Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! : Jane Seymour
Stick around, and you'll suddenly see more
A note for new followers: hello! Many new eyes are reading this newsletter this week (shoutout to
who is having a wild week and from whose recommendation many of you have joined up). I wanted to let you all know what you’ve gotten yourselves into.My name is Ann Foster, and I host the Vulgar History podcast, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. This week on the podcast, I’m talking about Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong!
This newsletter is a companion to the podcast. I share pieces about women I haven’t yet profiled on the podcast, but I like to talk about them, and writing essays is a great way to do that. For the past four weeks, I’ve been sharing a series called Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! which so far is talking about the three Katherines, two Annes, and one Jane who happened to be married to Henry VIII. This week, we’re up to wife #3 and Jane #1, Jane Seymour!
Previously on in Tudor? I Hardly Knew Her! Katherine of Aragon part one, Katherine of Aragon part two, Anne Boleyn part one, Anne Boleyn Part Two.
In contrast to the dramatic lives led by her predecessors, Jane Seymour (the third wife of Henry VIII) is mainly remembered for her boringness. This is a compliment: having witnessed first-hand what happened to the stubborn Katherine of Aragon and the outspoken Anne Boleyn, Jane’s choice to remain primarily quiet and submissive can be seen as a canny move to ensure her survival. Like Anne, she died young but of natural causes rather than execution. The tragedy of her life is the same thing that ensured her legacy; she died before she had a chance to displease Henry.
There is only one major biography written about her (noted at the bottom of this post), which speaks to the relative lack of drama inherent in her life’s story and the limited amount of information we know about her. Like Anne Boleyn, she was born in the early 16th century to an aristocratic and distantly royal family, notable enough for her to be sent to live at Court but not notable enough for her birth or childhood to have been recorded anywhere. Much of her life is reminiscent of Anne’s but in a mirror-image way. Both were possibly ladies-in-waiting to Katherine of Aragon at the same time, but it was the fiery Anne who captured Henry’s attention. Jane — possibly — moved on from serving Katherine to serving Anne, eventually supplanting her as Henry’s mistress, then wife. Anne and Jane were used as pawns by their families, pawns in an ongoing game to emerge as the King’s favourites. How much say did either woman have in this? None.
Anne remained unmarried through her twenties because she waited for Henry to be freed up to wed her. Jane, roughly the same age, remained unmarried. If Henry had been merely seeking a wife who would birth him many children, he would have likely sought out someone younger than Jane’s age (approximately 27). Something about her drew him in, perhaps the extent to which she came across as the exact opposite of Anne Boleyn. Jane was pale and blond next to Anne’s dark hair and eyes; Jane was quiet and passive to Anne’s extroversion and dramatic personality. Anne had perhaps helped win the King’s heart by holding to her religious beliefs, not allowing him to bed her until marriage was on the table. It was during the middle of the messy dissolution of Henry and Anne’s relationship, in the fall of 1535, when Jane is first recorded as having caught the King’s eye.
Following a royal visit to Wolf Hall, an estate belonging to Jane’s family, Henry began paying so much attention to Jane that courtiers began speculating she may become the King’s new mistress (as Anne was pregnant at this time, the question of Jane becoming the new Queen was not an option). As Anne had before her, Jane upheld her religious beliefs and refused the King’s advances, and just as this behaviour had only increased his commitment to pursuing Anne, it likewise caused Henry’s interest in Jane to increase. Their contemporaries and historians have criticized Anne and Jane for actively breaking up the King’s marriages. Still, the bigger picture was that the court was a cesspool of ambitious families constantly trying to leverage themselves at the mercy of others. With Anne’s star on the fall, Jane’s family weren’t the only ones to begin scheming to supplant the Queen with one of their family’s young women.
The Boleyn family had numerous enemies before and after Anne became Queen, many of whom were Catholics loyal to Henry’s first wife, Katherine, and his surviving daughter, Princess Mary. Jane, who happened to be a devoted Catholic, appealed to these factions as they felt she could represent their interests to the King. In January 1536, Katherine died, and Anne suffered a miscarriage, two events that made the impossible — Henry taking a new wife and Queen — suddenly plausible. Anne is said to have placed some of the blame for her miscarriage on having caught Jane carrying on with the King, but her reputation was already damaged enough that this did little to tarnish Jane’s reputation.
Jane sustained her pristine reputation when, upon receiving a gift of money from the King that March, she threw herself to the ground, kissed the King’s seal on the letter, and proclaimed herself a virtuous woman who could only receive a gift of money from a gentleman upon the promise of marriage, and had the messenger return the gift. Henry respected her stance, agreeing to only visit with her in the presence of a chaperone. However, he also had the rooms switched around in the palace so he could visit her through a super secret, sexy private hallway that connected their bedrooms, so make of that what you will.
Jane’s thoughts over Anne Boleyn's trial and execution are not recorded, nor are her thoughts about anything because she wasn’t big into writing. She was skilled at needlepoint and running a household but was either less trained or less interested in academics than Katherine and Anne had been. She was formally betrothed to Henry the day after Anne’s execution, and the couple were married shortly after, on May 29th. Jane’s household was sworn in on June 2nd, and she was proclaimed Queen on June 4th.
