Jane Seymour

• 1. Introduction

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  Jane Seymour once sent back a purse full of gold sovereigns from King Henry the Eighth without breaking its seal. She told his messenger that no treasure in the world meant as much to her as her honour. That gesture helped set off a rapid change in Tudor history, ending one queen's reign and opening the way for a very different one. Jane Seymour was born around 1508 and died on the 24th of October 1537. She became Queen of England as Henry the Eighth's third wife when they married on the 30th of May 1536. She rose to the throne only after Henry executed his second wife, Anne Boleyn. He had accused Anne of adultery after she failed to give him a son. Jane herself died of complications following childbirth less than two weeks after delivering Henry's only surviving son, the future King Edward the Sixth. She was the only one of Henry's six wives given a queen's funeral. When Henry himself died, he chose to be buried at her side in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. What made a woman so careful with a king's gold worth remembering above five other queens? And how did her quiet nature shape a stepdaughter, a household, and a dynasty that outlived her by generations?

• 2. Character and Bloodline

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  Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth were Jane's parents. She was most likely born at Wulfhall in Wiltshire, though some accounts point instead to West Bower Manor in Somerset. No record of her birth date survives; various accounts place it anywhere between 1504 and 1509. Through her mother's father, she descended from Lionel of Antwerp, 1st Duke of Clarence, a son of King Edward the Third. That lineage made her and Henry fifth cousins. She also shared a great-grandmother, Elizabeth Cheney, Lady Say, with two of Henry's other wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

  Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had received a far better education than Jane ever did. Jane could read and write only a little, but she excelled at needlework and household management, skills considered more fitting for women of her time. Her embroidery was reportedly beautiful and elaborate; some of it survived until 1652, when it was recorded as passed to the Seymour family. After her death, contemporaries described Henry himself as an "enthusiastic embroiderer."

  Eustace Chapuys, the Imperial Ambassador who called her Jane Semel in his letters, described her as being of middling stature, very pale, and not particularly beautiful. He also nicknamed her the Pacific for her peacemaking efforts at court. Courtier John Russell disagreed about her looks, once calling her the fairest of all the king's wives, and adding that she was "as gentle a lady as ever I knew." Scholar Polydore Vergil went further, writing that she was "a woman of the utmost charm in both character and appearance." Across these accounts she emerges as meek, gentle, simple, and chaste, with her large family suggesting to observers that she would prove fertile.

  Those same qualities of gentleness would soon draw a king's attention away from the wife he already had.

• 3. Serving Two Queens

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  No original record survives to confirm exactly when Jane joined Queen Catherine of Aragon's household. Most historians agree she began serving there as a lady-in-waiting sometime between 1527 and 1529. In 1531, Henry banished Catherine from court entirely. Historian Elizabeth Norton has argued that Jane likely followed Catherine into that exile. Alison Weir suggests instead that Jane stayed behind and entered Anne Boleyn's service.

  A gift recorded for a "Mistress Seymour" in January 1534 was a New Year's present from Henry. It may show that Jane was already part of Anne's retinue by then. Jane Dormer's memoir tells a different story. It credits courtier Francis Bryan, a relative of both Anne and the Seymours, with arranging Jane's entry into Anne's household in late 1535. In July 1536, the Holy Roman ambassador Pedro Ortiz wrote to Empress Isabella about Jane's past service. He reported that his colleague Chapuys understood Jane to have served both Catherine and Anne as a maid before that.

  Anne herself had become Henry's wife in January 1533 and Queen consort that June. She gave birth to a daughter, the future Elizabeth the First, in September 1533, but then suffered a series of miscarriages. Her marriage to Henry began to unravel, driven above all by his growing desperation for a son.

  That autumn, the king's travels would carry him to the one house in England built around the Seymour name.

• 4. A Careful Courtship

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  In late 1535, Henry set out on what would be his final royal progress with Anne still his queen. The couple spent a week that September at Wolf Hall, the Seymour family's ancestral home. Henry often visited the homes of favoured courtiers during his progresses, and on this trip that courtier was Jane's own father. Most historians think Jane was present too, whether to help her parents host the royal couple or to attend Queen Anne herself. She likely already knew Henry in some capacity, given her prior court service and his dealings with the Seymour family. It is possible, though, that this visit marked the first time his interest in her turned romantic.

  By February 1536, according to Chapuys, Henry had begun sending Jane gifts that signaled interest in her as a mistress. Contemporaries and later historians alike have suggested her family coached her responses, aiming ultimately to see Jane replace Anne as queen. Conservative figures at court, including Jane's own brother Edward, viewed her rise as a chance to undo the reformist policies tied to Anne's household. Biographer Antonia Fraser offers a more practical read of the moment. She suggests Jane's caution was about protecting her marriage prospects rather than serving any grand strategy. Jane, after all, had no independent wealth of her own to fall back on.

  Thomas Cromwell's own apartments at Greenwich Palace became the setting for what came next. Henry arranged for Jane and her brother Edward to move in, positioning Edward as chaperone while the king continued his pursuit.

