Weir A. Henry VIII: The King and His Court

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conciliatory. He had recently prevented the Pope from publishing the sentence of excommunication that

would deprive Henry of his throne, and now that his aunt Katherine was dead, he was willing to offer

the King his support for “the continuation of this last matrimony” with Anne Boleyn, “or otherwise,” in

return for Katherine’s daughter Mary being declared legitimate.

Cromwell was convinced that, given

the threat of excommunication, an imperial alliance was vital to England’s security, and even the

Boleyn faction had resolved to abandon their hopes of a new entente with France and support an

understanding with Charles.

Late in March, Chapuys had heard that Cromwell had fallen out with the Queen, probably because of

his compliance in vacating his rooms for the Seymours. Cromwell confirmed the rift to Chapuys on 1

April, asserting that Anne hated him and wanted to have him executed. He asked Chapuys how Charles

V would feel if the King remarried. Chapuys insisted that the world would never recognise Anne as

Henry’s true wife, but might accept another lady.

Henry and Anne, however, were determined to secure the Emperor’s acknowledgement of her as Queen

and, having granted Chapuys an audience for Easter Tuesday, 18 April, the King arranged matters so

that the ambassador, who had hitherto refused to pay Anne the courtesy of kissing her hand, would

have every opportunity of paying his respects to her.

When Chapuys arrived at Greenwich on 18 April, he was warmly welcomed at the gates by Rochford.

Cromwell then came forward with a message from the King, inviting him to visit Anne and kiss her

cheek—a great honour conferred only on those in high favour. Chapuys managed to ignore this

summons, but allowed himself to be escorted by Rochford to mass in the chapel royal. When the King

and Queen descended from the royal pew to make their offerings, Anne espied the ambassador standing

behind the door and turned, “merely to do me reverence.” He bowed in response. Anne hoped to speak

with Chapuys at the dinner she was to host in her apartments, but after she had left the chapel with the

King she was dismayed to see that the ambassador was not among those who were waiting at her door.

“Why does he not enter, like the other ambassadors?” she asked.

“It is not without good reason,” replied Henry, who had in fact decided to approach Chapuys himself

during the coming audience. After dining with Anne, he went to his presence chamber, where Chapuys

had eaten in the company of Rochford, and spoke with the ambassador in the privacy of a window

embrasure. During the conversation, the King showed himself unexpectedly cool towards the mooted

alliance, and insisted that the Emperor apologise for his past behaviour toward Henry and acknowledge

Anne as Queen—all in writing. Cromwell, who had certainly exceeded his brief in the negotiations

with Charles, and was heavily committed to the alliance, watched in consternation, knowing that the

Emperor would never agree to such humiliating terms. The Secretary realised that Anne herself was

behind Henry’s stand, and afterwards attempted to remonstrate with the King. In vain. Henry was so

angry and obstructive that Cromwell deemed it politic to withdraw from court and feign illness.

He knew now that, while Anne was in power, the Spanish alliance, which he believed was vital to the

security of the realm and his own future, would be in jeopardy. Anne was now his enemy and the

greatest threat to his career, even his life, and her hold over the King was still considerable. It was at

this point, as he told Chapuys on 6 June, that he decided she must be eliminated.

During the last two weeks of April, in the privacy of his London house, Cromwell hatched the plot that

would not only bring Anne down but also purge the Privy Chamber and the court of her supporters. He

even made common cause with the Seymours, Carew, Exeter, Montague, and Sir Francis Bryan, who

had recently returned to court and was a staunch ally of the Seymours. This unlikely alliance between

the champions of conservatism and the chief architect of reform would until recently have been

unthinkable, but they now shared a common aim, and Cromwell realised that supporting Jane Seymour

offered him his best chance of political survival. Another ally was Chapuys, who obtained the Lady

Mary’s qualified approval of the plot.

On 23 April, the King, Norfolk, Wiltshire, and the ailing Richmond were among those who attended the

annual chapter meeting of the Order of the Garter at Greenwich. A vacancy had arisen, and in honour of

a promise he had made to Francis I, Henry chose Sir Nicholas Carew rather than the other candidate,

Lord Rochford. Chapuys mistakenly interpreted this as a sign that the Boleyns were losing favour.

