Six Wives (88 page)

    None of course came. Instead, she sought and received permission to make a final speech. She chose her words carefully, so that they were neither the strident protestation of her innocence that Kingston feared, nor the confession of guilt that he would have hoped for. Instead, she cried 'mercy to God and to the King'. And she begged the people to pray for the King, 'for he was a good, gentle, gracious and amiable prince'.
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    Knowing Anne, one might almost suspect satire. But the moment was too serious for that. Had she loved him as the man she described? And did she still?

* * *

Her mantle trimmed with ermine – she had worn a royal fur to the last – was removed. Then she took off her headdress herself. It was – another gesture this – in the ponderous English gable style and not the much more becoming French hood that she normally wore. She knelt and, for decency's sake, tucked her dress tight about her feet. Then one of her women blindfolded her.

    Immediately, before she had time to register what was happening, the executioner swung his sword and her head was off.

    It was wrapped in a cloth and the body was buried immediately in the adjacent Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula.

* * *

H
ow a woman like Jane Seymour became Queen of England is a mystery. In Tudor terms she came from nowhere and was nothing.

    Chapuys confronted the riddle in his despatch of 18 May 1536, which was addressed to Antoine Perrenot, the Emperor's minister, rather than to the Emperor Charles V himself. Freed from the decorum of writing to his sovereign, the ambassador expressed himself bluntly. 'She is the sister', he began, 'of a certain Edward Seymour, who has been in the service of his Majesty [Charles V]'; while 'she [herself] was formerly in the service of the good Queen [Catherine]'.

    As for her appearance, it was literally colourless. 'She is of middle height, and nobody thinks she has much beauty. Her complexion is so whitish that she may be called rather pale.'

    This is a neat pen-portrait of the woman whose mousy, peaked features and mean, pointed chin are rendered by Holbein with his characteristic, unsparing honesty.

    So much Chapuys could see. But when he turned to her supposed moral character he gave his prejudices full rein. 'You may imagine', he wrote to Perrenot, man-to-man, 'whether, being an Englishwoman, and having been so long at Court, she would not hold it a sin to be
virgo
intacta
.' 'She is not a woman of great wit,' he continued. 'But she may have' – and here he became frankly coarse – 'a fine
enigme
.' '
Enigme
' means 'riddle' or 'secret', as in 'secret place' or the female genitalia. 'It is said', he concluded, 'that she is rather proud and haughty.' 'She seems to bear great goodwill and respect to [Mary]. I am not sure whether later on the honours heaped on her will not make her change her mind.'
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* * *

What was there here – a woman of no family, no beauty, no talent and perhaps not much reputation (though there is no need to accept all of Chapuys's slanders) – to attract a man who had already been married to two such extraordinary women as Catherine and Anne?

    But maybe Jane's very ordinariness was the point. Anne had been exciting as a mistress. But she was too demanding, too mercurial and tempestuous, to make a good wife. Like the Gospel which she patronised, she seemed to have come 'not to send peace but the sword' and to make 'a man's foes . . . them of his own household' (
Matthew
10.34–6). Henry was weary of scenes and squabbles, weary too of ruptures with his nearest and dearest and his oldest and closest friends. He wanted his family and friends back. He wanted domestic peace and the quiet life. He also, more disturbingly, wanted submission. For increasing age and the Supremacy's relentless elevation of the monarchy had made him ever more impatient of contradiction and disagreement. Only obedience, prompt, absolute and unconditional, would do.

    And he could have none of this with Anne.

    Jane, on the other hand, was everything that Anne was not. She was calm, quiet, soft-spoken (when she spoke at all) and profoundly submissive, at least to Henry. In short, after Anne's flagrant defiance of convention, Jane was the sixteenth-century's ideal woman (or at least the sixteenth-century
male
's ideal woman).

