Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  On the scaffold the headsman, black-garbed and hooded, his sword hidden in the straw, waited with his assistant and a priest beside the low wooden block. Anne mounted the steps with great composure, and smiled as she gazed down on the people below her. She asked Kingston not to give the signal for her death until she had spoken 'that which she had a mind to say'. Then, with an untroubled countenance and a firm voice, she delivered a carefully prepared speech:

  Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, according to law, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I come here only to die, and thus to yield myself humbly to the will of the King, my lord. And if, in my life, I did ever offend the King's Grace, surely with my death I do now atone. I come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught I say in my defence doth not appertain to you. I pray and beseech you all, good friends, to pray for the life of the King, my sovereign lord and yours, who is one of the best princes on the face of the earth, who has always treated me so well that better could not be, wherefore I submit to death with good will, humbly asking pardon of all the world. If any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best. Thus I take my leave of the world, and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.

  She then turned to her ladies, who had ascended the scaffold with her, and told them not to be sorry to see her die, begging their pardon for any harshness towards them, praying them to take comfort for her loss, and admonishing them to 'be always faithful to her whom with happier fortune ye may have as your queen and mistress'. Anne then gave her prayer book to Lady Lee; entitled The Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it had been made and illuminated for Anne in France around 1528, and she had inscribed it: 'Remember me when you do pray, that hope doth lead from day to day.' The prayer book still survives, and is now at Hever Castle.

  Her farewell speeches done, Anne knelt with the priest for some final prayers. Then, she rose and took off her French hood, beneath which she had on a coif over her long dark hair, bound high so as not to impede the headsman, who now knelt to ask her forgiveness for what he must do. This she granted, and gave him his fee. Then she unclasped her necklace and knelt before the block. One of her maids tied a blindfold round her eyes, then withdrew to join the other ladies, who were weeping in a corner of the scaffold. The crowd also knelt, out of respect for the passing of a soul. Then, as Anne prayed aloud, saying over and over again, 'Jesu, receive my soul! O Lord God, have pity on my soul! To Christ I commend my soul!', the executioner retrieved his sword and cut off her head 'before you could say a Paternoster', according to Sir John Spelman, who was present. Then the headsman picked up the head and held it aloft, crying, in heavily accented English, 'So perish all the King's enemies!' At this moment, the onlookers saw the dead woman's eyes and lips move, a reflex action resulting from the shock of decapitation to the nervous system, yet to Tudor eyes an almost supernatural phenomenon.

  'The Queen died boldly,' Kingston wrote to Cromwell later. 'God take her to His mercy.' Quickly, the crowd dispersed, and soon Tower Green was deserted, save for the broken body on the scaffold and the four weeping ladies who kept vigil beside it. No coffin had been provided, but an arrow chest lay waiting beside the steps. Reverently the ladies lifted the pathetic remains into it, and covered them with a sheet. The chest was then carried into the Royal Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula, where it was buried in the choir that afternoon, Lady Lee being chief mourner.

  As Anne's head fell in the straw, the guns on the Tower wharf signalled, in a resounding report, her end to the world. Few mourned her passing, yet within two weeks of her death there were circulating in London ballads portraying her as a much wronged heroine, thus giving birth to a legend that has persisted, with gathering momentum, ever since.

  Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire, a broken man, now retired to Hever with his countess. She died in 1538 and was buried in the Howard Aisle in Lambeth Church; Wiltshire died a year later, and was laid to rest in Hever Church beneath a fine brass. Their grandson, Henry Carey, was created Viscount Hunsdon by Elizabeth I, and was much favoured by her. His sister Katherine married Sir Francis Knollys, another of Elizabeth's courtiers, and George Boleyn's son, named after his father, became Dean of Lichfield.

  In the royal palaces, carpenters, masons and sempstresses were set to work removing Anne's initial wherever it occurred, and replacing it with Jane's. Portraits of Anne were taken down and hidden away. It was as if she had never existed. And not once, during the years that were left to him, would the King be heard to utter her name again.

  12

  Like one given by God

  Henry VIII was at Whitehall Palace when the Tower guns signalled that he was once more a free man. He then appeared dressed in white mourning as a token of respect for his late queen, called for his barge, and had himself rowed at full speed to the Strand, where Jane Seymour had also heard the guns. News of Anne Boleyn's death had been formally conveyed to her by Sir Francis Bryan; it does not seem to have unduly concerned her, for she spent the greater part of the day preparing her wedding clothes, and perhaps reflecting upon the ease with which she had attained her ambition: Anne Boleyn had had to wait seven years for her crown; Jane had waited barely seven months.

  It was common knowledge that Henry would marry Jane as soon as possible; the Privy Council had already petitioned him to venture once more into the perilous seas of holy wedlock, and it was a plea of the utmost urgency due to the uncertainty surrounding the succession. Both the King's daughters had been declared bastards, and his natural son Richmond was obviously dying. A speedy marriage was therefore not only desirable but necessary, and on the day Anne Boleyn died the King's imminent betrothal to Jane Seymour was announced to a relieved Privy Council. This was news as gratifying to the imperialist party, who had vigorously promoted the match, as it would soon be to the people of England at large, who would welcome the prospect of the imperial alliance with its inevitable benefits to trade.

