The Boleyn Misfortunes: Chapter 2

The Boleyn Misfortunes: Chapter 2

Early spring 1536.

George Boleyn:

Dear Holy Father, please let me escape with my head in a court full of endangerment, and thus the name and inheritance of the family be continued. I shall not want to see my own sister, as well as myself, put into anymore danger. It's risky business, the life of a courtier, and I acknowledge that. At one time, many years ago, before I was married to the witch of a wife I found in Jane Parker; things had been bliss. Anne had been in the French Court with her own sister Mary, and things had been ongoing and peaceful for our very aristocratic family, until the day when Uncle Howard devised a plan.

Uncle Howard decided that he was going to put the fate of the family onto our hands, the dynamic threesome that we were: Anne, Mary, and I. I daresay the picture of us three younger and bouncing about carelessly had to have been an extremely humorous sight, though at the same time; it would have charmed any properly seeing man into jealousy once he admired the beautiful caricatures in my beloved sisters. In that sense – things haven't much changed, if so, hardly at all – it was such following: Anne, the playful and outgoing one, the ambitious, and Mary, the honesty and sweet and confiding girl that I'd learnt to befriend before lift my britches, and I as the brother; enjoyed playing along with their silly games and tricks that they've picked up in the French courts. They were both expert flirts from a young age, and I daresay, that I expected them to go farther with the ambition in either of them than many other of the girls we lived around. I never would have thought that the throne of England and the favor of the impotent King Henry would later be on one of their hands.

When I'd had a drink or two more, I'd even confide some of the nasty tricks that a few of the people in the whorehouses had informed me of, back in the days when I wasn't afraid to even step out of my bed out of fear that my promiscuous wife would be on the prowl. Things had been a charmed life up until our greedy Uncle Howard, who somehow was able to always contrive reluctant fear and bitter admiration out of all of us. Our parents raised us as if it was their duty to obey and live out our lives under his command, and in that matter, we never failed to succeed once. It was his ambition that was passed onto Anne's, and possibly even I, who have at times, had my moments where I wanted nothing more than to climb status much higher than my dear friend Francis Weston. In a way, they had always been grooming us for the courtier life that was to be in our near future.

Mary, had her eyes set on the Golden Prince from the first time that she saw him, hunting on the grounds that belonged to some family friends acquainted to the Great King, who seemed to attract just as many women as he did deer. Little did we know that she wouldn't be the only mistress to the King, there were many. Bessie Blount, the rumored mother of Henry's illegitimate child Henry Fitzroy, and most recently; our family born rival Jane Seymour – whom Anne has been wailing like a banshee about often. After all, our family has driven it into her head that if she does nothing more than enchant him, their family will never, ever rise to higher standards. She must always keep the King's eyes only on her, and apparently, that's one mission that she's failed on.

Anne hasn't had as much patience as Uncle would want these days, after all, he had only been the Golden Prince…or so proclaimed, well. Lets it put this way - That was before he had been bloated from the amount of food he began to eat from time Anne caught his fancy onward, as Catherine of Aragon would never have allowed him to bloat so terribly, and possibly even endanger his health and the health of whatever children he may have. Though, in those days, he didn't seem to care about anything much more than having a son, something he had been becoming increasingly obsessive about. I can't blame him, as Henry himself shouldn't have inherited his throne, his late older brother Arthur should have been the one to claim and live out the monarchy of England.

Back to the story on the hunting grounds, she had caught his eye once before at a joust, though they had never become acquainted. Henry, who was proclaiming to his close advisors at court; my uncle among them at one point in time as well as Thomas Cromwell; that Catherine – his queen of nearly 24 years – was destroying his manhood. He was obviously getting distraught with bad fortune after the second miscarriage, and he was seeking a sort of get-away, and to him, Mary was just the sort. Unfortunately, she didn't make it particularly interesting or out of the blue for him, as once she had given birth to not only one, but two children of his; and given higher status to many of the members of the family – all but her, in that sense. Anne learned from that. Even while Mary was recovering from the birth of Henry, whom had a devastating impact on her poor health, she was already catching flirtations with the high Tudor. How was I brought into the ploy? I was made out to be the in between, the boy that sent messengers from the farm house that Mary was to stay in over the midsummer, and the castle where Anne now ruled. There was a born rivalry between my two sisters, and despite being pulled and tugged on either of their sides, I managed the in between – having decidedly stuck by both my sisters in times of stress. From the first time that Henry had determined Anne's marriage to her beloved Henry Percy to be invalid, and had grown sick and weary beyond belief, to the time that Mary's first betrothed William Carey had passed of the sweat.

What about my life in the court of Henry the Eighth of the name to rest on the throne, outside of the tennis courts and king's great jousts? By the year 1535, I was approximately in my second year of marriage with the hideous Jane Parker, whom I was assigned as being the Boleyn heir to marry another of my class. Unfortunately for me, it wasn't only me that grew distaste to her; she was under allusion that she held charm, though really; with me, she came nowhere close of the fancy most women are to their husbands or even their betrothed. Ugly, spiteful, and jealous as she was, she seemed to lurk and pry in the depth of the castle where he were to stay when at court. I was once lounging and laying with my dear sister who was recovering from the birth of Henry Carey, my nephew who at one time I thought was to become heir, and she came lurking in only to later gossip to a few of the maids that we had too much of a closer relationship than siblings ought to. She is the one who brought up the false incestuous charges against me in this trail of recent, and I daresay, she ought to be the one condemned to the scaffold. I know it is a sin that I am committing when even thinking, not just confessing as such, but a man who has grown such a distaste for his wife; even Henry the 8th could see why I held such accusations of horridness and spitefulness against her. Eventually, I turned my attraction towards another opposing fellow in the court, a Francis Weston. It was only something serious when we would play matches with rum, and secretly sneak out to the piers to fish for whatever we may find like silly boys in the neighboring forest. A couple of times we would discuss the hideousness in our own betrotheds and one thing got to another, and we exchanged an immoral embrace. I apologize for my sins, Jesus, and they shall not be held against me after thus. Francis was in favor of the King, I never would have suspected that his eye would have grown as wary to him as a master to a pig. My downfall, as well as Anne's, would be made up from some of the lies and odd circumstances that shrouded our lives in the court. It was something that ought to have never been recorded, these sins and accusations; these are things after all that many people get away with outside of the court, regardless of their belief systems and their preferences for reform or Catholicism. If he's such a great king that could win many victories over opposing nations, and work out so many treaties, then why does he struggle so on a matter of forgiving nature on his own once companions?