On that same day, the Queen took it upon herself to reprove Sir Francis Weston for flirting with Madge

Shelton, and speculated why Sir Henry Norris had not yet married Madge. Weston pointed out, “Norris

comes more into your chamber for Your Grace than he does for Madge.” Anne ignored this, although

she did not forget it, and told Weston she had heard he did not love his wife, Anne Pickering. Teasingly,

she asked if he was in love with Madge.

“I love one in your household better than both,” he answered meaningfully.

“Who is that?” Anne asked.

“It is yourself,” he declared. The Queen “defied him” and indicated that their talk was at an end.

was reported conversations such as this that enabled Cromwell to construct a case against Anne.

The next day, Lord Chancellor Audley authorised Cromwell and Norfolk to head a commission to

investigate unspecified cases of treason and other offences committed in Middlesex and Kent.

It is

unlikely that, at this stage, the King was aware that his wife was the object of an inquiry, or that he

knew about the patent of oyer that Cromwell had obtained, since the issue of such documents was

routine.

In fact, contrary to the opinion of nearly every modern historian, Henry had every reason to be pleased

with Anne, for the evidence strongly suggests that she was pregnant again. Just as she had conceived

rapidly after the birth of Elizabeth, so her reconciliation with the King after the miscarriage in January

had quickly borne fruit. Henry made what was probably an oblique reference to her pregnancy that

April, when he rounded on Chapuys for suggesting that God had not thought fit to send him male issue

because He had ordained that England should have a female succession. “Am I not a man like other

men? Am I not? Am I not?” shouted Henry. “You do not know all my secrets.” On 25 April, in a letter

sent to his ambassador Richard Pate in Rome, and duplicated to Gardiner and Wallop in France, Henry

announced “the likelihood and appearance that God will send us heirs male,” implying that his “most

dear and entirely beloved wife the Queen” was once more expecting a child.

Had Anne conceived

towards the end of February, it would have been possible for the King to state this with some certainty,

and clearly he was eager to do so. In the past, royal conceptions had not normally been the subject of

official announcements, but the urgent resolution of the succession problem was a matter of vital

national importance meriting widespread publicity. On a personal level, too, the King was anxious to

show the world that he was capable of fathering an heir, and also to justify his marriage to Anne. It is

unthinkable therefore that he, a normally discreet man in such matters, would have made such a

statement, knowing that his ambassadors would make it public, if there had been no certain hope of a

child.

The news that the Queen might yet bear a son and so render herself invincible must have caused

Cromwell considerable alarm, and given him the impetus to bring her down while he had the chance.

He was keeping all his options open: at the end of April, he and his fellow conspirators were still

discussing the possibility of the royal marriage being annulled.

But the Queen was in a very strong

position: only the most damning charges against her would now suffice to destroy her.

On 29 April, a conversation that Anne had with the musician Mark Smeaton was reported to Cromwell.

Smeaton had enjoyed more success than most people of his “poor degree”

ever dreamed of, but he

was acutely aware of being outside the charmed circle that surrounded the Queen, whom he evidently

admired. Anne now came upon him standing dejectedly in the “round window” in her apartments.

“Master Smeaton, why are you so sad?” she asked.

“It is no matter,” he replied dejectedly.

Anne answered haughtily, “You may not look to have me speak to you as I would to a nobleman,

because you be an inferior person.”

“No, no, a look sufficeth me,” Smeaton assured her, “and thus fare you well.”

He was to have bitter

cause to regret his words.

The King had been planning for some time to revisit Calais, and intended to depart with the Queen on 2

May, after the May Day jousts. Before crossing the Channel, they would stop in Dover to inspect the

fortifications.

