The Life and Death of Jane Boleyn feat Logan Weimer

It's good. All right, Do you want to talk about how Henry the Eighth is a real piece of ship or no.

No, We're going to be the first podcast ever to come in with the with the correct take about Henry the Eighth.

Yeah. I was actually here to sign up as like a Henry the ath Apologist. I was, I was figuring, I was all in one. I was gonna do John, I was gonna do Henry.

Listen the chat.

The chat abruptly, Logan goes, she's gone, She's gone. Oops.

I think it's I think it's funny until you mentioned Thomas Jefferson and I'm just like, no, I'm out, I can't do it. The only the only thing I could think about Thomas Jefferson that I don't that doesn't immediately fill me with hatred is how funny it is that he just cuts Ship out of his personal Bible, like like he he would just like he would like excise stuff from it he didn't like.

And I mean, dog, look at my founding fathers.

That that is just but it's so like, I'll be honest, I like that's the one thing where it's just like, yeah, I know Christians who use subtexts and they're all cowards, like we denuded it of everything, all of the pomp and circumstances of cat of Catholicism, and and even and even the early Catholic offshoots, and now and and now we're down into deism. And this guy who owns literal slaves is like sitting there like, I don't think this part of the Bible's ride. This is this is a little this is a little too uh, a little too miraclely for me.

It's like I felt too seen by this part of the Bible. So I decided to turn it out.

But he didn't trim out the parts about slavery. He thought that was fine. He trimmed out the stuff about like uh, like the stuff that was too magicy, that that that that was too supernatural. He's just like, yeah, what, like what are we what are we doing it? Like it's it's a holy book man, Like yeah, what what the fuck?

Yeah?

God, anyway, I'm sorry, I'm not here to talk about Thomas Jack.

Oh honestly, well, I'll put a button in that. Then. I my first year of law school, wrote a paper about kind of like the evolution of the law of racial oppression, and you can't do that without talking about him because he kind of created it in a way. And then that and the fact that he had like children with slaves who you know, we could get into a whole thing about coercion and all that. But if we want to go back a couple of hundred years from that, we can talk about another piece of ship. Sorry, I mean hero Patriot, Maverick, a man for all.

Men, a man for some seasons, yes, for at least one season.

A spring summer type of guy, A man for one man. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, all right, all right, let's do tutor chat though we're doing it so a break from your schedule programming to discuss a bit about the more broadly history of the execution of the mentally ill.

Yeah, I'll kind of flip back and forth between mentally ill, mad, et cetera. They mean basically the same thing.

So, uh, I'm sorry, can I can I do my intrope? We can go into it. Yeah, No, you're good. Okay, I'm gonna cut that out because that sounded really bossy of me, and I didn't mean for it.

To please be quiet. No, I'm also according so I was gonna post it. Dontorry you're gonna like, you're gonna post.

This piece of ship over women. That's what they say. That's what they always say.

I'm a best celebrating Thomas Jefferson.

No, no, I've been hoisted by my own batard. Oh goodness, all right, Uh hello, and I can't do it.

I get.

Hello and welcome back to We're Not So Different, a podcast about how I personally and against Thomas Jefferson if anyone has ever been against him, and as I now, I'm just kidding, we're actually all against him. We hate him. But yeah, anyway, hey folks, we're back and Luke, It's Luke and doctor Eleanor We're back and we're going to talk tutor women with a special friend, So no questions this week. Several years ago, back in January, we had Logan Weimer on the show and we ended up talking about the fascist occupation of Minneapolis by the federal government, ICE raids, the power of the people's solidarity, and much more.

You should check it out if you haven't. However, we weren't originally going to talk about that. We only switched that topic at the last moment because it was happening in that moment and Logan is from Minneapolis and helped resist, excuse me, and help resist the occupation. Originally, we were going to talk with Logan about a topic much more closely related in time to the stuff we normally cover on this ostensibly medieval history podcast, the life of James Bolin, Viscountess Rochford, under the reign of Henry the Eighth Tutor.

If you BOO do not know, Jane was lady in waiting to Henry's first wife, Catherine of Rigon, then the sister in law of Anne Bolin, through Ant's brother George, who was of course Henry the Eighth's second wife, and also the lady in waiting to Henry's third, fourth, and fifth wives before her execution in fifteen forty two. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Logan is going to walk us through the eventful life and times of James Bolin, what it says about patriarchy in the early modern and modern worlds, and how her historical narrative has often been changed to suit the political whims of those in power. By way of reintroduction, Logan Weimer is an attorney in Minnesota with a particular interest in Tutor women,

and we're so happy to have her back on the show. Last time I said she was an attorney. That was my mistake. That was before she passed the bar. She has, however, since passed the bar. Great job, logan, because the bar is a shitty pain in the ass, and also logan, welcome back. How the hell are you?

Thank you so much? I'm good I passed the bar, which means I get super drunk and I give terrible legal advice. Feel free to embezzle and steal. And if anyone asks, who told you that? My name is Melania and you can you can look me up and you can sue me.

There not legal not legal advice.

Not, this is legal information. This is le's correct. But yeah, good. Uh. Since the bar exam, I've been able to dive a lot more into this, so if anything, it's uh, ever more timely. I went cuckoo crazy and learned every English monarch from the Conquest now in order and their spouses, because yeah, kind of again cuckoo crazy, and I didn't have anything else to do.

Hot girl shit, hot girl shit, what can I say?

They're honestly more important anyways, But I'm fine.

That did you? Wait? Was was this was this learning all of the monarchs and spouses in order? Was this was this contemporaneous with studying for the bar was a sour prior thing, you know.

What, I'm gonna say. It was after actually, but it's certainly there was some intermingling.

Great to wind down at the end of the night.

You know, yeah, yeah, wind down at the end of the night, stop dead in the middle of a day.

Just go through it.

But and you get through it, you're like, uh, you're like listing the uh the what what causes defamation? You know, like number one, uh, Jefferson a number two. It was propagated to people number three.

Uh.

Steven's wife was named Matilda, and mother in law was also named Matilda, and there was another Matilda around.

His cousin was also Yeah, there's too many.

Someone who drowned in the White Ship.

Was also named Matilda. So here's the thing. What that means is that Steven's sister was also his mother, who was also his wife who he killed in the White Ship disaster. And that is all I have to say about that. And you know what, I believe it.

This is also legal advice.

This is legal advice.

That's historical advice you and use that when you go to history court.

Yes, yeah, so I I do think that that you know, pivots well into like kind of what I what I do. I view myself like, yes, as an attorney kind of more in the public interest scope, but I, uh my kind of like real passion is the legal history of women. I'm actually developing, uh my own podcast.

Not to not to betray this, as you know, you can't your own podcast, I'm not.

I'm developing.

There is no there there is no name of it yet, but there is, but I haven't made it yet. But it's basically just going through in each episode tracing uh an important historical woman, so like Matilda Flanders, Herleva of Falaise, like Ettera, et cetera. Yeah, so going through and maybe even doing like a series or so on a group of women, so kind of like this. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was in criminal law in my first year of law school and I we were looking at the execution of the mentally ill and I had already been kind of like a tutor stand girl, and I remembered that Jane, who I thought at that point was like a horrible person, had been executed for being like, quote unquote crazy. So I looked into it, and I went to my professor, Susannah Blumenthal, well known Krim law queen and historian, and yes, and she looked into it because I had said I think this was the first law that expressly allowed for the execution of the mentally ill.

She said, yeah, I think it is, and I was not able to find anyone else who's writing about it, which, uh, here I am now like four years later, and it's it's controlled every weeking within one of my life since then. But yeah, yeah, Henry, Henry b a th ruining the life of another woman almost almost. Uh actually it was just the four hundred and eightieth anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution, like a couple of weeks ago.

So yeah, we all had to put out, you know, milk and cookies for Amblin. Actually, what would you put out for Amblin? Probably like.

Putting on a gun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I a gun.

And diplomatic Meanranblin GROLs.

When they go back in history. Oh, let me change something, boys, when they go back in history, and here's the gun should face.

There you go.

Yeah, but see I turned I turned the meme on its head because of patriarchy.

I know, I like that, I like hatriarchy. And then also like, of course we got to bring guns in there, America.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Yeah. So when I looked into execution of the the the Kookies, which as a fellow kookie, I say, hello, welcome, I'll get in line any day. And uh, I decided to look into not only the law but Jane Balin because I figured, Wow, someone hated her enough to like create a law to allow himself to execute someone. It was not lost on me that it was a woman.

It was not lost on me that there was pushback, et cetera. So this is when I come to changed camp from like kind of the Victorian propaganda that Jane was that, you know, vindictive, hateful woman. To hey, actually, way, she might have just been misunderstood. So to understand her, like most people, you kind of have to go back a little bit. She was born in fifteen oh five in Norfolk, which makes her contemporary of Anne Boleyn, who I fall into the fifteen oh nine camp, but was born either four years before or four years after her.

