JANE SEYMOUR,

THIRD QUEEN OF HENRY VIII.

Conduct of Jane Seymour-Age-Descent-Early life-Maid of Honour-Courted by Henry VIII.-Execution of Anne Boleyn, May 19th-Arrival of Henry VIII. at Wolf Hall that evening-Jane Seymour marries him next day-Reasons for haste-Wedding-dinner at Wolf Hall-Beauty of the bride-Compared with preceding queens-Royal wedding kept at Marwell-King and queen return to London-Her public appearance at Whitsuntide-Lord chancellor's speech concerning her-Crown settled on her offspring-Coverdale's Bibles-Reconciles the king and his daughter Mary-Death of her father-She crosses the frozen Thames-Her coronation discussed-Deferred-King's letter-She takes to her chamber at Hampton Court-Her portraits-Extreme dangerKing's conduct-Historical ballad-Self-devotion to her child-Birth of Edward VI.-Baptisın-Improper treatment of the queen-Illness-Fluctuation of health-Physicians' bulletin-Catholic rites-Queen's death-Her burial— Epitaph-Mourning worn by Henry VIII.-His grief-Letter of condolence— Description of the infant prince-Journal of Edward VI.—Mentions his mother, queen Jane-Discussions on court mournings-Edward VI. laments the untimely death of his mother, and the fate of her brothers-Project of her tomb --Discovery of her coffin by George IV.

"JANE SEYMOUR was the fairest, the discreetest, and the most meritorious of all Henry VIII.'s wives." This assertion has been generally repeated by all historians to the present hour; yet doubtless the question has frequently occurred to their readers in what did her merit consist? It will be the object of the present biography to answer this question impartially.

Customs may vary at various eras, but the laws of moral justice are unalterable; difficult would it be to reconcile with them the first actions known of this discreet lady, for discretion is the attribute lord Herbert peculiarly challenges as her own. It has been shown, in the preceding biography, that Jane Seymour's shameless conduct in receiving the courtship of Henry VIII. was the commencement of the severe calamities that befell her mistress, Anne Boleyn. Scripture points out as an especial odium the circumstance of a handmaid taking the place of her mistress. Odious enough was the case, when Anne Boleyn supplanted the right royal Katharine of Arragon; but a sickening 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, when that unhappy queen was in a state, which peculiarly demanded feminine sympathy; she knew that the discovery of Henry's inconstancy had nearly destroyed her, and that it had actually destroyed her infant. She saw a series of murderous

accusations got up against the queen, which finally brought her to the scaffold, yet she gave her hand to the regal ruffian before his wife's corpse was cold. Yes-four-and-twenty hours had not elapsed since the axe was reddened with the blood of her mistress, when Jane Seymour became the bride of Henry VIII. And let it be remembered, that a royal marriage could not have been celebrated without previous preparation, which must have proceeded simultaneously with the heartrending events of Anne Boleyn's last agonised hours. The weddingcakes must have been baking, the wedding-dinner providing, 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 picture is repulsive enough, but it becomes tenfold more abhorrent when the woman who caused the whole tragedy is loaded with panegyric.

Jane Seymour had arrived at an age when the timidity of girlhood could no longer be pleaded as excuse for passive acquiescence in such outrages on common decency. All genealogies' concur in naming her as the eldest of sir John Seymour's numerous family. As such, she could not have been younger than Anne Boleyn, who was much older than is generally asserted. Jane was the eldest of the eight children of sir John Seymour, of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire, and Margaret Wentworth, daughter of sir John Wentworth, of Nettlestead, in Suffolk. The Seymours were a family of country gentry, who, like most holders of manorial rights, traced their ancestry to a Norman origin. One or two had been knighted in the wars of France, but their names had never emerged from the herald's visitation rolls into historical celebrity. They increased their boundaries by fortunate alliances with heiresses; but till the head of the family married into a collateral branch of the lordly line of Beauchamp, they scarcely took rank as second-rate gentry. After that event, two instances are quoted of Seymours serving as high-sheriff for Wilts, but no instance can be found of one of the name being returned as knight of the shire. Through Margaret Wentworth, the mother of Jane Seymour, a descent from the blood-royal of England was claimed, from an intermarriage with a Wentworth and a daughter of Hotspur and lady Elizabeth Mortimer, granddaughter to Lionel, duke of Clarence. This lady Percy is stated by all ancient heralds to have died childless. Few persons, however, dared dispute a pedigree with Henry VIII.; and it appears that on this ground Cranmer granted a dispensation for nearness of kin between Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour; rather a work of supererogation, since, even if the Wentworth genealogy held good, the parties could not be related within the forbidden degrees, viz. as fourth cousins.