  Although the future Queen had rarely been seen in public, stories of her virtuous behaviour during the King's courtship had been circulated and applauded. Chapuys, more cynical, perceived that such virtue had had an ulterior motive, and privately thought it unlikely that Jane had reached the age of twenty-five without having lost her virginity, 'being an Englishwoman and having been so long' at a court where immorality was rife. However, he assumed that Jane's likely lack of a maidenhead would not trouble the King very much, 'since he may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not'.

  This apart, Chapuys and most other people considered Jane to be well endowed with all the qualities then thought becoming in a wife: meekness, docility and quiet dignity. Jane had been well groomed for her role by her family and supporters, and was in any case determined not to follow the example of her predecessor. She intended to use her influence to further the causes she held dear, as Anne Boleyn had, but, being of a less mercurial temperament, she would never use the same tactics. Jane's well-publicised sympathy for the late Queen Katherine and the Lady Mary showed her to be compassionate, and made her a popular figure with the common people and most of the courtiers. Overseas, she would be looked upon with favour because she was known to be an orthodox Catholic with no heretical tendencies whatsoever, one who favoured the old ways and who might use her influence to dissuade the King from continuing with his radical religious reforms.

  Jane was of medium height, with a pale, nearly white, complexion. 'Nobody thinks she has much beauty,' commented Chapuys, and the French ambassador thought her too plain. Holbein's portrait of Jane, painted in 1536 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, bears out these statements, and shows her to have been fair with a large, resolute face, small slanting eyes and a pinched mouth. She wears a sumptuously bejewelled and embroidered gown and head-dress, the latter in the whelk-shell fashion so favoured by her; Holbein himself designed the pendant on
her breast, and the lace at her wrists. This portrait was probably his first royal commission after being appointed the King's Master Painter in September 1536; a preliminary sketch for it is in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and a studio copy is in the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Holbein executed one other portrait of Jane during her lifetime. Throughout the winter of 1536-7, he was at work on a huge mural in the Presence Chamber in Whitehall Palace; it depicted the Tudor dynasty, with the figures of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York in the background, and Henry VIII and Jane Seymour in front. This magnificent work was one of the first to depict full-length likenesses of royal personages in England (although a late sixteenth-century inventory of Lord Lumley's pictures records a full-length portrait of Anne Boleyn, which has either been lost or cut down). Sadly, the Whitehall mural no longer exists, having been destroyed when the palace burned down in the late seventeenth century. Fortuitously, Charles II had before then commissioned a Dutch artist, Remigius van Leemput, to make two small copies, now in the Royal Collection and at Petworth House. His style shows little of Holbein's draughtsmanship, but his pictures at least give us a clear impression of what the original must have looked like. The figure of Jane is interesting in that we can see her long court train with her pet poodle resting on it. Her gown is of cloth of gold damask, lined with ermine, with six ropes of pearls slung across the bodice, and more pearls hanging in a girdle to the floor. Later portraits of Jane, such as those in long-gallery sets and the miniature by Nicholas Hilliard, all derive from this portrait or Holbein's original likeness now in Vienna, yet they are mostly mechanical in quality and anatomically awkward.

  However, it was not Jane's face that had attracted the King so much as the fact that she was Anne Boleyn's opposite in every way. Where Anne had been bold and fond of having her own way, Jane showed herself entirely subservient to Henry's will; where Anne had, in the King's view, been a wanton, Jane had shown herself to be inviolably chaste. And where Anne had been ruthless, he believed Jane to be naturally compassionate. He would in years to come remember her as the fairest, the most discreet, and the most meritorious of all his wives.

  Her contemporaries thought she had a pleasing sprightliness about her. She was pious, but not ostentatiously so. Reginald Pole, soon to be made a cardinal, described her as 'full of goodness', although Martin Luther, hearing of her reactionary religious views, feared her as 'an enemy of the Gospel'. According to Chapuys, she was not clever or witty, but 'of good understanding'. As queen, she made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and could be remote and arrogant, being a stickler for the observance of etiquette at her court. Chapuys feared that, once Jane had had a taste of queenship, she would forget her good intentions towards the Lady Mary, but his fears proved unfounded. Jane remained loyal to her supporters, and to Mary's cause, and in the months to come would endeavour to heal the rift between the King and his daughter.

  Henry and Jane dined together in the Strand on the evening of 19 May; afterwards, the King took his barge and went straight to Hampton Court, where he would stay for a week. At six o'clock on the following morning, Jane followed him there, and at nine o'clock, they were formally betrothed in a ceremony lasting a few minutes. It is likely that Jane's family were present, for after the ceremony she returned with them to Wulfhall, there to await her marriage.

  The next day, Henry wore white mourning once more, and gave orders for his daughter Elizabeth to be taken from Greenwich to Hatfield in the care of Lady Margaret Bryan, and kept out of his sight. There was an outstanding account to settle in respect of money outlayed by Sir William Kingston in respect of necessities provided for Elizabeth's mother. And there remained the problem of Mary. In spite of Jane's entreaties on the girl's behalf, Henry's attitude was unchanged: unless she acknowledged his laws and statutes, he would proceed against her. Mary was still in very grave danger.

