HEVER CASTLE was originally the stronghold of the family of De Hevre, said to have been of Norman extraction, one of whom, William De Hevre, is stated to have had license from King Edward III. to embattle this his manor-house. His daughters and co-heiresses inherited the estates, and through them, by marriage, they were conveyed to the families of Cobham and Brocas, the former of whom, having obtained the whole by purchase, sold it to Sir Geoffrey Bullen, or Boleyn, in which family it remained until it was seized by the Crown.

The family of Boleyn, or Bullen, traces from Sir Thomas Bullen, Knt., of Blickling and Saul, in Norfolk, and Joan, his wife, daughter and heiress of Sir John Bracton, Knt. The grandson of Sir Thomas was Sir Geoffrey Bullen, the purchaser of Hever Castle and other estates of the De Hevre family. Sir Geoffrey “was a wealthy mercer in London, as also Lord Mayor of that city in 37 Henry VI., and, having married Anne, eldest daughter and co-heiress to John, Baron Hoo and Hastings, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir Nicholas Wichingham, he had issue, Sir William Bullen, Knight of the Bath at the coronation of King Richard III.” Sir William married Margaret, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond (third brother to James, Earl of Wiltshire), and by her had, with other issue, a son, Thomas Bullen, afterwards created Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond.

This Thomas Bullen, or Boleyn, whose career, and that of his unfortunate daughter, Queen Anne Boleyn, are so intimately woven into the history of our country, was, in 1496, in arms with his father for suppressing the Cornish rebellion; and, under Henry VIII., “being one of the knights of the king’s body, was, jointly with Sir Henry Wyat, Knt., constituted governor of the Castle of Norwich. In the following year he was one of the ambassadors to the Emperor Maximilian, touching a war with France, and soon after was sole governor of Norwich Castle.”

In the eleventh year of this sovereign’s reign “he arranged the famous interview of King Henry VIII. and Francis I. between Guisnes and Ardres, and in the thirteenth year was accredited ambassador to the latter. The next year, being treasurer of the King’s household, he was sent ambassador to Spain, to advise with King Charles upon some proceedings in order to the war with France.” In 1525, with a view to further the suit of the monarch to his daughter Anne, Sir Thomas Bullen was created Baron and Viscount Rochfort, and afterwards successively Earl of Wiltshire and Earl of Ormond, a Knight of the Garter, and Lord Privy Seal. “He subscribed the articles against Cardinal Wolsey in 21 Henry VIII., and soon after was sent again ambassador to the Emperor Charles V.”

This Sir Thomas Bullen, afterwards, as we have shown, created Baron Rochfort, Viscount Rochfort, Earl of Ormond, and Earl of Wiltshire, married Elizabeth daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and by her had issue one son—George, commonly called Viscount Rochfort, but summoned as Baron Rochfort during the lifetime of his father—and two daughters, Anne and Mary. Lord Rochfort married Jane, daughter of Henry Parker, Earl of Morley. He was beheaded during the lifetime of his father, and left no issue. Of the daughters, the Lady Anne Bullen, who was created Marchioness of Pembroke, became second queen to King Henry VIII.; and the Lady Mary Bullen, married, first, William Cary, Esquire of the Body to King Henry VIII., and brother of Sir John Cary of Plashley, one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber to the same monarch; and, secondly, Sir William Stafford, Knt. The husband of this lady, William Cary, was the son of Thomas Cary, of Chilton Foliat, in Wiltshire (son of Sir William Cary, of Cockington, Devon, Knt.—who was slain at the battle of Tewkesbury—by his second wife, Alice, daughter of Sir Baldwin Fulford), by his wife, Margaret, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Robert Spencer, of Spencer Combe, by the Lady Eleanor Beaufort, daughter of Edmund, and sister and co-heiress of Henry, Duke of Somerset. Lady Mary Bullen had, by her first husband, William Cary, a daughter, Catherine, married to Sir Francis Knollys, K.G.; and a son, Sir Henry Cary, Knt., who was created Baron Hunsdon at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, and from whom descended the Barons Hunsdon and Earls of Dover and Monmouth; while from his brother, Sir John Cary, of Plashley, Knt., by his wife, Joyce, sister of Sir Anthony Denny, king’s remembrancer, are descended the Viscounts Falkland.

