Chapter summaries Boleyn Traitor Philippa Gregory

Chapter 32: Westminster Palace, Spring 1540

Spoiler Notice

This page reveals the full plot of Chapter 32. If you are reading Boleyn Traitor for the first time, you may wish to wait before proceeding.

Summary

Lord Cromwell summons Jane to his rooms to address the king’s public humiliation: Henry has confessed to his friends that he is impotent with Queen Anne of Cleves, describing her body as slack and her smell repellent. Cromwell dismisses these claims as delusions and, treating the crisis as a logical puzzle, argues that the king must have been bewitched. Together they construct a conspiracy theory blaming the Spanish party, Lord Lisle, and Lord Hungerford—along with a hedge-witch, Mother Roache—for the king’s condition. Jane is horrified by the plan to use a writ of attainder instead of a trial, but Cromwell presses her into a choice: either she helps persuade the queen to accept an annulment based on a prior contract, or a dozen innocent people will die for witchcraft. Faced with no other option, Jane agrees to advise Anne of Cleves to lie about a precontract, accepting an annulment and a pension to save lives.

Key Events

  • Cromwell reveals that the king publicly admits his impotence with the queen, blaming her body and odor.
  • Jane refutes the king’s complaints, knowing the queen is young and beautiful, and that the king’s own leg ulcer reeks.
  • Cromwell proposes a deliberate falsehood: the king is bewitched, and they must find a suspect to dismantle the marriage.
  • The pair fabricate a Papist plot involving Lord Lisle, Anne Basset, Lord Hungerford, and the witch Mother Roache.
  • Jane points out the injustice—no trial, only a writ of attainder—but Cromwell counters that tyranny by godly men is most efficient.
  • Cromwell reveals that if the queen agrees to an annulment (citing a prior childhood betrothal and non-consummation), all these lives can be spared.
  • Jane, recognizing no alternative, accepts the mission to counsel the queen to lie.

Character Development

  • Jane Boleyn: Torn between her moral compass and political survival. She uses double-entry bookkeeping as a metaphor for her own life—balancing ambition against defeat. Though complicit, she struggles against the monstrous falsehood and tries to preserve lives by steering the plan toward an annulment instead of a witch-hunt.
  • Lord Cromwell: Displays cold pragmatism and a willing embrace of tyranny. He treats the king’s impotence as a problem to be solved by fabrication, not truth. His preference for attaining enemies without trial reveals a dangerous consolidation of power, and he manipulates Jane’s compassion to secure her cooperation.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • Tyranny vs. Justice: Cromwell openly admits he would bypass Magna Carta and fair trial, calling a godly tyranny the best form of rule. The chapter questions what happens when power abandons all legal restraint.
  • Fabricated Truth: The entire witchcraft plot is a “useful fallacy,” built on a false supposition (petitio principii). Logic is weaponized to justify a predetermined outcome, showing how evidence can be constructed to serve power.
  • The King’s Body: The king’s impotence and his attempt to blame the queen’s body expose the fragility of his masculinity and the dangerous delusion that can drive state policy.
  • Women as Pawns: Anne of Cleves, Eliza Hungerford, Anne Basset, and others are mere pieces in a political game. The queen must sacrifice her crown and reputation to save lives, illustrating the complete lack of agency royal women possess.
  • Double-Entry Bookkeeping: Extends beyond financial accounts to a moral and practical audit of Jane’s life, symbolizing her calculated navigation of the treacherous court.

Why This Chapter Matters

This is the pivotal moment when the fate of Anne of Cleves is sealed not by her actions but by a fiction dreamed up in Cromwell’s chambers. It exposes the mechanism of Tudor political survival: when the king’s personal failings threaten the realm, a convenient lie must be constructed. Cromwell’s willingness to sacrifice others and Jane’s reluctant complicity set the stage for the queen’s downfall and foreshadow Cromwell’s own eventual destruction. The chapter crystallizes the ethical rot at the center of Henry’s court, where truth is what can be shouted loudest.

Study Questions and Answers

  1. Why does Cromwell insist on treating the king’s impotence as a case of witchcraft? Cromwell needs a political solution that does not blame the king. By framing the situation as witchcraft, he can destroy political rivals (Lisle, Hungerford, the Spanish party) while absolving Henry of any personal failing. The false narrative allows him to annul the marriage without admitting the king’s physical or mental shortcomings.

  2. What does Jane’s reaction to Cromwell’s plot reveal about her character? Jane is horrified by the idea of inventing a witch to kill innocent people, but she ultimately agrees when the alternative is mass execution. Her moral objection is real but not strong enough to break from Cromwell. She balances her conscience with a pragmatic desire to minimize harm—and to preserve her own position—showing her deep entanglement in the regime’s machinery.

  3. How does the concept of a “useful fallacy” function in this chapter, and what does it say about power at Henry’s court? Cromwell and Jane knowingly construct a false premise (the king is bewitched) and then deduce consequences from it. This invert-logic technique reveals that truth at court is secondary to political expediency; if the king’s desire can be served by a lie, that lie becomes official reality. The chapter argues that in a tyranny, even the king’s closest advisors must operate in a world of manufactured truths.

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