by Alison Weir
It has been suggested that this was all a front put on by an ageing man to mask his disappointment and shame at not having an heir, and perhaps also his increasing impotence. But the evidence for this is slender. In the August following his marriage to Jane Seymour, the King, perhaps disappointed that his bride was not yet pregnant, confided to Chapuys that he felt himself growing old, and doubted whether he would have any children by the Queen. 5 This cannot be taken as conclusive proof of sexual difficulties, since Henry had said as much when addressing Parliament in 1532,6 and Anne Boleyn conceived four times during their subsequent marriage. Four months after Henry’s conversation with Chapuys, Jane herself conceived. Apart from the suspect evidence produced at Rochford’s trial, that Anne Boleyn had told him Henry was unable to copulate with her and had neither skill nor staying power in bed,7 there is nothing else to suggest that the King was actually impotent. Indeed, Cromwell may well have manufactured this evidence in order to portray Anne as a wife who had no respect for her husband and sovereign, and who pretended that he was impotent in order to gratify her own lusts.
In fact, there is evidence that in his later years Henry was still indulging his sexual impulses. Many of his contemporaries referred to his predilection for female company—Norfolk, who knew Henry well, asserted that he was “continually inclined to amours”8—and in Europe his reputation as a libertine was notorious: Charles V told Chapuys that it was well known that Henry was “of amorous complexion.” 9 In 1533, one observer had predicted that the Princess Elizabeth would be a weakly child because of her father’s “complexion and habits of life”:10 it was widely accepted that a man’s promiscuity affected his offspring.
In 1535, John Hale, Vicar of Isleworth, confided to a priest, Robert Feron, that the King indulged in “foul pleasures” and was mired in vice: “If thou wilt look deeply upon his life, thou shalt find it more foul and more stinking than a sow, wallowing and defiling herself in any filthy place. For how great soever he is, he is fully given to his foul pleasure of the flesh and other voluptuousness.” Hale claimed that Henry had violated most of the women of his court, and married Anne Boleyn out of sheer “fornication, to the highest shame and undoing of himself and all this realm.” He had also learned that “our sovereign lord” kept his own brothel, which Hale described as “a short of maidens over one of his chambers at Farnham.”11
There is plenty of evidence, as we have seen, that the King had a wandering eye. Soon after his marriage to Jane Seymour, he noticed two beautiful young women at court, and “said and showed himself sorry that he had not seen them before he was married.”12
Other evidence, despite being fragmentary, bears out Hale’s assertions. In the late 1530s, a man called William Webbe complained that, while he was riding in broad daylight with his mistress near Eltham Palace, they encountered the King, who took an immediate fancy to the “pretty wench,” pulled her up on his horse, and rode off to the palace, where he ravished her and kept her for some time. Webbe was furious, and swore he would have his revenge, but could do little but recount his grievance to all and sundry. 13
There is a curious story, which must date from after 1536, that while Holbein was painting a portrait of an unidentified lady that had been privately commissioned by the King, a “nobleman”—perhaps a rival for her favours—burst into the room. Mindful of the discretion required of him, Holbein, without any compunction, pushed him out and threw him down the stairs. He then locked up his house, hastened to the King, fell on his knees, and begged to be pardoned for committing an assault within the verge of the court. Hot on the artist’s heels came the nobleman to give his version of events. But Henry’s jealousy got the better of him and he lost his temper, telling the man, “You have not to do with Holbein, but with me. I tell you, of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but not one Holbein.”14
Such was Henry’s reputation for lechery that in 1537 it was being said that all it took to please him was “an apple and a fair wench to dally withal.”15 The King’s discretion, along with a natural reluctance on the part of observers to commit what they knew to paper, may account for the paucity of evidence, but enough survives to suggest a healthy sexual appetite rather than impotence.
