Thomas Boleyn
Earl of Wiltshire
Thomas Boleyn (1477 – ), Earl of Wiltshire, has been representing the king at the Imperial and French courts. He is the father of Mary and Anne Boleyn.
“You are fifty … a prominent courtier. On your mother’s side you have ancient royal blood but your wealthy paternal grandfather was Lord Mayor of London; hence the jibe that your people are ‘in trade’. You are clever, well-connected, cultured, smooth and able; exactly the sort of man who gets on in the reign of Henry VIII.”
Hilary Mantel, notes on characters
The story so far…
Week 3: An Occult History of Britain (Part 1)
In 1523, Boleyn is raked over the coals by the most powerful man in England, Thomas Wolsey. The cardinal accuses him of trying to get his daughter married to the future Earl of Northumberland. But Sir Thomas’s other daughter is sleeping with the king, so Boleyn’s ambitions may be even greater.
Week 6: Entirely Beloved Cromwell (Part 1)
With Wolsey down, the Boleyns will rise. In the Spring of 1530, Thomas becomes Earl of Wilshire.
Week 8: The Dead Complain of Their Burial / Arrange Your Face (Part 1)
“I feel sure Thomas Cromwell has a note of it. Give him a year or two, and we may all find ourselves superfluous.” I give you six months, Thomas. No more.
Week 10: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 1)
Boleyn is now Monseigneur, a special title for the father of the queen-to-be. It is difficult to take this man seriously. At the family council to decide what to do about Sir Henry Percy, Boleyn is fussy, hesitant, a slight figure with a big title.
Week 11: 'Alas, What Shall I Do For Love?' (Part 2) / Early Mass
Monseigneur looks delighted with himself at his daughter’s instalment as Marquess of Pembroke. One imagines he is planning what he will wear to her coronation.
Week 14: Devil's Spit / A Painter’s Eye
Monseigneur the queen’s father shines like the sun, and around him spins a smaller but still blazing noonday planet, his son George Rochford.
Week 15: Supremacy
His sister, Anne Shelton, has the measure of the man:
She talks about her brother Thomas Boleyn, the most selfish man I ever knew, it is no wonder Anne is so grasping, all she has ever heard from him is talk of money, and how to gain a mean advantage over people, he would have sold those girls naked at a Barbary slave market if he had thought he would get a good price.
Week 16: The Map of Christendom (Part 1)
Mary Boleyn writes to Cromwell for help. Her family have abandoned her. Cromwell calls Wiltshire in:
He will humiliate him - in his genial fashion - and make him give Mary an annuity. The girl worked for him, on her back, and now he must pension her. Richard will sit in the shadows and take notes. It will remind Boleyn of the old days: the old days now being approximately six, seven years back. Last week Chapuys said to him, in this kingdom now you are all the cardinal was, and more.
Week 17: The Map of Christendom (Part 2) / To Wolf Hall
His new cropped hair makes him look “deceptively ascetic.” He represents the king at the execution of the Charterhouse monks and he represents the Boleyns at the Tower to put the oath to Thomas More.
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 24: The Black Book (Part 3)
After Anne’s Easter triumph, recognised by Chapuys, the Boleyns are in a good mood. At the king’s council, they ‘are sleek cats, lolling in their seats and preening their whiskers.’ The day before, Henry fought with Cromwell and Master Secretary ran home.
'How pleaseing to hear from you at last, Cromwell,' says Monseigneur with a smirk. 'You do most usually speak first, and last, and everywhere in the middle, so that we more modest councillors are obliged to speak sotto voce, if at all, and pass notes to each other. May we ask if this new reticence of yours relates, in any way, to yesterday's events? When His Majesty, if I do recall correctly, administered a check to your ambition?'
Week 25: Master of Phantoms (Part 1/5)
Cromwell asks Monseigneur to convince Anne to go quietly.
A decade of self-aggrandisement, since his daughter flashed her cunny at the king, has made Boleyn rich and settled and confident. His era is drawing to a close, and he, Cromwell sees him decide not to fight it. Women age, men like variety; it's an old story, and even an anointed queen cannot escape it to write her own ending.
He agrees to talk to Anne, despite his son’s protestations.
Week 43: Nonsuch
Boleyn is back at court. ‘He is grey, drawn, less flesh on him than doctors like to see. He wears his Garter badge and a gold chain, but he wears them against the subdued garments of a private gentleman, and neither he nor his small entourage boast nor strut nor pick fights with the servants of the Seymours.’
‘We have seen such times, Lord Cromwell,’ he says, ‘if I consider what has befallen in England, since my late daughter came up — we have seen events crowded into a week, that in ordinary times would have sustained the chroniclers for a decade.’
Well, quite.