    And it was not only Henry who noticed the difference. Sir John Russell had been one of the many who had felt the repeated rough edge of Anne's tongue. Now he rejoiced at her successor: indeed, his gladness seems to have blinded him to the reality of her looks. 'I do assure you, my Lord', he wrote to his friend Lord Lisle, 'she is as gentle a lady as I ever knew, and as fair a Queen as any in Christendom.' 'The King', he continued, warming to his theme, 'hath come out of hell into heaven, for the gentleness in this, and the cursedness and the unhappiness in the other.'

    Lisle, he advised, should write to congratulate Henry, saying 'you do rejoice that he is so well matched with so gracious a woman as she is' – 'wherein', Russell stated with his insider's knowledge, 'you shall content his Grace'.
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    Everybody – Henry, Jane and the Court – was happy.

* * *

In his first audience with Jane, Chapuys played on this idea of happiness with a debonair gracefulness which contrasts gratingly with his private judgement. He kissed her and congratulated her. 'Her predecessor', he said, 'had borne the device "The Most Happy".' She, on the other hand, 'would bear the reality'. Then he continued to pile flattery on flattery. He was sure, he said, that '[Charles V] would be immeasurably pleased that the King had found so good and virtuous a wife, especially as her brother had been in [Charles's] service'.
³

    On the back of this reference to the Seymours' Imperial connexions, Chapuys smoothly shifted to politics. 'The satisfaction of the people . . . was incredible', he said, 'especially at the restoration of Mary to the King's favour'. And it would be even greater, he hinted, if Mary were made heiress once more. Then indeed Jane would deserve the title that he hoped would be hers of 'the pacific' or peace-maker – abroad as well as at home.

    This was getting into deep water. At this point Henry, who had been enjoying the company of the Queen's ladies without the reproving stares which had spoiled such pleasures under Anne, pricked up his ears, came over and interrupted the conversation. Jane, he said, was overwhelmed. Chapuys was the first ambassador who had spoken to her and she was not used to such attentions. However, he was sure she was eager for the title of 'pacific'. 'For, besides that her nature was gentle and inclined to peace, she would not for the world that he was engaged in war, that she might not be separated from him.'
⁴

    Henry's little woman was rescued. But from what? Chapuys had addressed her in French. Was she, unlike Anne, unable to reply easily in the same language? Was she simply bashful? Or was Henry afraid that she might disclose too much of her own opinions in her reply?

    In other words, was Jane really quite such a doormat as at first appears? Or was there strategy in her submissiveness? Did she choose the extravagant humility of her motto 'Bound to obey and serve' because it represented her view of her position? Or because it would tickle Henry's patriarchal visions?

    Even more interesting is the question of her badge or personal emblem. Her father, Sir John Seymour, had sported 'a peacock's head and neck couped Azure, between two wings erect Or'. But of course the peacock, then as now, symbolised pride. That was hardly suitable for the message Jane was supposed to convey. So she, or someone on her behalf, effected an ingenious substitution. Out of filial loyalty, she kept a bird as her badge. But a few deft strokes changed it from the peacock to the phoenix. This was the peacock's opposite. Instead of empty pride, it represented renewal through self-sacrifice. According to the legend, it lived for a thousand years. Then, feeling its end near, it built a nest-cumpyre. This it ignited, and then burned itself to ashes from which there arose a new phoenix.
⁵

    And so, Jane's badge said, she would renew the Tudor dynasty. As indeed she did, and, as it happened, at the cost of her own life.

* * *

The extent of Jane's 'ordinariness' is therefore debatable. Moreover, why had this ordinary woman won the King's hand? Had Henry spotted her for himself? Or had she been chosen for him? And why?

    These questions cannot be answered definitively because the obscurity, which veils the whole of Jane's early life, also masks the origins of her love affair with the King. We do not know when it began. Or where. Instead, she appears fully-fledged in February 1536 as 'the young lady . . . whom [Henry] serves'. This is how Henry's relationship with Anne had begun also. It too had been an episode in the game of Courtly Love that had quickly turned serious.
⁶

    But, then, it was Anne herself who had brought about the transformation. In 1536, on the other hand, it is clear that Jane had many helping hands.

