His younger brother, another Geoffrey, achieved even more. After becoming a hatter in London, he worked hard to be in a position to join the prestigious Mercer’s Company in 1435. Geoffrey, who would later be knighted, became one of the most prosperous merchants in London, as well as serving as Lord Mayor of London in 1457. He purchased Blickling Hall in Norfolk from Sir John Falstolf, allowing him to establish a family seat. His first wife, Dionise, died young, but his second, Anne Hoo, was the most prominent early Boleyn woman and greatly extended the fortunes of the family.

Anne Hoo was considerably younger than her husband, whom she married in around 1442-1444. She was then the only surviving child of Sir Thomas Hoo, the head of a long-established Sussex gentry family. Hoo had served as Henry VI’s chancellor of France and, in 1448 was created Lord Hoo and Hastings, bringing the Boleyns within touching distance of the nobility. At the time of his marriage, Geoffrey had high hopes that Anne would one day be her father’s heiress – something that was proved right although, disappointingly, she had to share the near-bankrupt estate with three younger half-sisters, who were all born after her marriage.

Anne Hoo, who provided the Boleyns with strong family links to the gentry, also contributed more practically to the family following Geoffrey’s death in 1463. Her two sons, Thomas (who died as a young adult) and William were both minors, leaving her to run the family estates. She was also left to arrange marriages for her three daughters, proving to be a formidable barrier when the fortune hunting John Paston, of the famous Paston family, attempted to woo her daughter with his charm and ‘personable’ appearance. Instead, she arranged solid gentry matches for her three daughters. She remained close to her children, dying an old woman in 1485 and receiving a prominent grave in Norwich Cathedral.

On the Tudor Trail - The Boleyn Women, Ann Boleyn's Female Forbears