Her mother was Alice Saint John and her father was Henry Parker, the tenth Baron Morley. So she's born into the aristocracy and through Alice Saint John, whose grandmother was Margaret Beecham, who was also the grandmother of Henry the seventh. So I know, they are like five of there are like five branches on this family tree and they're all fucking.

So yeah, they're all I cannot understand how much they're all fucking. And so that makes Jane actually a second cousin to Henry the eighth once removed. And then you've got, you know, her father, who is a baron. So she is born into the upper echelons of the English nobility, and around fifteen twenty she arrives at the court of Henry the eighth in service to Catherine of Aragon. She's about fifteen. She is present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in fifteen twenty, which is kind of her first We see her as a member of the Queen's close basically retinue, so maybe just temporarily there, maybe full time. We do know she was there full time by fifteen twenty two because she performed in the Chateau

Verir masquerade as Constancy alongside her future sister in law and Berlin playing perseverance I'll say, yeah, yeah, honestly, and also.

Podcasting.

Okay, yeah, literally literally they said, they said, I'm going to play this bit till death. I got you. So in fifteen twenty four she marries George Berlin. So, in retrospect, hindsight is a longsteak. Well, yes, of course, hindsight does a lot of obscuring in history. And if we look back and capture fifteen twenty four, this was before Anne Bolin had been really publicly acknowledged by Henry the eighth as like a hot babe that he wanted to be with.

So basically she was a peer peer's daughter marrying a wealthy but unlanded basically merchant's son, politician son.

I think that's a really good way of putting it, because like the Bullins are on their way up. Everybody notes they're in the ascendancy, but like they're not. They're not huge yet, are they.

Yes. Also, I just caught myself earlier, I said Anne blin fifteen oh nine, camp, I meant fifteen oh one. I'm not in the fifteen oh nine, I'm in the Okay, Yeah, I agree with you, Okay, yeah, yeah, sorry, that was yeah, because I was like, I was apologized. Yeah, and if you're out there, I'm so sorry that two weeks after your execution, I forgot to leave out in Milkan cookies and I got a number of mixed us. Yes, fifteen oh one. Anyways, because I was also looking at the fifteen to twenty five date and I was like, oh gosh, that's even creepier than yeah. Yeah, so sorry, we are in fifteen twenty four. This was actually an upward move for George and the Bolin family. The Parkers, which was Jane's family, were old money, like the Old Guard. They

had a legitimate medieval peerage, and her father Henry, had a scholarly reputation. And the Bullin's were kind of in this, you know, as Eleanor said, like this kind of aggressive new money. They were climbing. They were buying, buying old legitimacy, and their kind of biggest claim to the peerage was Thomas Bullyin's marriage to Elizabeth Howard, the daughter of Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk and sister to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, which will be kind of important later maybe maybe maybe Yeah, I sorry, it's it's been four hundred something years. So if you haven't seen it yet, you should.

You know you're gonna have to You're gonna have to move on. Yeah, you're gonna have.

To catch up. So once Anne Boleyn kind of caught the King's eye, uh, this family specifically, this couple became, as I have in my notes, rich as balls. So uh, they were gifted palaces with like state of the art plumbing and private tennis court.

I know, so.

Things are owing good. She didn skyrockets to the sister in law of the Queen of England in fifteen thirty three and of the future Elizabeth the First and soon after that I should have mentioned she is in Anne's household serving as a lady in waiting, and then fifteen thirty six, Fronts comes around May fifteen thirty six, and she is like suddenly faced with her husband and her sister in law, among others in her married family, and some reports say her own like direct direct family people from like the Parker Camp. Definitely in fifteen forty two, but in fifteen thirty six there's I saw a couple references, but they could have just been people petitioning on her behalf to be like, hey, she didn't do anything wrong.

So she is interrogated by Thomas Cromwell, enemy of the pod. Just kidding. I can't make that claim, but any podcast I make, he will be an enemy of the pod. And the way Thomas Cromwell kind of worked was he was the most like gas lighty obnoxious dude you've ever dated. Like he sits there and gets you to say something and then he's like, oh so so you don't mean It's like, how would you describe this person a brutal killer or a martian? And they're like, well, I guess a brutal killer because the other and he's like, wow, I can't believe you just said that they were a brutal killer. Well, you're going to be executed to.

Essentially, I'm a very very good podcaster though, to be fair, like probably good.

Yeah, yeah, oh clickbait out the wazoo for sure. So we have inherited this reputation of hers kind of like the wicked wife. Right. There was this idea that she ran to Thomas Cromwell and was like, hey, just so you know, I'm pretty sure my husband and Anne were fucking and in theory Thomas is like, oh my gosh, that's terrible, and of course that's a grave like sin and we have to do something about it. And you know, no one living was in that room, but there is zero surviving written paperwork or confessions or anything like they're often were for things like this from Jane's fifteen thirty six interrogation. If you look at the papers of Henry the eighth, it's not mentioned in any of that. And even though that's kind of like a bulleted calendar list

of the Privy Council meetings, they mentioned pretty explicit details in those kind of like bulleted lists of questions. So the King probably didn't even hear about this, right that she supposedly said they slept together.

Can I I'm sorry, can I ask a threshold question here? I am not in the what you would call the maybe the tutor fandom as it were, or the tutor wife and or whatever. The way you're talking about this makes it sound like they're like almost confessional or or team based camps that are here, and it's like this person was evil and did something in this person and it's like, I I'm not trying to be Maybe it's just because I don't like have I don't feel personally about the about the Tutors other than really disliking Henry and thinking, wow, that sucks for his wives. To various degrees.

All of these women are uh victims to very to to to various degrees, and some have worse sins and crimes committed against them than others. But like, I mean, I don't know, is like, is Jane like the Benedict Arnold of this thing? Like I'm serious, I'm not, I'm not like putting on airs. I just don't know that that's a good question. I don't know the vibe of of how this goes down.

Yeah. So, and it's difficult sometimes because I'm so immersed in it to kind of think about where the baseline is. So there is a recurring kind of legend that Jane who married George, that they just hated each other.

Okay, so.

This is evidenced by a few things. They didn't have any kids even though they were married for over a decade, and then this evidence that she supposedly gave against them, leading to their executions. However, that sort of negative reputation towards her really only started after or the start of the reign of Elizabeth the First So I want to make sure I get to like all those questions, so like when how a kind of criminal investigation went at this time, it was basically entirely vibes. There were only a couple rules, like you can't torture a noble end of sentence, and like, yeah, that's pretty much it. And Thomas Cromwell was a weasel and was very good at this because he would manipulate the people he was questioning

with I mean, completely illogical, irrational, bullshit questions, but they and he would write them down. And that's one of the reasons he was so successful Under Henry the Eighth. He could get someone to say anything because he would make them say it. And when Anne Bolin was arrested on suspected adultery, treason, and incest, he brought those charges with nothing to substantiate them really, and a lot of what he was doing from May second, fifteen thirty six, when she was arrested to her trial was interrogate and drill everyone in her life to get them to say something incriminating to allow Thomas Cromwell to take down Anne Bolin and basically the five men around and her, which I mean, there's many, but the one that I focus

on is George because of his relationships with Jane, basically as George's wife. Jane is of particular interest because in theory, she spends the most time with George, and so in theory, if he's sleeping with his sister, she's going to be the one to know about it, right. Yeah, So this they're leading questions, their garbage doodoo questions, slouchy Mike Wazowski, questions that are and oh, I've been saying slouchy Mike Wazowski so much lately. It's really unfortunate. Yeah, if it rhymes, if it's alliterative, I love it. Anyways, So he's asking her questions. It doesn't seem like she was in the tower or anything, which is good. She hadn't been like arrested attain. She was just kind of getting grilled, Like

you're just sitting there trying to eat your lunch and and Thomas shows up and is like, so your sister in law was fucking your husband, right, And also to anyone who out there who's in a relationship or married, like, think about how humiliating that is to just have someone and be like, do you know your partners sleeping with their sibling and like, that's that's a crazy Like you would probably be like, what are you talking about? Are you crazy? What do you mean? Unless that's actually happening, in which case get help, But uh.

Yeah, probably got's good advice.

That's advice that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. My legal advice is please don't sleep with your blood relatives. That's that's that's typically not a good idea, yeah, and in often cases it's legal. But Jane is being asked all these questions, and we don't know exactly what she was asked. We do know, generally based on a letter and some testimony introduced at the trial of her husband, George, that she said something to the effect of George and Anne spent a lot of time together in the Queen's apartments alone, or a variation of that. Now you might think, hey, Logan, look, gurly, what's so wrong with that. They're siblings spending time together.

