I've always wondered why an up & coming, ambitious lord like Thomas Boleyn would marry off his only surviving son & heir to one Mistress Jane Parker. Her father, Henry Parker, Lord Morley, was by way of being an amateur historian & theologian, which was right up Henry VIIIs alley, & allegedly they had some splendid chummy chats on the subjects mentioned, but other than that connection the Parkers were no great shakes in Tudor England.
I found a wee clue in the begats (family tree) pages of the Julia Fox bio of Jane. Morley's father, Sir William Parker, was married to an Alice Lovel (already wondering could she be any relation to the infamous A cat, a rat, & Lovel our Dog/Rule all England under a Hog from the Ricardian days). After Jane's grandsire demised in 1510, Lady Parker promptly married none other than Lord Edward Howard.
Edward was the Howard in birth order between Thomas, Duke of Norfolk & Elizabeth Boleyn; not to be confused with Edmund Howard, the father of the unlamented Queen Catherine, & the youngest in that family. Edmund was married twice, if I recall right; one of his wives was a Joyce Culpeper (finally some originality in baby-naming), but not sure if this is the wife who was Catherine's mother. I do know the Duchess of Norfolk who kept Catherine in her charge so laxly was actually her step-grandmamma (the 1st Norfolk married sisters, Elizabeth & Agnes Tylney; there was a Catherine Tylney who was raised with Catherine Howard & sang like a canary when the Culpeper affair came to light).
Anyhow, there's more re JP....the eldest of Thomas Boleyn's three sisters, another Anne Boleyn, married Sir John Shelton. Their son, also John, married Margaret Parker, Jane's sister. I do wish the Tudors had been more inventive in naming their offspring ROFL because do not confuse this Margaret Shelton with THAT Margaret Shelton (young John's sister), the cousin of Anne's who has been allegedly both romantically linked with Thomas Wyatt the elder as his purported mistress, & also mentioned as being the 3rd "Boleyn girl" to be shoved into Henry's bed to keep his waning interest in Anne "in the family".
Also noted that the Lady Boleyn (also an Anne
) who's sometimes cited as being in the Tower with AB & spying on her to glean more ammo in the case against her is the wife of Thomas's brother Edward. For some reason I had thought Lady Bo was perhaps a great-aunt, as I've not seen begats citing brothers at all for TB, yet besides Edward there was also William & James Boleyn in Fox's trees. James is credited by Fox for having the bright idea of polling the universities in The King's Great Matter, which I always had attributed to Cromwell.
We could almost play Six Degrees of Jane Rochford here ROFL
Riddle me this, if you will, BTW.....why is Jane nearly always referred to as "Jane Rochford", but George is NEVER referred to as "George Rochford" but always "George Boleyn"? 
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