Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  Sir John, then nearing sixty, was the father of a large family. His wife was Margaret, the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead in Suffolk; as a young girl at Henry VII's court she had been a celebrated beauty, and the poet laureate, John Skelton, had written in her honour a poem entitled 'To Mistress Margery Wentworth', praising her maidenly virtues and her 'benign, courteous and meek' qualities. Mistress Margery had been married to Sir John Seymour around 1500 and for him it was a brilliant match, for although the Seymours were said to have been descended from one of William the Conqueror's Norman knights, surnamed St Maur after his birthplace in Touraine, they had never been more than country gentry. Their first certain ancestor came from Monmouthshire; a branch of the family was already established in Wiltshire at the end of the fourteenth century, and provided a Member of Parliament for Bedwyn Magna, the village near Wulfhall. The manor of Wulfhall had come to the Seymours by marriage to the heiress of the Esturmi family in the early fifteenth century, through which they also acquired the hereditary guardianship of Savernake. Thereafter, they proudly displayed in the manor house the great ivory hunting-horn, bound with silver, that was the symbol of their office. Gradually, by lucrative and advantageous marriages, they had, like the Boleyns, increased not only their land and wealth, but also their social standing. The marriage of Sir John Seymour to Lady Margaret Wentworth, however, was the most prestigious of them all, for Lady Margaret was descended from Edward III and Henry 'Hotspur' Percy, the hero of Shrewsbury. She was, in all respects, a most desirable wife for a man like Sir John, who was considered to be one of the foremost in the rising class of gentry known as 'new men', solid, respectable, loyal to the crown, and owing their status to wealth rather than breeding. Such men were greatly favoured by Tudor monarchs distrustful of the ancient blood of the older nobility.

  Of the ten children born of the marriage, four died young, probably of plague. Two of the surviving sons, Edward and Thomas, were to play prominent parts in English history. The other son, Henry, shunned public life and led the existence of a country gentleman. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was a widow in 1535, her husband having died the previous year. The other daughters were Dorothy, later the wife of Sir Clement Smith, and Jane.

  Unhappily, there had been a rift in the Seymour family some five years before the royal visit, and the ensuing scandal had shocked even Henry VIII's courtiers. Young Edward Seymour had been sent to court at an early age, and had served as page to both Mary Tudor when she was Queen of France, and the King himself. When still quite young, he had been married to Katherine, the daughter of Sir Edward Fillol. Very little is known about the marriage apart from the fact that Katherine bore two sons, John and Edward, in 1528 and 1529. A year later, Edward was shattered to discover that his wife and his father had for some time been lovers, and that there was every possibility that Sir John had fathered Katherine's two children. Edward's retaliation was swift. Katherine was bundled into a nunnery, where she died within five years. For a time, Edward spoke of divorcing her, though he did not do so, but he disinherited her two boys, and would have nothing to do with them. After his wife's death, he remarried immediately, his bride being the formidable Anne Stanhope, a lady who would rule both her husband and her family with a will of steel, and whose pride would be notorious.

  By the time Henry VIII arrived at Wulfhall in 1535, the scandal had died a natural death, and a truce had been called between Edward and his father; Edward's new marriage had done much to mellow his bitterness. The King certainly knew of the affair, but probably felt that the family had suffered enough without his censure. As for Sir John, he must have seen his sovereign's visit as a sign that the past was done with and forgotten.

  Although royal visits to private subjects were at this date by no means as crippling financially as they were to become under Elizabeth I, entertaining one's king and queen of necessity called for a substantial outlay to pay for the special fare provided for the royal table, for not only did the royal guests have to be accommodated but their retainers also, and that could mean a good many people. However, the King's charm and courtesy, especially towards the ladies, were well known; Henry VIII was invariably an appreciative and genial guest, laying aside formality and conversing with his host and the family as if they were his equals.

  Despite the brooding presence of the Queen, Henry must have enjoyed his stay at Wulfhall, where the excellent hunting to be found in Savernake Forest provided a welcome respite from the cares of state. Sir John was a good host, and Lady Margaret typified all that the King thought a wife should be: meek, decorous, well bred, and, above all, fruitful - unlike Anne in every way.

  Jane Seymour was probably the second daughter of Sir John and Lady Margaret. The date of her birth is nowhere recorded, and has until now been estimated as 1509-10. This calculation has been based on two things: a report of the Spanish ambassador, dated May 1536, stating that Jane was then more than twenty-five years old, and a miniature of her painted in the 1580s by Nicholas Hilliard, which gives her age as twenty-five in 1536. The miniature may be discounted as reliable evidence: it was based on one of Holbein's portraits of Jane Seymour, none of which give her age. A far more likely date of birth, based upon sound evidence, would be between October 1507 and October 1508. When Jane was buried with the full honours due to a queen of England in November 1537, twenty-nine ladies walked in he funeral procession: seemingly an odd number until one discovers that it was customary at medieval funerals to mark the age of the deceased in such a way, just as it was traditional to ring the passing bell once for every year the departed soul had spent on earth. On this assumption, Jane was twenty-nine when she died, and a birthdate of 1507-8 would accord with Chapuys's statement that she was over twenty-five in 1536.