Although the royal kindred appears somewhat doubtful, yet it is undeniable that the sovereign of England gained by this alliance one brother-in-law, who bore the name of Smith, and another whose grandfather was a blacksmith at Putney: Jane Seymour's sister Elizabeth

VOL. IV.-19

'Collins' Peerage, vol. i. p. 167.

having married Gregory, the son of Cromwell, and her sister Dorothy being the wife of sir Clement Smith, of Little Baddow, in Essex.'

Jane's childhood and early youth are involved in great obscurity; but there is reason to suppose that, like Anne Boleyn, her education was finished and her manners formed at the court of France. Her portrait in the Louvre as a French maid of honour has given rise to this idea. It is probable that she entered the service of Mary Tudor, where her brother certainly was, for in a list of the persons forming the bridal retinue of that queen, signed by the hand of Louis XII., we observe among the enfans d'oneur le fils de Mess. Seymour. This must have been Jane's brother Edward, afterwards so celebrated as the Protector Somerset. He was younger, however, than Jane, and it is very possible that she had an appointment also, though not of such importance as Anne Boleyn, who was granddaughter to the duke of Norfolk, and was associated with two of the sovereign's kinswomen, the ladies Grey, as maids of honour to Mary, queen of France. Jane could boast of no such high connexions as these, and, perhaps, from her comparatively inferior birth, did not excite the jealousy of the French monarch like the ladies of maturer years.3 Perhaps Jane Seymour was promoted to the post of maid of honour in France after the dismissal of the other ladies, for the young queen says in her letter to the king, her brother, "my chamberlain, with all other men servants, were discharged, and in like wise my moder Guldeford, with other my women and maidens, except such as never had experience nor knowledge how to advertise or give me council in any time of need." These were, of course, the young girls, of whom Anne Boleyn we know was one, and probably Jane Seymour, her compeer in age, another. Her portrait in the Louvre represents her as a beautiful full-formed woman, of nineteen or twenty, and seems an evidence that, like Anne, she had obtained a place subsequently in the household of queen Claude, where she perfected herself in the art of coquetry, though in a more demure way than her unfortunate compeer, Anne Boleyn. Who placed Jane Seymour as a maid of honour to Anne Boleyn, or whether she filled that office in the court

1 Collins' Peerage. Elizabeth Seymour was the widow of sir Gregory Oughtred when she married the younger Cromwell. Jane Seymour, like Anne Boleyn, was old enough for her younger sister to have married twice, before she herself became queen.

This document, which is not quoted by sir H. Ellis, Royal Letters, vol. i. is preserved among the Cotton. MSS.

"Moder Guldeford," whose loss is so pathetically deplored by the poor young queen, is supposed by sir H. Ellis to have been the governess, or what is called the mother, of the maids of honour.

Now in the French king's collection at Versailles. It is a whole-length, and one of Holbein's masterpieces. The face and dress resemble minutely the younger portraits of Jane Seymour in England. It is merely entitled "maid of honour to Marie d'Angleterre, queen of Louis XII.," and is placed as companion to another, a magnificent whole-length of Anne Boleyn, likewise entitled "maid of honour to the queen of Louis XII." These two well-known portraits are clad in the same costume, though varied in ornaments and colour; they are not recog nised in France as pictures of English queens, but as companions suivantes of en English princess, queen of France.

of Katharine, as well as her sister-in-law, Anne Stanhope, has not yet been ascertained.

Henry's growing passion for Jane must have attracted the observation and excited the jealousy of queen Anne some time before she received the fatal conviction that she was supplanted in his fickle regard by her treacherous handmaid. It is said, that the queen's attention was one day attracted by a jewel, which Jane Seymour wore about her neck, and she expressed a wish to look at it. Jane faltered and drew back, and the queen, noticing her hesitation, snatched it violently from her, and found that it contained the portrait of the king,' which, as she most truly guessed, had been presented by himself to her fair rival. Jane Seymour had far advanced in the same serpentine path which conducted Anne herself to a throne, ere she had ventured to accept the picture of her enamoured sovereign, and well assured must she have been of success in her ambitious views, before she presumed to wear such a love-token in the presence of the queen.

