Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire

• 1. Introduction

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  Thomas Boleyn's family became the subject of a pointed rumour at the court of Henry VIII. The accusation was that Henry had slept with Boleyn's wife as well as his daughter Anne. When the rumour reached him, Henry replied briefly: 'Never with the mother.' It was designed to steer Henry away from marrying Anne. That it recruited Thomas Boleyn's own wife shows how far the family had been drawn into the king's orbit. Boleyn died on the 12th of March 1539, the grandfather of the future Queen Elizabeth I. He had spent his working life as one of Henry's leading diplomats, accumulating titles that stretched across England and Ireland. Of all his children, only one outlived him. History has cast him as a ruthless operator who used his daughters for advancement. Whether that portrait holds up is the central question of his story.

• 2. A Life on the Road

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  In 1503, Thomas Boleyn was part of the escort that accompanied Princess Margaret Tudor north to Scotland for her marriage to King James IV. It was the kind of assignment that brought a young courtier before the courts of Europe. He had already been active at the court of Henry VII, attending the wedding of Prince Arthur to Catherine of Aragon. At Henry VIII's coronation in 1509, he was made a Knight of the Bath. In February 1511, he rode in the Westminster Tournament, held to celebrate the birth of Henry, Duke of Cornwall. His partner that day was Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset, and their costumes bore emblems of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

  His first major diplomatic posting came in 1512, as one of three envoys sent to the Netherlands. At the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria, regent of the Low Countries, he found a natural counterpart. Both spoke French and Latin, and they got along well. Margaret agreed to take his daughter Anne into her household as a maid of honour. That arrangement would have lasting consequences.

  Boleyn served as Sheriff of Kent in 1511 and again in 1517. Between 1518 and 1520, he was ambassador to France. His early work included the arrangements for the Field of Cloth of Gold, a grand meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I. Sir Richard Wingfield replaced him as ambassador and took over the preparations for the 1520 meeting itself. He served as envoy to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1521 and 1523. His investiture as a Knight of the Garter came in 1523. In 1527, he was among a large envoy sent to France. In 1529, he joined a mission to both Charles V and Pope Clement VII, seeking support for Henry's annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. By 1530, he had been appointed Lord Privy Seal.

• 3. Bloodlines and Titles

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  Thomas Boleyn's paternal grandfather, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, had been a wealthy mercer who served as Lord Mayor of London. Sir Geoffrey purchased Blickling in Norfolk, moving the family into the landowning class. Thomas himself was born around 1477 at Hever Castle in Kent. He married Elizabeth Howard, eldest daughter of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey. They had five children, only three of whom survived childhood. Two sons, Thomas and Henry, died young in 1506, both possibly of sweating sickness. The three who grew to adulthood were Mary, George, and Anne. His mother's side of the family carried a different weight. Margaret Butler was a daughter of Thomas Butler, 7th Earl of Ormond. Through that Irish ancestry came the titles that would define his later career.

  Thomas Butler, the 7th Earl, was a personal friend of Henry VII. In November 1488, Henry summoned him to the English parliament despite his being an Irish peer. He was at that point already 8th Earl of Carrick and 7th Earl of Ormond. When the line ran out in 1515 without a male heir, the Ormond title fell into abeyance. Under English law, matrilineal descent was not recognized for earldoms. In Ireland, Brehon law required new leaders to be chosen by election. Neither system delivered the title to Thomas Boleyn. Royal favor did instead. Henry VIII pressed the main rival claimant, Piers Butler, to renounce all his claims in 1529. Butler was compensated five days later, created Earl of Ossory. On the 8th of December 1529, Thomas Boleyn was created Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond.

  James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormond, had been the 1st Earl of Wiltshire. He was Thomas Boleyn's maternal great-grandfather. James Butler lost both his titles and his life on the 1st of May 1461, executed by the victorious Yorkists. The earldom was revived and given to unrelated families twice more before Boleyn's creation. His was the sixth. On the same day as his elevation, Thomas's only surviving son, George, received the courtesy title of Viscount Rochford.

• 4. Daughters and the King

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  Henry VIII had first pursued Mary Boleyn before his attention turned to her younger sister Anne. Around 1525, that shift brought a formal change. Thomas Boleyn was elevated to Viscount Rochford on the 18th of June 1525. The title claimed a lineage stretching back to 1488. Thomas Boleyn has been remembered, in both contemporary and later accounts, as a man hungry for power whose daughters were instruments. His biographer Lauren Mackay has made a different case. She argues that his career as ambassador and courtier was already flourishing well before either daughter caught the king's interest. The rewards that followed Anne's rise reflected not only Henry's passion for her but also Boleyn's own years of competent service.

  Mary Boleyn married a soldier named William Stafford in 1534. The match created a family scandal and led to her banishment from court. While her younger sister occupied the throne as queen consort, Mary lived in effective exile.

  Anne had been created Marquess of Pembroke in her own right in 1532, before marrying Henry the following year and becoming queen. During her time as queen, her father held immense power at court. But Anne failed to give Henry a son. She had a daughter, Elizabeth, and suffered two miscarriages. Henry did not wait.

• 5. May 1536

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  George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, was executed on the 17th of May 1536. All his titles were forfeited that day. His sister Anne followed two days later, on the 19th of May. Thomas Boleyn was spared the specific ordeal of sitting in judgment on his own children. The trials of George and Anne proceeded without him. He did, however, serve on the jury for four of the men accused of committing adultery with his daughter. He acquiesced in the outcome. When Henry discarded Anne in favor of Jane Seymour, Thomas Boleyn lost the Lord Privy Seal and left the court in disgrace.

  George's widow, Jane, Viscountess Rochford, continued using the title after her husband's death. She too would face a violent end. She was attainted for treason and beheaded at Tower Green, within the Tower of London, on the 13th of February 1542. She died alongside Queen Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife. Thomas Boleyn did not live to see it. He died three years before Jane Rochford's execution.

• 6. The Brass at Hever

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  On the 22nd of January 1538, Henry VIII restored the earldom of Ormond to Piers Butler. Thomas Boleyn was still alive. For the final months of his life, England had two earls of Ormond at the same time. He died at Hever Castle and was buried in St. Peter's Church in the village of Hever. His monumental brass survives. It shows him in full Garter robes, with the Badge on his left breast and the Garter around his left knee. His head rests on a helm topped by a falcon crest, his daughter's heraldic badge. At his feet is a griffin. It is an image of rank and power, frozen in brass. Nothing in it speaks of the disgrace he had suffered.

  Thomas Boleyn has been portrayed by six different actors across film and television. Sir Michael Hordern played him in the 1969 film Anne of the Thousand Days. Benjamin Whitrow played the role in Henry VIII. The 2003 and 2008 film versions of The Other Boleyn Girl cast Jack Shepherd and Mark Rylance respectively. Nick Dunning took the part in the 2007 Showtime series The Tudors. He played Boleyn as ambitious, cunning and devious, always working to advance his family. He was willing to 'motivate' his daughter Anne whenever Henry's attention threatened to wander. David Robb in Wolf Hall played him as a constantly furious and irascible schemer. Across all these portrayals, Boleyn has become an emblem of Tudor parental ambition. Elizabeth Boleyn preceded her husband in death by less than a year. The earldoms of Wiltshire and Ormond, won through decades of diplomatic service and contested inheritance, had no male heir to carry them forward.