Six Wives of Henry VIII

by Alison Weir

  On New Year's Day, gifts were exchanged. Both Henry and Jane gave Mary costly presents, as did Cromwell, and Mary, among other gifts, gave some money to Elizabeth's chaplain because she was concerned about the child's religious education.

  But this peaceful lull could not last. Robert Asked had been the King's guest at court over Christmas, and after it had ended he and his followers began to realise that the King had no intention of honouring his promises. The dissolution of the monasteries had resumed, taxes were still heavy, and there were as yet no definite plans for a royal visit to York, much less a coronation in that city. Disillusioned and bitter, the rebels regrouped, but this time, Henry was not prepared to send them fair words. Instead, he sent that redoubtable commander the Duke of Norfolk into Lincolnshire at the head of a great army, to teach those in revolt that they must not presume to question the will of their king. It was a terrible lesson. Norfolk hanged as many traitors as he could lay his hands upon, and in March 1537 presided over a Grand Assize that condemned a further thirty-six men to death. Their bodies, left rotting on gibbets for months, served as a grim warning to all those who dared contemplate further rebellion. Constable was arrested and condemned to death in June, being hanged alive in chains over the gates of Hull, where he shortly perished of exposure and starvation, and Asked was captured in July, and suffered the same fate at York. By then, the rebellion had long since been effectively crushed.

  Having successfully dealt with the worst crisis of his reign, Henry VIII discovered that he had another cause for rejoicing, for in the early spring of 1537, Queen Jane discovered that she was pregnant; she had conceived around the middle of January. Shortly afterwards, Henry took her on a progress through Kent, visiting Rochester and Sittingbourne before going on to Canterbury as pilgrims and making their offerings at the shrine of St Thomas a Becket. It was characteristic of Henry that he was already planning the dissolution of the great Abbey of St Augustine there - within a year, Becket himself would have been denounced as a traitor to his king, his shrine broken up, and his bones destroyed.

  From Canterbury the King and Queen rode to Dover to see the newly constructed pier. Then it was back to Hampton Court where, on 20 March, Jane granted the master of the Hospital of St Katherine-by-the-Tower, an institution serving as both church and hospice under the traditional patronage of successive queens of England, exemption from all annual tithes in consideration of the burden borne by the hospital from the increasing numbers of poor people. And, at around the same time, Jane stood sponsor at the christening of her brother Edward's child, who bore her name; Mary and Cromwell also attended the ceremony.

  Jane's pregnancy was announced at the beginning of April, when the King conveyed the happy news to the Privy Council. In the minutes of this meeting, the councillors recorded that they trusted in God that the Queen's Grace would bring forth many fair children, 'to the consolation and comfort of the King's Majesty, and of his whole realm'. News of Jane's condition spread quickly, and soon there were celebrations, not only in England, but as far away as Calais, where Lady Lisle, wife of the Governor, was not only copying the gold and silk embroidered caps and nightgowns worn and popularised by Queen Jane, but was also doing her best to place one of her daughters in Jane's service. She thought the news to be 'merry tidings'.

  Throughout that spring, Henry was merry himself, and cheerful, even though his leg pained him and kept him indoors for much of the time. Late in May the Queen appeared at Hampton Court in the open-laced gown of a pregnant mother, and it was announced that the child had moved in her womb. 'God send her good deliverance of a prince, to the joy of all faithful subjects,' wrote one courtier. When news that the baby - 'like one given by God' - had quickened reached London on Trinity Sunday, a special mass was celebrated in St Paul's Cathedral in thanksgiving that 'our most excellent lady and mistress, Queen Jane, hath conceived and is great with child'. On the same day a Te Deum was sung in churches throughout the realm, 'for joy of the Queen's quickening', and in London that evening the citizens were provided with free wine and bonfires were lit. The King abandoned plans for a summer coronation; that could wait until after October, when the child was due.