  Within days, Cromwell's household would find itself at the center of a change in queens.

• 5. Queen and Stepmother

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  On the 20th of May 1536, Henry was formally betrothed to Jane. As a wedding gift, he granted her jointure, an income meant to support her during their marriage. That grant covered 104 manors across four counties, plus several forests and hunting chases. Bishop Stephen Gardiner performed the marriage ceremony in the Queen's closet at the Palace of Whitehall in London. Jane was publicly proclaimed queen on the 4th of June 1536. Her well-known sympathy for the late Queen Catherine and for Catherine's daughter Mary made her popular with both the common people and most courtiers. A coronation never took place, however, because plague had broken out in London, where the ceremony was to be held. Henry may also have wanted her to bear a son before crowning her.

  Strict decorum replaced the lavish entertainment that had defined Anne Boleyn's household at its height. Jane, observed by her court as formal and rather severe, banned the French fashions Anne had introduced. Politically she stayed conservative. Her only recorded intervention in national affairs came in 1536, when she asked Henry to pardon participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Henry refused, reportedly reminding her of the fate met by "her predecessor" should she "meddle with his affairs." Her motto as queen was "Bound to obey and serve."

  Mary, Henry's daughter by Catherine of Aragon, found an unlikely ally in her new stepmother. Jane pushed, both before and after becoming queen, to have Mary restored to court. She wanted Mary placed back in the line of succession, behind any children Jane herself might bear. She could not secure Mary's place in the succession itself, but she did help reconcile Mary with her father. Chapuys wrote to Emperor Charles the Fifth praising Jane's compassion toward Mary, and a surviving letter from Mary shows her gratitude in return. Full reinstatement of Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth to the succession would not come until years later. It took Henry's sixth wife, Catherine Parr, to finally persuade him to act.

  By January 1537, Jane had conceived again. A craving during that pregnancy would soon reach as far as the marshes of Calais.

• 6. Quail, Labour, and Loss

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  Quail became Jane's craving during this pregnancy. The birds thrived in the marshes around Calais, where Henry's aunt and uncle, the Viscount and Viscountess Lisle, made their home. The couple could also source quail from Flanders when needed. In May, Henry instructed courtier John Russell to write to the Lisles on the queen's behalf: "the king commanded me to write to you for some fat quails, for the queen is very desirous to eat some but here be none to be gotten... pray you will send some with as much speed as may be possible, but they must be very fat." The Lisles obliged.

  Through the summer of 1537, Jane took no public engagements, attending to her pregnancy under the care of royal physicians and the kingdom's best midwives. She entered confinement in September 1537. She gave birth to the future King Edward the Sixth at two o'clock in the morning on the 12th of October, at Hampton Court Palace. He was Henry's only legitimate son to survive infancy. Edward was christened on the 15th of October without his parents present, as custom required. His half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth both carried his train during the ceremony.

  Labour had lasted two days and three nights, likely because the baby was poorly positioned. Soon after the christening, it became clear Jane was gravely ill. Within weeks, accounts of her death conflicted with one another. Edward's biographer Jennifer Loach has suggested an infection from a retained placenta. Alison Weir points instead to puerperal fever following a bacterial infection. Weir has also raised, after consulting medical experts, the possibility of a pulmonary embolism.

  Jane was buried on the 12th of November, with her stepdaughter Mary serving as chief mourner. Twenty-nine mourners followed in procession, one for every year of Jane's life. Henry wore black for the following three months. Marriage negotiations toward his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, began not long after Jane's death, though the wedding itself did not happen for two more years. Widowerhood took a physical toll on Henry, who grew obese and swollen and developed both diabetes and gout.

  That decline in health would shape the next decade of his reign, even as Jane's own brothers moved to claim what her death had made possible.

• 7. Family Fortunes and Treasures

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  Catherine Filliol, her father's own daughter-in-law, had once been at the center of a scandal that hindered the Seymour family's standing at court. Jane's rise as queen helped erase that stain, and she used her position to advance her relatives more broadly. Two of her brothers, Thomas and Edward, spent the years after her death trading on her memory to build their own fortunes. Thomas was rumored to be courting the future Elizabeth the First, but he married the queen dowager, Catherine Parr, instead. Edward Seymour went further still. He set himself up as Lord Protector and de facto ruler of England during the reign of the young King Edward the Sixth. Both brothers eventually fell from power, and both were executed.

  Lady Margery Lyster kept charge of Jane's jewels. An inventory of them listed beads, pomanders, tablets, girdles, borders, brooches, bracelets, buttons, aglets, and chains. Many of the pieces were worked in gold and enamel, and some were set with gems. A separate inventory from 1542, taken when her belongings were stored in the Old Jewel House at Whitehall Palace, recorded her wardrobe in detail. It listed gowns of damask, velvet, and satin, along with kirtles of velvet, cloth of silver, taffeta, and purple cloth of gold. Cloaks of satin were included too. It also listed sleeves of silver and gold tissue, embroidered with Venice gold and tied with gold aglets. Placards, stomachers, frontlets, French hoods, and partlets appeared alongside crimson velvet hats trimmed in black velvet and white satin. The same items were listed again in 1547.

