‘Company me thinketh best
All thoughts and fancies to digest …’
Henry went from risking everything for Anne Boleyn, to kindly consenting to her being beheaded by a sharp sword instead of a clumsy axe. The public were said to be appalled.1 We can only surmise as to the reasons for his rejection of her – her sharp tongue and alleged criticism, his disappointment that she had not borne him a son, or perhaps he had genuinely been convinced that she was a witch. But finally, her enemies had succeeded in overthrowing her, and Henry quickly married Jane Seymour.
Henry was an excommunicate, and any Catholic allied to him risked eternal damnation. Because of the religious changes in England, Henry would have found it very difficult to negotiate a match with a foreign princess who could bring him a decent dowry and an international alliance. It had to be an English woman, and he had chosen Mistress Jane Seymour, of an undistinguished gentry family. Within twenty-four hours of Anne’s execution, Henry and Jane were officially engaged. They married on 30 May, eleven days after his last wife had been beheaded. As Jane had been one of Anne’s attendants, spending much of their time together, it is extremely unlikely that she could have believed her former mistress was guilty of all the charges.
It was very unusual for a king to marry one of his subjects except when he desperately needed an alliance with her family. Now Henry was marrying a commoner for the second time – and the Seymours were a level below the Boleyns in the social hierarchy. Jane claimed descent from Edward III, but this was through an illegitimate line and was of dubious authenticity. She had little to recommend her to the outside observer, with no title, no beauty and no charisma. But she seemed to be what a woman was supposed to be: submissive. She was the perfect antidote to ten years with Anne Boleyn. Jane had been at court since 1529, but there had been no sign that the king had noticed her before.
Jane was, at around twenty-eight, old to have been unmarried. She was said to have been in love with William Dormer,2 but his family had not been prepared for him to marry a mere Seymour. Jane’s mother was Margery Wentworth, a noted beauty, a quality Jane does not seem to have inherited. Her father was Sir John Seymour, who had been born around 1474 and knighted by Henry VII in 1497 for his assistance at the battle of Blackheath. He was described as a ‘gentle, courteous man’3 with ten children; in fact, the whole Seymour family was remarkably fertile. Sir John was even rumoured to have fathered the children of his daughter-in-law, who was then abandoned by her husband, Jane’s brother, Edward. Such a family history of fecundity had helped convince Henry to marry Anne Boleyn, a member of the Howard family; it probably also helped sway him towards her successor.
Henry, as he had for his first two marriages, needed a dispensation to marry his third wife. The dispensation was dated 19 May 1536 – the day of Anne’s execution. The wording is revealing; it was a dispensation for those in the ‘third degrees of affinity’ – second cousins.4 Henry and Jane were, at closest, fifth cousins but it was Jane’s close relationship to his last wife that was the issue – it has rarely been noted, but Jane was Anne Boleyn’s second cousin. Jane and the Boleyn sisters shared Elizabeth Cheyney as their great-grandmother. The Boleyns were descended from Elizabeth Cheyney’s first marriage to Sir Frederick Tilney, and they became the parents of Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn’s maternal grandmother. Jane Seymour was descended from Elizabeth Cheyney’s second marriage to John Saye, and they were the parents of Anne Saye, Jane Seymour’s maternal grandmother. Elizabeth Carew, who Henry was also linked with, was another second cousin of Jane’s. There was now no need to beg for the Pope’s approval – Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury signed the paperwork immediately.
Henry was looking forward, again, to conceiving a male heir but he was also planning for the future if this did not happen, and these plans seem to have included making the duke of Richmond a potential heir. Shortly after his marriage, the king was pushing through the Act of Succession, which would allow him to name his own successor. The first recorded sign of the duke of Richmond’s illness was five days before his death, when he failed to attend Parliament to support this very act. Prior to this he went every day, and was also a guest at weddings and a participant in all the court’s activities. The king had spent a lot of time with his son throughout his childhood and was inconsolable on his death.