But the visit would never take place. It is clear that Anne’s fall from favour was sudden. On 30 April, as

the Queen watched a dogfight in Greenwich Park, Cromwell laid before the King shocking and

seemingly incontrovertible evidence that she had seduced Smeaton and other members of the Privy

Chamber, including her own brother, and that, furthermore, she had plotted regicide,

with the

intention of marrying one of her lovers and ruling as regent for the child she was carrying. The

evidence was sufficiently strong and convincing to cast serious doubt on the paternity of the baby, and

to utterly alienate the King from her. With devastating clarity, he saw now that all along he had

nourished a viper in his bosom: not only had she deceived and humiliated him, both as a husband and

as her sovereign, but—more seriously—she had put the succession in jeopardy and committed the

worst kind of treason by plotting the King’s death.

Most modern historians are of the opinion that Anne was not guilty of any of the twenty-two charges of

adultery laid against her; eleven of them can be proved false. It is unlikely that she would have

schemed to kill the King, who was her chief defender and protector. The circumstances of her fall

suggest strongly that she was framed; even Chapuys thought so,

and on the eve of her death, Anne

herself would swear on the blessed sacrament that she was innocent. However, her reputation, her

flirtatious nature, her enjoyment of male company, and her indulgence in the amorous banter and

interplay of courtly love all made the charges against her believable. Not only the King but many other

people thought her guilty.

Anne was doomed. In the normal course of justice, her pregnancy would have saved her from a death

sentence, or at least postponed it, but this child could never be allowed to live, because the King would

not dare risk a disputed succession. Nor, however, could he be seen as a monarch who put an innocent

baby to death, which is perhaps the reason why some of the documents relating to Anne’s trial were

destroyed. No further mention is made of her pregnancy, and it is perhaps significant that she was not

made to undergo an examination by a panel of matrons before her execution, as Lady Jane Grey did in

1553. Anne herself never mentioned her condition while in the Tower, but neither did she make any

reference to her daughter Elizabeth. In both cases, she must have realised that to do so would be futile,

for Henry had hardened his heart against her.

Cromwell had obtained most of his evidence by questioning the members of Anne’s household,

particularly the ladies of her Privy Chamber, who, he claimed, were so shocked by her crimes that they

could not conceal them.

What he uncovered was described at her trial as “bawdy and lechery.”

Only

fragments of it survive, but they suffice to suggest that the whole fabric of the case against Anne was

constructed on the basis of innuendo and inference. It was enough, however, to convince an overly

suspicious man like the King.

On 30 April, the King and Queen were observed at a window overlooking the courtyard at Greenwich.

Anne was holding Elizabeth in her arms, and seemed to be pleading with Henry, who appeared to be

angry. The Council sat until dark in “protracted conference,” and a crowd gathered at the palace,

realising that “some deep and difficult question was being discussed.”

During that day, Anne tackled Sir Henry Norris about his failure to marry Madge Shelton; he said he

wished to “tarry awhile,” but she interpreted his evasive reply as implying that it was because of her.

“You look for dead men’s shoes!” she told him. “For if aught came to the King but good, you would

look to have me.”

Norris was appalled at her indiscretion and infringement of the rules of courtly love, which required the

man to set the pace, and stoutly declared that, if he ever thought such a thing, “he would his head were

off.” Anne was amused, and said she could undo him if she wished to, but then realised that others were

listening to their conversation, and made Norris go to her Almoner John Skip to swear on his oath that

she “was a good woman.”

Within three days the gossipmongers had spread her words round the court.

That evening, while dancing, Anne learned that the musician Mark Smeaton had been arrested.

She

was also informed, at 11 P.M., that the planned visit to Calais had been postponed for a week.

Smeaton was taken to the Tower on the morning of 1 May.

There, probably under torture,

confessed to committing adultery with the Queen on three occasions in the spring of 1535

—the only

one of the men accused with her to admit his guilt. His inclusion among her alleged lovers was

doubtless intended to show how low she had stooped to gratify her lust, and so further inflame public

opinion against her. Anne herself later insisted that Smeaton had only been in her apartments twice—

on 29 April, and at Winchester in 1535, when he played the virginals for her.

The May Day jousts went ahead as planned. Sir Henry Norris led the defenders while Rochford was the

leading challenger. When Norris’s steed became uncontrollable, the King lent him one of his own

horses.

But before the tournament ended, to everyone’s astonishment, especially the Queen’s,

Henry

left abruptly with less than six attendants,

probably because Cromwell had sent word that he had

Smeaton’s confession in hand and that Norris also was under suspicion.

