:13 Kate Lister? I would.
10:14 Speaker 02 Anyone, no sense would.
10:16 Kate Lister? Right.
10:17 Speaker 02 Amazingly, Jane Boleyn is promoted.
10:21 Speaker 02 She becomes Lady in Waiting, Chief Lady in Waiting to the next Queen, Jane Seymour. She is at her bed when Jane dies in childbirth. She is at christening behind, you know, carrying the baby at the christening. She couldn't be in a more important position. And then when Jane Seymour dies, she's Chief Lady in Waiting to Anne of Cleves. And then when Anne of Cleves is divorced, she's Chief Lady in Waiting to Catherine Howard.
10:46 Kate Lister? She's there the whole time.
10:47 Speaker 02 She's there the whole time. And one of the big questions for me writing this novel was, how do you, Jane, pull that off? Because that is not ordinary. There's no route that could explain coming back from that sort of early disgrace.
11:06 Kate Lister? No, when you put it like that, surely the court would shun you and your best bet would be to go, do you know what? I'm just gonna retire quietly and and tend a garden and keep my head down.
11:17 Speaker 02 But instead of that, there's actually an act of Parliament that improves her diary. So she gets a fortune that she wouldn't have expected. And she gets promoted to be Lady in Waiting to all the subsequent queens.
11:29 Kate Lister? Something is afoot.
11:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, who's done that? Where's that come from? And I think the only person who could have done it would have been Henry the Eighth. And we know Henry the Eighth is not going to do that without some kind of extraordinary benefit. There's never any suggestion that she's his lover. And that's the only reason Henry would give a woman.
11:50 Kate Lister? Yes, yeah.
11:51 Speaker 02 So who else could do it? The only other person who could do it, technically do it, would be Thomas Cromwell, because he runs the administration. He runs the show. He can tell Parliament to pass a law. He can tell the Queen, this is to be your Lady in Waiting. He's top, top, top admin guy. So I go, why would Thomas Cromwell interest himself in this woman? And I am ninety percent certain that it is because he is setting up, he's in the middle of setting up a huge spy administration network in which all of the towns of England have somebody who reports to him. He's usually made them sheriff or mayor or promoted them as a justice of peace locally.
12:33 Speaker 02 Most of the cities of Europe are reporting to him as part of a huge, not just political, but also commercial diplomatic network. So he's running a big, big spy network before we are really aware of spy networks very much. He's trained, he spent a long time in Italy, where the Republic of Venice perfected spying as a tool of government. So he's very, very well informed in how this works.
13:03 Kate Lister? Oh, hello.
13:04 Speaker 02 We have the names of three women who are spies in the Queen's chambers and they are Cromwell spies. He's recruited them and they work for him. And so I go, I think Jane is one of these. And we don't have any, they've got no documentary evidence for it. But all I have is, in a sense, this missing patron who pulls her out of disgrace and puts her into the top office in the land. Someone with extraordinary amount of power and influence has done that. The only person I think who could do it is Thomas Cromwell and you can see why he would benefit from it.
13:43 Kate Lister? Just to go back to what happened with Anne Boleyn, it is nuts that now you get married to some local guy who's on the make and then all of a sudden, oh my God, now you're having dinner with the Queen. But in that scandal, was Jane implicated at all? Because she was married to George, who was accused of having sex with Anne. How was she factored into this? Did she just put her hands up and go, I don't know anything about anything?
14:09 Speaker 02 That's a really key question and it's on that, that her reputation becomes really destroyed, that at the time, we know that there were two women who gave evidence against George and Anne and they probably reported inappropriate intimacy. So him going into her bedroom and chatting to her, you know, in my earlier novel, The Other Bilingual, I have him lounging about on her bed and knowing too much about her. I mean, in this novel, they are very, very close, as they would be as people who are trying To survive in a very dangerous environment. So it's the Victorian historians who decide that one of the women who gave evidence against George was his wife.