And I would say, friend, you're so right, there's nothing wrong about that. Even in the early modern period, in the tutor court, siblings spent a lot of time together alone. There were very few people you could reasonably be if you're a woman alone in a room with if they're not also a woman, And that is like your father, your husband, and your brother or sibling and maybe your children, depending on your class. So this is Thomas is like grilling Jane and she's like, I mean, yeah, I guess they spent a lot of time together, but they're like siblings.

And he said, Damn, I cannot believe you just said that they're in her bedchamber all the time, like and just turned that into these disgusting allegations graphic disgusting allegations of incest. Important note, I think there's five claims brought against Anne Boleyn of adultery slash incest, and four of the five literally could not have happened, either because of not being literally present like the court not being present where the incests or adultery allegedly happened, or because I don't know one of them. She was literally still in she hadn't been churched yet from giving birth Tols with the first, and so she was surrounded by only women, like you mean to tell me. I think it might have been Henry Norris that just like came into her

chamber and was like, high room full of women, I'm here to sleep with Anne now, and they were all like, oh, of course, and no one said that the word happened. Yeah, they like saluted, they said, yes, king haha. Also treason. But anyways, so uh, historically, it just kind of note, like final note on that. Elizabeth the First did a lot of work to try and kind of incognito rehabilitate ambulance reputation, probably rightfully so, because I think it's pretty universally accepted that and while maybe it was difficult and that she was a strong willed, smart woman, was also like wrongfully accused. It didn't do any of the things that she was accused of doing. So one of the ways was kind of theying the people who gave evidence

against her, and Jane just happened to get caught in the crossfire. And I think that's kind of where the myth starts. And then by the time you get to Victorian England, she fits into the perfect other woman kind of trope, like her and Jane Seymour kind of fit, you know, into this trope of okay, get her back for being a sinful, lustful woman. And then Jane Seymour comes in and she's the retribution. Right, It's like, hey, don't be the other woman like Anne Boleynn, because now you can see what a good wife is supposed to look like.

Right, gotcha.

My opinion is that it's horseshit. At the end of the day, we're all working with the same resources, but we see a lot more evidence of people talking about others in legal records when they're jerks than we do if they are just great people.

And yeah, yeah, I mean I think that that's that's definitely true. Like, you know, we definitely see this, you know, throughout the medieval period. Like for example, I think you could say right, like able Ard, he was right about everything, but his trouble was he.

Was like a piece of ship that nobody liked.

Oh yeah, so he so he ends up in legal trouble just because nobody likes him, right, and so that happens, right, Yeah, I.

Mean, what a way to go, right, boldly go friend. Anyways, so I kind of lined out what this alleged evidence is. And then also Henry had penile problems in that he supposed.

It was only one time it was.

Yeah, so he was he was struggling with his morility, and so allegedly and and her brother or Ann and Jane had been talking about how the king lacked potency and virility. It's like, yo, he can't get hard, but when he does, nothing's happening, which is possible based on what we know about him, and that kind of put the nail in the coffin for them. We do think that it's probably true that Jane, yeah, oh oh yeah, oh yeah. There there ain't no doubt in my mind, Henry was the worst lay you've ever had one that. Yeah.

So basically I based on the archive full work I've done where I saw the kind of allegations one by one and what they what quote unquote acts they used to substantiate them. I think the worst thing she probably said was, yeah, sometimes we made like gossipy little jokes about the King having like an erectile dysfunction.

Because function.

Yeah, yeah, on on account on account of all of the erectile dysfunction and uh, another important fact about him, he's a big fat baby. And so that is actually my legal advice. That is my official designation to the Minnesota bar. Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. Unless you want to give me the authority to do that, and then I will say it. So this really Thomas Cromwell knows that if he brings that up in trial, they're gonna convict Georgian Anne, just based on the fact that they know Henry's going to freak the fuck out that. Yeah. Yeah, and he's like, excuse me, I have the biggest cod piece in this room. What do you mean it doesn't work.

It's a normal I am a normal, functional man. I am a man like any other, right, right.

So I put on my cod piece one leg at a time, just like.

Sorry, my servants put on my cod pieces.

Yeah.

I also think it's important to realize and this is the you know, one of the key bits is like, like, uh, humanizing the humans that were alive. Then Henry hadn't been murdering wives at this point in time rights. It is weird, but also her first Jane's first boss, Catherine of Aragon, had been set aside and pretty cruelly pretty being an understatement, and now her sister in law was like in jail, and so she was just like, Okay, maybe if I give something, they'll just annull the marriage and move on, and then like we can just be done with this because last time it was a decade almost of bullshit and whatever. Again, I still don't think she said anything particularly crazy. So then and and George are condemned as traders.

There I was looking at a statute both the other day. They're still in the attaineder roles, which is interesting because if they're condemned, they don't need to be attainted, you know what I mean. But because they were found guilty by a jury, And I think another important one to realize is, you know, the family left behind from these people.

You've got Thomas Bolin, the father of the two executed children, who immediately writes to Henry the eighth being like, please please don't fire me, like you're so cool, don't worry about it.

I hate him so much. People don't talk enough about how he's a piece of shit, I think, actually, But anyway, like yeah.

So I'm also writing a little little slay book thing which is like very early early, but I literally have like a chapter on him being a monster.

Yea.

And another person that I want to highlight here is not just Jane, but Elizabeth Howard. So Elizabeth Howard's husband had and sorry, Elizabeth Howard's children, her only surviving son, and her daughter had been forced into this position then executed. Her husband is immediately saying please, Henry, love me, love me.

And her brother, which we think she was older, her little brother was the one presiding over the trial and condemned them.

So sure, that's fine. I wouldn't worry about that.

I think, yeah, totally, totally, yeah, no big deal. But it's like, this is traumatizing. And also people love to make a big deal about the fact that when Anne was executed, and I believe it was also the case with George, they fired a cannon but Elizabeth Howard and Jane Bolin at this time, but Jane Parker were in London. Like, if you're a parent, imagine you're hearing the two cannon shots, or at least the one that are announcing the death of your children, while you know your husband's like in the office over there writing a letter to the man who killed them, being like you are so pretty and your cod piece is the biggest and I want to keep working for you. And then you know that your little brother was the one who like helped bully the

jury into ex king them. So these two women who have been a three women, and Jane and Elizabeth who have really think about how traumatizing this two and a half weeks is for these women. Jane is now a widow of a condemned and senselessly honestly a tainted trader because Henry really had to just hit it home, which means, for those who don't know the legal process of attainder, you are basically declaring the person legally dead. You are saying that everything that they have is basically reverting to the crown, and it also taints the blood of the entire line below them, so it also goes out to sometimes depending but this one wouldn't have because Henry didn't want any of his potential offspring to get all silly,

silly up with a tainted blood. And the only way you could overcome that is by parliament declaring that by statue that you were untainted. Basically, so Jane's dour lands, the things that she should have gotten as a widow are no longer available because they yeah, and she leaves court right after she's lost. By the way, we have actual records that she and George got along very well.

George just spent years in France and also so that's just kind of People have speculated that George was gay, that George was abusive to her because they never had kids. They just didn't have kids, like I've been married for two years and not had kids, Like we don't, you know what I mean, Like it doesn't it's not a thing.

Yeah.

And also some people just can't have kids.

So just like jump that down, oh, tons of peoples of people. So Jane leaves. She's negotiating with Thomas Blyn being like, Hi, you are still an earl uh and you have all of this money and income. Can I please have something money and had to fight with him and Thomas Cromwell for ten months. She then is like given scraps and can barely support herself. And I don't even mean in the like that she's the dowager Viscountess Rochford, not even in that finery, like I don't we don't have records that she's got a large staff or like a huge estate. She's just like unable to get clothes and food and she's not even at court. So she eventually goes back to court to serve her sister in law's replacement, Jane Seymour ten months later, I hate I don't. Okay, honestly,

I've been listen.

She's such a pick me like I mean quite literally, and I'm oh, oh, I'm so good. Oh no, I love my husband who just like killed his last wife.

Yeah. No, very calculated. And also she just like pulled from Uh. I don't think Anne was as calculated in her quote capturing of Henry. I think that there's a lot of nuance there, but I don't think there's a whole lot of nuance with Jane. I think Jane just pulled from that playbook and like went in there. At the end of the day, I don't know that I believe in the whole like wife Steeler thing, because like Henry had to allow himself to be stolen and so there's that. But also like, uh, yeah, Jane's a complex creature.