If he was indeed

manufacturing evidence, Cromwell was taking a risk here, because Norris was one of the King’s closest

friends and intimate associates, and enjoyed far greater influence with Henry than Cromwell did. But

the King chose to believe his Secretary, which suggests that the evidence against Norris was seriously

compelling. Norris was summoned to accompany his master to York Place, and during the journey

Henry personally accused him of adultery with the Queen as far back as October 1533,

which Norris

vehemently denied. All the same, he was taken under guard to the Tower at dawn the next day.

Anne was not to be kept in suspense for long. After watching a game of tennis on the morning of 2

May,

she was arrested and conveyed by barge to the Tower, where she was comfortably lodged in the

rooms she had occupied before her coronation, in the custody of the Constable of the Tower, the kindly

Sir William Kingston. Her brother Rochford was also committed to the Tower that day. The accusation

of incest was the vilest of the charges against Anne, calculated to arouse the deepest public revulsion,

especially in view of the fact that in late 1535, when her affair with her brother was alleged to have

taken place, she was pregnant. The implication, of course, was that the child was not the King’s.

was on the evidence of Lady Rochford alone that the charge of “undue familiarity” between her

husband and his sister was made,

although Rochford received a message through Carew and Bryan

that his wife planned to intercede with the King on his behalf. There is no record of her doing so. It was

believed at the time that Lady Rochford was motivated by “envy and jealousy” of the close relationship

between Rochford and Anne.

On the evening following Anne’s arrest, the King broke down. Once again, his hopes of an heir had

been cruelly frustrated, and he was by now ready to believe anything of her. When his son Richmond

came to bid him goodnight and ask his blessing, he clasped him to his breast and began weeping,

declaring “that he and his sister [Mary] were greatly bound to God for having escaped the hands of that

accursed whore, who had determined to poison them.”

Henry’s state of mind at this time has been

largely ignored by many writers, who forget that his only son was obviously dying, a fact that was no

doubt responsible in part for the King’s uncertain temper, emotional reactions, and phases of almost

desperate gaiety. Jane Seymour, calm and sympathetic, must have offered a welcome refuge from the

horrors that had invaded Henry’s existence.

The atmosphere at court was tense as people wondered who would be arrested next. Anne’s Receiver

General, George Taylor, and her Sewer, Harry Webb, went in fear of their lives.

Even Francis Bryan

was questioned by Cromwell,

but this may have been a charade to lend credibility to the other arrests,

since Bryan was unquestionably Anne’s enemy and in fact profited from the fall of her co-accused. In a

letter to Gardiner informing him of Bryan’s cold-blooded abandonment of his cousin, Cromwell refers

to him as “the Vicar of Hell,” a name that stuck.

Sir Francis Weston was the next to be arrested, and around 4 or 5 May, William Brereton was also

committed to the Tower. The charges against him were not made public, but probably included adultery

with the Queen. There is good evidence that Cromwell resented his territorial influence in North Wales

and Cheshire, where he served as Richmond’s deputy, and wanted him out of the way.

Cavendish says

he was executed “shamefully, only of old rancour.”

Brereton’s distraught wife and family pleaded his

innocence, but to no avail.

By 8 May, another Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Sir Richard Page, was in the Tower,

along with

Sir Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt believed that Suffolk had been the cause of his arrest; it is unlikely that his

friend Cromwell would have ordered it. Given Henry’s earlier suspicions of Wyatt, and Suffolk’s

accusations, Wyatt may well have been correct in his assumption. He was deeply affected, not only by

his own plight, but also by that of Anne and the men accused with her, and during his imprisonment he

wrote poignant verses expressing his misery. Entitled “Circa Regna tomat” (Thunder rolls around the

Throne), they began,

These bloody days have broken my heart,

My lust, my youth did then depart,

And blind desire of estate.

Who hastes to climb seeks to revert.

Of truth, circa regna tomat.