Early in her tenure as Queen, Jane is recorded as pressing her husband to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Princess Mary. She convinced Henry and Mary to compromise a little, with Mary agreeing to publicly claim that her parents’ marriage was invalid. Despite, or perhaps because of, their closeness in age (Jane being about eight years older than her stepdaughter), the two women are said to have gotten along very well. Mary was still removed from the line of succession (Jane’s children would now take priority), but the family was on its way to being mended.
During the autumn of 1536, riots broke out as rebels protested Henry’s conversion of the country from Catholicism to Protestantism, particularly his strategy of disbanding monasteries and convents. Jane, whose cousin Robert Aske was among the rebel leaders, suggested that the riots were God’s punishment for Henry’s actions and that he should restore the monasteries. Henry spoke angrily to her, reminding her of what happened to his other wives who had meddled in his affairs. Jane is not recorded as having offered her political opinion again. However, once the riots were quashed, Henry founded two new monasteries in her honour.
Jane still had yet to receive an official coronation. The first date, in July, was postponed due to an outbreak of plague. A second, planned for October, was postponed due to the religious riots. However, she was accepted as Queen and took her role seriously — her influence taking over in the type of fashion worn, the types of festivities held, and the overall mood of the court. Where Anne had brought an influx of French fashion and customs, Jane returned to Katherine’s more conservative manners, going so far as to specifically ban anyone from wearing French-inspired fashion. The difference between the two Queens is perhaps best shown in the contrast between each chosen motto: Anne selected the joyous phrase The Most Happy, while Jane selected the conservative Bound To Obey And Serve.
Of course, Jane’s primary job as Queen was to birth sons who would become Henry’s heirs. She became pregnant in early 1537 and was said to have craved quails, which Henry sought out for her from France. She spent that summer quietly attended to by royal physicians and midwives in the palace, removing herself from the public eye and focusing entirely on ensuring the success of her pregnancy. When she went into the standard confinement in mid-September, the country celebrated the impending birth with bonfires and services of thanksgiving. Following a treacherous labour lasting two nights and three days, she delivered a son, Prince Edward, on October 9th. When the new heir was christened on October 15th, Mary and Jane’s other stepdaughter, Elizabeth, helped carry the infant’s train. As was customary, Jane did not attend the christening but did greet courtiers following the ceremony. It was apparent even at this time that her health was failing her.
She received her last rites on October 17th, but her health briefly rallied afterwards. However, she finally succumbed to birth-related side effects (likely a ruptured placenta and/or bacterial infection contracted during labour), passing away on October 24th. Mary again took a place of honour, appointed chief mourner at Jane’s funeral, followed by 29 other mourners, each representing one year of the Queen’s short life. Unlike Katherine and Anne, Jane was given a Queen’s funeral; none of the three wives following her would receive this same honour. Inscribed above her grave was the poem:
Here lieth a Phoenix, by whose death
Another Phoenix life gave breath:
It is to be lamented much
The world at once ne’er knew two such.
Jane’s marriage to Henry lasted 18 months, and the King would thereafter speak of her as his most-loved wife. He wore black for three months after her passing and did not marry again for three years. It was during these years that he put on so much weight that he developed diabetes and gout. Eight years after her death, despite Henry being married then to another woman, he had her painted into an official family portrait by his side. When the King died, he was buried beside her, at his request, at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. He was devoted to her, and that exact inoffensive nature leaves us without much written to know about who she really was.
One chronicler of the time noted that Jane was the most beautiful of all Henry’s wives, noting that no woman was more beautiful when she donned her Queenly regalia. In contrast, others noted her as being pale and unattractive. All agreed, however, that her peaceful and calming presence was a balm to all who encountered her. Whether it was her looks, behaviour, or affect that drew Henry to her, her personality stands entirely outside that of any of Henry’s other wives. She did not cause any controversy or seemingly offend anyone, which perversely means that little was written about her. It’s that Laurel Thatcher Ulrich thing where well-behaved women seldom make history, and Jane is the poster child for this sort of behaviour. She had seen both Katherine and Anne destroyed by their stubborn and dramatic personalities. Through some combination of her good nature and her canny survivor’s instincts, Jane is remembered much as she lived — as a kind-hearted, well-intentioned, well-behaved woman.
By contrast, her brothers Thomas and Edward would continue to hold influential roles at court based on their connection to her, and both would flame out spectacularly (but we’ll get to that later on). I mention this because it makes Jane’s quiet power all the more notable; surrounded by scheming family members, ambitious rivals, and a mercurial King/husband who had already put one wife to death, she continued to live on her terms, prioritizing harmony, peacefulness, and kindness even amid the viper’s nest that was English court. Perhaps it’s for these attributes that Henry loved her best, or perhaps because she died so soon after delivering his much-wanted son. But even though putting this essay together, I’ve found a new admiration for Jane; she is often omitted from the discourse of women of this period for the same reasons that allowed her to thrive as much as she was able to: she was calm amid a chaotic storm of religious wars and ambitious courtiers, who never wavered in her commitment to her faith or her morals.
Vulgar History A La Carte is the sister newsletter to the Vulgar History podcast. This week on the podcast: talking about Anna May Wong with special guest Katie Gee Salisbury! Listen here or wherever you get podcasts!
References:
Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s True Love by Elizabeth Norton