14:52 Speaker 02 George never says that. And we have a letter, the only letter we have, which is reported not, we don't have the original. She says she's going to speak to the king for George, for her husband, and we don't know if she even does. So I think at the time, she kept her head down, like her father did, like her mother did, like her really powerful uncle did. All of the Bolins and the Howards just go absolutely quiet on this and let so-called justice, let the show trial roll its way through and get to the execution and hope to survive themselves. So I think that's all she's doing then. But when it comes to the divorce of Anne of Cleves, when she is under, I believe, working for Thomas Cromwell.
15:38 Speaker 02 Thomas Cromwell has to get the divorce through because Henry the Eighth has decided he doesn't like Anne of Cleves. That's the one that is, this is fat and ugly. So Thomas Cromwell's got to deliver this divorce at speed, he's really got to. And I think that he tells Jane what she is going to say in her witness statement. And her witness statement, it is her who gives it, her and two other women, but she's at the top of the witnesses. She says that the Queen Anne of Cleves says to her in the morning that the king lies beside her and sleeps all night. And in the morning, he kisses her and says, good day sweetheart. And she says, good day, my lord.
16:19 Kate Lister? Didn't know it was Jane that said that.
16:22 Speaker 02 It's Jane who.
16:22 Kate Lister? Jane.
16:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly. And, you know, in my novel, I suggest that actually she's doing Anne of Cleves a favour because if not that, there's going to be an accusation. And she's certainly earning her pay that she's already been given from Cromwell of her enormous beautiful house and her huge estates and her great position in life. And she has to deliver material which proves that the king has not consummated his marriage and that it's okay to put Anne of Cleves aside.
16:53 Kate Lister? So she really is right in the middle of all of this. And I know that we've got to be careful looking back this far, but your point is absolutely solid. Why wasn't this woman completely disgraced and cast to the outliers of society? She was married to a guy that was accused of bonking the Queen, and then the Queen was her sister-in-law, and then, but no, she's elevated. This person is now allowed to be lady-in-waiting to different Queens. That's bizarre.
17:22 Speaker 02 It is really extraordinary. And I think she doesn't put a foot wrong until Thomas Cromwell himself is executed by Henry on his wedding day. I mean, nice timing.
17:34 Kate Lister? Oh, well done, Henry. Oh, oh.
17:36 Speaker 02 He really is rather vile by now. So he executes his great friend, great supporter, the only man who could run his kingdom on his wedding day to Catherine Howard, which means that not only does Henry have nobody to help him and steer him and to run the kingdom and to maintain the spy network and to answer the letters and to maintain the diplomatic relationships, to run the Reformation of the Church of England, which Cromwell was doing, and we can't do, nobody can do it. Not only is Henry absolutely deserted, it's like the whole civil service walked out, but Jane has lost her advisor and her spymaster. So she has to run Catherine Howard's
18:19 Kate Lister? Oh, no.
18:21 Speaker 02 life without any advice and any support, without any protection. And of course, when Catherine Howard falls insanely and completely in love with Thomas Culpepper, which I believe she did, and we've got evidence for that in a letter that she wrote him, Jane is powerless to stop the relationship. And I think she thinks she's going to do something very, very clever and very, very interesting, which is allow it, support it. And then she, if the King dies, and everybody thinks he's going to die, then Catherine Howard is Dowager Queen of England. And if she were to have a son by Thomas Culpepper, she's got a very
19:04 Speaker 02 good chance of being on the Regents Council. And Jane Rochford, having been her advisor and duenna and supporter and complicit in this love affair, is made for life. You know, she's got such scandal on her that she's literally in clover forever.
19:24 Kate Lister? That's a risky game.
19:26 Speaker 02 She's behind the throne of the Queen Dowager.
19:29 Kate Lister? That's risky, though.
19:31 Speaker 02 It's incredibly risky.
19:35 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Philippa and Jane after this short break.
19:50 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.
20:22 Kate Lister? Hello, Betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right, it took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.
21:06 Kate Lister? She does seem to be making, at least what I know of her, smart decisions all the way through. Like, she's in the centre of these scandals, but she's playing it well. Like, when the thing with Anne kicks off, she just goes to ground, as everyone does, and then kind of reappears. And then with Anne of Cleve, she's suddenly there with all this information. It does seem really odd that she'd suddenly then take up, not take up, but, you know, fall in with this, how old was Catherine Howard? She's like, 18?
21:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, she's even younger. She's probably about 16 when this-
21:33 Kate Lister? 16? And I feel endlessly sorry for Catherine Howard. I've got a real soft spot for her. But also, it's, you just want to sit down and go, sweetheart, come on now. I know he's pretty, but you can't do this. What on earth is she doing? Encouraging this and allowing this and not reporting it?
21:51 Speaker 02 I love your imaginary drama of you saying to Catherine, oh, sweetheart, sit down. Suppose, okay, I shall be Catherine Howard in this scenario.
21:59 Kate Lister? Okay.
22:00 Speaker 02 And I say to you, I don't care.
22:04 Kate Lister? Oh, God.
22:04 Speaker 02 I am married to a man old enough to be my grandfather, who is disgusting. And he's impotent, but he keeps trying. I mean, it is abuse, it is assault. I cannot bear it. The only way I will get through this is if I can see, once a day, this man I love. And I'd rather die than not see him. She actually writes a letter, and she says, it makes my heart to die to think that I will not see you today.
22:33 Kate Lister? Oh, Catherine.
22:34 Speaker 02 It's not a passing fancy. As far as she's concerned, this is the love of her life, and she would rather die than not see him. And tragically, she does give her life for it.
22:46 Kate Lister? Do you think he loved her? I mean, we've all done that, haven't we, when we were 17, of like, but I love him so much.
22:51 Speaker 02 I know. He's a bit older. He certainly knows the risks he's running. I think he did love her, because I think he really understood much more than she did. He was a friend of Henry. I mean, he was in the court. He was not a child. I think he's late 20s or early 30s. So he knows much more the risk they're running. And I think he is probably flattered. I think he probably really, really, really fancies her. And I think he's probably in love with her, yeah. I can't see any reason for him to take these risks if it wasn't- Really compelling.
23:29 Kate Lister? I suppose when you say it like that, I can understand a situation that might have developed with Jane of, well, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna shop her in? Because then she probably will die. You're now implicated in this the second you know about it. So maybe what she was doing was trying to, like, help them and keep it under wraps somehow?
23:49 Speaker 02 Well, the facts are that she lets him into the Queen's rooms and she stays with. I think she's trying to kind of chaperone them and keep a lid on it. So Catherine says she wants to see him and that, to the scaffold Catherine says they didn't have sex.
24:05 Kate Lister? Do you believe her?
24:07 Speaker 02 There's some evidence that Jane turned her chair and wasn't watching them.
24:11 Kate Lister? That's kind of sweet.
24:12 Speaker 02 Thing says that she fell asleep, so she doesn't know quite what went on. And somebody listening outside the door, someone else altogether, says that she hears the Queen sigh. And she thinks she's, the word she uses is that she dies away, which is Tudor speak for orgasm.
24:28 Kate Lister? See, that's a lie, isn't it though, Jane? That, that I turned my chair around and I just fell asleep. There was, it was so uninteresting what was going on in the room. I just thought I'd have a little nap and I don't actually know what happened at the crucial moment.
24:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, that's how you say I was there, but I, but I won't give evidence against them.
24:44 Kate Lister? Smart. That's like the Tudor colour, like, I just don't remember. I just, I just, I was there. I just don't, my memory's gone completely.
24:51 Speaker 02 I used to work in journalism. We used to say, yeah, it might have happened. I don't know. I was on a day off.
24:58 Kate Lister? Now I'm gonna say, I was in the chair and I had a nap and I just, I just don't remember what happened.
25:03 Speaker 02 Around and I was having a nap. So, I mean.
25:05 Kate Lister? What a mess, though.
25:07 Speaker 02 It is a terrific mess, but at the same time, this is a time of such danger and such high stakes. If she had pulled it off, if Catherine Howard had got pregnant by Thomas Culpepper, passed it off as the King's baby, been crowned Queen. And then the king had died. She's then the top woman of England forever.