So Jane Bolin slash Parker shows up to court, she's got a third boss. Maybe this won't go better. She is supposedly present for the threat Henry made toe where he basically said, remember what happened to Anne? She got too involved in politics, so watch yourself. People think Jane was a really conservative Catholic. Actually the Seymour branch was a Reformist branch look at Edward the sixth later on, who was like kind of crazy Protestant or Anglican, I guess.

And she would have been present for Jane's lying in and the birth of Edward the sixth and then also for the death of Jane Seymour. So she doesn't have a great track record or with bosses, right, And I do think there's some level of relief, like, Okay, now there's a prince, people will stop looking at my niece Elizabeth, They'll stop looking at my brother, and my sister in law all stop being looked at like this.

Yeah, yeah, she.

The household has kind of broken up. After couple of months, the women are sent from court. She is brought back in to serve Anne of Cleaves. So she's there and there is actual debate on whether that marriage was consummated. I kind of think it could have been, and.

I really too.

I do too.

But she's also the smartest of all of them, I think in terms of like street smarts, like she she really like played the game right and the circumstances were such that it like allowed for her to But the reason I kind of think that is I don't think she didn't know what sex was, like noble women knew what sex was. Privacy. Job, yeah, job, know what sex is.

You can't convince me that she thought that Henry the kissing her forehead like in the morning and at evening was going to get her pregnant. I just don't believe that she had She had siblings, she had they had a farm, like she knew animals had to do it to have kids.

She didn't think that.

But Jane Bolin shows up again as the kind of Lee testimony basically kind of like a chit chatty innuendo conversation that she reports to. Uh, I think it's actually Cranmer, not Cromwell, because Cromwell's kind of not doing too good in this one because he organized the Anne of Cleve's marriage, which is disastrous falling apart because Henry h has that aforementioned ed erectile dysfunction and says that he literally can't get it up for her because she's so ugly. Sure, whatever, And so Jane gives this testimony that basically she had been talking to the queen and said, Hey, are we about to have like a Duke of York, Like, let's what's happen are you? And then she was like, oh, I don't know, like maybe soon. And then somehow, even

after this same kind of phrasing got her husband executed, even though she didn't say it, she's like, well, basically there has to be something come on, like basically just being like dish about the sex with the king, and it's kind of like, I don't know that she probably would have said that considering like talking shit about the king was alrighty kind of treason, let alone talking about it in a way that indicated the succession.

And also why does she actually want to know about like sex with the king, given the fact that she's probably like, this fucking guy ruined my life so many times.

But I cannot imagine how terrified she must have been when he walked in the room, you know what I mean, like as a human being. But that testimony, she gives it very quickly. That is kind of like a nail in the coffin for oh, it hasn't been consummated. That's the basis for the annulment. That and they try a pre contract route. But basically Anne of Clean is just like I don't want to be married either, Like I think one of the key traits of someone who's married to Henry the eight is not wanting to be married to Henry the eighth anymore. Yeah yeah, and so she just like bows out after six months. That's great. Well, another cousin, Katherine Howard, who.

I love Katherine Howard, I do what, like, is she true? Okay? So Catherine Howard, let me just say girls, girl, oh good time girl? Uh like, uh she is. She's so real for all this shit. Absolutely fucking married this guy and cheat on him. I love you. I believe she was fucking other people.

Okay, yeah, and and I like that for her. So here's where I out myself as a Gareth Russell Stan Okay, all right. So one of the first books I read about Catherine Howard that actually kind of induced me into researching this more was The Young and d and in Fair also personal lore. I descend through the Morton family, which is okay, So like if I was a contemporary like I, which directly goes into the Wentworth family. So like my ancestor was Jane Seymour's aunt, so like I would have been all up in this ship. And so I'm like, ooh uh, that's why some of all these connections are interesting to me because I'm like, had I been alive contemporaneously, I would have known, you know, this asshole, and like yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like everyone says

I was related to let but that one I do have on good authority and through like clear genealogical tracing. But anyways, Gareth wrote a book, Young and Damned and the Fair, The Life of Katherine Howard. I think you should read it. I think it's fantastic. Audiobook is also very good. And we kind of we guess that she's Catherine Howard. It's about eighteen. I tend to fall more into the camp that she was like seventeen when she got married to Henry the eighth. She was a lady or a maid of honor and of Cleave's service. Henry kind of caught her eye. We think that Thomas Howard, if you remember, the brother of Elizabeth Howard, kind of threw her in front of him and the ironic because he had just like a few years earlier, condemned his

niece and nephew for for no real reason, but puts Catherine out in front of the king. The king becomes obsessed with her and infatuate with her, and my guess is just like he's a creepy perv and was like able to become aroused, like I think said something like it. She stirs me to like our like she proves that I'm a man. Like there there's there's a lot of my god, shut up, yeah he's discussed. He we again, disgusting man and he Thomas Howard puts her in front of Henry and immediately you've got her grandmother, the dowager Countess or stepgrandmother, the Dowager Countess of Norfolk and her family, Catherine Howard's family and close connections, being like, Thomas, you're so stupid. She's we know she been throwing ass, like

we know people we know she's like, you know, a normal teenage girl and uh, while that's unacceptable. Also, uh side note, people were having sex like all of these like oh every you know noble one men like who went to her marriage bed a maid? Whatever? That literally is not true, like there are plenty of noble women who would do certain sexual acts.

You can get jacked the fuck off.

Yeah, Like I mean, well, like, how do you how.

Do you explain fucking Mary Bullin? Right, Like that's all I'm saying.

But anyway, Yeah, love that diva.

Yeah she's diva. She played her cards right.

Oh yeah. I I tend to fall into this idea that like Catherine was just a normal girl who would have been like a real cool lady. Like I think she was really fun, really self determined and self possessed, and I think that she just was pushed in front of the King potentially or he genuinely found her and capture, like uh, enthralling and wanted her, and she just did the best she could with what she was given.

We don't have really everybody wants a bad bitch until related all I'm saying.

That's that's been my experience as well. Yes, he basically I think there there's like some reference that I saw that Catherine may have slept with Henry before they got married as well, and like that's kind of why he knew that he could stir for her. Uh So, I'm like, you guys are really going to make a big deal out of premarital sex when Henry Okay whatever. Anyways, So Jane sees this seventeen maybe eighteen year old girl who she is by marriage related to closely because they were her and Anne were first cousins. She's like, I want to I think she was like, I want to protect this kid who is reckless and doing whatever the hell she wants, but also like a normal person. So we also don't see signs that Catherine Howard is really doing

anything illicit. Until early to mid fifteen forty one, Henry V eighth had a famous like festering ulcer on his leg or yeah, yeah, yes, stinky boy, And basically I think it was March of fifteen forty one. I might have the month wrong, but the wound was kept open to drain it constantly, and it closed and so he had like intense fever. He was ill for weeks and everyone thought he was going to die, like this was like a legitimate People thought he was going to die.

And this is another thing that I believe I saw Gareth Russell say, which is I also agree that I think Catherine Howard thought she was about to be the dowager Queen of England. I think she thought Henry was about to die. And I think she was pulling later on Catherine Parr, like lining up her next marriage to Thomas Culpepper. There was already attraction there, and I think by that point she just kind of like threw a line in it had gotten a bite. But then Henry survived, and she at that point was just like she already had feelings for Thomas Culpepper before they got married, before she and Henry got married, So I just think by that point she was trapped, like she was stuck in She was like I am probably either deeply infatuated with

or in love with Thomas Culpepper. She had always gotten everything she kind of wanted from then she couldn't have him in theory, so I think that there's like a lot of elements there that would make a normal human being feel a certain way, and so I think that we will never know. I don't necessarily think that Jane Bolin had like an aggressive hand and like encouraging it or whatever. I think she was doing her what she probably saw as her job. She's served queens since she was fifteen, like it's been twenty one years at this point, and yes that has not gone well. But also think about this, if you see someone doing the same thing that has gotten people in trouble in the past, and why would you not try and help kind of like

smooth that over. And I also think that her not reporting it sooner indicates something about Jane's character, like would she have if Jane or if Anne Blynn had been sleeping with George. Would Jane Bolin have sat on it and then told when it was convenient for her? I don't know. So Catherine is Thomas Kramer also kind of a dick in my opinion.

Oh, I really hate Thomas Kremer. But anyway, I do too.

I like I'm being I'm very I'm being very reserved in my in my language. That's why I just said, Oh, yeah, total dick. Yeah right. So the he he somehow alerts the King that there may or may not be some sexual promiscuity on Catherine's part. There is an investigation super quiet, uh at first, and then they find out that Catherine had had a premarital relationship with Francis Durham, truly one of the worst people in this story if you can believe it. Truly a bad dude, and I mean the relationship was real. They had had sex numerous times while Catherine was under like was a ward to the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, and from what we can tell, he was way more interested in her than she was. He was trying to get her to say, oh, we're married,

because at that time, that's all that's all it takes, like in the medieval early modern period, basically I don't remember what year it is, but until like there's standardization in marriages, all you need is an oath, a promise, and then consummation. So and that's until then, it's a pre contract. So like, if you have the oath but no consummation, that's a pre contract, et cetera, et cetera.

