HEIRS OF AMBITION: The Making of the Boleyns

The name of Boleyn is carved deep into the heart of British history. Nicholas Boleyn of Salle; Thomas Boleyn, 'Donsel'; Geoffrey Boleyn, yeoman; Geoffrey Boleyn, citizen, hatter, mercer, merchant, sheriff, alderman, mayor; Master Thomas Boleyn, clerk; Lady Boleyn, widow; William Boleyn, esquire, knight; Thomas Boleyn, esquire, knight, viscount, earl; George Boleyn, esquire, knight, viscount; Anne Boleyn, marquess, Queen. Together they tell the story of lives well lived, fortunes changed, and sons who surpassed the ambition of their fathers. But was 15th century England really the mobile society their story suggests? The rules, the economy, the society, the prejudice through which the Boleyns forged a path began in the sheep fold and ended on the scaffold. From the fields of Norfolk to the royal court, via city commerce, local government, liberal education and numerous wedding bells, the Boleyns emerge as just one of many newly prosperous and ambitious families seeking to make the best of a changing world. As they struggle upwards, England is visited by famine, plague, revolt and civil war, but also opportunity. Struggling peasants in dirt-floored cottages scratch a living on tiny scraps of land. More than half are swept away by plague while revolt soaks the south-east in blood, but hope lies in the teeming, timber-framed streets of London amongst ambitious merchants who speculate and scheme. Meagre rations become venison pasties and straw-filled mattresses feather beds, but some things remain the same. Disease has no respect for wealth; war takes sons whose lives have barely begun. From steady climb to bone-breaking fall, this is far more than a prelude to the well-trodden tale of Anne Boleyn, mother of Queen Elizabeth I, who ended her life on the scaffold, and Henry VIII. With plenty of footnotes, an encyclopaedic knowledge and a compelling literary style, historian Claire Martin traces the family through the black death, the mercantile bustle of London, the Wars of the Roses and the ascent of the Tudors which until now we only had the Paston and Stonor letters to take us into the lives of late medieval merchant families. 256 pages, family trees.