25:29 Kate Lister? Yeah, she is actually. Yeah, she is. Do you think she'd have done this if Cromwell was still around? I know that we're speculating highly, but what would have been his advice in this situation?
25:40 Speaker 02 I think his advice in the situation would have been get hold of Catherine Howard and tell her to wait till the king is dead. And get, you know, Thomas Cromwell is not the sort of man to be melted to the core by a young girl saying she's in love with somebody and she doesn't care. Thomas Cromwell would make her care. I think Thomas Cromwell would be very much, you know, in psychology, be correcting parent. He would be correcting parent role in that particular scenario. And if he couldn't control her, if he couldn't prevent it, I think he would have prevented it. Then I think he would have said to Henry, the cold pepper is the danger here. Get rid. Send away to France on a diplomatic mission. I think probably he wouldn't have told Henry. I think he was thinking it through.
26:26 Speaker 02 If I was Cromwell, I would send cold pepper somewhere really awful, like in their view, Constantinople. On a diplomatic mission for five years and then see what happens when it comes. And then if she has another fancy, send him. You know, there's lots of countries of Europe that you can send these young men to. And they will learn that you can flirt with the queen, but you can't, you can't have assignations.
26:51 Kate Lister? No, you cannot. But none of that happens because the spymaster has gone.
26:56 Speaker 02 Spymaster has been killed by the, I say, you know, narcissistic, if not psychopathic king. And
27:05 Kate Lister? I'm inclined to agree with you.
27:06 Speaker 02 You know, that's not the first death in this story.
27:08 Kate Lister? I mean, what's it take to execute your mate, to like have a falling out, like your best bud and just be like, oh yeah, that off with his head. And I'm going to get married on the same day. That's, that is tapped behaviour.
27:19 Speaker 02 Cromwell's letter to Henry from the Tower. And the last line of it is, he says, you know, I didn't do this. I did do this. I did this because I thought it was what you wanted. I did this because it was the right thing to do. And at the end of it, he says, I cry mercy, mercy, mercy. And Henry eight gets that and lets the execution go ahead.
27:40 Kate Lister? So how did they get busted then? How does this all come undone for Jane? He must have been there watching this, like well aware of the stakes and what could.
27:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, what Jane doesn't know is that Catherine Howard has a past with, and we don't know how consensual the past is. But certainly she's been engaged in sex play when she was a girl at her grandmother's house. And one of the other maids in waiting in the room was present, actually in the bed when this was going on. So there was a lot of larking about. It's a dormitory situation and the boys came in and two women, two girls were having sex play or sex with two of the boys. And
28:28 Kate Lister? Okay.
28:29 Speaker 02 Literally this previous partner turns up and starts to blackmail Catherine. And another of the friends at the time tells her brother, who is scolding her that she's done nothing worse than the Queen of England herself. And he, as a very, very, very passionate Protestant, reports this in order to further the Reformation, which they.
28:56 Kate Lister? Snitch. Oh, no.
28:59 Speaker 02 So he reports it to, and ultimately the king hears of it really early on. It goes to the Archbishop of Canterbury. And he can't keep it to himself, of course, because then he's in danger. So he tells the king, they can't bear to tell him in person. They leave a note at his place in church. And he reads it and Henry says, it's a lie. It's gossip. I don't believe it for a moment. And so they all investigate it and everybody goes like, okay, it happened when she was a girl. We're not even clear that she was consenting. It was before she even met the king. She didn't know she was going to be Queen of England. She shouldn't.
29:37 Kate Lister? Fair, I would have said.
29:38 Speaker 02 Like, you know, this isn't adultery. She wasn't married to the king at the time. This is, you know, unsuitable and it's a pity, but. We can nod it through, perhaps. And they question her and they question all of her ladies. And at times, her attention to Thomas Culpepper comes out and immediately they get hold of that. That's the end. And Jane denies right the way through till they come at her and say they've named you as helping them. Then she tells them what she knows. And they try and blame.