Anne Boleyn, or Bullen, was born at Hever in or about the year 1507; and in 1514, when only seven years of age, was appointed one of the maids of honour to the King’s sister—who had then just been married to Louis XII. of France—and was allowed to remain with her when her other English attendants were unceremoniously sent out of the country. On the Queen’s second marriage with Brandon, Anne Boleyn was left under the powerful protection of the new queen, Claude, wife of Francis I. She was thus brought up at the French Court. When war was declared against France in 1522, at which time her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, was ambassador to that country, it is thought she was brought back to England by him, and, shortly afterwards, was appointed one of the maids of honour to Queen Catherine, wife of Henry VIII., and was thus brought under the notice of that detestable and profligate monarch. She had not been long at Court when, it is said by Cavendish, a strong and mutual attachment sprang up between her and the young Lord Percy, son and heir of the Earl of Northumberland, who made her an offer of marriage, and was accepted. At this time she was only sixteen years of age. The match, however, was not destined to be made, for the King “had already turned his admiring eyes in the same direction, and, jealous of the rivalry of a subject, he caused the lovers to be parted through the agency of Cardinal Wolsey, in whose household Percy had been educated; and that young nobleman, probably under compulsion, married, in 1523, a daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury.” Anne, on being thus compulsorily separated from her young and fond lover, was removed to Hever. Here, within a few weeks, she heard of the marriage of her accepted lover, and, with feelings which can well be imagined, kept herself secluded.

To Hever the King repaired on a visit, but probably suspecting the cause of his arrival, Anne, under the pretext of sickness, kept closely to her chamber, which she did not leave until after his departure. “But this reserve was more likely to animate than daunt a royal lover; and Henry, for the purpose of restoring the reluctant lady to court, and bringing her within the sphere of his solicitations,” created her father Baron and Viscount Rochfort, and gave him the important post of Treasurer of the Royal Household. He also surrounded himself with her relatives and friends. Among those who were his chief companions were her father, Thomas, Viscount Rochfort; her brother George; her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk; her cousin, Sir Francis Bryan; her near relative and admirer, Sir Henry Norris; her intimate friend, Sir William Compton; and the King’s old favourite, the Duke of Suffolk—a lively but dissolute society, not one of whom showed any high regard for marriage vows, or treated their infringement as anything but a jest. “Suffolk,” says Mr. Brewer, “had been betrothed to one lady; then married another; then abandoned her, on the plea of his previous contract, for the lady whom he had in the first instance rejected. Norfolk lived with his duchess on the most scandalous terms. Sir William Compton had been cited in the Ecclesiastical Court for living in open adultery with a married woman. The fate of Norris and George Boleyn is too well known to require comment. Sir Francis Bryan, the chief companion in the King’s amusements, and the minister of his pleasures, was pointed out by common fame as more dissolute than all the rest.” Sir Thomas Wyatt, though married, wore her miniature round his neck, and sang of her love. Still, however, Henry’s suit, which was dishonourable even to one so depraved and lost to honour as he was, was unprosperous when made; and she is said by an old writer, and one not favourable to her, to have replied firmly to the King, “Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of my own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already; and your mistress I will not be.” Foiled in his attempt to gain her by any other means, the unscrupulous monarch now began seriously to set himself to the task of obtaining a divorce from Queen Catherine, who had been his wife for seventeen years, in order that he might replace her by Anne Boleyn. The history of these proceedings is a part of the history of the kingdom, and need not be here detailed. It is, however, a tradition of Hever that when the King came “a wooing” he sounded his bugle in the distance, that his lady-love might know of his approach. The divorce being obtained, Anne Boleyn, having previously been married to the King, became “indeed a queen;” and having given birth to two children—Queen Elizabeth and a still-born son—was arrested on a false and disgraceful charge, and was beheaded, to make room for a new queen in the person of one of her own maids of honour, Jane Seymour.

Of the personal appearance of Queen Anne Boleyn Mr. Brewer thus pleasantly discourses:—“The blood of the Ormonds ran in her veins. From her Irish descent she inherited—

‘The black-blue Irish hair and Irish eyes.’

And, like the Irish Isolt of the great poet, Anne Boleyn was remarkable for the exquisite turn of her neck and her glossy throat. She was a little, lively, sparkling brunette, with fascinating eyes and long black hair, which, contrary to the sombre fashion of those days, she wore coquettishly floating loosely down her back, interlaced with jewels. The beauty of her eyes and hair struck all beholders alike—grave ecclesiastics and spruce young sprigs of nobility. ‘Sitting in her hair on a litter’ is the feature at her coronation which seems to have made the deepest impression upon Archbishop Cranmer. ‘On Sunday morning (1st September, 1532), solemnly and in public, Madame Anne being then at Windsor, con li capilli sparsi, completely covered with the most costly jewels, was created by the king Countess of Pembroke.’ George Wyatt, grandson of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet, one of her admirers, describes her, in the fantastic language of the sixteenth century, as having ‘a beauty not so whitely as clear and fresh above all that we may esteem, which appeared much more excellent by her favour passing sweet and cheerful. There was found, indeed, upon the side of her nail upon one of her fingers some little show of a nail, which yet was so small, by the report of some that have seen her, as the work-master seemed to leave it an occasion of greater grace to her hand, which, with the tip of one of her fingers, might be and was usually by her hidden, without any least blemish to it.’”