Anne Boleyn was not of a temper to bear her wrongs patiently; but Jane Seymour's star was in the ascendant, hers in the decline; her anger was unavailing. Jane maintained her ground triumphantly, even after the disgraceful dénouement which has been related in the memoir of Anne Boleyn.

While the last act of that diabolical drama was played out, which consummated the destruction of poor Anne, it appears that her rival had the discretion to retreat to her paternal mansion, Wolf Hall, in Wiltshire. There the preparations for her marriage with Henry VIII. were proceeding with sufficient activity to allow her royal wedlock to take place the day after the axe had rendered the king a widower. Henry himself remained in the vicinity of the metropolis, awaiting the accomplishment of that event. The traditions of Richmond Park and Epping Forest quote each place as the locale of the following scene. On the morning of the 19th of May, Henry VIII., attired for the chase, with his huntsmen and hounds around him, was standing under a spreading oak, breathlessly awaiting the signal gun from the Tower, which was to announce that the axe had fallen on the neck of his once "entirely beloved Anne Boleyn." At last, when the bright summer sun rode high towards its meridian, the sullen sound of the death-gun boomed along the windings of the Thames. Henry started with ferocious joy. "Ha, ha!" he cried with satisfaction, "the deed is done! Uncouple the hounds and away." The chase that day bent towards the west, whether the stag led it in that direction or not. At nightfall the king was at Wolf Hall, in Wilts, telling the news to his elected bride.

The next morning the king married the beautiful Seymour. It is

This anecdote is traditionary, without any precise authority. Miss Aikin relates the same with little variation.

*Nott's Life of Surrey. Richmond would be much nearer to Wolf Hall than Epping Forest. The chief objection to this story is, that, robust as Henry then was, it would have been scarcely possible for him to have reached Wiltshire on the 19th of May, if he commenced his journey in the afternoon from Epping Forest.

commonly asserted that he wore white for mourning the day after Anne Boleyn's execution; he certainly wore white, not as mourning, but because he on that day wedded her rival. The reason of this extraordinary haste was, as an ingenious modern writer observes,' "Because Saturday the 20th of May, 1536, fell the day before Rogation Sunday, and no marriage could be performed before the rogation days of preparation for the Whitsun festival were passed," and the king did not choose to tarry so long.

Wolf Hall, the scene of these royal nuptials, was a short distance from Tottenham Park, in Wiltshire. Of the ancient residence some remains now exist, among which is the kitchen, where tradition declares a notable royal wedding-dinner was cooked; a detached building is, likewise, still entire, in which the said dinner was served up, the room being hung, on this occasion, with tapestry. Several favourite members of the king's obsequious privy council were present at the marriage, therefore the authenticity of its date is beyond all dispute. Among others, was sir John Russell (afterwards earl of Bedford), who, having been at church with the royal pair, gave as his opinion, "That the king was the goodliest person there, and that the richer queen Jane was dressed, the fairer she appeared; on the contrary, the better Anne Boleyn was apparelled the worse she looked; but that queen Jane was the fairest of all Henry's wives, though both Anne Boleyn and queen Katharine, in their younger days, were women not easily to be paralleled."

From sir John Russell's words it appears the wedding was performed in a church, probably that of Tottingham parish, Wiltshire. The bridal party proceeded, after dinner, to Marwell, near Winchester, a countryseat belonging to the bishops of that see, which Henry had already wrested from the church and bestowed on the Seymours. The queen's chamber is still shown at Marwell.

From Marwell the king and his bride went to Winchester, where they sojourned a few days, and from thence returned to London, in time to hold a great court on the 29th of May. Here the bride was publicly introduced as queen, and her marriage festivities were blended with the celebration of Whitsuntide. The king paid the citizens the compliment of bringing his fair queen to Mercer's Hall, and she stood in one of the windows to view the annual ceremony of setting the city watch on St. Peter's eve, June 29th.

The lord chancellor Audley, when parliament met a few days after, introduced the subject of the king's new marriage, in a speech so tedious in length, that the clerks who wrote the parliamentary journals gave up its transcription in despair. Yet they fortunately left extant an abstract, containing a curious condolence on the exquisite sufferings the monarch had endured in matrimony. "Ye well remember," pathetically declaimed 1Fisher's Genealogical History of England.

It was the inheritance of sir John Seymour from his grandmother, the heiress of Esturmy. Previous to this lucky marriage, the family of St. Maur, Seymour, were settled in Monmouthshire, at Woundy; they were some of the Marchmen, who kept the Welsh in bounds. 'Milner's Winchester.

Britton's Wiltshire, p. 685.