Johane Williamson is Cromwell’s sister-in-law, the daughter of Henry and Mercy Wykys, the wife of John Williamson and the mother of Jo.
The story so far…
Week 4: An Occult History of Britain (Part 2)
In 1527, we meet Johane at Liz’s funeral. Her husband is coughing, and she jokes that she will marry Thomas Cromwell if John dies. They will get a papal dispensation so he can marry his wife’s sister, they joke. Gregory doesn’t think it’s funny.
She moves her family into Austin Friars, and her husband goes to work with Cromwell. She makes it clear she wants John to avoid the slander being directed at Wolsey as his reputation tanks.
Week 5: Make or Mar / Three-Card Trick
As Cromwell pinches out the last candle of 1529, he tells Johane: “I wish we had a baby … a baby in the house.” It is there that Johane says her husband John does his duty by her, but it is “not my pleasure.” It is a conversation, Cromwell realises, he should not have had.
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
One day, when she meets Cromwell on the stairs, they kiss.
’Why does God test us?’ she whispers.
He murmers, ‘I do not feel we will pass.’
Does he, Cromwell, want to fail? He lets his thoughts run, and it is a dangerous game. He thinks of his dead wife:
Now the image is beginning to merge with that of her sister Johane, and everything that belonged to Liz is begining to belong to her: her half-smile, her questioning glance, her way of being naked. Till he says, enough, and scrubs her out of his mind.
Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1)
Mistress Petyt, I am very sorry to hear your husband is in the Tower. But you have brought this on yourselves. You people were the first to throw culumnies at the late cardinal. But now I suppose you wish you had him back.
Johane seems concerned that Cromwell will destroy himself protecting these heretics.
Week 9: Arrange Your Face (Part 2)
She and Cromwell know they must end their “ongoing folly.” She would marry him in an instant if she weren’t already married. She does not approve of what he is doing to help the king’s divorce, but she loves him. “They part friends.” And just so there are no hard feelings, she requests “a drinking cup made of the shell of a griffin’s egg.” Demand the impossible of the king’s councillor.
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
Cromwell now calls her “sweet sister.” She disapproves of Lucy Petyt marrying fellow evangelical John Parnell. “You’d think she’d marry a safer sort of man.” But he, Cromwell, doesn’t think she knows any. She tries to talk to him about marriage and who he will marry, when “that woman” is queen. But Cromwell’s mind is elsewhere, counting new bricks for renovations at The Tower.
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Johane on the king: “I had not thought him so tender. I see why Katherine has fought so hard for him. I mean, not just to be queen, which she thinks is her right, but to have him for a husband. I would say he is a man very apt to be loved.”
Also: “Henry is frightened of you.”
Week 29: The Book of Phantoms (Part 5/5) / Spoils
Cromwell wonders whether his wife was ever unfaithful. He says her sister. ‘Whatever put that into your head? Put it right out again.’