Once you do have the consummation, it's a binding like covenant before God. You cannot break it. So that was kind of the big deal, right. They wanted to know what had happened, to know if the marriage to the king was legally valid. He Henry actually did care about that because he's scot two children that are illegitimate in theory and needs more, and there's no reason to believe Catherine won't have kids. She's young and healthy, so they look into it. And then Catherine, while being questioned, randomly brings up Thomas Culpepper's name to try and like outsmart them and be like, oh, he was just jealous for some stupid reason of Thomas Culpepper, and that kind of shed light on people were like, why would you bring

Thomas Culpepper up? They investigated found out that there had been some sort of like yes, yes. And one of my favorite bits of lore is that Henry the Eighth, upon like finding out about that, just broke down into tears in front of his Privy Council, which is like massive like that that would be completely unimaginable. Oh, it's in more than one report. I mean most of them are from Eustace shep Wey, which you know, I love that man. Very gossip, be very like we wouldn't know shit if it wasn't for him.

He's such a good guy. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyways, Henry is devastated, upset, never sees Catherine again up and leaves. She's locked in her chambers at I think not Greenwich Hampton Court, and that is kind of when Jane gets pulled in to say, hey, what happened, what happened? What happened. She's interrogated for three days. She is taken to the tower this time, and keep in mind her sister in law and her husband had been executed there and she had a lot of negative experiences there.

So she goes in. She's being interrogated in relatively nice conditions, like we it seems like she was housed in the Queen's apart, so it's not like a dungeon, but still it's the Tower of London, like you don't want to be there, no, no, you know, yeah, it's not the ideal place. And at some point Thomas Kramer provides information to Jane that Catherine Howard had been pointing fingers at Jane, trying to distance herself, basically saying, well, Jane made me.

Jane made me do this, She facilitated it all, she encouraged me to do it. She basically wanted to like make the king a cuckhold, like she wanted you know what I mean, like just we don't actually know that that's true. That could have been an invention by Thomas Kramer. That really could have been. But when Jane hears this, she gets understandably upset and she starts to try and defend herself and she's like, well, actually Catherine was like screwing Thomas and I've seen, like I know that that was happening. But there's a concept called misprison of treason.

Which is if you know about treason, if you know treason is happening and you do nothing about it, that in and of itself is like constructive treason. You have basically committed treason. It's like aiding in a bedding, right. And so while Jane is sitting there being like, wow, I can't believe this, Like jerk is out here saying that I did this, I'm gonna say, wait a second, No, she was a willing participant. Look at her own behavior.

She also simultaneously condemns herself. She basically admits to being guilty of misprison of treason, even if what she was saying wasn't true, even if she didn't think that they had been sleeping together. Her saying that she knew they had meant that she had committed treason, right. And it's about this time that she goes into a frenzy, which is a term that is kind of similar to what we would see as catatonic today.

So it's kind of I'm sorry to interrupt, I'm going to cut this out. I have to go. You guys keep talking, won't logan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Its great to talk to you again. And thank you for this. I I don't know most of this, but yeah, thank you. Y'all have fun and yeah, i'll get it posted. Bye bye bye.

Ah, rest in peace, and I'll try to be quick. I okay, I will say it's so interesting, but then I felt bad because I was like lou grum. Sorry anyways, and scene okay, so h around the three day is when we think this evidence was given just based on the the state papers of Henry the eighth, Right, that's kind of when we get the indication that there's been some incriminating statements. She falls into a frenzy, which is, you know, for a long time, I mean over a millennia at this point, characterized by kind of manic highs, babbling, kind of hallucinations, being inconsolable, and then kind of manic glows.

There are reports not from this case, but of other cases of frenzy, like being unable to move, being unable to respond, seeming conscious, like freezing up body parts, which are all symptoms of what we would today call kind of a catatonic state. Yeah, and you can't really mimic this frenzy was a legal term. It had a meaning.

It's not how you might say today, Oh gosh, they were crazy, which is like, yeah, like frenzy was like a medical term as well, it meant something, So we don't know. You know, there wasn't like a checklist if you have to have three of these four symptoms. What we do know is that she most likely exhibited hysterics, screaming, crying, speaking to people that weren't there, seeing people that weren't there, combined with restlessness pacing walking, followed by periods of prolonged stillness.

And I don't mean stillness like oh she's just sitting there. I mean like eyes open, staring at a wall, not able to move. So those are the most like kind of common frenzy symptoms that I have found since like Greek texts about it. And also this is from like the royal like like of doctors, So if they're why would they say frenzy? If they, like to me, it makes they they have an interest in making it seem less serious, so I don't think they would have said frenzy if it wasn't legitimate. Then Henry sends his doctors to treat her well. First they remove her from the tower because they're like, well, this environment's stressful they from what yeah, we kind of yeah, just a little bit like she, oh, you know what, she hasn't moved in

a day, she might be a little upset. And one of the ways people would try to like snap people out of a frenzy. Again, we don't have this expressly from her case, but in other cases is to like scream in their face to like see if they're faking, so like to make loud in their face.

And then see if they flinch. Okay, yeah, yeshtcha.

But fun facts they don't. And what we have from people who've like kind of recovered from a calatonic state is like they're very aware of everything. They can see everything here, everything. They just can't move. They can be willing their body to move and it will not move. So again, we don't know that that's what happened to Jane, but it's possible. I would say it's I wouldn't say it's like certain. I would say it's probably like more likely than not, but like fifty one percent chance based on what we have and what we know about the term that was being used. Like it's like if someone said heart attack today, you would be like, oh, okay, well, we generally know what happens with the heart attack today.

So she is mood, She's moved from the Tower of London to Russell House on I believe it's on the strand and she's basically just like soothed and like gets her head pats and they send Royal physicians, which again big deal, like for them to divert Royal health care from a hypochondriac king to like have them go in there.

Like in my mind, Henry was just like fixer, like thin, so that we can get that bitch on the stand, yes exactly. And they were able to get her to like eat and like not basically go into hysterics for a little bit, and so they said, okay, cool. But she never reached a state where she was lucid enough to stand trial or do anything like that. Like she she was basically permanently on. There is a lot of post talk, what's the right word, I guess, conjecture or speculation that she was faking it. I don't think you can really fake frenzy. I don't think they would have been sending Royal doctors to someone who was faking it.

It just it seems very unlikely to me based on the actions of the people around her, that that's what would have happened. Again, I'm of the perspective that, you know, culture has changed so much, but human nature hasn't. So if you take yourself and put yourself as a human being going through these things, and that's why going through her life I think is very important. Yeah, you know, I believe that any person would be very at least high strung at this point. But when you find out like, hey, you're on the tight rope of treason and then you trip, like and you know that it's over for you.

Yeah, Like, why why not treat yourself to about of madness?

Yeah? Why not? Honestly, like if it keeps your brain out of there, like, dissociate me so far out of my body please. So there's a kind of prolonged period of time. I mean when from May tewod to May nineteenth and fifteen thirty six when Ane Bolin was executed again, it's like seventeen days. This is from November in fifteen forty one to February and fifteen forty two, a much longer period of time, and a good chunk of that is because they need Jane's confession slash testimony and also my belief is that they needed to Henry needed to punish Jane. I mean, if you think about it, her husband, her husband and sister in law had embarrassed him. She had given testimony saying that he couldn't get it up

for Catherine or Anne of Cleaves, and then he sees her as kind of facilitating an adulterous relationship. So I think that everything we know about Henry tells me that he would have loathed Jane by.

This point because he's a penny little bitch you know.

That doesn't work.

Yeah, yeah, right, and she knew, yeah, and like what are you gonna do? Right, what are you going to do?

Yeah that at that point, once she kind of incriminated herself, no amount of intervention could help her. And yeah, that kind of real also why she freaked out, you know, oh yeah, like her father was still a baron, you know what I mean, Like she like she was still related to the Earl of Wiltshire, and like it's like she had reason to believe she could have gotten out of this until she incriminated herself, until she realized that her title or her her family's title and her family's wealth could not save her from her own words, like she probably just and then she's already in the Tower of London, Like I can't imagine how trapped she must have felt at that point, and just so sure she must have been that she was. Henry had not given

mercy to anyone, right, right, she even the people that he claimed to love, the mothers of his children, like.

Bitches, right yeah?

