Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour (c. 1508 – 24 October 1537) was Queen of England as the third wife of King Henry VIII. She succeeded Anne Boleyn as queen consort following the latter's execution for trumped up charges of high treason, incest and adultery in May 1536. She died of postnatal complications less than two weeks after the birth of her only child, a son who reigned as Edward VI. She was the only one of Henry's wives to receive a queen's funeral, and his only consort to be buried beside him in St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, as she was the only consort to have a male heir.

Early life

Jane Seymour was born at Wulfhall, Savernake Forest, Wiltshire, the daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth. Through her maternal grandfather, she was a descendant of King Edward III of England through Lionel Plantagenet. Because of this, she and King Henry VIII were fifth cousins three times removed. She was a half-second cousin to her predecessor Anne Boleyn, sharing a great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cheney.^[1] Her date of birth is a matter of debate. It is usually given as 1509 or even 1510, but it has been noted that at her funeral, 29 women walked in succession.^[2] Since it was customary for the attendant company to mark every year of the deceased's life in numbers, this implies she was born in 1508, or 1507 and she had not yet celebrated her 30th birthday.

She was not educated as highly as King Henry's previous wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. She could read and write a little, but was much better at needlework and household management, which were considered much more necessary for women.^[3] Jane's needlework was reported to be beautiful and elaborate; some of her work survived up to 1652, when it is recorded to have been given to the Seymour family. After her death, it was noted that Henry was an "enthusiastic embroiderer".^[4]

She became a maid-of-honour in 1532 to Queen Catherine, but Jane may have served Catherine as early as 1527, and went on to serve Queen Anne Boleyn. The first report of Henry VIII's interest in Jane Seymour was in early 1536, sometime before the death of Catherine of Aragon.

Jane was noted to have a child-like face, as well as a modest personality.^[5] According to the Imperial Ambassador Eustace Chapuys, Jane was of middling stature and very pale; he also commented that she was not of much beauty. However, John Russell stated that Jane was "the fairest of all the King's wives." ^[6] Polydore Vergil commented that she was "a woman of the utmost charm in both character and appearance."^[7]

Marriage

King Henry VIII was married to Jane at the Palace of Whitehall, Whitehall, London, on 30 May 1536, just eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution. She was publicly proclaimed as queen consort on 4 June. She was never crowned, due to a plague in London where the coronation was to take place. Henry may have been reluctant to crown Jane before she had fulfilled her duty as a queen consort by bearing him a son and a male heir.

As queen, Seymour was said to be strict and formal. She was close to her female relations, Anne Stanhope (her brother's wife) and her sister, Elizabeth. Jane was also close to the Lady Lisle along with her sister-in-law the Lady Beauchamp. Jane considered Lisle's daughters as ladies-in-waiting and she left many of her possessions to Beauchamp. Jane would form a very close relationship with Mary Tudor. The lavish entertainments, gaiety, and extravagance of the Queen's household, which had reached its peak during the time of Anne Boleyn, was replaced by a strict enforcement of decorum. For example, instead of the fashionable French hoods which Anne Boleyn had introduced, Jane preferred her ladies to wear the gabled English hoods that Catherine of Aragon had worn. Politically, Seymour appears to have been conservative. Her only reported involvement in national affairs, in 1536, was when she asked for pardons for participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Henry is said to have rejected this, reminding her of the fate her predecessor met with when she "meddled in his affairs".^[9]

Jane was of the Roman Catholic faith, not an Anglican. It is believed, because of this and her loyalty to her former mistress, Catherine of Aragon, Jane put forth much effort to restore Henry's first child, Princess Mary, to court and heir to the throne behind any children that Jane would have with Henry. Jane brought up the issue of Mary's restoration both before and after she became Queen. While Jane was unable to restore Mary to the line of succession, Jane was able to reconcile her with Henry. Eustace Chapuys wrote to Charles V of Jane's compassion and efforts on behalf of Mary's return to favour. A letter from Mary to Jane shows that Mary was grateful to Jane. While it was Jane who first pushed for the restoration, Mary and Elizabeth were not reinstated in the succession until Henry's sixth wife, Queen Catherine Parr, convinced him to do so.^[10]

In early 1537, Jane became pregnant. During her pregnancy, she developed a craving for quail, which Henry ordered for her from Calais and Flanders. She went into confinement in September 1537 and gave birth to the coveted male heir, the future King Edward VI on 12 October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace.