It is not known when Henry decided to marry Jane Seymour, but few doubted that she would soon be

Queen. Sir Nicholas Carew had offered her a temporary refuge at his house at Beddington,

but she did

not remain there long since it was inaccessible by river and the King naturally did not wish to be seen

riding abroad in public at this time. Carew therefore found her lodgings near Hampton Court, where

Henry could visit her by barge.

During the Queen’s sojourn in the Tower, the King continued to keep a low profile. He did not venture

beyond the gardens of York Place, save for short jaunts along the Thames in the evening, banqueting

with the ladies in his barge and returning after midnight. “Most of the time he was accompanied by

various musical instruments and by the singers of his chamber.” He was behaving, according to

Chapuys, “like a man who had rid himself of a thin, old and vicious hack in the hope of getting again a

fine horse to ride.”

One evening, Henry had supper at the house of John Kite, Bishop of Carlisle, “and showed an

extravagant joy” as he dined in the company of many ladies. The Bishop afterwards told Chapuys that

the King told him he believed more than a hundred men “had had to do” with the Queen, and said “he

had long expected the issues of these affairs, and that thereupon he had before composed a tragedy,

which he carried with him. And so saying the King drew from his bosom a little book written in his

own hand, but the Bishop could not read the contents. It may have been certain ballads that the King

had composed, at which the whore and her brother laughed as foolish things.”

On 12 May, Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were arraigned at Westminster Hall; all were

condemned to death. The trial of the Queen and Rochford, who by virtue of their rank had the privilege

of being tried by their peers, was held three days later in the great hall within the Tower. They too were

sentenced to die, despite their protestations of innocence. Rochford caused a sensation at his trial when,

passed a paper by Cromwell and told to respond without revealing what was written there, he read out

what his wife had alleged, that the Queen had revealed to him that the King was impotent: given that

Anne had conceived four times in three years, this was unlikely. When asked if he had expressed

doubts that Elizabeth was Henry’s child, Rochford refused to answer and incriminate himself.

That evening, Sir Francis Bryan brought news of Anne’s condemnation to Jane Seymour at Hampton,

and soon afterwards the King himself arrived for dinner, having been conveyed along the Thames with

an almost festive air of pageantry.

After her trial, Anne was moved to two panelled rooms on the first floor of the newly constructed

Lieutenant’s Lodging opposite Tower Green, which is now known as the Queen’s House.

She would

remain there until her execution, and from her windows would have been able to see the scaffold being

built.

On 17 May, the Queen’s alleged lovers were beheaded on Tower Hill. All except Smeaton stressed their

innocence, and Rochford warned the onlookers to beware of “the flatteries of the court.”

That same

day, Archbishop Cranmer pronounced Anne’s marriage to the King null and void and her daughter

Elizabeth a bastard. The next day, he issued a dispensation for the King to remarry within the third

degree of affinity. No such relationship existed between Henry and Jane Seymour, who were far more

distant cousins, and it may be that the King had been involved in a unrecorded sexual relationship with

somebody closely related to Jane,

or that Jane herself had once been the mistress of one of Henry’s

cousins.

Anne Boleyn met her death with such dignity and courage that even Cromwell was impressed:

she

was executed with a sword on Tower Green at 9 A.M. on Friday, 19 May, and was buried in the

afternoon in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the Tower. Richmond and his friend Surrey were

among the crowd that witnessed the execution. The King’s household expenses for that day were lower

than for any other day that year, which suggests that he spent it in seclusion. On the following Sunday,

which was Ascension Day, he made the gesture of wearing white mourning.

There had been no precedent for the trial and execution of an English queen, and Anne Boleyn’s fall

with its attendant purge of the Privy Chamber had been nothing less than sensational. At a stroke,

Cromwell had eliminated a whole faction. Many were touched by the tragedy. Anne’s daughter

Elizabeth, not yet three, was at Hunsdon when her mother perished, and remained there in the care of

Lady Bryan, but that redoubtable lady was soon having to beg Cromwell to replace the clothes her

charge had outgrown. The child herself, sharp for her age, was soon openly wondering why people had

ceased to address her as “My Lady Princess” and were now calling her “My Lady Elizabeth.” No one

knows when and how she discovered what had happened to her mother.