  This means that Jane was around twenty-seven when the King visited Wulfhall, a very late age to remain single in an era when most girls were married by fifteen or sixteen. There had, at an unspecified date, been talk of a betrothal between Jane and Sir Robert Dormer's son William; Sir Francis Bryan, who was connected by marriage to the Seymours, did his best to promote the match, but met with opposition from Lady Dormer, who seems to have felt that Jane was not a good enough match for her son. Eventually William Dormer was betrothed elsewhere, and it was probably this that precipitated Bryan into securing a position at court for Jane; thus she came to join the household of Katherine of Aragon as a maid of honour sometime during the 1520s.

  Jane greatly admired Queen Katherine, and later used her as her own role model when she herself became queen. Catherine's court provided a kind of finishing school for young women of good family, and it was in this learned and pious atmosphere that Jane Seymour grew to maturity. Of her education, we know very little. During her childhood there had been a salaried priest, Father James, at Wulfhall, who may have given Jane some rudimentary lessons along with her brothers. As an adult, she could read and sign her name, but she was not learned as both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn were, nor was she as intelligent as they. For Jane, an education of a traditional sort had been provided, and it was doubtless her mother - as was customary - who taught her the usual feminine skills such as household management, needlework, and cookery. Jane's expertise as a needlewoman became legendary, and examples of her work still survived a century after her death to testify to her skill. Yet she also enjoyed outdoor sports, having been taught to ride at an early age, and as queen she would enjoy following the hunt.

  Jane was just one of many aspiring young women in Queen Katherine's household. She grew to know and like the Princess Mary, eight years her junior, and she would also have known Anne Boleyn well, for she was a fellow maid of honour for a time. By virtue of her position, Jane would have been a witness to the events leading up to the legatine court hearing in 1529, and would have observed at first hand the downfall of the Queen and the rise to power of Anne Boleyn. She certainly saw enough of these things to make her decide that her sympathies lay with Katherine, and, later on, when Katherine was beyond
all human help, Jane would extend her friendship to the Lady Mary, in an attempt to make up to her for what she and her mother had suffered.

  When the Queen was exiled from the court in 15 31, Jane may have been one of those who went with her to The More and ultimately to Ampthill. Yet it is more likely that she transferred to the household of Anne Boleyn at this time: she had certainly joined it by Christmas 1533, and Anne would hardly have accepted someone who had chosen to share Katherine's exile. Like Anne, Jane was ambitious; her family, too, were ambitious for her. To remain in the service of a fallen queen, however much admired, would not have done much for Jane's chances of making her way in the world and contracting an advantageous marriage. Anne Boleyn was at that time amassing a huge train of female attendants, and it would have been easy for Jane, with her experience of the court, to secure a place with her.

  At Christmas 1533, Henry VIII presented gifts to several ladies in his wife's household, among them Jane Seymour, whom he had known since she first arrived at court; he would certainly have approved of her timely transfer to Anne's service. Yet it was not until September 1535 that he began to take particular notice of her. This probably came about as a result of the visit to her family home. Far from being in residence at Wulfhall at the time of the King's arrival, which is the traditional version of events, Jane was in the Queen's train and travelling on progress with her.

  Henry was no longer the athletic young man who had married Katherine of Aragon. After 1533, he had begun to put on weight, and became less active than in his youth; he had also had recurrrent trouble with one leg after being wounded by a fall from his horse in 1528. Yet he continued to hunt regularly and rode with skill, and people still thought him handsome, in spite of the fact that his red hair had receded, leaving the crown of his head bald. Although in recent years his latent ruthlessness and cruelty had become more evident, and his subjects now feared rather than loved him, he could be charming when he pleased, and he was being charming now.

  For her part, Jane presented a welcome contrast to the Queen. She concealed her ambition beneath a veneer of placid gravity, and where Anne's eyes had once flashed an invitation, Jane's were kept modestly lowered. Her manner was pleasing, her temperament calm. The King was very taken with her, and before long his courtiers were aware, as was his wife, that he was pursuing the plain Mistress Seymour, and that - as Anne had once done to great advantage - the lady was holding him off while protesting a chaste devotion for her king. There were those at court who had been waiting for an opportunity like this to unseat Anne from Henry's affections, not only because she was unpopular and had not borne a male heir, but also because they resented her promotion of the reformist cause. Foremost among them was Chapuys, who desired nothing more than Anne's fall, and who, at a very early stage, saw in Jane Seymour the means by which this might be achieved.

  Jane must have given the King some indication that his advances were welcome; his courtship presented her with an opportunity that was too good to miss. With Anne Boleyn's example before her to prove that a maid of honour could successfully aspire to queenship, she does not seem to have considered that by encouraging the King she was betraying the mistress to whom she had sworn an oath of service. The Seymours belonged to the faction which despised Anne and all that she stood for, while secretly reserving their allegiance to Katherine of Aragon and her daughter; thus they abetted Jane from the beginning, urging her to encourage the King's courtship and seeing it as a means to several ends. It is likely that, as the King prepared to leave Wulfhall after a good week's hunting, some of the courtiers were already predicting the imminent downfall of the Queen. Among them was Sir Francis Bryan, the son of Lady Margaret Bryan, a member of the King's immediate entourage, and one of his friends. Bryan had paid lip-service to Queen Anne, but he privately disapproved of her, and he was perhaps the first person to see in Jane Seymour a means of toppling Anne from her throne. Certainly, he did his best to encourage Henry's affair with Jane from the beginning.

