The character of Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford, is drawn from history—few novelists would dare to invent such a horror as she seems to have been. She did indeed give the crucial evidence that led to the beheading of her husband and sister-in-law, and there seems to be no explanation for this but jealousy and a determination to preserve her inheritance. She was at the deathbed of Jane Seymour, and gave evidence that could have been used to send Anne of Cleves to the scaffold (as I describe). The evidence against her and her own confession clearly show that she encouraged Katherine Howard’s adultery, fully understanding the fatal danger to the young queen. The suggestion that she did this with the purpose of getting the queen pregnant is my own. I suggest that she pretended madness in the hope of escaping the scaffold, but I hope I show, both in this book and in The Other Boleyn Girl, that Jane Boleyn was never wholly sane.

On my website philippagregory.com there is a family tree and more background information about the writing of this novel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The following works have been invaluable in the research for this book:

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Bindoff, S. T., Pelican History of England: Tudor England, Penguin, 1993

Bruce, Marie Louise, Anne Boleyn, Collins, 1972

Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual Religions and the Life-cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, OUP, 1977

Darby, H. C., A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, CUP, 1976

Denny, Joanna, Katherine Howard, A Tudor Conspiracy, Portrait, 2005

Elton, G. R., England under the Tudors, Methuen, 1955

Fletcher, Anthony, Tudor Rebellions, Longman, 1968

Guy, John, Tudor England, OUP, 1988

Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, Sutton, 1997

Hutchinson, Robert, The Last Days of Henry VIII, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005

Lindsey, Karen, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived, A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, Perseus Publishing, 1995

Loades, David, The Tudor Court, Batsford, 1986

Loades, David, Henry VIII and His Queens, Sutton, 2000

Mackie, J. D., Oxford History of England: The Earlier Tudors, OUP, 1952

Mumby, Frank Arthur, The Youth of Henry VIII, Constable and Co., 1913

Plowden, Alison, The House of Tudor, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976

Plowden, Alison, Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners, Sutton, 1998

Randall, Keith, Henry VIII and the Reformation in England, Hodder, 1993

Robinson, John Martin, The Dukes of Norfolk, OUP, 1982

Routh, C.R.N., Who’s Who in Tudor England, Shepheard-Walwyn, 1990

Scarisbrick, J. J., Yale English Monarchs: Henry VIII, YUP, 1997

Starkey, David, Henry VIII: A European Court in England, Collins & Brown, 1991

Starkey, David, The Reign of Henry VIII: Personalities and Politics, G. Philip, 1985

Starkey, David, Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII, Vintage, 2003

Tillyard, E. M. W., The Elizabethan World Picture, Pimlico, 1943

Turner, Robert, Elizabethan Magic, Element, 1989

Warnicke, Retha M., The Marrying of Anne of Cleves, CUP, 2000

Warnicke, Retha M., The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn, CUP, 1991