Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Boleyn Who Betrayed Henry VIII

Episode Date: October 10, 2025

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, 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.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. This is Betwicks the Sheets and you are you. And boy am I glad that you are here with me listening to Betwix 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 book. By Adults, Adults, Other Adults, Bad, Daltcy Things in an Adulty Way, covering a range adult subjects and you should be an adult too. I'm an adult as well. Oh, thank God, right, let's get on with it. 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 Bed Chamber, unless Catherine Howard, you know, that one, is holding secret meetings with a man that she loves,

and it's not Henry the 8th. I have some. sympathy with her. I wouldn't love him either. She's in there with Thomas Cull Pepper. Oh, Catherine, Catherine, Catherine. I know that you're married to a fat, miserable gip, but you need to be smarted in this and to make matters worse. Jane Berlin is keeping guard. 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's 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.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs. by just turning a knob and pushing it. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful, Anne. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and 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 Bullen, 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, historian and author of previous works like The Other Bollingale 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. Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Philippa Gregory. How are you doing? Very, very pleased to be back with you, Kitty. Nice to see you. 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? 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 Bolin, 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. 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 Victorians 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 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, 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. The first time I ever heard of her was when I was reading about the executioner 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? 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-broking and the power struggles of the Tudor. He's a translator of Renaissance text. He's a really, really top-flight scholar and his gifts to the royal court every new year. He gives him 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. And he sends his daughter, Jane, his oldest girl, to the court of Catherine of Farraghan to become a maiden waiting. And she works there. And then he arranges a moderately good marriage for

her to the oldest son of the Bolin 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, which is that Anne Boleyn pulls off this social bombshell of marrying the King of England. And all of a sudden, Arjain 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 Berlin immediately becomes top courtier. He becomes the diplomat of choice, descent of France, though he's very young and venerating experienced. And he is part of the circle of handsome young man that circulate the handsome young prince, Henry VIII, 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 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 an 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 bullins disappear from court. They retire. They, neither of them, neither mother nor father do anything effectual at court anymore.

They just go back their country estates. and they've... I would. Anyone of a sense would. But amazingly, Jane Berlin is promoted. She becomes lady and 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 Cleaves. and then when Anne of Cleaves is divorced, she's chief lady in waiting to Catherine Howard. She's there the whole time. 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. 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 going to retire quietly and tender garden and keep my head down. 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 laid in waiting to all the subsequent queens. Something is afoot.

Yeah. Who's done that? Where has that come from? And I think the only person who could have done it would have been Henry the 8th. And we know Henry the 8th 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. Yes. Yeah. 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 a 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 90% 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. Most of these 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. Oh, hello.

We have the names of three women who are spies in the Queen of. 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 is 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. Just to go back to what happened with Anne Boleyn,

it is nuts that 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 up hands up and go, I don't know anything about anything. 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 Balinga, 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. 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 a 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 this show trial roll its way through and get to the execution and hope to survive it themselves. So I think that's all she's doing then, but when it comes to the divorce of Anne of Cleaves, when she is under, I believe, working for Thomas Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell has to get the divorce through

because Henry the 8th has decided he doesn't like Anne of Cleaves. That's the one that is the best, 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 Anna Cleaves 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. I didn't know. It was Jane that said that. It's Jane who. Jane. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, in my novel, I suggest that actually she's doing Anne of Cleves of 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 promul 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 Anna pleas aside. 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 that 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. 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 time. Oh, well done, Henry. Oh, 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 to do. Yeah. 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 spy master. So she has to run Catherine Howard's 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 to 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 Dowery Queen of England. and if she were to have a son by Thomas Culpeper, she's got a very 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. That's a risky game. She's behind the throne of the Queen Dowager. That's risky though. It's incredibly risky. I'll be back with Philippa and Jane after this short break. 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 Cleave, 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, falling with this how old. was Catherine Howard. She's like 18. Yeah, she's even younger. She's probably about 16 when this... 16? And I feel endlessly sorry for Catherine Howard. I've got a real soft spot for her. But also, you just want to sit down and go, sweetheart. Come on now. I know he's pretty, but you can't do this. What earth is she doing encouraging this and allowing this and not reporting it?

I love your imaginary drama of you saying to Catherine Howard's sweetheart, sit down. Suppose, okay, I should be Catherine Howard in this scenario. And I say to you, I don't care. 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, 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. Oh, Catherine. 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, he does give her life for it. Do you think he loved her? I mean, we've all done that, haven't we, when we were 17 of life, but I love him so much. 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. I can't see any reason for him to take these risks if it wasn't really compelling. I suppose when you say it like that, I can understand a situation that might have developed with Jane of, well, what are you going to do? Are you going to 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 help them and keep it under wraps somehow. 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 this scaffold, Catherine says they didn't have sex. Which you believe her? There's some evidence that Jane turned her chair and wasn't watching them.

That's kind of sweet. Jane 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 the word she uses is that she dies away, which is to speak for orgasm. See, that's a lie, isn't it though, Jane, that I turned my chair around and I just fell asleep. 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. Yeah, well, that's how you say I was there, but I won't give evidence against them.

smart. That's like the Tudor cover, like, I just don't remember. I just, I was there. I just don't, my memory's gone completely. And 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. Now I'm going to say, I was in the chair and I had a nap. And I just, I just don't remember what happened at the time. And I was having a nap. So, I mean, what a mess, though. 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,

being crowned queen, and then the king had died, she's then the top woman of England forever. 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?