  Jane was said to have embroidered a bed and a chair herself, pieces later given by Charles the First to her relation William Seymour. The 1542 inventory also lists embroidery believed to be her own work. One piece is a cushion featuring an antelope. Another shows a branch of roses beneath a crowned white falcon, an emblem tied to Anne Boleyn. Among her possessions were also great and little dolls, dressed in silver, satin, and velvet gowns tied with gold aglets to match her own sleeves. Some historians think these dolls may have been early fashion dolls.

  None of that inherited fortune, though, could keep her story off the stage and screen for the centuries that followed.

• 8. A Queen Remembered

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  Wendy Barrie played Jane opposite Charles Laughton's Henry the Eighth in Alexander Korda's acclaimed 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII. Lesley Paterson took the role briefly in 1969's Anne of the Thousand Days. The BBC series was adapted into the 1972 film Henry VIII and His Six Wives. Keith Michell reprised his role as the king, while Jane Asher played Seymour. Corinne Galloway portrayed her in 2008's The Other Boleyn Girl.

  The BBC's 1970 series The Six Wives of Henry VIII paired Keith Michell's Henry with Anne Stallybrass as Seymour. In the 2003 BBC drama The Other Boleyn Girl, Naomi Benson played Seymour opposite Jared Harris as Henry and Jodhi May as Anne Boleyn. That same year, ITV's two-part drama Henry VIII cast Ray Winstone as the king and Emilia Fox as Jane Seymour. A 2004 episode of The Simpsons, "Margical History Tour," cast a shrill Miss Springfield as Seymour. Homer's Henry orders her beheading soon after hearing her annoying voice. Anita Briem played Seymour as a lady-in-waiting in the second season of Showtime's The Tudors, in 2008. When the character became queen and died in the third season, Annabelle Wallis took over the role. Kate Phillips played Jane Seymour in her first professional role, in the BBC Two adaptation of Wolf Hall. She reprised the part in its sequel, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light.

  Charlotte Roach played Seymour in David Starkey's 2001 documentary series The Six Wives of Henry VIII. Lucy Telleck took the role opposite Charlie Clements's Henry VIII in Suzannah Lipscomb and Dan Jones's Henry VIII and his Six Wives on Channel 5.

  Mike Poulton adapted Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall novels into a two-part stage production, with Jane Seymour among its characters. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged it in London's West End in 2014 and on Broadway in 2015. In the musical Six, Holly Musgrave played her in the original Edinburgh cast. Natalie Paris took the role for the studio recording and West End run, and Abby Mueller played her in the Chicago cast.

  Janet Wertman made her the lead of Jane the Quene, the first book in her Seymour Saga. Carolly Erickson's highly fictionalized The Favoured Queen follows Jane from her early appointment as lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon through to her death. Laurien Gardner, writing as Sarah Hoyt, made her the subject of Plain Jane: A Novel of Jane Seymour. In Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, Jane appears as a lady serving both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Hints of her coming prominence are saved for the book's close. Mantel's sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, centers on the plotting that led to Anne Boleyn's execution. It also covers Henry's determination to replace her with Jane, and the Seymour family's own scheming toward that end. The third volume, The Mirror and the Light, carries Jane's story further still. Diane Haeger's novel I, Jane imagines her girlhood. It includes a close relationship with a young man whose court-connected parents looked down on the Seymour family. Jane never forgot that bond in later years. Elizabeth Norton made her the title figure of Jane Seymour: Henry VIII's True Love. Alison Weir did the same in Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen, the third book in her Six Tudor Queens series.

  She appears as Giovanna Seymour in Gaetano Donizetti's opera Anna Bolena. Rick Wakeman recorded a piece titled "Jane Seymour" for his 1973 album The Six Wives of Henry VIII. An older English ballad, "The Death of Queen Jane," is catalogued as Child number 170. It describes her death after Prince Edward's birth, though its account is historically inaccurate. The real story is plainer: Edward was born without complication, and his mother died twelve days later of an infection. Most versions of the ballad set the joy of the birth against the grief of the queen's death. Irish musician Dáithí Sproule set the ballad to his own tune. That version appeared on the Bothy Band's 1979 album After Hours (Live in Paris). It also appeared on Trian's 1995 album Trian II, and on the Bothy Band's 2008 compilation Best of the Bothy Band. Trian, on that recording, paired Sproule with Liz Carroll and Billy McComiskey. The same ballad turned up on Loreena McKennitt's 2010 album The Wind That Shakes the Barley and on Sproule's own 2011 album Lost River: Vol. 1. Oscar Isaac performed the ballad on screen in the Coen brothers' 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis.

  Long after Jane's own death, that same ballad keeps finding new voices to carry her brief reign forward.