Death

Custom dictated that the Queen did not participate in her children's christening. Consequently, Edward was christened without his mother in attendance on 15 October 1537. Both of the King's daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were present and carried the infant's train during the ceremony.^[11] After the christening, it became clear that Jane Seymour was seriously ill.^[12]

Jane Seymour's labour had been difficult, lasting two days and three nights, probably because the baby was not well positioned.^[13] According to King Edward's biographer, Jennifer Loach, Jane Seymour's death may have been due to an infection from a retained placenta. According to Alison Weir, death could have also been caused by puerperal fever due to a bacterial infection contracted during the birth or a tear in her perineum which became infected.

Jane Seymour died on 24 October 1537 at Hampton Court Palace at Kingston upon Thames.

Funeral

Jane Seymour was buried on 12 November 1537 in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle after a funeral in which her stepdaughter, Mary, acted as chief mourner. Jane Seymour was the only one of Henry's wives to receive a Queen's funeral.

The following inscription was above her grave for a time:

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.

After her death, Henry wore black for the next three months and did not remarry for three years, although marriage negotiations were tentatively begun soon after her death. She was Henry's favourite wife because, historians have speculated, she gave birth to a male heir. When he died in 1547, Henry was buried beside her in the grave he had made for her, on his request.

Legacy

Two of Jane's brothers, Thomas and Edward, used her memory to improve their own fortunes. Thomas was rumoured to have been pursuing Princess Elizabeth, but married Queen Catherine Parr instead after the King's death. In the reign of the young King Edward VI, Edward Seymour set himself up as Lord Protector and de facto ruler of the kingdom. Both brothers eventually fell from power, and were executed.

In film

• In 1933, Wendy Barrie played Seymour opposite Charles Laughton's Henry VIII in Alexander Korda's highly-acclaimed film The Private Life of Henry VIII.
• Seymour is a minor character in Hal B. Wallis' 1969 Oscar-winning Anne of the Thousand Days. She was played by Lesley Paterson, opposite Richard Burton as Henry VIII.
• As part of the 1970 BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, the episode entitled "Jane Seymour" presented her as a shy but honest introvert, devoted to her husband. Henry was played by Keith Michell, and Seymour by Anne Stallybrass. The previous episode "Anne Boleyn" displayed Jane as fully knowing the damage her relationship with King Henry was doing.
• In 1973, this interpretation was repeated in Henry VIII and his Six Wives, in which Keith Michell reprised his role from the BBC drama; on this occasion Seymour was played by Jane Asher.
• Seymour was played by Charlotte Roach in David Starkey's documentary series on Henry's Queens in 2001.
• Seymour is a supporting character in the BBC television drama The Other Boleyn Girl, played by Naomi Benson opposite Jared Harris as Henry VIII and Jodhi May as Anne Boleyn.
• In October 2003, in the two-part ITV drama Henry VIII, Ray Winstone starred as the King. Jane Seymour was played by Emilia Fox.
• In The Simpsons episode "Margical History Tour," Seymour is portrayed by the shrill-tongued Miss Springfield during Marge's retelling of Henry's reign. Henry (portrayed by Homer) quickly orders Seymour's beheading after hearing her annoying voice.
• Anita Briem portrays Seymour as lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn in the second season of the television series The Tudors, produced for Showtime. In the third season of the same series, when Jane Seymour becomes Queen and later dies, the part is played by Annabelle Wallis.
• Seymour was played by actress Corinne Galloway in the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl.