Henry VIII had always been terrified of death and insisted that Richmond’s father-in-law, the duke of Norfolk, organise a quick and private funeral. Henry may have wanted his dead son’s corpse taken far away from him. Richmond was originally buried in Thetford, but is now interred at St Michael’s Church in Framlingham, near his close friend, the earl of Surrey. It is thought that he died of consumption, although it could have been another lung condition. McNalty concludes that there was a history of pulmonary tuberculosis in the Tudors. It allegedly killed both of Henry’s sons, Richmond and Edward VI, contributed to the deaths of Henry’s father and brother, Henry VII and Prince Arthur, and his daughter Elizabeth may have suffered from tuberculous laryngitis.5 The duke was only seventeen, and died on 23 July 1536 in St James’s Palace. It was only two months since the execution of his stepmother, who the king had branded a ‘poisoning whore’, accusing her of targeting both Princess Mary and the duke of Richmond.6
Henry refused to provide for Mary Howard, the teenage widow who was now the dowager duchess of Richmond and Somerset. Perhaps this was because it was Anne Boleyn who had arranged the marriage, and Mary, Anne’s cousin and one of her most favoured ladies-in-waiting, reminded him of his disgraced wife. Mary had brought no dowry and their marriage had been unconsummated and therefore childless, so £1,000 a year for life was a sum that Henry had no wish to pay. The duchess did not believe that it was the king who was denying her this money, blaming the situation wholly on her father. The duke of Norfolk was doing his best to persuade Henry to settle the matter fairly but the king was insistent that their unconsummated marriage did not count as a legitimate union.
Henry appeared happy in his marriage to Jane, but she never gained a fraction of the power her predecessors had wielded. Perhaps this is why she seems to have made no serious enemies. Henry does not seem to have felt the same passion for her as for his previous lovers and it is likely that he was quickly unfaithful.
Within eight days after publication of his marriage, having twice met two beautiful young ladies, he said and showed himself somewhat sorry that he had not seen them before he was married.7
Henry also asked that all Jane’s attendants be ‘fair’; it was important to him that the new ladies-in-waiting were attractive.
Jane was clearly determined, as her predecessors had been, that her ladies would behave virtuously. Anne Boleyn had introduced French fashions and customs, but Jane was a conservative Englishwoman and was determined to return to a more traditional court. It is unsurprising that when Anne Bassett secured a place at court, she was warned that she must not arrive in the ‘French apparel’ she had worn to meet the queen previously. John Hussey wrote to Anne Bassett’s mother that he had seen Anne in the altered headdress and ‘I thought it became her nothing so well as the French hood, but the Queen’s pleasure must be done’; the French hood sat further back on the head and showed the hair. Anne Bassett was also warned that she needed to add extra material to her neckline.8 Queen Jane may have felt threatened by the arrival of this new, and apparently very pretty, young woman; there were later rumours that Henry was attracted to her, and even considering marrying Anne.
Henry told Chapuys that he was now feeling old, and doubted that the queen would conceive, after only three months of marriage. This is unlikely to have been proof of his impotence – she did become pregnant soon after, and on 12 October 1537, Jane gave birth to a healthy boy. She died twelve days after the birth, probably of puerperal sepsis, the infection Henry’s mother had died of. Jane had paid the ultimate price for her success, only seventeen months after the wedding. Nevertheless, she had died in a noble cause; she had given her husband the one thing he had craved all his life, that he would shake the foundations of his country for – a legitimate son, the future Edward VI.
Jane may have died, but the Seymours continued to benefit from her refusal to be merely Henry’s mistress. During the reign of her son, Edward VI, Jane’s eldest brother Edward was made duke of Somerset (which had been a royal title) and was Lord Protector during the first half of his nephew’s minority. Her brother Thomas married the queen dowager, Katheryn Parr. Both were executed in the ensuing power struggles and the son she had given her life to bear died before he reached full adulthood. Both her brothers were buried in the Tower of London’s chapel, St Peter ad Vincula, near Anne Boleyn and some of her ‘lovers’.* Nevertheless, as a family, the Seymours continued to prosper.
Henry had three marriages behind him, and had gone through a turbulent ten years, but finally he had his Prince of Wales. The disappointment of losing the woman he loved was weighed against the joy of the long-awaited arrival of a healthy son and heir. The king was now old by sixteenth-century standards, and was perhaps beyond his days as a man ‘inclined to amours’. But he was still insistent that his next wife must be someone he could be attracted to.
In the letters to other monarchs announcing the death of Queen Jane, there were already hints at negotiating for her successor. Henry wore black for over three months after her death (Jane Seymour died on 24 October 1537 and he wore black until 3 February 1538), but England was threatened by the Catholic coalition of France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papal States. An alliance with a European power, sealed by a marriage, could bolster England’s position on the Continent and prevent a possible invasion. As a man, he could mourn, but as a king, he could not afford the luxury. The future of the Tudor dynasty, and of the country, rested on the health of the king and one baby boy. He knew from painful experience that this was not enough.
