Henry VIII became engaged to Jane Seymour on 20 May 1536, one day after beheading his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
On the morning of Anne’s death, he had a barge waiting for him in order to whisk him downriver to Jane as soon as the former queen’s head was off, and while Anne’s body cooled he canoodled with his soon-to-be bride. While this is universally acknowledged as grotesque behavior on the king’s part, too many people seem to give Jane Seymour a pass on her fair share of criticism. She is portrayed as a docile and meek sweetheart who had no choice but to marry the king regardless of his fearsome reputation. As for me, I call shenanigans on this depiction of Jane. Once the king made know his desire for her milky-white flesh, Jane played him like an angler reeling in a fat trout.
Henry had probably started showing interest in Jane Seymour in late 1535, because Anne Boleyn was once more pregnant and in that stage of gestation Henry would have been expected to ‘relieve’ his sexual needs elsewhere so as to not endanger the fetus. Jane, unmarried and relatively low-born (like Bessie Blount), appears to have been his potential sexual partner. Wined her and dined her and paid attention to her, so much so that Anne held his flirtation with Jane to be one of the reasons she miscarried in January of 1536. What Henry didn’t know was that Jane was being very carefully coached to tease the king rather than satisfy him, and to poor poison about Anne Boleyn into his ear while she was about it.
Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys recorded some of Jane’s planning and very public coyness (although to be fair, Chapuys got things wrong or exaggerated often, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be). According to the ambassador, Jane had “been well tutored and warned by those among this King’s courtiers who hate the concubine, telling her not in any wise to give in to the King’s fancy unless he makes her his Queen, upon which the damsel is quite resolved. She has likewise been advised to tell the King frankly, and without reserve, how much his subjects abominate the marriage contracted with the concubine, and that not one considers it legitimate, and that this declaration ought to be made in the presence of witnesses of the titled nobility of this kingdom, who are to attest the truth of her statements should the King request them on their oath and fealty to do so.”
Jane may have been resolved not to give in to the king’s fancy, but she certainly let him know she liked him well enough. Henry clearly thought he had made some serious inroads toward Jane’s bed by the very end of March 1536, because he sent her what looks very much to have been a letter summoning her to the royal chamber and a gift of sovereigns that would act as a dowry in lieu of her virginity. The king was ready to seal the deal, but Jane, “after respectfully kissing the letter, returned it to the messenger without opening it, and then falling on her knees, begged the royal messenger to entreat the King in her name to consider that she was a well-born damsel, the daughter of good and honourable parents without blame or reproach of any kind; there was no treasure in this world that she valued as much as her honour, and on no account would she lose it, even if she were to die a thousand deaths. That if the King wished to make her a present of money, she requested him to reserve it for such a time as God would be pleased to send her some advantageous marriage.”
This was a good move on Jane’s part, because “in consequence of this refusal the King’s love for the said damsel had marvelously increased.” According to Chapuys, the king told “her that not only did he praise and commend her virtuous behaviour on the occasion, but that in order to prove the sincerity of his love, and the honesty of his views towards her, he had resolved not to converse with her in future, except in the presence of one of her relatives.” Cromwell, every ready to please the king and also plotting against Anne Boleyn, helpfully vacated his apartments in the palace so that Jane could stay there with her eldest brother and sister-in-law, making it easy for Henry to visit her there unseen by the other courtiers whenever he liked.
Jane knew full well she was trying to displace Anne. Contemporaries of these events were also aware that Jane was tying up Henry’s affections as his wife sat in the Tower awaiting death at the king’s command. Shortly before Anne’ execution, Chapuys wrote that people were speaking” variously about the King, and certainly the slander will not cease when they hear of what passed and is passing between him and his new mistress, Jane Seymour. Already it sounds badly in the ears of the public that the King, after such ignominy and discredit as the concubine has brought on his head, should manifest more joy and pleasure now, since her arrest and trial, than he has ever done on other occasions … to all appearances there cannot be the least doubt that the King will soon take the said Seymour to wife, some people believing, and even asserting, that the marriage settlements have already been drawn up.” Jane knew her manipulations had borne fruit and she was going to get a crown, and she didn’t appear to give the furry crack of a rat’s butt that Anne – who was now thought innocent by most of her once implacable foes — was going to die to make way for her.
People were not amused. Henry had to warn his erstwhile bride that there was “a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which if it go much abroad and is seen by you, I pray you to pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing, but if he is found out he shall be straitly punished for it.” (The author, whoever he or she was, escaped detection I am pleased to report.) However, in order to soothe Jane’s potentially hurt feelings, the king also promised her booty for her booty, saying that, “For the things ye lacked I have minded my lord to supply them to you as soon as he can buy them.”
One of my favorite Victorian historians, Agnes Strickland, put it best when she wrote, “a sinking sensation of horror must pervade every right feeling mind, when the proceedings of the discreet Jane Seymour are considered. She received the addresses of her mistress’s husband, knowing him to be such. She passively beheld the mortal anguish of Anne Boleyn … yet she gave her hand to the regal ruffian before his wife’s corpse was cold … The wedding-cakes must have been baking, the wedding-dinner provided, the wedding-clothes preparing, while the life-blood was yet running warm in the veins of the victim, whose place was to be rendered vacant by a violent death.”
The queen was dead, and Jane would become queen in her place. Since she was the one who had the good luck to birth a boy before she died, this chinless chit Jane was idealized and immortalised by her bereaved husband as his first “true” queen and his favorite brood mare wife.
I can see why Henry mythologized her as a precious snowflake, but why did historians pile on the malarkey of her near saintliness? I think it is because she never rocked the boat, never made men feel inadequate, never challenged the patriarchal status quo, and died young in the best tradition of lost loves. Jane is a perfect example how outward docility can spare a woman from slut shaming regardless of how skanky her romantic life actually was.