Read The Fall of Anne Boleyn: A Countdown Online
Authors: Claire Ridgway
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour was born around 1508/1509 probably at the family seat, Wolf Hall in Wiltshire. She was the daughter of Sir John Seymour, a soldier and courtier who served Henry VII at the Battle of Blackheath, and of his wife, Margery Wentworth, daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk.
Through the Seymours, Jane was descended from Frenchman Guy de St Maur who is thought to have come from France to England with William the Conqueror. Obviously St Maur, pronounced San-Mawr, had become anglicised to Seymour over the centuries. Through her mother's family, the Wentworths, Jane was descended from Edward III, through Edward's great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Percy. The Seymours became members of the gentry class in the 14th century when Roger Seymour married Maud Esturmy
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of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire; the house that became the Seymour family home.
Jane was related to Anne Boleyn through a mutual connection to the Howard family. Jane's mother's first cousins were Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Howard, Anne Boleyn's mother. Jane and Anne were, therefore, second cousins.
Jane's exact birthdate is not known, but her biographer, Elizabeth Norton, points out that Jane had 29 ladies in her funeral procession in 1537
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and that this was a traditional way of symbolising the age of the deceased. If this indeed was the case, then it indicates that Jane would have been born between October 1507 and October 1508.
Jane had nine siblings, although not all of them survived childhood. The most famous of her siblings was Edward Seymour, who went on to become Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector in Jane's son Edward VI's reign. Also well-known was Thomas Seymour, Lord Admiral and Baron Seymour of Sudeley, who married Henry VIII's final wife and widow, Catherine Parr. Both men were executed as traitors. Jane also had another brother Henry, who died in 1578, and two sisters: Dorothy, who became the wife of Sir Clement Smith, and Elizabeth, who was married first to Sir Anthony Ughtred, then to Gregory Cromwell, son of Thomas Cromwell, and finally to administrator William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester.
Chapuys described Jane as "of middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise" and Hans Holbein's portrait of Jane is far from flattering. Jane was blonde, pale-skinned and rather chinless. However, this made her much closer to the Tudor ideal of beauty, the classic English Rose, than the dark-haired and sallow-skinned Anne Boleyn. We know nothing of Jane's early life and her education, although it appears that she could read and write, and had some knowledge of French and Latin.
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She would have learned music and needlework, as well as the country pursuits of horse riding and hunting. Elizabeth Norton writes of how records show that in 1647, during the reign of Charles I, "a bed of needlework with a chair and cushions, said to be wrought by the queen, Lady Jane Seymour" was passed back to the Seymour family from the royal collection.
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It is not known exactly when Jane arrived at court but, taking into account her birthdate, she must have been appointed to Queen Catherine of Aragon's household between 1527 and 1529, the time when the King was courting Anne Boleyn and trying to annul his marriage to Catherine. The annulment finally went through in 1533. The King married Anne Boleyn this year and Catherine's household was disbanded in the August. Jane would have returned home to Wolf Hall. By this time, Jane's brother, Edward, had separated from his wife, Catherine Filiol, on the grounds of her infidelity. Edward went on to marry Anne Stanhope sometime before March 1535. On her arrival home, Jane's relative, Sir Francis Bryan, started trying to arrange a marriage between Jane and William Dormer, son of Sir Robert Dormer.
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It seems that the Dormers were not keen on the idea as they quickly married off William to Mary Sidney, a much better match, in their eyes, than the 26ish year-old Jane, who didn't even have a dowry.
The failure of this potential marriage match must have been a huge blow to Jane and her family. Jane wasn't getting any younger and was now in the position where a good marriage looked unlikely, However, things looked up in early 1535; Jane was called back to court to serve Queen Anne Boleyn. This appointment was probably down to Bryan, who was also related to Anne Boleyn. Little did anyone know that this appointment would lead to Jane becoming Queen.
Jane has gone down in history as Henry VIII's true love, the woman he chose to be painted with in the Whitehall family portrait and the woman he chose to be laid to rest with, but this surely had little to do with true love and more to do with the fact that she gave him the ultimate gift, that of a son and heir. He didn't treat her particularly well when they were married, but Jane's death so soon after their wedding, after giving him a son, made him look back fondly on their union, regarding Jane as his only true wife.
Early 1536 – Foreign Policy
On 1st November 1535, Francesco II Sforza, Duke of Milan died childless. This caused trouble between Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and Francis I of France, and eventually sparked the Italian War of 1536-1538. The Duke's death put England into a tricky position. Either side may have dragged England in. Alternatively, as the Pope wanted, France and the Empire might actually join forces against England. Anne Boleyn was pro-French, which is understandable given her time at the French court, but Cromwell seemed to want to keep his options open. Anne was looking for an alliance with France, through a marriage match for her daughter, Elizabeth,
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but, Cromwell
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was open to negotiating with the Emperor.
Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, was firm in his negotiations with Cromwell and the King. When the latter pair made overtures to Chapuys in February 1536, after Catherine of Aragon's death in the January, Chapuys made it clear that he welcomed a restoration of the friendship between England and the Empire, but that there were conditions:-
If those points could be agreed upon, Chapuys was happy to go forward with a more general treaty.