The Earl of Wiltshire (Sir Thomas Boleyn), father of the ill-fated queen, died in 1538—two years after witnessing the beheading of his only son, Viscount Rochfort, and of his daughter, Queen Anne Boleyn; and on his death the family of Boleyn, in the main line, became extinct.

After the death of the Earl, Henry, with the rapacity that kept pace with his profligacy, claimed and seized the castle of Hever in right of his murdered wife, and subsequently settled it upon one of his later wives. He also purchased adjoining lands from others of the Boleyn family, and thus enlarged the estate. The castle and manor of Hever, and other adjoining lands, were settled upon Anne of Cleves, after her divorce, for life, or so long as she should remain in the kingdom, at the yearly rent of £93 13s. 3½d. She made Hever her general place of residence, and died there according to some writers, but at Chelsea according to others, in 1557. In “the same year the Hever estates were sold by commissioners, authorised by the Crown, to Sir Edward Waldegrave, lord chamberlain to the household of Queen Mary, who, on the accession of Elizabeth, was divested of all his employments, and committed to the Tower, where he died in 1561.” The estates afterwards passed through the family of Humphreys to that of Medley.

In 1745 Hever Castle was purchased by Timothy Waldo, of London, and of Clapham, in Surrey. The family of Waldo is said to derive itself, according to Hasted, from Thomas Waldo, of Lyons, in the kingdom of France, and was among the first who publicly renounced the doctrines of the Church of Rome, “one of the descendants of whom, in the reign of Elizabeth, in order to escape the persecutions of the Duke d’Alva, came over, it is said, and settled in England.” In 1575 Peter Waldo resided at Mitcham. His eldest son, Lawrence—according to Mr. Morris Jones, who has made much laudable research into the history of the family—had issue, by his wife Elizabeth, no fewer than fifteen children. Of these the twelfth child, Daniel Waldo, is the one pertaining to our present inquiry. He was a citizen and clothworker of London, and was fined as alderman and sheriff in 1661. He married Anne Claxton, by whom he had issue nine children. Of these the eldest son, Daniel Waldo, some of whose property was burnt down in the great fire of London in 1666, married twice, and from him are descended the Waldos of Harrow. Edward, the second son, became the purchaser, after the fire, of the sites of the “Black Bull,” the “Cardinal’s Hat,” and the “Black Boy,” in Cheapside, on which he erected a “great messuage,” where he dwelt; and in which, when it was taken down in 1861, was some fine oak carving, now at Gungrog.

This Edward Waldo was knighted—“at his own house in Cheapside,” the very house he had built—by the King, who was his guest, in 1677. On this occasion “he had the honour of entertaining his sovereign, together with the Princesses Mary and Anne and the Duchess of York, who, from a canopy of state in front of his house, viewed the civic procession pass along Cheapside on its way to Guildhall.” Sir Edward married three times. He died at his residence at Pinner in 1705, aged seventy-five, and was buried at Harrow. Nathaniel and Isaac, third and fourth sons of Daniel Waldo, died unmarried. Timothy, the fifth son, we shall speak of presently. Samuel, the sixth son, citizen and mercer of London, and freeman of the Clothworkers’ Company, married, first, a daughter of Sir Thomas Allen, of Finchley; and, secondly, Susan Churchman; and had, among other issue, Daniel Waldo, one of whose daughters, Sarah (married to Israel Woolliston), died at the age of ninety-eight, leaving her cousin, Col. Sibthorpe, M.P., her executor; Isaac Waldo, one of whose daughters, Sarah, married Humphrey Sibthorpe, M.D., Sheridan Professor of Botany, whose son, Humphrey Sibthorpe, M.P. (father of Col. Sibthorpe, M.P.), assumed for himself and his heirs, by royal sign-manual, the additional name and the arms of Waldo on inheriting the property left him by his relative, Peter Waldo, Esq., of Mitcham and of Warton.

Sir Timothy Waldo, to whom allusion has been made, the purchaser of Hever Castle, was admitted attorney of the King’s Bench and solicitor in Chancery in 1730; in 1739 he was under-sheriff of the city of London, and he was a liveryman and the clerk of the Salters’ Company. In 1736 he married Catherine Wakefield, and had by her an only child, Jane, who married, in 1762, George Medley, Esq., M.P., of Buxted. Sir Timothy, who was knighted in 1769, died at Clapham in 1786, his wife surviving him, and dying in 1806, aged ninety-five.