On 2 June 1536, Jane Seymour dined in public with the King for the first time, and her servants all took their oath of allegiance. Later that day, the court moved to Greenwich, where, two days later, at Whitsuntide, Jane was proclaimed Queen “and went in procession, after the King, with a great train of ladies following her, and also offered at mass as Queen, dining in her chamber of presence under the cloth of estate.”16
Jane’s elevation brought her brother Edward to prominence at court. On the day she was proclaimed Queen, he was created Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, Somerset, and appointed Governor of Jersey and Chancellor of North Wales. Now the most important Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, he enjoyed great influence with his brother-in-law the King and was therefore able to ensure that his allies and clients were appointed to key posts in the royal household.
Seymour was a haughty, reserved man, somewhat under the thumb of his volatile second wife, Anne Stanhope, whom he had married in about 1534/5; his sister Jane had been godmother at the baptism of their eldest son in February 1536. Although cultivated and astute, Seymour was too much of an idealist to make a great politician, but his ambition and status overrode such a minor consideration, and his loyalty to the Crown was never in doubt. A humanist, he was sympathetic to the cause of reform, but “so moderate that all thought him their own.”17 His greatest talent was as a military commander: even Norfolk was impressed with him, and his recommendation later led to Seymour’s successful command of the royal forces in the north of England.
On 7 June, the King and Queen came by barge from Greenwich to Whitehall, attended by great pageantry. As they passed the Tower, where Anne Boleyn had lain in her grave for less than three weeks, four hundred guns sounded a salute; “all the Tower walls towards the water-side were set with streamers and banners.”18 At Radcliffe Wharf the royal barge halted so that Chapuys could pay his respects; surrounded by his velvet-clad gentlemen, and wearing purple satin, he stood bowing under a tent embroidered with the imperial arms, then gave the signal for three small boats laden with musicians playing trumpets, shawms, and sackbuts to escort the King and Queen to Westminster. After they had disembarked, Henry and Jane walked in procession to Westminster Abbey and attended high mass.19
The next morning, Jane stood in the gallery above the “Holbein” gatehouse at Whitehall, and waved Henry farewell as he rode off in procession to open Parliament.
As Queen, Jane proved herself to be entirely subservient to the King’s will; Chapuys discovered that she was not to be drawn into discussions about religion or politics.20 She was compassionate and pious, but made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and thus appeared “proud and haughty.”21 Because she was only a knight’s daughter, and lacked Anne Boleyn’s confidence, she seems to have felt it necessary to emphasise her new status, and was consequently strict with regard to protocol and etiquette.22 Chapuys had cause to revise his earlier opinion of her, and reported that she bore her royal honours with dignity.23
Meanwhile, an army of masons, carpenters, painters, glaziers, and embroiderers had been hastily replacing Anne Boleyn’s initials, mottoes and badges with Jane’s throughout the royal palaces;24 at Hampton Court, the entwined initials H and I may still be seen in the Great Watching Chamber. Jane’s badge was her family emblem of a phoenix rising from a flaming castle, and her herldic beast was the panther. The motto she had dutifully chosen was “Bound to obey and serve.”
Henry ordered a stained-glass window depicting St. Anne, his former wife’s patron saint, to be removed from the chapel at Hampton Court. 25 Miles Coverdale, who had been about to dedicate the latest edition of his translation of the Bible to Anne, hastily inserted Queen Jane’s name before it went to the printer.26
Jane was given Baynard’s Castle and Havering-atte
-Bower as part of her jointure. The Queen’s lodgings at Hampton Court, begun for Anne Boleyn, were completed for Jane. Her bed boasted a wooden roundel painted with her arms.27
The King was planning a splendid coronation for Jane, which was to take place in October. A great barge, built along the lines of the famous Bucentaur of the Doges of Venice, was to be constructed; it would bring the Queen from Greenwich to London, where she would be received with magnificent pageantry and music, and thus proceed to Westminster.