Henry’s council may have begun enquiries into a fourth wife immediately, but Henry himself was cautious. He wanted to marry, but after the two queens he had discarded, he was determined to choose very carefully this time. Henry now sought all the advantages of a wife and a mistress to be wrapped up in one woman: for her to enjoy the constant celebrations and feasts, and to ornament them; for her to be intelligent and a good companion; for them to be in love. He insisted: ‘I will trust no one but myself; marriage touches a man too closely.’9
Henry said his advisers should choose his fourth wife for him, as they ‘would have good sport to make him amorous at his age’.10 After the death of Jane, there are far fewer reports of Henry chasing ladies. Maybe it was because Henry was less able to womanise, with his ulcerated leg and his obese frame, his headaches, constipation, indigestion and irritability. As he aged, he preferred to marry the women he loved, rather than retain them as mistresses. Yet the reports of Henry between 1540 and 1541, barely able to keep his hands off Catherine Howard in public, show that he was still interested in attractive girls.
By 1538, a year after Jane’s death, Henry was enthusiastic about finding a new wife. He enjoyed the negotiations, playing rival off against rival, hoping to obtain the best possible match. Unfortunately, the royal families of Europe were not as eager as they would previously have been – Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour had all died in the last two years. Rumours that Katherine had been poisoned, Anne falsely accused and that Jane had died of neglect spread throughout Europe.
At first, Henry was particularly interested in marrying a French noblewoman. He told Francis I that he would like some possible contenders to travel to Calais, so that he could ‘see them and enjoy their society before settling on one’. Francis replied that Henry
would perhaps like to try them all, one after the other, and keep for yourself the one who seemed the sweetest. It was not thus, Sir, that the Knights of the Round Table treated their ladies.11
Henry was said to have been deeply embarrassed, and did not pursue this idea. He then wished to marry Mary of Guise, Francis’s cousin, but she rejected him in favour of his nephew, James V of Scotland, a man with a smaller kingdom but who was younger and more attractive.
Henry had wished to meet the women before making any commitments as ‘marriage is a bargain of such nature as must endure for the whole life of man, and a thing whereof the pleasure and quiet, or the displeasure and torment of the man’s mind doth much depend’.12 Even the sixteen-year-old Christina of Milan’s reputation for beauty was not enough for Henry, or that she was said to resemble his former mistress, Mary Shelton; or that she was also the niece of the most powerful man in Europe. He still wanted to check this for himself. He was very pleased that her portrait showed she was tall, as this had been listed as one of his requirements (although the next woman he fell in love with was the diminutive Catherine Howard). He was specific about her appearance – not only must she be beautiful, but as he was now a big man he was in need of ‘a big wife’.13
While negotiations continued with several French princesses, and their portraits were painted for Henry’s approval, the king seemed wholly taken by Christina of Milan. To marry Christina, Henry demanded that his prospective bride be made the heir to Denmark; she was at the time second in line to her elder sister. However, her family were not so eager. Wriothesley went to meet Christina and asked if she wished to marry Henry; he had heard rumours that she did not. She replied, ‘What should I say? You know that I am at the Emperor’s commandment.’ Wriothesley then tried to persuade the evasive princess that this would be an excellent match for her, explaining that Henry was ‘the most gentle gentleman that liveth; his nature so benign and pleasant, that I think till this day no man hath heard many angry words pass his mouth’. This was deviating so far from the truth that Christina seems to have struggled to keep a straight face; Wriothesley described her as ‘like one that was tickled’.14
From the start of the detailed negotiations for Christina’s hand, the Hapsburgs seemed lukewarm. As she was the great-niece of Katherine of Aragon, they needed a dispensation for her to marry Henry – and they would only accept this from the Pope, who was unlikely to be helpful. The negotiations continued for over a year, but eventually petered out. No doubt her family had concerns about sending such a young woman to a husband known for disposing of unwanted wives. Neither Francis nor Charles made any serious effort to build a marital alliance with the King of England – it was not just his past record and his age which counted against him, it seems his kingdom was not considered quite attractive enough either.
Archbishop Cranmer had another suggestion for Henry. He thought that the king should marry ‘where that he had his fantasy and love, for that would be most comfort for his grace’.15 Cranmer knew him well; this was a progressive idea, and one that was ignored. Henry wanted a foreign princess, as was expected of him – and no Englishwoman had captured his heart this time. In 1516 Erasmus had published The Education of a Prince, in which he criticised the use of princesses as marriage pawns – pointing out that these alliances rarely worked. He advised kings to marry women from their own country; this may have inspired Henry.