30:10 Kate Lister? If Cromwell had been around, none of this, none of this would have happened. The second that blackmailing person turned up, he would have been dealt with.
30:17 Speaker 02 Exactly.
30:18 Kate Lister? Oh, God.
30:20 Speaker 02 Put it in a more feminist way, if Jane Berlin had had the authority that her service really demanded, she could have sold it. But because women don't get official positions in admin, they just get unofficial positions and do all the work. She doesn't have the power, though she knows exactly what should happen next.
30:40 Kate Lister? Would she have realised that when she was implicated, that would mean her head? Because I've always thought that that seemed incredibly harsh. It's like, all right, she was there and she, you know, she knew them at the time and she was apparently asleep in the chair. But I still think it's very harsh to say, well, now you have to die too.
30:59 Speaker 02 No, she would have thought, as anybody would have thought, that Henry terribly disappointed in the wife that he, I mean, he adored her. He had this real, real desire and love and passion for her. He called her his rose. The day before it all came out, he'd ordered a Thanksgiving service for her, to be said in every church in England. I mean, it was, it was really.
31:24 Kate Lister? That's not funny.
31:25 Speaker 02 On a level, it's really embarrassing. It really is awful. What you would have expected, what Jane would have expected, what anybody of any sense would have expected is that he would have accused her of adultery. He would have banished her to a nunnery and he would have divorced her, which he had already established he could do just by saying, I'm divorcing her. So that would be what you would do and she would be horribly shamed and all of her family would, you know, go undercover. But there's no question that, you know, Anne Berlin. Was executed because she was accused of plotting against the king's life. By allegedly telling her brother and others that he was impotent. As any comment on his life is treason. But nobody says Catherine Howard plotted against his life.
32:10 Speaker 02 Nobody says she was involved in incest or witchcraft. There's no reason for her to be executed at all. And initially, it looks as if she's going to move to a nunnery. All of her lovely jewels and lovely stuff is taken away. She has to stay there, but she has ladies in waiting and she has, you know, depressing clothes in dark colours. She doesn't have a, and she has a head. She's still alive and Jane is still with her. So, you know, you go like, oh, this is a disaster, but it's not life threatening. And then when Henry learns that she's been meeting Culpeper while on royal progress with him. So in the day, she's standing beside him and going like, you're so great, I'm so happy to be a wife.
32:55 Speaker 02 And in the night, she's sneaking out to on some occasions, the privy and meeting Culpeper. Anywhere they can meet. Henry's just absolutely furious and that's why he decides to execute it. It's not law, it's vindictive rage. And that's why he wants to execute Jane. Because she was party to it, because she has in a sense seen that somebody preferred very much. Someone to him. It's literally, it's narcissistic rage. I think it's, you, you have to unhand it in the context of a man whose vanity cannot tolerate. The fact that somebody might prefer a man young enough to be a son.
33:37 Kate Lister? Did she have a trial?
33:39 Speaker 02 No. That's among the really awful things about it is that Henry doesn't have to put her on trial. Because Cromwell has already recreated this legal fiction called the Order of a Tandor. Which just means that the king can say, I want this person dead, signed Henry, and that's it. So there's, you know, Mag Macardle, which precedes Henry, which is guarantees a safety of subjects of the king is out the window. This is genuinely political tyranny. And the novel is very, very clear, but it's not just the personal pursuit of these women,
34:16 Speaker 02 but it's the change of Henry from a kingship which sits amongst equals with lords around him to a tyranny which is focused entirely on him, which makes it possible for him to kill women as not just a murderous husband, but as a tyrant. And to me, the, the link, of course, which we know between domestic abuse and tyranny, you know, that domestic abuse is a tyranny. And in Henry VIII, we see, and in, I imagine, other tyrants, we see it playing out completely.
34:53 Kate Lister? So poor Catherine doesn't get a trial. Jane doesn't get a trial. How does Jane deal with this? How does anybody deal with this?