  Yet, even knowing her peril, she remained obdurate. Her father wanted her to abandon her deepest-held convictions and beliefs, and swear that her mother's marriage had been incestuous and unlawful, and that she accepted him as Supreme Head of the Church of England - something she could not bring herself to do. It seemed that coercion or force might be necessary if the King were to have his way, and several of the King's advisers thought that now would be a good time to put pressure on Mary. She was known to be weak and sickly. Seven years of insecurity and misery had made her a martyr, at twenty, to headaches, menstrual problems, and nervous depression, as well as vague, ill-defined illnesses, and she was still grieving for her mother.

  The news of Anne Boleyn's death had revived Mary's spirits considerably, for she hoped the way might now be clear towards a reconciliation with her father. She knew she could count upon the support of Jane Seymour and the imperialist party, and prayed that the time had come to forget the unhappy past. She wrote to the King, begging to be taken back into his favour, humbly beseeching him to remember that she was 'but a woman, and your child'. Henry did not reply. The war of nerves had begun.

  Mary, on the advice of her friend Lady Kingston, next tried approaching Henry through Cromwell, whom she had been told was secretly sympathetic towards her and might well use his very considerable influence on her behalf. On 26 May, Mary wrote to Mr Secretary, begging him to intercede for her with the King. Yet before her letter had time to arrive, Henry sent a deputation of the Privy Council to see Mary and make her submit to her father over the matter of her mother's marriage and the royal supremacy. She refused to do this, even though Norfolk told her that if his daughter had offered such 'unnatural opposition', he would have beaten and knocked her head against the wall until it was as soft as baked apples. This reduced Mary to floods of tears, but even the threat of violence was not sufficient to move her. When Henry learned of her defiance, he became more determined than ever to break her will. Nor was the Emperor inclined to interfere; Mary was not his subject, and he was more concerned about establishing the new alliance and reluctant to offend Henry VIII. Mary was on her own now.

  Preparations for the royal wedding were now almost complete. Like all Henry VIII's marriages, it would be a private ceremony, although there would be public festivities to mark it. In the Queen's apartments, Anne Boleyn's falcon badge had been replaced by Jane's personal emblem, a phoenix rising from a castle amid flames and Tudor roses painted in red and white; this emblem would surmount the motto chosen by Jane, 'Bound to obey and serve'. Her initials had now replaced Anne's, although this had been done in such a hurry that at Hampton Court, the As are still visible underneath the Js. The monograms on the royal linen had been similarly altered, and at Zurich, where Coverdale's Bible with its dedication to Henry and Anne was being reprinted, the printers had to superimpose Jane's name on the frontispiece.

  Both Henry and Jane returned to a transformed Whitehall Palace before 29 May. They were married there the following day in the Queen's Closet by Archbishop Cranmer. After the wedding ceremony Jane was enthroned in the Queen's chair beneath the canopy of royal estate in the great hall, where she presided over the court for the first time. Later that day, the King made her a grant of 104 manors in 4 counties, as well as a number of forests and hunting chases, for her jointure, the income that would support her during her marriage. One London estate, Paris Garden, was an unusual choice, for it was situated on the insalubrious Surrey shore of the Thames and its rents came from bear pits and brothels. Henry's personal wedding gift to his bride was a gold cup designed by Hans Holbein and engraved with the initials of the royal couple entwined with a love-knot; the Queen's motto appeared three times in the design. A drawing of this cup exists in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; the original was pawned by Charles I in 1625 and melted down four years later.

  On 1 June, the King and Queen went by barge to Greenwich. The tradition that they spent their honeymoon at Wulfhall is based on an incorrect interpretation of a letter written by Sir John Russell in early June, in which he mentions a visit by Henry and Jane to Tottenham Parish Church. There exists today a Totte
nham House not far from the site of Wulfhall, and a building called Tottenham Lodge seems in the sixteenth century to have been a dower house in the grounds of the Seymour estates; Lady Seymour lived there during her widowhood. Nevertheless, it is not feasible to suppose that this was the Tottenham referred to in Sir John Russell's letter, for the time-scale dictates that it must have been Tottenham Church, north-east of the City of London, that was honoured by a royal visit at this time.

  Within a week of his wedding, the King was optimistically speaking of 'the Prince hoped for in due season', leaving no doubt in the minds of his courtiers - who had, after all, heard of the slur on Henry's virility raised at George Boleyn's trial - that the royal marriage had been successfully consummated. Soon afterwards, prayers were being offered up in churches for the quickening of the Queen.

  When Jane arrived at Greenwich, she was attended by a bevy of ladies. On that Friday, she dined in public with her husband for the first time. Sir John Russell was impressed by her demeanour on that occasion, and told Lord Lisle she was as gentle a lady as ever I knew, and as fair a queen as any in Christendom. I do assure you, my lord, the King hath come out of hell into heaven for the gentleness in this, and the cursedness and the unhappiness in the other. When you write to the King again, tell him that you do rejoice that he is so well matched with so gracious a woman as she is.