Their sole daughter and heiress, Jane, wife of George Medley, inherited all the property, including Hever Castle. She had no issue, and died in 1829, in her ninety-second year, leaving her large possessions, the personalty of which was sworn under £180,000, to her cousin, Jane Waldo, only daughter and heiress of Edward Waldo, of London, who administered to the estate as cousin and only next of kin. This lady, who thus became the possessor of Hever Castle, died at Tunbridge Wells in 1840, when the family became extinct. The name of Waldo had, however, been taken by royal sign-manual, in 1830, by Edmund Wakefield Meade, Esq., of Newbridge House, Dawlish, son of Francis Meade, of Lambeth. Edmund Meade-Waldo, Esq., became resident at Stonewall Park, near Hever Castle, which memorable edifice is still in possession of this family. He married Harriet, second daughter of Colonel Rochfort, M.P., by whom he left issue two sons and one daughter; the eldest son and heir being Edmund Waldo Meade-Waldo, Esq. The daughter, Harriet Dorothea, was married, in 1850, to the Rev. W. W. Battye, Rector of Hever, to which living he was presented by his father-in-law.

There are few ancient houses in the kingdom more deeply interesting to the curious occasional visitor than Hever; it does not, however, convey ideas of grandeur or magnificence. It never could have been large. Certainly at no period did it supply ample room to accommodate the suite of a luxurious monarch; and there is little doubt that the visits of the eighth Henry were made, if not secretly, without state, when he went to woo the unhappy lady he afterwards—and not long afterwards—murdered.

In the small chamber of the ground-floor, which still retains its minstrel’s gallery and its panelling of oak, was the bad king entertained by his victims; and in a very tiny chamber slept in pure innocence the object of his lust—a most reluctant bride and most miserable wife.

Yet Hever Castle was a stronghold, and a place well calculated for safety in the troublous times in which it was built and embattled. It is surrounded by a moat, across which a bridge leads to the entrance gateway. The entrance is defended by a strong portcullis, composed of several large pieces of wood laid across each other like a harrow, and riveted throughout with iron, designed to be let down in case of surprise, and when there was not time to shut the gate. To this succeeds an iron portcullis. It is followed by an inner solid oaken door, riveted with iron, firmly bound with iron pieces going the whole length across, and studded with iron knobs. A wooden portcullis then follows. Immediately adjoining these are two guardrooms, in which a dozen men-at-arms might long dispute the passage of an enemy.

Over the external gate, directly under the battlements, a series of machicolations project boldly forward: from these molten lead and other deadly appliances and missiles could be poured and discharged on the heads of assailants with terrible effect. Passing through these gates and beneath the portcullises, the visitor enters a spacious court-yard, surrounded on all its sides by the building. From this court-yard or quadrangle he enters the old Dining-hall, where the racks for hunting-spears are still visible, and where grotesque decorations will not fail to be noticed. In the stained-glass windows are the arms of the Boleyns and the Howards. Near this is the Chapel, and continuing along the passages are two rooms bearing the names of Anne Boleyn’s Bed-room and Anne of Cleves’ Room. Anne Boleyn’s Room “is really an interesting apartment, beautifully panelled, and contains the original family chairs, tables, muniment box, and what is called Anne’s bed.”[46] To this apartment several ante-rooms succeed, and the suite terminates in a grand Gallery occupying the whole length of the building, in which the judicial meetings and the social gatherings of the ancient family were held. It is about 150 feet in length, by 20 feet in width, with a vaulted roof, and panelled throughout with carved oak. On one side, placed at equal distances apart, are three recesses: the first, having a flight of three steps, is fitted up with elbowed benches, where the lord of the castle in old times held his courts, and where Henry VIII. is said, on the occasions of his visits, to have received the congratulations of the gentry; a second was occupied by the fire; and the third was used as a quiet corner for the old folks, while the younger ones frolicked throughout the mazes of the dance. At one end of the Gallery a trap-door leads to a dark chamber, called the Dungeon, in which the family are believed to have sheltered themselves in time of trouble, although it is manifest that the height of the room, compared with that of the building, must have betrayed its existence to even a careless observer.

The interior of that part properly called “the castle”—e.g. the entrance—is approached by a winding staircase in one of the towers. “About midway the staircase opens into the narrow vestibule of the great state-room. The Gothic tracery over the fire-place is extremely beautiful both in design and in execution. It consists of two angels, each bearing two shields, showing the arms and alliances of the Cary and Boleyn families, of Cary and Waldo, Boleyn and Howard, and Henry VIII. and Boleyn.”