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, 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 will be very much, you know, in psychology speak, 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, Culpepper 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. If I was Gromwell, I would send Culpeper 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. No, you cannot. But none of that happens because the spy master has gone. His master has been killed by the, I say, you know, narcissistic, if not psychopathic king.

I'm inclined to agree with you. You know, that's not the first death in this story. I mean, what does it take to execute your mate? To like have a falling out, like your best bud and just be like, oh yeah, off with his head. And I'm going to get married on the same day. That is tapped behavior. We've got 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 Yates. And that's the execution. Go ahead. So how did they get busted then?

How does this all come undone for Jane? Who must have been there watching this, like well aware of the stakes and what could happen? 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 literally this previous partner turns up and starts to blackmail, Catherine,

and another of... 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... Snitch. Oh, no. So he reports it to, and ultimately,

that 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 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's going to be Queen of England. She shouldn't. Fair, I would have said. But, 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'll get hold of that. That's the end. And Jane denies right the way through till they come a time. and say they've named you as helping them. Then she tells them what she knows. And they try and blame. If Cromwell had been around, none of this.

Yeah. None of this would happen. The second that blackmailing person turned up, he would have been dealt with. Exactly. Or 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. 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. 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, it ordered a Thanksgiving service for her to be said in every church in England. I mean, it was really, it was not funny. At a level, it's really embarrassing. It really is. What you would have expected, what Jane would have expected, what anybody of any sense would have expected is,

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 Boleyn 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. 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 look, and she has her 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 Culpepper 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 your wife. And in the night she's sneaking out, two on some occasions, the privy, and meeting Culpepper. 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 have to unplan 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. Did she have a trial? 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 Attainter,

which just means that the king can say I want this person dead, signed Henry, and that's it. So there's, you know, Magna Carta, which precedes Henry, which guarantees a safety of subjects of the king, is out the window. This is genuinely a political tyranny, and the novel's very, very clear. But it's not just the personal pursuit of these women, 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 tarant. And to me, the link, of course, which we know between domestic abuse and tyranny, you know, that domestic abuse is a tyranny. And in Henry Gate, we see, and in I imagine other tarants, we see it playing out completely.

Wow. 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? 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 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 and Lady Russell who keep her at their house in the Strand and nurse her 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. Scott Free, done.

Clever, clever, clever woman. And Henry the Eighth changes the law, which now says you can execute a mad person. Absolute shitbag. It changes the entire law in order to kill her. Just to get her. Yeah. 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 him. He really, really, really could not stand the thought that anybody could think that he was inferior in any way. Wow. 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. I'll be back with Philippa and Jane after this short break.

I know that the law 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. She hasn't done anything that deserves a 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. that's an accessory to a deltery, that's not a crime. No, that's not a crime. Even if it was a crime, she has the absolute grace, the pardon, from being seen as being mad. That must have been a moment when they came to get her for that and said, oh, we've changed the law now. Yeah. I think in my novel, that's when I have her realizing 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 tarant 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 realize that you are in a tyrannical state if you're not very very aware it's too late to save yourself you should suffer The tyrannical state the minute it starts. Very potent words for what we're going through right now. So Jane and Catherine, look at me on first name terms of them, they are executed together, aren't they?

They're executed sequentially. So Catherine goes 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. 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. She gets the block into her own cell to practice putting a head down. 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 try and do it right. So she does that, and then Jane, this woman who has survived, five of Henry's six queens.

She nearly made it. 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. Oh, it's grim. It's very grim. Do we know, because I know that sometimes these executions don't go very well.

Was it at least quick? This is at least quick, yeah. There's a previous execution of a woman of 78 who Henry beheads for no reason without a trial. And that goes really... The more I hear about him. Like, I think I've made my mind up about how horribly is and it just gets worse. Yeah. So she's 78 and what happens with that?

I mean, again, it's... She has a very, very, very talented son who Henry Admires very, very. much when they're on the same side of the religious question, but the Sun stays faithful with 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, the enormous wealth of the church and also get rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon. And Reginald, Paul, writes a book which makes it absolutely clear that this is why.

Henry has done and Henry is so furious with him 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 Pohl 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'd 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 to earn 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. So she has no time to prepare. And they don't have

a competent headman. So he chases her around the scaffold, beheading her. Oh, oh dear. at least it was quick for Jane and Catherine. It was quick for Jane. It was quick for Catherine. And it was quick for Anne as well. God, oh my God, oh my. I know. 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 into everything and twist things. But what do you think her legacy is? Is she the evil? Lady Rochford. 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 a victorians would have, or a mad person, as subsequent historians have suggested. Maybe she's the woman in the most recent biography, which is 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, 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. Philippa, you have been marvellous 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? 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 1060. I loved your book, Normal Women.

That's brilliant. 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 Weillen. Fabulous. Thank you so much for giving us your time. You have been fascinating. It's been a pleasure. Always a pleasure. 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 with you 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 betwixt at history hit.com. 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.