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According to Chapuys, Cromwell's answer to the fourth point was the his master, the King, "would do anything that might be desired" and he did not see that the third point would be a problem. As far as the second point was concerned:
"With regard to the Princess, Cromwell observed this was the fit opportunity to treat of her prospects, and of the settlement of her affairs in future, in a manner to please Your Majesty; the door was already open for negotiation."
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The first point "was the most difficult of all", according to Cromwell, but he did say that "he thought the King, his master, would readily accede to what might be agreed upon between the deputies of both parties" and reminded Chapuys of the "wonderful things he had achieved ever since he had had the administration of the King's affairs". Cromwell was stalling, which was all he could do, but he appeared to be giving Chapuys hope of an agreement. What Chapuys didn't know was that Cromwell was also corresponding with Martin Luther
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and Justus Jonas
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in Germany, and negotiating a potential treaty between England and the Schmalkaldic League. Talk about keeping your options open!
March 1536 – Act for the Suppression of Lesser Monasteries
Brief Background
In 1534, Henry VIII broke with Rome and became the supreme head of the church in England via the Act of Supremacy. In the same year, the collection and payments of annates ('first fruits', or the first year's profits of a benefice) to Rome was abolished by the Act in Absolute Restraint of Annates (25 Hen. VIII c. 20). This was followed, in January 1535, by the appointing of a commission to conduct a survey of the income of ecclesiastical property in England and Wales. The commission was known as the Valor Ecclesiasticus and those under its employ were to:
"examyn, serche, and enquyre, by all the wayes and meanes that they can by their dyscrecions, of and for the true and just, hole and entyere yerely values of all the manors, londes, tenements, hereditaments, rents, tythes, offerings, emoluments, and all other profittes as well spirituall as temporall apperteyninge or belonginge to any Archebushopricke, &c. within the lymyttes of their Commyssion."
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The commissioners collected this information and produced a financial statement for every religious community, which was given to the King's Exchequer.
Following on from the Valor, which was a financial audit of the religious institutions for tax purposes, a further series of visitations of the monasteries started in the summer of 1535 and was not completed until early 1536. The commissioners of this visitation were given a set of questions to ask each monk. The questions covered everything from their qualifications and information on daily life, to whether they were staying true to their vows and vocation.
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The Act for the Suppression of Lesser Monasteries
The results of the visitations and the reports of the commissioners were made into a report, the Compendium Compertorum (Comperta), and shared with Parliament when it convened on 4th February 1536. The abuses and corruption which had allegedly been uncovered in the smaller monasteries led to the passing of the Act for the Suppression (or Dissolution) of the Lesser Monasteries in March 1536. The preamble of the Act stated:
"For as much as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories, and other religious houses of monks, canons, and nuns, where the congregation of such religious persons is under the number of twelve persons, whereby the governors of such religious houses, and their convent, spoil, destroy, consume, and utterly waste, as well their churches, monasteries, priories, principal houses, farms, granges, lands, tenements, and hereditaments, as the ornaments of their churches, and their goods and chattels, to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and to the great infamy of the king's highness and the realm, if redress should not be had thereof. And albeit that many continual visitations hath been heretofore had, by the space of two hundred years and more, for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable living, yet nevertheless little or none amendment is hitherto had, but their vicious living shamelessly increases and augments, and by a cursed custom so rooted and infected, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in apostasy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good religion; so that without such small houses be utterly suppressed, and the religious persons therein committed to great and honourable monasteries of religion in this realm, where they may be compelled to live religiously, for reformation of their lives, there can else be no redress nor reformation in that behalf."
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This Act affected the "lesser monasteries"; those with fewer than twelve members and those worth less than £200 per year. They were to be dissolved, their heads pensioned off and their members to become secularized or moved to larger monasteries "where they may be compelled to live religiously for reformation of their lives". The monasteries' possessions were to be given to the King and his heirs "to do and use therewith his and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm."
Historians are divided over the motives of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII in devising this statute. Some see its purpose as reform and a straightforward solution to the "incurable depravity"
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in the smaller monasteries. Others see it as an excuse for the Crown to benefit from their wealth and lands
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under the guise of reform. With hindsight, knowing about the later widespread dissolution of the monasteries, we can view this Act as nothing more than a first step in a money-making exercise. It could also be seen as a way of ridding the realm of the abuses and superstition that reformers associated with Rome.
6th March 1536
In a letter to the Empress, written on 6th March 1536, Dr Pedro Ortiz reported:
"Anne Bolans is now in fear of the King deserting her one of these days, in order to marry another lady."
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The sentence comes after his report of Catherine of Aragon's burial and he does not elaborate in any way, apart from saying at the end of the letter that "At any rate, it must be owned that though the King himself was not converted like St. Paul after his fall, at least his adulterous wife has miscarried of a son."
It is safe to assume that Ortiz believed that Anne's miscarriage made Anne vulnerable, but any information he may have had regarding Anne's state of mind would be second-hand because Ortiz was in Rome at the time! It really cannot be used as evidence of a breakdown in Anne and Henry's relationship.
18th March 1536 – Jane in Favour