35:01 Speaker 02 Well, Jane, still thinking, still clever, decides to invoke by her actions the Tudor law, which says that mad people cannot be executed. The assumption is, is that God has already punished them enough. And so a mad person goes and lives with their family, or maybe goes and lives in a nunnery, or maybe is chucked out even on the streets, but they're not executed. So she's got a root if she can be convincing in it. And I believe she pretends to be mad. And she does such a good job of it that she is released from the Tower of London into the care of Admiral Lady Russell, who keep her at their beautiful house in the Strand and nurse her
35:44 Speaker 02 and take her to church. And she is visited by the king's personal physician to see if she is mad or not. And she convinces everybody that she is mad. At which point, if you were Jane, you would be going, I'm going to get away with this.
36:00 Kate Lister? Scot-free, done.
36:01 Speaker 02 Clever, clever, clever woman. And Henry VIII changes the law, which now says you can execute a mad person.
36:09 Kate Lister? Absolute shitbag.
36:11 Speaker 02 Changes the entire law in order to kill her.
36:14 Kate Lister? Just to get her?
36:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:17 Kate Lister? That's really personal then. That's not just that she kind of got swept away with this and oh, we've killed her too. He really wanted to get rid of her.
36:25 Speaker 02 He really, really, really could not stand the thought that anybody could think that he was inferior in any way.
36:32 Kate Lister? Wow.
36:34 Speaker 02 Which is why I think he's a psychopath. I know he's a narcissist, but I actually think what we're talking here is something so extreme that he would rather people were killed than they thought badly of him.
36:49 Kate Lister? I'll be back with Philippa and Jane after this short break.
37:04 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.
37:39 Speaker 01 What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere? And did the Vikings ever reach America?
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38:38 Kate Lister? I know that the laws and everything's different, but she hasn't really done anything wrong here. I think we could probably argue that Catherine hasn't done anything wrong either, but she definitely didn't do anything wrong.
38:48 Speaker 02 She hasn't done anything that deserves the death penalty. She's not done treason. She's not threatened the king. She's not acted against the king in any direct way. She's stood by while the queen saw, that's all we know, another man. So that's an accessory to adultery. That's not a crime.
39:10 Kate Lister? No, that's not a crime.
39:12 Speaker 02 Even if it was a crime, she has the absolute grace, the pardon, from being seen as being mad.
39:19 Kate Lister? That must have been a moment when they came to get her for that and said, oh, we've changed the law now.
39:24 Speaker 02 Yeah. I think in my novel, that's when I have her realising that it's not a question of surviving a difficult man. It's she's up against a state, a man who's become a tyrant, and a state that has become tyrannical. And that's why the book is, at one level, very, very political, as well as a personal story about love and death and disaster and success. It also says that when you realise that you are in a tyrannical state, if you're not very, very aware, it's too late to save yourself. You should stop a tyrannical state the minute it starts.
40:08 Kate Lister? Very potent words for what we're going through right now. So Jane and Catherine, look at me on first name terms with them, they are executed together, aren't they?
40:17 Speaker 02 They're executed sequentially. So Catherine goes.
40:22 Speaker 02 On the scaffold first and she gives a very short apology. She doesn't admit adultery, but she gives a very short apology for offending the king.
40:30 Kate Lister? I have huge respect for that because if that had been me, I'd have got up there and just said, he was an absolute dick. I hated him. He was terrible in bed. I'll see you all. That would have been me on the way out. But she's got the good grace to even stand there and say sorry to this.
40:44 Speaker 02 Gets the block into her own cell to practise putting her head down.
40:47 Kate Lister? Oh, Catherine.
40:47 Speaker 02 She's so young. She just wants to do everything right. And that's, you know, she's very, very, very ill educated. What she's brought up to do is to be graceful and pretty and ornamental. And her last act is to, is to try and do it right. So she does that and then Jane, this woman who has survived five of Henry's six queens.
41:16 Kate Lister? She nearly made it.
41:17 Speaker 02 She nearly made it. Follows her to the block, gives a brief speech apologising for anything that she might be thought to have done wrong and puts Niels in the bloodstained straw, puts her head down on the bloodstained block.
41:31 Kate Lister? Oh, it's grim.
41:32 Speaker 02 It's very grim.