In 1538 rumours abounded at court as to whether an Englishwoman would again sit on the throne of England. But with an absence of ladies at court, as there was no queen for them to serve, Henry had few opportunities to fall in love with a young aristocrat. One courtier, John Hussey, wrote:
The election lieth between Mrs. Mary Shelton and Mrs. Mary Skipwith. I pray Jesu send such one as may be for his Highness’ comfort and the wealth of the realm. Herein I doubt not but your lordship will keep silence till the matter be surely known.16
Mary Shelton had been Henry’s mistress three years before, during his marriage to Anne Boleyn. (If he was considering marrying Mary Shelton in 1538, then she was almost definitely his earlier mistress, not her sister Margaret: he would have been unlikely to marry his ex-mistress’s sister after his annulments to Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. If he had, this would have been the third time in four marriages that he had married a woman who under Church law was his sister.) A woman who had fornicated before marriage was clearly an unsuitable choice as Queen of England – and Henry may not have been her only lover.
Mistress Skipwith is more likely to be Margaret than Mary Skipwith. The sisters were the daughters of Sir William Skipwith of South Ormsby, part of the Lincolnshire gentry. Mary Skipwith married George Fitzwilliam of Mablethorpe around 1550. We are unsure of her date of birth, but her date of marriage suggests she may have been too young to marry at the time of the rumours, twelve years beforehand. It is likely that, as with the Sheltons, Mary and Marg, the abbreviated version of Margaret, were confused here, and it was Margaret Skipwith who Henry was rumoured to be interested in. Margaret Skipwith married three months after this rumour, when the king helped arrange a marriage for her to Bessie Blount’s son.17
The court had been desperate for a new queen. Without one, its social life came to a standstill, with no ladies-in-waiting. The women who had served Queen Jane, or who hoped to serve a new queen, were eager to gain positions at court. Anne Bassett, who had served Queen Jane so briefly, wrote to her mother that: ‘I trust in God that we shall have a mistress shortly … which I hope to God will not be long.’18 This letter suggests that Anne Bassett, who was later thought a possible candidate for wife number five or six, did not consider herself to be in the running for the position of wife number four. After two years without a queen, negotiations seemed to have come to an end for a French or Habsburg princess. But the shrewd Thomas Cromwell had a match in mind.
She was not a princess from a dominant European family, but she was royal, single and available. Her brother was the duke of Cleves, a small but strategically placed German duchy between the lands of the mighty Habsburgs and France. An alliance between Cleves, Denmark, Guelders and England could cause problems for the emperor, especially in the Netherlands. Cleves had a similar brand of Christianity to England’s, in between Catholicism and Protestantism, so they were not perturbed by the idea of their Lady Anne marrying an excommunicate. While the Catholic countries were temporarily allied, England could easily be subjected to a holy invasion. Despite Henry’s dislike of Lutheran doctrines, the German principalities could be useful allies.
1. Mattingly, Catherine of Aragon, p.161
2. Seymour, Ordeal by Ambition, p.36
3. Cit. Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, p.288
4. L&P, X, no.915
5. McNalty, Henry VIII: A Difficult Patient, pp.25–6 and p.28
6. CSP, Spanish, V, pt. II, p.125
7. L&P, XI, no.8; Chapuys to Granvelle, 1st July 1536
8. L&P, XII, p.254; Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement, p.209
9. Cit. Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, p.66
10. Ibid.
11. Castillon; cit. Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty, p.67
12. Cit. Byrne (ed.), The Letters of King Henry VIII, p.61
13. L&P, XII, pt. II, p.449
14. L&P, VIII, pp.142–6
15. Cit. Wilson, In the Lion’s Court: Power, Ambition and Sudden Death in the Reign of Henry VIII, p.449
16. L&P, IX, no.24; John Hussey to Lord Lisle, 3rd January 1538
17. L&P, XIII, pt. I, no.795
18. Byrne (ed.), The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement, p.281
* Henry Norris, Francis Weston and George Boleyn were buried in St Peter ad Vincula along with Anne Boleyn. Jane, Lady Rochford joined her husband and sister-in-law there six years later, along with Catherine Howard. Jane Seymour’s brothers, Edward, duke of Somerset and Thomas, Baron Seymour of Sudeley joined them in the 1550s. Charles II’s illegitimate son, the first bastard to try to claim the throne of England since William the Conqueror, joined them in the seventeenth century.