  When Henry and Jane were both back at court after the progress, their affair continued, gaining in intensity. In November, the French ambassador saw them together and concluded that the King was in love again. So open was the affair that courtiers were falling over themselves to win the friendship of the new favourite, leaving the Queen to sit alone in her empty apartments. History was repeating itself.

  Jane's brothers, Edward and Thomas, were both with her at court, and they prudently warned her not to yield her virginity to Henry: she must create the impression of a modest and virtuous gentlewoman who wished to preserve her virtue until she was married. Jane played her part perfectly, knowing full well that she was employing the same tactics Anne Boleyn had used years before - and, once again, Henry took the bait. A man who set much store by female virtue, he was enchanted, if frustrated, and set about laying siege to this virtuous citadel. Jane's resolve withstood this, but her virtue did not prevent her from accepting the expensive gifts that Henry gave her. Indeed, her calculated campaign to ensnare her mistress's husband shows her to have been a woman of ruthless determination. It is true that she enjoyed the vigorous support of her family, but it is impossible to believe that she was a mere tool of the imperialist party which was encouraging the affair: any woman setting out on the course Jane Seymour would follow over the next few months would have had to be possessed of both strength and resolution, as well as driving ambition and a flexible conscience. Jane had all these, hidden beneath a demure manner that deceived many. Yet, to her credit, she aimed to use her talents and her growing power to persuade the King to return to the fold of Rome and restore the Lady Mary to her rightful place in the succession. These were matters about which she felt strongly, although she knew she could only broach them once she had firmly established herself in the King's affections. Like Anne Boleyn before her, she had set her sights high.

  In October 1535, Cromwell brought the King devastating news: Tunis had fallen to the Emperor, and the Turks had been crushed. Chapuys told his master that Henry and Anne looked 'like dogs falling out of a window', so dismayed were they by the news. And as if this was not enough, there were reports of a ruined harvest, due to the bad weather that year. Anne was even blamed for this by the common people: they saw it as a sign from God that He was displeased with the King for marrying her. General unrest was mounting, and there were still murmurs of disapproval about the executions that had taken place earlier in the year. It was not a happy homecoming when Henry and Anne ended their progress at Windsor on 26 October.

  That same month, Katherine was writing to the Pope, begging him to find a remedy for what was happening in England; by so doing she was putting herself in grave danger, for, if intercepted, her letter could have been used as evidence that she had tried to incite a foreign power to make war upon the King, and that was treason. Henry suspected that Katherine was up to something of the sort, and in November he told his Privy Council that he would no longer remain in 'this trouble and fear and suspicion' engendered by Katherine and Mary, and insisted that proceedings be taken against them in the next session of Parliament, 'or, by God, I will not wait any longer to provide for this myself!' Seeing the dismay on the faces of his councillors, he told them it was nothing to cry or make wry faces about. 'If I am to lose my crown for it, I will do what I have set out to do,' he warned. When Chapuys reported this to Charles V, and told him that 'the Concubine has for some time conspired for the death of the Queen and her daughter,' Charles replied, 'The threats of which you speak can only be designed to frighten them, but if they really are in danger you may tell them from me that they must yield.' He did not share Katherine's professed enthusiasm for martyrdom, and he was in fact beginning to find the whole affair rather tiresome. 'I cannot believe what you tell me,' he wrote to Chapuys. 'The King cannot be so unnatural as to put to death his own wife and daughter,' even though Henry's treatment of them had been 'cruel and horrible'. But if the King would not go so far, Chapuys feared that Anne Boleyn would, for she 'is th
e person who manages and orders and governs everything, whom the King does not dare to oppose'. Anne believed mistakenly, as it turned out - that while Katherine lived, her own life was in danger. 'She is my death and I am hers,' she said at this time, 'so I will take good care that she shall not laugh at me after my death.' It was a supreme irony that Katherine's existence was later shown to have guaranteed Anne's safety, rather than having threatened it, for while Katherine lived, Henry dared not set Anne aside.

  Anne's influence was to some degree restored during November because she had found herself to be pregnant with a child conceived during the autumn progress. Nevertheless, she was depressed during the first months of her pregnancy because she was fearfully aware that her whole future depended on its outcome: the King would not tolerate another failure. Outwardly, he was being solicitous, but George Wyatt tells us that he 'shrank from her' in private, 'at this time when most she was to have been cherished', which did not help Anne's frame of mind. The Bishop of Tarbes, visiting the English court, noticed that 'the King's love for his wife is less than it has been, and diminishes every day because he has new amours'. Anne was well aware of his pursuit of Jane Seymour, which was another reason for her depression.