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Home / People / Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford

Historical person

Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford

1505–1542

Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford, was the wife of George Boleyn and served several of Henry VIII’s queens. Later tradition accused her of giving evidence that helped condemn George and Anne Boleyn, but the surviving records do not support the most extreme claims.

In 1541 she helped arrange secret meetings between Catherine Howard and Thomas Culpeper. Declared insane after arrest but made legally punishable by statute, she was executed with Catherine in 1542. Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford was born in Norfolk and died in Tower of London.

Alison Weir’s Katheryn Howard shows Jane Boleyn serving the young queen and helping arrange the secret meetings with Thomas Culpeper that later become evidence of treason. Philippa Gregory’s The Boleyn Inheritance gives Jane her own narrative voice as she returns to court after the deaths of George and Anne Boleyn and becomes trapped in Catherine Howard’s downfall. Weir’s The Wicked Wife makes Jane herself the central subject, re-examining the motives behind both her Boleyn testimony and her fatal service to Catherine. The Lady in the Tower considers Jane’s place in the evidence surrounding Anne Boleyn’s fall, while Gareth Russell’s Young and Damned and Fair reconstructs her later role in the Howard household and in the investigation that led to Catherine’s execution.

Series

Historical novels and book series featuring Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (2 series)

The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels in Order

by Philippa Gregory 16 books 4.4(140,052)

The Plantagenet and Tudor novels form a chronological sequence of connected but independently readable stories about women near the English throne. They move from the Lancastrian court and the Wars of the Roses through the rise of the Tudors, Henry VIII’s marriages, the mid-Tudor religious crisis and the…

All books in this series

Six Tudor Queens in Order

by Alison Weir 21 books 4.2(79,643)

The Six Tudor Queens sequence retells the lives of Henry VIII’s wives through six full-length novels. Twelve companion stories shift attention to relatives, servants, artists and courtiers affected by the same events, while Six Tudor Queens: Writing a New Story explains the project’s historical method. In the Shadow…

All books in this series

Non Fiction

Non Fiction featuring Jane Boleyn, Viscountess Rochford (2 books)

Biographies, histories and other non-fiction are listed separately from the historical novels above.