And like why would he have pity on a woman who had, in his eyes, probably humiliated him on numerous occasions. And that's kind of where, you know, we move into the legal history of it. The issue with executing or even trying Jane is that for millennia at this point, you didn't do that. Yeah, you know, you don't kill people who can't understand what they're being killed for. There is a kind of stacked list of reasons.

Sorry, you're good.

There's a stacked list of reasons, the earliest being being mentally ill from an ancient Roman philosophy, just means he is punished enough by his own madness. It's a Roman maxim I'm not going to try to say it. My Latin is not that good.

None of us speak baby, don't worry about that.

Yes, I can give you a translation, and that it basically just means that losing one's human identity, their own sentience, was the ultimate sentence, and that physical execution was a redundant cruelty. Then there's the theological canon law. So a sixteenth century Christian state would have believed in the good death, which meant that a prisoner had to be lucid to confess, to receive the sacraments, and repent on the scaffold to save their soul. So executing a mad person meant you were sending an unrepentant soul straight to hell. That was considered a mortal sin for the state. That is, in theory, worse than treason, worse like it is worse to kill someone knowing you're sending their soul to hell without yeah,

absolutely yeah, without a chance for them to repent. So and then so we've got the philosophical, we've got the religious, the theological, and then we've got the practical. Public executions were state propaganda theater. The prisoner was expected to play their part, confess, validate the king's justice, be like yep, I deserve to be killed, And the whole point was to deter other people from committing crimes. The big concern being that if you executed someone who was visibly mentally ill, visibly you know, dragging or screaming or just kind of delirious, that it would not serve the purpose of deterrence, it would endear or create empathy or compassion for the person on the scaffold, and it could cause violence, unrest, and

undermine justice. We've got three to the sixteenth century mind, very very legitimate reasons you cannot do it. It doesn't matter if they were crazy from their perspective, mad, lost their mind before they did the crime, after they did the crime, after they were convicted and sentenced, you just don't do it. If someone's and if they regain their sanity, sure then you can do it. If they became mad after sentencing, that was like the one kind of caveat.

Yeah, it's like the vibes are just off right, Like that's fundamentally the thing. It's like, you're not going to get whatever it is you want to get out of it. I think it's kind of like the idea, right.

Yeah, there's no good reason, there's no like philosophically it's bad, theologically it's illegal, and practically it does more harm than good. Yeah. So Henry the eighth was like, but I want to kill her, and his advice.

I love killing. I just love it.

You know, Sorry what we got.

I was just saying that Headery the eighth was like, but I just love killing bitches. That's fun for me.

Oh, he said, but I want to kill her. Yeah, it's like varuk assault I want to squirrel from Yeah. Yeah, but he's like, I want to kill this lady. She's made me mad. There was no need for it. Misprison of treason was something that got pardoned all the time. If you're planning for the death of the king, like his estate planning, so like the entire parliament, every time they talk about succession, they're committing misprison of treason, so they get mass pardons all the time. The idea is that like it's to deter people noting up. But Jane had, in theory spoken up. There was no real reason that she needed to be executed, and she had fallen mad.

There was every reason to just give her life imprisonment or just let her go. So Parliament was like, I don't think that we can execute them for this. The legal irony which has been talked about more widely. But you know, if Catherine Howard had a pre contract with Francis Durham, then she was never married to Henry, and then she never could have committed adultery if she had been married to Henry and had never fully classmated the marriage.

But it had like a romantic affair that was treason for him but not necessarily for her, Like there are there are many legal loopholes. And if she had had Thomas Cromwell on her side, who had been executed the same day she got married to Henry in a true like psychopathic move like, I think that it would have come out very differently. But they didn't have they didn't have the support. I mean, one of the big things is a hallmark of legal prosecution for a most of English history. At leases, you don't get to know the charges against you, like you just show up. You generally may know what you're being tried for. You show up to your trial, they just throw all of the facts and allegations that you and you try to defend yourself

there and if you can't, woo boopsies, you're done. But people are looking at Henry like, I really think we should not do this so Henry had two big things on his agenda at the end of fifteen forty one. I want to kill my wife and Jane, and I want to be called the King of Ireland.

And I know so much. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Yeah, anyway, and Parliament was like, well no, and the lords in Ireland were like, well no, and so he was like, well, then this parliament is over and they were like okay. So they all left and went to their respective like earldoms and seats and whatnot. And then he was like and another thing, emergency Parliament January be here.

So they come back down and in the interim they are every member of this you know, House of Lords basically is being told you have to basically pick one. You have to do both. You have to make Henry the King of Ireland and get the attainder pushed through for Catherine and Jane. During the intervening months, they had tried to ask Catherine if she would consent to a trial, because then they could do what they did to Anne Balin and basically just drag her through the mud and get it a kind of foregone conclusion. But Catherine thought she was making Henry happy by saying no, I won't do a trial because you know, that might humiliate Henry.

But that actually made it more difficult because now they had to legally condemn them. She didn't know that. She wouldn't have known that. It was like, it's unreasonable to think that by doing a favor to someone you might actually be like condemning yourself. That's just not a normal thought process to have if you're like a regular human. Yeah, hopefully so in the intervening months, while the parliament's on their way, they're getting browbeat, and they meet and basically they're like, Okay, we don't really think it's necessary, but we will sign the attainer based on these confessions we've gotten.

They were extracted by Thomas Oh gosh, Crmmer. Sorry Thomas Kramer. I almost said Cromwell, but nope, he's dead. Yeah, and they were really devastating. Again. I think that everyone should read Young and Damned and Fair by Gareth Russell. He goes through this in detail, but the confessions are contradictory.

She's kind of pushed by Kranmer into giving contradictory confessions. He felt bad for her, but he expressly gave her enough rope to hang herself with. He allowed her to contradict herself. Basically just manipulated this terrified teenager into condemning herself. And then when we get the quote unquote final or the most likely accurate confession, the reality of the situation is, Yeah, she slept with Francis.

There.

She never agreed to a pre contract. She was overwhelmed by him, he was possessive. She wanted out of it. She had had emotional feelings for h. Thomas Culpepper. They had never crossed the line into actual sex in the you know, Christian way, but there had been like long nights and maybe kisses and stuff. We don't know, but there was something there. It was not necessarily a physical affair, but it was an emotional one. And in theory, based on the law, neither of those things were illegal. But that's why attainder was needed, because yeah, a fair trial would have said, like she should be a like the marriage would be an old but like, yeah, anyways, she had not committed a statutory crime. Right the attainer passes through.

We have some like ambassador letters saying there were dissenting rumbles from nobles outside, but inside they they all sided with the King and then from that point they do one final rally to try and quote cure. They didn't say cure, but basically undo her frenzy. It doesn't really work, but they do feed her and get her as comfy as they can without telling her she's going to be executed, just so she's in a state where she can be executed.

And yeah, they in the interim with the Act of Attainder pass a statute called the Trees and Lunacy Act and A fifteen forty two and it basically says if a person was sane when they committed or confessed to treason but then subsequently went mad, the state could legally execute them anyways, exactly as if they were lucid.

So this is like.

A very clearly targeted statute to kill Jane. There's no one else doing that. This was not a petition for statue, Like there wasn't really debate on it. It was just like, okay, yes, we'll kill her. Yeah, because even if you've been attainted, yeah if you want, if you're a tainted that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be killed. So it like they're like, okay, she's attainted, Like she has no rights anymore, but like, we still can't execute her because it's illegal. And then they were like, oh, well insert this law. So February thirteenth, Jane or it was actually I believe the twelfth. Somewhere in the first two weeks of February, Jane is taken from the strand at Russell House back to the tower,

and somewhere in there she is told that she's to be executed. And this is another one of those moments where people say, oh, she was faking it, because reportedly, as soon as she finds out, she goes slack faced, stoic and calm. She stops going into hysterics, she stops sobbing. And to those people, I would say, have you ever heard of association, my dear.

It's like yeah, I mean, that doesn't prove anything, it's just like, yay, cool, right.

Biologically, your brain will do things like so think about like shock or how you might get like a paper cut and it doesn't hurt at first. Your brain is designed to protect itself and you from things that would be too traumatic in theory to process. When people get really terrific or terrific terrible, not terrific, definitely terrible, very bad or devastating news. There is a well known thing often thrown around, but technically it's dissociation, where your body and your brain, as a means of protecting itself from an overwhelming blow of trauma, will disconnect sort of. That's the best I can use word I can use for it.

You are that feeling of being outside of your body because you are in danger and you're trapped and you can't do anything. To all of our mental health profession I know that is like the most like simple explanation ever, but I'm not a mental health professional. Mentally ill maybe, but the dissociation is what I would say it is.

