(This is an edited version of an article I wrote for Royals Monthly. The relationship between Jane Boleyn and Anne is the mystery around which my next novel, The Beaulieu Lane Allotments Historical Society, is based.)

JANE BOLEYN, wife of Anne Boleyn’s brother George, is one of Tudor history’s best-known figures, and yet if you search online for her portrait you will find … nothing.

Why are there no portraits of Jane? She was one of the highest-ranking noblewomen at court, and was lady-in-waiting to no fewer than five of Henry VIII’s six wives. She was the daughter of a lord, and when she married George (Viscount Rochford), became sister-in-law to the soon-to-be queen. Top notch, then, on the scale of posh!

The five Tudor queens served by Jane Boleyn: Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, and Catherine Howard. (The miniature portrait of Catherine Howard is not confirmed as Catherine, but if it is, it’s thought to be the only surviving painting of the teenage queen.)

But no portraits of this grand lady, because they really knew how to cancel people in Tudor times. If you offended King Henry you lost your head, and then every visible trace of you was wiped. All portraits of Jane, like those of Anne Boleyn, were destroyed after her death – having Jane’s or Anne’s likeness on your wall would have been tantamount to treason. The pictures of Anne we are familiar with were painted some time after Henry VIII’s death, when it was safe to talk about her again. Not so with Jane, because while Anne’s reputation was rehabilitated, Jane’s only went from bad to worse.

Over the centuries, Jane Boleyn has constantly been portrayed as a vindictive, scheming mean girl, eaten up with jealousy as her indifferent husband partied with his beloved sister. According to many historians and almost all historical fiction, Jane was wildly jealous of Anne’s close relationship with George, and was motivated by her hatred to help bring about Anne’s downfall, whispering tales of incest in the ear of Henry VIII’s ruthless henchman, Thomas Cromwell. At the time, Cromwell was amassing ‘evidence’ that would send Anne to the block so that Henry could move on to his next wife. In the TV series Wolf Hall we see this typical portrayal of Jane, listening at walls, peeping round corners, spying on George and Anne, running to Cromwell.

Six years after Anne was beheaded courtesy of those trumped-up charges, Jane lost her own head when she helped Henry’s fifth queen, Catherine Howard, have an affair with the young courtier Thomas Culpeper (he was hot, Henry by now was not). Again we see Jane whispering in corners, until Catherine and Jane are busted and both are dispatched to the Tower.

Did Jane make those accusations of incest? Did she hate Anne? Why did she help Catherine Howard go behind Henry’s back? Was she a malicious, compulsive schemer? Jane is a puzzle, and she’s one that historians have been revisiting recently, now we no longer readily accept these portrayals of women that have been built by mostly male historians, based on gossip, hearsay, and little evidence, and for questionable reasons. Was Jane made a scapegoat for the real perpetrators of Anne Boleyn’s downfall?

Jane Boleyn (born Jane Parker) was in her early teens when she first went to the Tudor court, to serve in the household of Queen Katherine of Aragon. In 1522, when she was about 17, she and 6 other ladies, including Anne Boleyn, Anne’s sister Mary, and the King’s sister Mary Tudor, were selected to take part in a masquerade. The seven women were chosen for their rank and appearance, which tells us how high Jane had already risen and gives us a strong hint that she was attractive.

About two years later, Jane married George Boleyn. Like most aristocratic marriages, it was an arrangement between two high-ranking families – Anne Boleyn was not yet married to Henry, but everyone knew where this was heading. Jane and George had no children, which is often taken as an indication that their marriage wasn’t happy, but there’s no evidence to back that up. It has been suggested that George was gay, although there’s no proof of this, either. However, author and historian Alison Weir called him ‘very promiscuous’.

This portrait by Hans Holbein could possibly be George Boleyn

There appears to be no hard evidence that Jane was an embittered wife, raging at George’s indifference to her, or that she hated her sister-in-law. In fact she wrote to George during his imprisonment in the Tower, and petitioned the King on his behalf – and George sent her a message of thanks.

It’s likely, according to Jane’s biographer Julia Fox, that Cromwell already had most of the evidence necessary to convict Anne by the time he sent for Jane (the initial claims of incest were made by another noblewoman at court): ‘Faced with such incessant questions … Jane would have searched her memory for every tiny incident that occurred to her … she buckled under the pressure of relentless questioning … and it was her weakness under interrogation that gave her future detractors – happy to find a scapegoat to exonerate the King from the heinous charge of callously killing his innocent wife – the ammunition to maintain that it was her evidence that had fooled Henry and destroyed Anne and George.’

After Anne’s death, Jane served Henry’s queens Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, and then the teenage Catherine Howard. Why did she help arrange Catherine’s love trysts with Culpeper? Theories include: because Catherine was the queen so Jane couldn’t say no; because Jane felt sorry for Catherine; and – the most intriguing – because it was vital that Catherine became pregnant but the King wasn’t up to the job, and Jane was playing her part in facilitating a pregnancy on behalf of the powerful Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard – Catherine’s uncle.

Whatever Jane’s motivation, Catherine and Thomas were found out and were despatched to the Tower to await execution, along with Jane who, unsurprisingly, had a nervous breakdown. Because she was declared insane, Henry VIII had to change the law to have her executed. However, Jane recovered, and faced her death with courage and dignity.

You might imagine Jane’s parents would disown her for bringing disgrace on the family. But there’s an interesting postscript to this tale. Jane’s mother commissioned a bell for her local church in her daughter’s memory. Every time it rang, she would have thought of Jane. And in that same church is a strange little statue, of a skeleton with a severed head by its foot. This memorial was part of the family tomb, and it’s thought that the severed head is a reference to Jane.

The cadavre memorial from the Parker family tomb in St Giles Church, near Great Hallingbury, Essex

So … no portraits, but Jane’s remembered in a tiny church in rural Essex. Was she history’s ultimate bad girl? Or an innocent pawn, a handy scapegoat for the real plotters and schemers of Tudor history?