Many of Anne Boleyn’s officers and servants transferred to Jane Seymour’s household of two hundred persons. Some were replaced by clients of the Seymours. Before 1536 was out, Lady Rochford had returned to court as one of the new Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Mary Zouche, who had also served Anne Boleyn, was a maid of honour, and is perhaps to be identified with the “Mrs. Zouche” who was presented with jewel-encrusted borders by Queen Jane and who later attended the Queen’s funeral; in 1542, the King awarded her a pension of £10 (£3,000) in consideration of her good service to Jane and himself. A Holbein sketch of a lady identified as “M. Souch” survives: it may be of Mary Zouche, or of Anne Boleyn’s former maid of honour, Anne Gainsford, who became Mistress Zouche upon her marriage to George Zouche of Codnor.28
Other ladies who served Jane Seymour included Anne Parr, the wife of William Herbert, later Earl of Pembroke; her sister Katherine would become Henry VIII’s sixth wife. Elizabeth Darrell, Wyatt’s mistress, who had served with Jane in the household of Katherine of Aragon, and who had attended that lady to the end, was saved from destitution by her new appointment. Sketches by Holbein survive of two more of the Queen’s ladies: Suffolk’s daughter (by Anne Brown), Mary Brandon, Lady Monteagle, to whom Jane gave gifts of jewellery; and Grace, Lady Parker, Lady Rochford’s sister-in-law.29
Jane was determined to enforce high moral standards in her household. She laid down strict rules governing not only the behaviour but also the dress of her attendants: her ladies were to be sumptuously but modestly attired and had to wear trains three yards long and girdles set with a regulation number of pearls. One girl was told that a girdle embroidered with 120 pearls was not sufficiently grand to wear before the Queen.30 Although Jane herself dressed magnificently, she left little mark upon fashion except to popularise nightgowns and caps edged with gold and silver embroidery. The King showered her with jewels—including a large IHS pendant studded with black diamonds, which she wears in Holbein’s portrait—and there is evidence that some of them were designed for her by Holbein, among them the emerald and ruby pendant surrounded by gold acanthus leaves that appears in the portrait, for which a similar design by him survives.
Holbein also designed an exquisite gold Renaissance-style drinking cup for Jane, perhaps a wedding gift from the King. It was decorated with her motto around the stem and on the cover, the initials H and I entwined in true lovers’ knots, four antique medallion heads, and the Queen’s arms supported by dolphins and cherubs and surmounted by a crown. 31 Few items of English goldsmiths’ work achieved such a standard of perfection.
By 1536, thanks to Cromwell’s influence, Holbein was working as King’s Painter from a studio in Whitehall Palace, on a salary of £30 (£9,000). Henry was in no doubt that here was an exceptional artist worthy of his patronage, who would create the iconography of the New Monarchy, and among his first commissions were portraits of himself and Queen Jane. 32 That of Henry VIII, a small panel of astonishing power and presence, highlighted in real gold leaf, is the only original painting of the King by Holbein to have survived. Those on display in the Galleria Corsini in Rome, Belvoir Castle, the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, Warwick Castle, Hever Castle, and Castle Howard are all copies of lost originals by Holbein.
Henry also commissioned Holbein to design jewellery, clocks, plate, seals, ceremonial garters, hat badges, book clasps, daggers, and swords, 33 as well as decorative schemes in the royal palaces. Some of these items were probably made up by Cornelius Heyss, the King’s goldsmith, others by Holbein’s friend, the celebrated Hans of Antwerp, who also enjoyed Henry’s custom. In 1537, Hans was admitted, on Cromwell’s recommendation, to the Goldsmiths’ Company in London.
Jane Seymour enjoyed simple pleasures. She owned a white poodle, which appears in a seventeenth-century copy of Holbein’s Whitehall mural of the Tudor dynasty.34 The royal accounts testify to her love of gardens; Master Chapman, her head gardener at Hampton Court was quite famous. 35 She was an expert needlewoman, whose work was on display in the royal palaces more than a century after her death. She also liked field sports, and followed the hunt whenever she could.