    Her two principal patrons were Gertrude, Marchioness of Exeter, and Sir Nicholas Carew, the highly influential Master of the Horse who had won out in the struggle for the Garter with Rochford. Gertrude's activities were supported by her friends and relations in the conservative high nobility, such as Montague; while Carew had the enthusiastic backing of his colleagues of the Privy Chamber, such as Sir Anthony Browne and Sir John Russell. Even Carew's brother-in-law, Sir Francis Bryan, once so closely identified with Anne, had gone over to the enemy after his furious quarrel with Rochford in December 1534.
⁷

    But it is important to be clear about Jane's place in the scheme of things. For the Marchioness, Carew and the rest, she was a means, not an end. Their immediate goal was to restore Mary as heir to the throne, and, with Mary as a stalking-horse, to bring about a Catholic restoration also. Or, at the very least, to stop Reform in its tracks.

    All of this, they knew, would happen only over Anne's dead body. And Anne's dead body was something they could contemplate with equanimity, if not enthusiasm.

    For they had only ever paid the minimum lip-service to the Boleyn marriage. They detested Anne, and they detested the consequences of her marriage. And, from the beginning, they had sought for means to overthrow her. The obvious tactic was to turn her own weapons of bedchamber politics against her. She had shown that a mistress could become Queen. Why should not another woman repeat the trick? And why should this other woman not overthrow Anne and all she stood for, as completely as Anne had toppled Catherine?

    The problem, of course, was to find the right mistress. Each young woman who caught Henry's eye was nobbled by Anne's opponents and enthusiastically talked up as her nemesis. Things had reached a feverpitch of excitement in late 1534. Henry had acquired a new 'young lady' who refused to pay court to Anne. And Henry refused to back Anne when she appealed to him to slap down the insolent new-comer. Instead, he brushed off his wife angrily, and complained loudly about her importunity. The Court seethed with rumour. Was this the beginning of the end of Queen Anne?

    Chapuys at least kept a sense of proportion. 'Not much weight', he wrote, was to be attached to the report, 'unless the love of the King for the young lady . . . should grow warm and continue for some time'. But, he warned, 'it is impossible to form a judgement [of this], considering the changeableness of [Henry]'. The ambassador was right to be sceptical. The 'young lady' disappeared and we do not even know her name.
⁸

* * *

But of course the situation in early 1536 was very different. Catherine died, which meant that Henry could repudiate his second marriage without reaffirming his first. Anne miscarried. Cromwell turned against Anne. And, above all, Henry's love for Jane Seymour indeed 'grew warm and continued for some time'.

    It is possible to pin-point the moment that the nature of Henry's feelings for Jane changed more or less exactly to mid-March. The last Session of the Reformation Parliament opened on 4 February. At first, Henry alternated between Greenwich and York Place, spending a few days at a time in each. But, when the Bill for the Dissolution of the Monasteries showed signs of sticking, he moved to York Place for the whole of March. Meanwhile Jane remained at Greenwich. And Henry, obviously fearing lest his dalliance prove out of sight, out of mind, sent her a valuable present. It consisted of 'a purse full of sovereigns' and a covering letter.
⁹

    Jane's response, however, was quite unexpected. She kissed the letter and returned it unopened to the messenger. Then, 'throwing herself on her knees' before the messenger, she addressed the King through him:

Jane, in other words, was playing the Boleyn card, and playing it rather well. She would not be Henry's mistress, but only his wife.

    Was it her idea? Or had she been coached? We know certainly that she had had lessons. According to Chapuys, Carew 'continually counsels [Jane]'. More generally, she 'had been well taught by members of the King's Privy Chamber that she must by no means comply with the King's wishes except by way of marriage'. And she had learned her lessons well: 'she is quite firm [in the matter]', Chapuys reported.
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