41:33 Kate Lister? Do we know, because I know that sometimes these executions don't go very well. Was it at least quick?
41:37 Speaker 02 This is at least quick, yeah. There's a previous execution of a woman of seventy eight who Henry beheads for no reason, without a trial.
41:47 Speaker 02 And that goes really.
41:48 Kate Lister? The more I hear about him, like I think I've made my mind up about how horribly he is and it just gets worse.
41:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:54 Kate Lister? So she's seventy eight and what happens with that?
41:56 Speaker 02 I mean, again, it's, she has a very, very, very talented son who Henry admires very much when they're on the same side of the religious question. But the son stays faithful to the Roman Catholic Church and Henry decides to set up a rival church in England, which ultimately becomes our Protestant church and the Church of England. But at the time, it's literally because that way Henry can get the profits enormous well for the church and also get rid of his wife Catherine of Aragon. And Reginald Pole writes a book, which makes it absolutely clear that this is what Henry has done. And Henry is so furious with him
42:35 Speaker 02 that after a lot of coming and going, which I won't trouble you with, he arrests most of his family and beheads most of his family. Really to revenge himself on this criticism. And Margaret Poole, Reginald's mother, is the matriarch of the family. And he arrests her and they interrogate her for days, night and day. And they say she never incriminates herself, she never says anything that they can hold against her. So they just hold her in the tower until Henry wants to kind of tidy up the tower. Before he goes away on a royal progress with Catherine to the north of England. And he orders her beheading. I think they tell her in the evening, she's going to be beheaded tomorrow morning.
43:19 Speaker 02 So she has no time to prepare. And they don't have a competent headman. So he chases her around the scaffold, beheading her.
43:29 Kate Lister? Oh, oh dear. Then at least it was quick for Jane and Catherine, unjust.
43:35 Speaker 02 It was quick for Jane, it was quick for Catherine. And it was quick for Anne as well.
43:39 Kate Lister? God almighty.
43:40 Speaker 02 I know.
43:41 Kate Lister? After writing this novel and deep diving into this woman and assessing her. What do you think her legacy is? Because if we had a strapline for this show, it might be the Victorians messed it up. Because they seem to get, they seem to get into everything and twist things. But what do you think her legacy is? Is she the evil Lady Rochford?
44:03 Speaker 02 Part of the joy of writing this book is to offer a different view of her. To say, maybe she was a spy for Thomas Cromwell. Maybe she was a woman who had a very clear sense of her own ambition and her own abilities. Maybe she was playing the card she had in a way that is absolutely admirable. Maybe she was neither a bad person, as the Victorians would have, or a mad person. As subsequent historians have suggested, maybe she's the woman in the most recent biography. It was a very, very good biography by historian Julia Fox. You know, maybe she's someone trying to survive in this very, very, very dangerous world.
44:45 Speaker 02 And she is one of the many people that Henry killed for no good reason. So maybe her legacy to us is to say, when you see tyranny coming, stand against it. Because sooner or later, it will come against you all the things you love.
45:01 Kate Lister? Philippa, you have been marvelous to talk to and very prophetic words to end on. If people know more about you and your book, and frankly, they should, where can they find you?
45:12 Speaker 02 Well, I've got a website and I do podcasts. I've got a podcast series called Normal Women, which is about the normal women of history from 1060s.
45:22 Kate Lister? I loved your book, Normal Women.
45:23 Speaker 02 And the novels you can buy anywhere you get your books. And also, it's an audiobook. It's a really, really lovely audio edition, read by actress Gemma Whelan.
45:33 Kate Lister? Fabulous. Thank you so much for giving us your time. You have been fascinating.
45:37 Speaker 02 It's been a pleasure. Always a pleasure.
45:44 Kate Lister? Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Philippa for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like, review and follow along, whatever it is you get your podcasts. Coming up, we've got an episode taking you inside the brothels of the Wild West and another one on the wife-swapping magician of the Tudor court. And if you would like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected] . This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.
46:28 Speaker 01 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work.
46:46 Speaker 07 That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about.
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