It aligns with every single one of her behaviors. She was still physically weak, she was still not talking, she was still I mean, she was so physically and mentally ill. She had to be physically helped into the barge to get from the strand to the tower. She had to be helped into the tower. It actually does seem like she was able. There's a common thing that she was helped up to the scaffold. I didn't see that in any of the records, and I don't think it's I don't think it's like impossible, but I don't know that it's true. But I do know she had to be aided into her bars. That's the one that I saw, and I believe that so she On February thirteen, fifteen forty two, both Catherine and Jane are set to be executed.

Catherine is executed first. I am not an expert in this. I have read conflicting things about the order of operations. My understanding of these executions is that if you have more than one noble being executed out of time, they don't share the scaffold together. They're not standing on the scaffold at the same time, but they may well be standing off in the wings, so you know they're at the bottom of the stairs ready to step up. It also could be true that she was that Jane was kept out of sight during this time. I do not know anyone who has, like primary sources that indicate that.

Please let me know. I think that logistically it makes the most sense that there was the scaffold. Catherine went first gave her speech. Jane would have been in view of the scaffold. Most likely she was a woman, so there was that to contend with two. Typically women did not watch private beheadings like noble women did not do that.

There was no law saying they couldn't, but it was just considered bad form. And one thing I do know, though, is the procedure of post beheading is to move the body and the head and to they leave straw and basically just like really cheap quality rushes, but it's just hay and straw to soak up blood. But they don't like clean the entire scaffold, make it nice and meat and then put it back. They can scoop out some of the like soiled hay and then put some over it.

But until they take the scaffold down and burn it, which was common practice, so you didn't make a martyr out of anyone or they use them as relics, there would have still been like blood on the scaffold visible in the hay. The block would have still been stained. So Jane's up there, she gives her speech, and she's beheaded, and she met most goodly and Christian ends, as did Catherine, which indicates that they just they gave a boilerplate speech on the scaffold like I'm here, I'm dying the loss.

As I die, I have sinned the King is so good and pray for me and by and that would have been standard. Not only because they were scared of the king. They're about to die, they're not scared of like the king coming in and slapping them at that point. But it was a true belief that you had to be repentant when you died, So this was just a good way of getting one final confession out there. It's absolute horseshit that Catherine Howard said that she died the wife of the king but would have rather died the wife of Culpepper. Like just no, no, not at all.

That's just didn't happen. But the final piece that people use against Jane is that she was able to give a scaffold speech. My answer to that is, like, you know what, sure, she was in a frenzy, she was dissociated, and she was able to give like a coherent, good speech. I use the word boiler place, which to our legal friends they'll understand is just like fill in the blank forms basically mad libs. But for a speech. The speeches were all very formulaic and basically said the same thing, like I just said, Hi, I've condemned, I'm a sinner.

I did bad things in my life. Pray for me, pray for the king, and then they get executed. And Jane had been a consummate courtier for twenty plus years at this point. I don't think it would have taken a lot of effort for her to just repeat the speeches that she would have known by heart. I don't think that it's condemning of her. I don't think it says that she I don't think based on her giving a convincing scaffold speech, we can say that she hated her husband and sister in law and so in a vindictive rage, had them condemned for incest. I don't think you can say that that means she faked her mental illness, which was believed so thoroughly by the entire and the king that they held off executing her for over a month.

Like yeah, and before I kind of pop into the final bit about the legacy of this. Executing people before, I mean modern times was not a long drawn out process like you might see in the US with like death row, where someone can be on death row for years and years and years and not be executed. This is ye olden times, friends, like they you're imprisoned to keep you from leaving because they don't have ways to track you. Really, and once you're condemned to die, you just you can be killed immediately after, like literally a lot of commoners like just take it out and execute it like right then, or you may be held until like the next day or maybe a couple of days depending, But to wait from like to wait over a month

is a long time contemporaneously to wait for an execution from a condemnation.

So yeah, absolutely, yep, so I.

Mean and again, like, uh, I believe Anne Boleyn was condemned on the thirteenth or fourteenth, anyways, she was supposed to be executed on the eighteenth. You know what I haven't in my notes. I'm gonna check because that's actually I don't want to butcher that. Luke edit this part out, yes, sorry, hi ear that, or they're all gonna hear me sound like a gosh darn silly because also there are multiple times where I'm like, uh, he did good editing the other one though, like he moved stuff around that didn't make me sound too as stupid. Okay, yeah, so if you look at the timeline of even Anne Bolin and George Bolin. Their trial was on the fifteenth of May.

George was executed on the seventeenth and was supposed to be executed on the eighteenth, it was delayed. She was executed on the nineteenth, So that is collectively four days including the trial day to execute the queen after a trial for a tainer, you're basically saying they don't exist. You can execute them anytime. The timing of it and everything tells me that everyone believed that this lady was not with us mentally. But moving forward, we've got kind of the revisionist karma narrative. Elizabethan pro Bolin. Writers framed her madness not as what I would say it is, which is kind of a tragic psychological breakdown caused by decades of state terror, but as some sort of divine punishment.

God struck her as insane, as a cosmic karma for betraying George and Anne in fifteen thirty six. And then victorians took that further and said she faked it. Now these are narrow right, Okay, Yeah, So the idea was not immediately that she faked it. The idea was that she was mad, but it was because God was punishing her right, so you can see the evolution of it.

And I also think that it's interesting because it kind of shows an evolution of our attitudes towards women and their mental health in general. So first, when you have like the state peting with like mental health, it proves how easily a state can just easily rewrite a foundational human and legal ethics issue like centuries or millennia of common protections the moment that those ethics conflict with their notions of political vengeance or bureaucratic convenience. So this is right.

I have to just find that quite interesting because it's like, at this point in time, we're accepting that maybe ambulance was a little hard done by, which is part of the reason why we are kind of like saying it's okay to be mean to her, but like not enough to be like, maybe this guy's just a piece of shit who killed a woman who was mentally unwell. Like, I mean, it's interesting, it's just interesting, you know.

Yeah, this is separate from my work with something that I've read a few times, like we expect women to fill the mommy role throughout all of history. The history is made up of you know, people and their mothers.

Right, Yeah, like.

We expect women to perform to such a high standard. It's difficult. We struggle with it. I mean through all of history, literally all of history. But I do think that what we've inherited about this that is so particularly harmful is this idea that it does not matter how visible and real and visceral the pain of a woman is.

We can just say she deserved it or she faked it. And that is such a pervasive theme even today, I mean even after like the Me Too movement, or during and after the Me Too movement, You've got this idea that whatever a woman says should be met with scrutiny. If she did get hurt, there must have been some sort of failing on her part. But I also think that it completely changes the way that we have touched mental health. Is it a lot to say that this one like fracture in history is the moment? Probably not.

Is it enough to say that at least marks a clear point in history where we start a strong deviation? I would say yes. You know, like we say the early modern period started in fourteen eighty five, that's not a real thing, that's just a label We gave it right. I think that I would give this a similar label, and that like this is I think the moment that the evolution of the law of mental health really begins into the modern day. So the idea before was mental health was real, mental health was sacred. Mental health prevented you from being punished, and it actually meant that you had to be cared for, because that's what good Christians do.

They care for those who can't care for themselves, et cetera, et cetera. Now the idea is, well, sometimes mentally ill people deserve to be mentally ill, and they deserve to be punished for the things they did either while they were mentally ill er before the car Serle state grows exponentially in the sixteenth, late sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries.

Even ironically, Charles the Second tried to use this law again. Yeah, well, because he was like, you guys killed my dad. I'm mad at you. And from what I've read, immediately they were like you can't do that, dog, and he was like, okay, fine, I'll find another way. Like he was told, no, you just can't do that. I think this wasn't taken officially off the books till like eighteen ninety five maybe, but if you're used, that does not mean that it was actively being like practiced, right, Like, statutory law is a bit more nuanced in that way. In the UK, things will just stay on the books indefinitely. It's uh yeah, and you just kind of like ignore it and like, yeah, yeah, apply it when it apply it based on vibes for sure.

So after that, we don't. I don't have any you know, records that I've found of people being executed per like pursuant to this act. Again maybe, but there's no big record of it. We know that one of the things that Mary Tutor, Mary the First Bloody Mary did was like acknowledged this as flawed.

Because to say, also justice or Mary Tutor, Elizabeth the First killed way more people than Mary ever did. But since she killed, like since very killed Protestants, everyone is like that's bad. Since Elizabeth the First killed Catholics, everyone is like that's good. So yeah, like, oh, like it's real, real.