Anne’s father, the Earl of Wiltshire, was immediately deprived of his lucrative office of Lord Privy Seal

and all his lands in Ireland,

but he retained his place at court, and when his wife died in April 1538

there was talk that he might marry Lady Margaret Douglas. When he passed away in March 1539, the

King ordered masses to be said for his soul.

He was buried in Hever Church, where a fine brass marks

his resting place.

Lady Rochford retired from court after her husband’s fall; her husband’s possessions had been

confiscated by the Crown, and she was reduced to begging Cromwell for financial help, signing herself

“a power[ful] desolate widow.” Her jointure was not restored to her until after Wiltshire’s death.

Shortly after Anne’s execution, Cromwell secured the release of Wyatt and Page. The King would have

received Page back into favour, but Page had decided it was safer to stay away from court.

Wyatt, also

bitterly disillusioned with a courtier’s existence, returned to his father’s castle at Allington, Kent, for a

time.

Despite his affinity with the Boleyns, Archbishop Cranmer survived the purge and continued to

promote the cause of reform. Norfolk, who had presided at Anne’s trial and passed sentence, retained

his post of Lord Treasurer, but deemed it politic to retire to Kenninghall for the present. His absence

from court enabled the Seymours to establish political ascendancy there, and so initiated the bitter

rivalry between them and the Howards that was to endure for the rest of the reign.

Cromwell was careful to ensure that Norris’s office of Groom of the Stool was filled by his own man,

Thomas Heneage, while Bryan became chief Gentleman of the Privy Chamber.

Anne Boleyn had been one of the most powerful women ever to wear the consort’s crown, yet her rapid

and cataclysmic fall illustrates just how fragile was the balance of power at the English court.

“Bound to Obey and Serve”

On 20 May, the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution, Jane Seymour was brought by barge to Hampton

Court, where she and the King were formally betrothed. Soon afterwards, Henry took her to York

Place, which in 1536 was officially renamed the King’s Palace of Westminster and designated by

statute as the principal residence of the sovereign and the seat of government, in place of the former

Westminster Palace;

from the late 1530s it was popularly and commonly known, however, as

Whitehall Palace, a name that may have derived from the pale ashlar stone used to build Wolsey’s great

hall. The remaining buildings of the mediaeval palace were incorporated into the complex, and

sometimes used on state occasions. Henry VIII had spent more than £8,000 (£240,000) on Whitehall,

and it was now the largest palace in Europe, and a fitting setting for the New Monarchy.

Henry and Jane were quietly married by Bishop Gardiner in the Queen’s closet at Whitehall on 30 May

1536. Later that day, Jane was “set in the Queen’s seat under the canopy of estate royal.”

At forty-five, the average age of male life expectancy in Tudor times, the King still boasted an

impressive physique: in 1536, his armourers found his waist to measure thirty-seven inches and his

chest forty-five inches. He remained active, continuing to enjoy hunting, riding, and dancing. But

foreign observers no longer praised his good looks. He was growing bald on top, and his face had aged

into the familiar mould depicted in his later portraits, with narrow eyes, heavy jowls, and a small,

tightly pursed mouth. The frustrations and stresses of the last decade had left their mark, not only upon

his appearance but also upon his character. Where he had once been openhanded, liberal, and idealistic,

he was now contrary, secretive, dogmatic, and unpredictably changeable. “Such are the King’s

fickleness and natural inclination to new or strange things that I could not find words to describe it,”

declared Chapuys. “His natural inclination is to oppose all things debatable, taking great pride in

persuading himself that he makes the world believe one thing instead of another.”

His egotism was

supreme: “He never forgets his own greatness, and is silent as to that of others,” observed a French

envoy.

His temper was feared by all.

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.

This cannot be taken as conclusive proof of sexual

difficulties, since Henry had said as much when addressing Parliament in 1532,

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,

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”

—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.”

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”:

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

She was compassionate and pious,

but made a point of distancing herself from her inferiors, and thus appeared “proud and haughty.”

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.

Chapuys had cause to revise his earlier opinion of her, and reported that she bore her royal

honours with dignity.

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;

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jane was determined to enforce high moral standards in her household. She laid down strict rules