The summer of 1536 was given over to celebrations and entertainments, with masques, hunting trips, river pageants, a fireworks display, and on 3 July a banquet and tournament to mark the triple wedding of the Earl of Westmorland’s three children, at which the King appeared disguised as the Sultan of Turkey. He did not, however, take part in the joust. On 15 June, Henry and Jane went again in procession to Westminster Abbey to observe the feast of Corpus Christi; Jane’s train was carried by the Lady Margaret Douglas. On St. Peter’s Night, 29 July, the royal couple stood at a window of the Mercers’ Hall in Cheapside to watch the annual torchlit procession of the scarlet-clad Marching Watch of the City of London.
During 1536, the King acquired yet more magnificent properties. Suffolk gave him the sumptuously appointed Suffolk Place in Southwark in exchange for Norwich House on the Strand, which would henceforth be known as Suffolk House.36 Lord Sandys gave Henry the riverside manor house at Chelsea, which partly occupied the site of the present Cheyne Walk, also as part of an exchange; Henry built a bijou palace there, with beautiful gardens, which later became the home of Katherine Parr and, later on, Anne of Cleves.37 In July 1536, the King annexed Durham House on the Strand to Whitehall Palace. The former London residence of the Bishops of Durham had at various times accommodated Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Then dated from the thirteenth century, but had been refurbished for Anne Boleyn.38 Henry acquired it by exchange with Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of Durham.
Around this time, the King was given the hunting lodge of Copt Hall in Essex by the Abbot of Waltham, in the vain hope that his gift would remove the threat of dissolution that hung over his abbey.39 Another monastic property acquired by Henry, from the Abbot of Westminster, was the 361-acre manor of Hyde, which Henry emparked as a royal hunting ground, and which now survives in part as Hyde Park in London.
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“The Suppression of the Religious Houses”
In June 1536, the alliance between Cromwell and the conservatives fell apart. The Queen wanted the Lady Mary to return to court and keep her company, but the King would not allow it until Mary had acknowledged that her mother’s marriage had been incestuous and unlawful. Between alternately cajoling and bullying Mary to submit to her father’s will, Cromwell again found himself in opposition to the conservatives who supported her and were hoping to see her restored to the succession. In the end, after initially defying the King and suffering much agony of mind, Mary capitulated, but she would never forgive herself for betraying her mother’s memory and the principles she had stood for.
The Queen now stepped in to bring about a reconciliation between Henry and his daughter. On 6 July, the royal couple visited Mary at Hackney, and the King showed himself affectionate and generous. Soon he was sending her gifts of money, while the Queen sent court gowns and Cromwell a fine horse. Meanwhile, Mary’s household was reassembled1 and her former governess, Lady Salisbury, was welcomed back at court.
Through the Queen’s good offices, the Lady Elizabeth was also allowed to visit the court that summer, although she did not dine at the same table as her father and stepmother. Nevertheless, Henry was “very affectionate” towards her and the French ambassador was certain that “he loves her very much.”2 The little girl did not remain long at court, however, and spent her childhood mainly in the pleasant nursery palaces of the Thames Valley.
In July 1537,
a new scandal enthralled the courtiers, when it was discovered that the King’s beautiful and strong-willed niece, twenty-one-year-old Lady Margaret Douglas, had been conducting a secret love affair with Norfolk’s much younger brother, Lord Thomas Howard; several poems relating to this liaison survive in the Devonshire Manuscript, some written by Margaret herself. When Henry learned that the young couple had contracted to marry each other without seeking his permission, his wrath was terrible: Margaret was near in blood to the throne, and Howard’s presumption amounted in Henry’s view to treason. The unhappy lovers were sent straight to the Tower, where Margaret was imprisoned in the rooms Anne Boleyn had occupied in the Lieutenant’s Lodging. Lord Thomas solaced himself by writing poignant verses to her:
My love truly shall not decay
For threatening nor for punishment;
For let them think, and let them say . . .3
A clause was added to the Act of Succession making it treason “to espouse, marry or deflower” any woman of the royal family, and Lord Thomas was attainted by Parliament and sentenced to death. Lady Margaret might have faced the same fate, but fortunately, according to Chapuys, “copulation had not taken place.”4