In books

• Is the main character in Carolly Erickson's novel 'The Favoured Queen' which follows her from her appointment as lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon right up to the time she herself becomes Henry's consort.
• Appears in a background role in The Dark Rose, Volume 2 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
• A minor character in Philippa Gregory's popular novel The Other Boleyn Girl. Jane is a devout girl seen by the Boleyns as their rival family at court.
• Appears in Alison Weir's debut novel Innocent Traitor and her second The Lady Elizabeth.
• Is the subject of the novel Plain Jane: A Novel of Jane Seymour (Tudor Women Series) by Laurien Gardner (Sarah Hoyt).
• Appears as a lady serving both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which ends with hints of her coming prominence. A planned sequel, The Mirror and the Light, is expected to tell her story.^[14]

In music

• As Giovanna Seymour, she appears in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Anna Bolena.
• Rick Wakeman recorded the piece "Jane Seymour" for his 1973 album The Six Wives of Henry VIII.
• The English ballad "The Death of Queen Jane" (Child #170) is about the death of Jane Seymour following the birth of Prince Edward. The story as related in the ballad is historically inaccurate, but apparently reflects the popular view at the time of the events surrounding her death. The historical fact is that Prince Edward was born naturally, and that his mother succumbed to infection and died 12 days later. Most versions of the song end with the contrast between the joy of the birth of the Prince and the grief of the death of the Queen.

From version 170A:

The baby was christened with joy and much mirth,

Whilst poor Queen Jane's body lay cold under earth:

There was ringing and singing and mourning all day,

The Princess Elizabeth went weeping away

• The ballad is included in Loreena McKennitt's Barley album.
• The song "Lady Jane by The Rolling Stones is rumoured to be about Jane Seymour and her relationship with Henry VIII.

Historiography

Books solely on Jane Seymour are scarce, but two biographies of the Queen have recently been published. The first is a scholarly biography by Pamela Gross, while the second, by Elizabeth Norton, is more accessible to the average reader. A third book, William Seymour's Ordeal by Ambition, is in part a biography of Jane.

Jane was widely praised as "the fairest, the most discreet, and the most meritous of all Henry VIII's wives" in the centuries after her passing away. One historian, however, took serious umbrage at this view in the 19th century. Victorian author Agnes Strickland, who wrote multi-volume anthologies of French, Scottish, and English royal women, said that the story of Anne Boleyn's last agonised hours and Henry VIII's swift remarriage to Jane Seymour "is repulsive enough, but it becomes tenfold more abhorrent when the woman who caused the whole tragedy is loaded with panegyric." Hester W. Chapman and Eric Ives resurrected Strickland's view of Jane Seymour, and believe she played a crucial and conscious role in the cold-blooded plot to bring Anne Boleyn to the executioner's block. Joanna Denny, Marie Louise Bruce and Carolly Erickson have also refrained from giving overly sympathetic accounts of Jane's life and career. It should be noted that Ives, Bruce, and Denny are biographers of Anne Boleyn as opposed to Jane Seymour.

On the other hand, historical writers like Alison Weir and Antonia Fraser paint a favourable portrait of a woman of discretion and good sense - "a strong-minded matriarch in the making," says Weir. David Starkey and Karen Lindsey are relatively dismissive of Jane's importance in comparison to that of Henry's other major queens (Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr), though they refrain from claiming that she was the cause of the unfair trial. They further state that it was unlikely Jane could accomplish as much as her predecessors or her successors because her reign had been relatively short and spent mainly pregnant or unwell.

Lineage

Notes

External links

• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1966 - Find A Grave
• A quick over-view of Jane's life, with a good portrait gallery as well
• A more in-depth historical look at Jane's life and times
• A geo-biography tour of the Six Wives of Henry VIII on Google Earth
• The text of the ballad The Death of Queen Jane
• Photo of Seymour waxwork Flickr
• A 1996 interview with Anne Boleyn's most respected academic biographer, E.W. Ives in which he offers his interpretations of Anne Boleyn but also speculates on the role Jane played in Anne's downfall