George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford (1504 – )
The younger brother of Anne and Mary, you are recognised in your lifetimes as an accomplished and attractive young man, but there is a curious blank in history where you should be. You were a busy Cout poet but your verses are lost. You were said to be handsome but no picture remains. You were committed to religious reform but your only religious writings are translations. You were oddly insubstantial and so [in this story] you are your clothes: flamboyant, expensive and a bit silly.
Mantel, Notes on characters
The story so far…
Week 7: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 2)
A hand-devil carrying Wolsey at the farce held at Hampton Court after the cardinal’s death. Cromwell makes a mental note.
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
He is Lord Rochford now, and the boatmen on the river say he is sleeping with his sister. He certainly spends enough time with Anne. Cromwell sees them together at Advent with the king’s friends, her pets, the gentlemen of the privy chamber.
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
Cromwell is scathing of George, Lord Rochford. A vain man, fascinated by his own clothes. He is with the rest of the family when Cromwell visits to discuss the delicate matter of Henry Percy:
“George sits by him on a stool. George has his head in his hands. His sleeves are only medium-puffed.”
When Jane Rochford speaks the truth, George says, “I wish I could divorce you.”
After they agree they need Cromwell to figuratively beat in the skull of the Earl of Northumberland, George sits, “lost in thought”, playing with a jewelled pin. He pricks himself. “You fool of a boy,” says Uncle Norfolk.
Week 14: Devil’s Spit / A Painter’s Eye
George Rochford, “the blazing noonday planet” pays Mark Smeaton in “pearl buttons and comfit boxes” as they bring George’s friends to Anne’s bedchamber. Or so says Lady Rochford. She believes her husband and his sister Anne will poison her.
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
George Boleyn represents the king at the execution of the monks. At Thomas More’s trial, he asks if More can provide his own version of his conversation with Richard Riche. But of course he cannot, because Riche was there to “remove from me the means of recording.”
Week 18: Falcons
Thomas Cromwell on Anne: “She hates Henry to listen to anyone but herself and her brother George and Monseigneur her father, and even her father gets the rough side of her tongue, and gets called lily-liver and timewaster.”
Week 19: Crows (Part 1)
Edward Seymour drops a court rumour about George and Anne. Currently, Boleyn’s men are scrapping with Nicholas Carew’s people.
When Anne became queen, George brought Cromwell in to give him advice.
It’s interesting, George Boleyn’s version of his life. He had always supposed it was Wolsey who trained him up, Wolsey who promoted him, Wolsey who made him the man he is: but George says no, it was the Boleyns.
Cromwell plays along and shows gratitude.