Let's wake that up. So I did some math on this because I too was like the same, right, And I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone was like, I said, basically, the same thing. And my take on this is if we look at averages, Mary killed the fewest of the Tutor monarchs, like and that's that's a per year average, that's not even like total overall. So Henry the Eighth killed tens of thousands of people, Edward the sixth killed somewhere like not a ton by early modern monarch standards, but like, I think around one thousand something. Elizabeth the number that I saw was about five hundred ish, and then Mary was three hundred something and in her five years. So if you were to divide their reigns by their executions, like Mary,

she may be about tied with Elizabeth because Elizabeth reigned for so many years, but she, like, come on, I think it is you know, she was executing people based on their religious and political ideologies, but so was everyone else.

It was everybody else. It's just that it was okay to kill Catholics.

Yeah. I think that the only monarch that didn't do that from the Tutor era was Henry the seventh. I think he was the only that I can think of it because Henry the Seventh, Henry the eighth definitely killed people on heresy, so did Edward the six so did Mary the First, So did Elizabeth the First. Uh and by the way, continued again with James the First and sixth then, like you know what I mean, like like, we're not she just fell victim to the Elizabethan propaganda machine.

I tend to fall into the unpopular camp that like Elizabeth the First was not the sleigh diva that we think she was, Like.

She's good, she's not even a fucking good queen.

No, she's really kind of job you know, she couldn't. Yeah, she kind of failed in like by every metric. I mean, like she really played no part in the Spanish Armada, and uh, like she was a bit too indecisive and money was a problem, and the succession was, you know, a literal crisis, et cetera, et cetera. I think like if I were to rank the monarchs of the Tutor era by their like goodness, as in good at their jobs, it would be Henry the Seventh, Marry the First, Edward the sixth, Elizabeth the One, Henry the eighth. So I do think that the gap between Elizabeth the First and Henry the Eve is massive. I think it's a massive gap.

I mean, Henry did just a terrible, terrible, terrible job.

At every part. Oh, I mean, every single thing he did was wrong. But yea, yeah, yeah.

So coming from the mess soup of the Tutor era, we have more long term incarceration of people with mental illness. We have the later advent of asylums, and it's kind of rooted in this idea that instead of rehabilitating someone, you have to punish them for their mental illness. And we have just now started to reform prison reform, so we've got things in at least in the US. Second, look sentencing reform, where you can look back at sentences that were committed a while ago, after a certain number of years depending on the state, and you look at the severity of the crime, and then you kind of look more holistically at the life of that person and what they've gone through, what they had gone through before,

what they've been through since, if they've gotten new diagnoses. A lot of these are based in mental health, like oh, they had undiagnosed schizophrenia and now they're medicated and that has basically removed like that has lowered their chances of not recidivism, yep, maybe recidivism. Anyways, they're not going to recommit.

I also want to fly that isism.

That is I I was gonna say, I'm pretty sure it supposed to. Oh my gosh, luke help. But like rates of recidivism go down as you treat people's mental health, and the reform is undoing what I see as hundreds of years of I mean, growing animosity towards the mentally ill uh and diminishing support for the people who need it the most. I'm not particularly religious myself, but I also think that the good works that you know, the early modern churches were doing. I say early modern because that's my area of study. No, yeah, like they were doing really tremendous work. I mean, even if you look at the things that religious houses we're doing for pilgrims, you show up, they will give you food, they will

give you shelter. If you don't have food, they will give you food. They will provide you with a job, they will help you with housing. Like they were doing a lot of the things based on their income from tithes and their income from rents that actually redistributed that wealth to people who needed it. And of course you had corrupt religious houses that were just enriching themselves at the expense of the people around them boo thumbs down.

But you also see Henry the dismantle so many of those systems. So I think that you know, it's easy to blame Henry the Eighth for a lot of things which I do, and and one of those things is removing support systems, removing the scaffolding for the common person to get help, and then making the law more harsh and more cruel to the people who need the most help.

That is something that we see today. Laws are inherently cruel to so many people, so many demographics, The way we punish people disproportionately based on their race, their gender, their various orientations and beliefs. It's something that has grown a lot since the early modern period, where I'm not trying to say the early modern peers it's laws were just like you know, peak and that we need to go back to them, but I am saying that there was more based on your actions, and as long as you practice the same religion you were told to practice, that was pretty much it. There's much less. I mean also, of course, the continual hostility towards like Jewish populations, and that's kind of the historical everywhere but in England, and

the idea that we think that women have more mental health issues, or that people of color feel pain differently, all stem from ideas that we can just finagle and play with mental health to make it more convenient for us. I think this is an example of it. I think this is an example of a woman who has been intentionally misunderstood and misrepresented for almost five hundred years, and who has been vilified after being victimized by a man who just I mean, who victimized thousands and thousands and thousands of people, so many women, every woman.

In his life.

He was abusive towards every single one, even Jane Seymour. He threatened her, you know, like, there's no woman in his life that he was kind to. Yeah. Completely, So it's just I don't It's not lost on me that in an era rooted in misogyny, we have laws that are meant to hurt women, or at least a woman, and then the way that that has evolved into a system where the law is much better equipped to hurt people based on who they are and how they exist, rather than the things they've actually done.

I think it's been really important to sit down and have a look at this, because you know, it's something I don't reguard listeners are going to be unsurprised to hear because I'm always banging on about it. But there is this assumption that history is this kind of one brave march towards progress and things are always getting better.

And I think that this case is one of those times when we see that really the opposite is true. And indeed, when you give rich people unlimited power, turns out they often do awful fucking things. And I think that it's important to just kind of highlight that the tutors are kind of worse than most of the medieval monitor.

I mean, like there's some there's some bad examples in there, but like the tutors fuck a lot more people up.

Yeah, I would say John is probably the only one. Yeah, Yeah, I would say like John and Henry the Eighth are probably up there as like the two two worst at least like as people like as people that I would not want to sit in a room with, and I mean period sitting room with. I think it's important to also like.

That's what happened when the spars get on the throne. That's all I'm saying oh, so true.

So true. I mean, it's it's it's always I think, unfortunately, at least in my study of the English monarchy, been the case that when you live in a world where a person's body is also the state, the people around them are pawns. At the end of the day, a prince or a princess is born a baby, just like anyone else, right, So, like, yes, you can get into whole nature versus nurture thing, But I don't think that if you went to a five year old girl right now and you're like, hey, in seven years, do you want to marry a sixty year old man, that they would be like yeah, And I just it doesn't matter that that's their duty. They're still human beings. And that's why I think it's important to remember that, you know,

human nature has not changed that much. Like we as humans are still social creatures. We still receive trauma, and our understandings of things have shifted, but we still weaponize populations that we see as weaker. By we, I mean socially societally weaponize people's identities like their womanhood or their poverty, or their ability to be housed. You know, yeah, yeah, ways to vilify them, and I think this is I appreciate your seeing of that, but also I wanted to highlight that it's not something that's gone.

It's oh god no, oh like babe, yeah and uh, and it's it's in no way gone. And at the moment the powers that be are fighting really hard to ensure that it will not go. You know, but yeah, you know that's why history is important, so you go down and look at it. But well, Logan, thank you very much for coming on, gentle listeners. I think you'll notice Luke had to drop off and uh go be a loving father, which is important as well. And these two childless ass bitches, these two crones, yes, hello, hello, yeah, no, but we'll stay on and talk shit about Henry the Eighth Logan. If the good people want to find you and stalk you so that they can pay attention when your podcast does come out, where might they do that?

Well, they can find me if I figure it out. I should have probably. If you want to find me on Instagram, you can find me at Logan underscore Wimer one one one. That's my anniversary date. I wasn't actually that boring that I just had one one one anyways, and I am. I have a co author chapter in an ABA book on Trauma Informed Lawyering coming out in July.

If you look up my name you should be able to find it. It's about second look sentence reform. And yes, I am currently developing a podcast where I do talks like this where I highlight the lives of women because we do a lot of work trying to avoid seeing historical people as people, and I think that we can do a better job of that.

Fucking brilliant to the listeners. You know, you can find Luke at Luke is Amazing across all platforms, and you can find his older podcast, A People's History of the Older Public, where he apps about Star Wars. I am, of course available on the platforms as at Going Medieval unlist It's Instagram when it's doctor eleanor Yanaga and I guess the thing to go check out that I've done recently that is not this bullshit is I was on No One Saw It Coming, which is the Australian Broadcast Corporation's podcast talking about the Black Death. And also, if you like this, tutors, do check out my limited series with a Friend of the pod of Phoebe Roy about the television series wolf Hall. Anyway, Logan, we love you.

Thanks for a friend of the pod and love you.

Yes, I'm also on the discord, so if anyone wants to to DM me being crazy, that's also a thing you're allowed to do. You got out again, Oh no, Fighting for her Life Part.

Two microphone, Oh my god, I needed anyway logan. Thank you. My mic is odd.

So you're coming. Oh my god, that's amazing.

Yeah.

The Life and Death of Jane Boleyn feat Logan Weimer

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