  Throughout the summer, prayers were offered in churches for Jane's safe delivery. She undertook no public engagements, and led a relatively quiet life, being attended by the royal physicians and the best midwives in the kingdom. To please her, the King had her brother Edward admitted to the Privy Council on 22 May. He also made sure she lacked for nothing. Her condition had given her a craving for quails, a great delicacy at that time, but unfortunately out of season. Henry went to considerable trouble to have the birds shipped over from Calais, commanding Lord Lisle to provide 'fat quails which her Grace loveth very well, and longeth not a little for'. If none was to be found in Calais, then a search must be made in Flanders. On 24 May, a large consignment of quails arrived, a welcome sight to the Queen and her relieved husband; they ate a dozen roasted at dinner, and a further dozen for supper. Jane's craving for quails persisted right through her pregnancy; the Lady Mary sent her some in June, and Lord and Lady Lisle dispatched a constant supply from Calais, for which the Queen sent her grateful thanks.

  The King was still in excellent spirits, and Sir John Russell found him behaving 'more like a good fellow than a king'; it was said he had never been merrier. Early in June, after a brief visit to Guildford, the court moved to Windsor because there was plague in London. The King hunted daily in Windsor Great Park, and the game he shot was served to the Queen along with her favourite quails. By the middle of July, Jane was very large and had unlaced her gowns to their fullest extent. As a token of appreciation to Lady Lisle, she agreed to find a place in her household for one of her two daughters, Anne and Katherine Bassett. Lady Lisle had been unsuccessful in securing places for them the previous year, and was desperate to have at least one accepted. Jane commanded her to send both girls over from Calais, so that she could decide which one she liked best. They must bring two changes of clothes, one of satin, the other of damask. The sister not chosen by the Queen would be offered a place in the household of the Duchess of Suffolk. Once the choice was made, Jane would provide wages and food only: Lady Lisle must see that her daughter was properly kitted out, and must exhort her girls to be 'sober, sad, wise and discreet, lowly above all things, obedient, and willing to be governed and ruled by my Lady Rutland and my Lady Sussex, and to serve God and be virtuous, for that is much regarded'.

  It is pure speculation to suggest that, had she lived, Jane Seymour might well have been the most formidable of Henry's wives, yet this is certainly indicated by the standards she set for her household and by her warning, sent through Lord Hussey to Lady Lisle, that the court was 'full of pride, envy, indignation, mocking, scorn and derision'. She had succeeded in ridding her household of Anne Boleyn's wayward influence, and was vigorously re-establishing the virtuous precepts set by Queen Katherine. Beneath her outward show of humility, there was steel, even though it was confined to the domestic sphere only. A year on the throne had transformed Jane into a pious and godly matron who was fully conscious of her rank and dignity, and who carried the knowledge that she might well be nurturing the heir to England in her womb.

  Jane's chief companions at this time were her sister Elizabeth, now the wife of Cromwell's son Gregory, and the Lady Mary. At the end of August, wagers were laid on the sex of the royal baby and the date of its birth, and the doctors and soothsayers were all confidently predicting a boy. 'I pray Jesu, an [if] it be his will, send us a prince,' prayed a courtier fervently. The birth was to take place at Hampton Court, and the court moved there early in September. On the 16th, Jane took to her chamber. Anne Boleyn had once occupied the magnificent rooms assigned to her; they were near the Silver Stick Gallery, and had linenfold panelling and gilded ceilings, much like the recently restored suite known as 'Wolsey's Rooms', except that Jane's long-vanished apartments would have been bigger.

  Here Lady Lisle's daughters came. Jane picke
d the elder, Anne Bassett, who was sworn to her service on 17 September. Anne would become a popular figure at court during the years to come, even attracting the King's amorous attention at one time, yet she kept her good reputation. For the present, however, she was dismayed to find that her attire did not meet the Queen's exacting standards. Jane insisted her French hood would have to go, and Lady Sussex hurriedly found a suitable gown of crimson damask and a gable hood for Anne to wear when in the Queen's presence. Jane ordered the girl to obtain two new hoods with stiffened frontlets, as well as two good gowns of black velvet and black satin, and insisted that she replace her coarse linen undergarments with ones of fine lawn. Finally, to her dismay, the Queen learned that there were far too few pearls stitched to Anne's girdle, and warned her that if she did not appear at court in the proper clothes, she would not be allowed to attend the royal christening when the time came.

  Jane was nevertheless a generous mistress; she gave Mary Zouche, one of Holbein's sitters whose portrait survives at Windsor, a gift of jewelled borders for a hood or gown, and after Jane's death the King granted Mary a pension of 10 per annum in consideration of her good service. The Queen also gave some jewellery to Mary, Lady Monteagle, one of her ladies-in-waiting. But she was not over- familiar with her ladies, and nor would they have expected her to be. She had the company of the Lady Mary during these last weeks of her pregnancy, and that was enough for her.

  In London, the plague raged. Henry was alarmed for the safety of his wife and unborn child; as for Jane, she was horribly afraid. The King gave orders that no one who had been in London was to approach the court, but even this did not dispel her fears. 'Your ladyship would not believe how much the Queen is afraid of the sickness,' wrote Anne Bassett to her mother. To further minimise the risks, Henry moved with his household to Esher, in order to reduce the number of people staying at Hampton Court. He did not apparently consider his presence there necessary for his wife's peace of mind, but he told Norfolk that he would not travel far from her at this time, considering that, being a woman, upon some sudden and displeasant rumours that might by foolish or light persons be blown abroad in our absence, she might take to her stomach such impression as might engender no little danger or displeasure to that wherewith she is now pregnant, which God forbid.

  The Council had advised him not to travel more than sixty miles from Hampton Court, 'especially as she being, as it is thought, further gone by a month or more than she thought herself at the perfect quickening, remembering what dependeth upon the prosperity of that matter'.

  It was obvious by early October that the birth was imminent, and the courtiers were telling each other to 'look daily for a prince'. The King was so certain that his child would be a boy that he gave orders for a Garter Stall to be made ready in St George's Chapel for 'the Prince hoped for in due season'. On 7 October, as the Queen showed no signs of going into labour, the Lady Mary went briefly back to Hunsdon to attend the christening of the child of one of her tenants; when she returned, Jane was still up and about. In Leicestershire, at Bradgate Manor, the King's niece, Frances Brandon, Marchioness of Dorset, gave birth to a baby girl and named her after the Queen; this child grew up to be the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, who would lose her head before her seventeenth birthday. And in London, the young Duchess of Suffolk bore a healthy son.

  At last, on the afternoon of 9 October, the Queen's labour pains began. As soon as they were well established, the King sent the royal heralds to London with the news. In the City, the response was overwhelming: bells were rung, masses sung in every parish church with congregations spilling out into the street in some places, and, on 11 October, a solemn procession walked from St Paul's Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, headed by the Lord Mayor and his aldermen, and including representatives of the guilds and livery companies of the City, and the clergy in their ceremonial copes. All offered prayers for the Queen's safe delivery.

  Jane's ordeal lasted three days and three nights. It was rumoured in London that she would have to be cut open to facilitate her infant's safe delivery, a rumour that would in later years be embroidered by Catholic writers hostile to Henry VIII. Their lurid accounts give graphic - and entirely fictional - details of Jane's labour, alleging that her limbs were stretched to ease delivery, and that at length the King was asked who should be saved, the mother or the child. He is said to have opted for the child, as other wives could easily be found. A Caesarean operation is then said to have been performed. None of this is true. There is no evidence for a Caesarean operation being performed on a living mother before 1610 and, if it had, the result would have been a speedy and agonising death. Not until the twentieth century could this procedure be safely carried out.

  Nevertheless, Jane Seymour's sufferings were great, and the labour prolonged and painful. But, finally, at two o'clock in the morning of Friday, 12 October 1537, it came to an end when she was safely delivered of a healthy, fair-haired boy. The King, after a wait lasting twenty-seven years, finally had his heir. It was, said a courtier, 'the most joyful news that has come to England these many years'.

  Henry was at Esher when his son was born, but when he was informed that the Queen had been happily delivered of a prince, he rode to Hampton Court to see her and to welcome the child. The royal father was delirious with pride and joy, and named the child Edward; by a happy coincidence he had been born on St Edward's Eve. He became Duke of Cornwall at the moment of his birth, and it was confidently expected that his father would create him Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, though this never came to pass. He was healthy, and bore resemblances to both his parents, having his father's features and his mother's fairness.

  Henry wasted no time in informing the world of the glad tidings. Within minutes of his arrival at Hampton Court, his heralds had been dispatched to every part of the country with instructions to spread the news. In London, aTe Deumwas sung in every parish church, and the bells in the City began a joyful pealing which would continue all day and all evening. There were bonfires in the streets, and the Tower guns shot off 2,000 rounds of ammunition in honour of the Prince. Banners were set up, and impromptu banquets given by prominent citizens. The messengers bearing the news were given costly gifts, and at the Steelyard the merchants of the Hanseatic League lit a hundred torches and generously provided free wine and beer for the citizens. Everywhere, housewives were hanging garlands above their doors and balconies and preparing food for the Tudor equivalentofstreet parties, while before the great doors of St Paul's many bishops gathered to provide a feast for the people before celebrating mass. A holiday mood prevailed, and verylittlework was done that day; the feasting and carousing continueduntilthe evening, when the Lord Mayor rode through the crowded streets thanking the people on the King's behalf for their demonstrations of love and loyalty. The conduits were still flowing with ale and wine, and there were many who woke with sore heads the next day, or found they had been robbed, thieves and pickpockets being certain of the King's pardon on such an occasion.

  London's bells ceased their clangour at ten o'clock in the evening. At around the same time, the Queen was sitting up in bed writing to Cromwell to inform him that 'we be delivered and brought in childbed of a prince conceived in most lawful matrimony between my lord the King's Majesty and us,' and commanding him to convey the news to the Privy Council. Her letter was signed 'Jane the Queen'. Her triumph was now complete. Letters of congratulation came pouring into the palace, and the royal secretaries were kept busy announcing the royal birth to foreign princes and other dignitaries. The Prince was not the only baby born at Hampton Court on 12 October; in another suite, the Queen's sister-in-law, Lady Beauchamp, gave birth to a son who was also called Edward. In all, it was an auspicious day for the Seymours.

  Overjoyed as he was with his 'fine boy', Henry was concerned for the infant's safety as there was still plague in the capital, and the first months of life were always hazardous. With these considerations in mind, he gave orders that every room, hall and courtyard in the Pri
nce's apartments was to be washed down with soap and swept daily. Everything that came near the child - clothing, bed-linen, toys - was to be scrupulously clean. It is doubtful whether Jane saw much of her son after his birth. He had his own apartments, where he was cared for by wet-nurses, nursemaids and other servants. Unlike Anne Boleyn, Jane would not make a fuss about suckling her own child.

  The Prince was christened on Monday, 15 October. Because of the risk of plague, the numbers attending were severely restricted, yet nearly 400 persons were present at the midnight ceremony in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, which had recently been completed and which still boasts its splendid Tudor ceiling. The guests had all gathered beforehand in the Queen's apartments, where Jane received them lying on a day bed of crimson damask lined with cloth of gold. Around her shoulders she wore a crimson mantle edged with ermine, over which flowed her loose blonde hair. Beside her sat the King in a richly upholstered chair. Her son was carried in procession through torchlit corridors just before midnight by Lady Exeter, with Norfolk holding his head steady and Suffolk supporting his feet. The King had chosen Archbishop Cranmer, Norfolk and Suffolk, and the Lady Mary as godparents. The Lady Elizabeth was in the procession too, carried in the arms of Lord Beauchamp, the Queen's brother, and holding the chrysom tightly in small fists. In the Chapel, the Prince was proclaimed heir to the King and, after he had been baptised by the Archbishop, he was conveyed back to the Queen's apartments with great pomp; this time, Elizabeth walked, holding Mary's hand. Jane took her son and gave him her blessing, then the King gathered him into his arms and, with tears of joy streaming down his face, blessed Edward in the name of God, the Virgin Mary and St George. The Prince was then carried off by the Duchess of Suffolk to his own apartments, followed by his household of 400 persons. Afterwards, refreshments were served for the guests, hippocras and wafers for the nobility, bread and sweet wine for the gentry. Then, when everyone present had kissed the hands of the King and Queen, the company dispersed. Jane had played her part to perfection; no one had noticed that anything was amiss with her.