Biography of Jane SeymourJane Seymour (1507/1508 - 24 October 1537) was the third wife of Henry VIII. She died of post-natal complications following the birth of her only child, Edward VI. She was also King Henry VIII's fifth cousin three times removed.
Jane Seymour was the daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wiltshire and Margaret Wentworth. Her exact birth date is debated; it is usually given as 1509; however, it has been noted that at her funeral 29 women walked in succession . Since it was customary for the attendant company to mark every year of the deceased's life in numbers, this implies she was born in 1508.
She was not educated as highly as Catherine or Anne: she could only read and write her name. Instead she was taught in needlework and household management, which was popular at that time for women. She became a lady-in-waiting in 1530, in the last year of Catherine of Aragon's reign. After Catherine was divorced and Anne Boleyn became queen, she served her instead. Jane caught the king's eye in September 1535 when Henry was returning from a march and he stayed at the Seymours' stately home. His love for her was not confirmed until February the following year when his marriage to Anne was falling rapidly apart. His desire to marry her may have predisposed him to believe the false accusations of adultery and witchcraft against Anne.
Henry became betrothed to Jane on 20 May 1536, the day after Anne's execution, and married her on 30 May. Jane was publicly proclaimed as queen on the 4 June. She was never crowned, with a crown due to a plague epidemic in London where the coronation was to take place of the birth of her son. It has also been suggested that Henry was reluctant to crown Jane before she had fulfilled her duty as a queen by bearing him a son and a male heir.
As queen consort, Jane was strict and formal. She was close only to her female relations, Anne Stanhope (her brother's wife) and her sister, Elizabeth Seymour. The glittering social life and extravagance of the queen's household, which had reached its peak during the time of Anne Boleyn, was replaced by a strict enforcement of decorum in Jane's time. For example, the dress requirements for ladies of the court were detailed down to the number of pearls that were to be sewn into each lady's skirt, and the French fashions introduced by Anne Boleyn were banned. Politically, Jane appears to have been conservative. However, her only involvement in national affairs, in 1536, when she asked for pardons for participants in the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion, was abandoned after the King reminded her of the fate the other queens met with when they "meddled in his affairs".
The Six Wives of
King Henry VIII
Catherine of Aragon
Anne Boleyn
Jane Seymour
Anne of Cleves
Catherine Howard
Catherine Parr
In early 1537, Jane became pregnant. During her pregnancy, she developed a craving for quail, which the King ordered for her from Calais and Flanders. Jane went into seclusion in September 1537 and gave birth to a male heir, the future King Edward VI of England on 12 October at Hampton Court Palace. After she participated in the prince's christening on October 15, it became clear that Jane was seriously ill. She had contracted puerperal fever and died on 24 October at Hampton Court. She was buried at Windsor Castle after a funeral in which her stepdaughter, Princess Mary (later Queen Mary I), acted as chief mourner.
Above her grave, there was for a time the following inscription:
Here lieth a Phoenix, by whose death
Another Phoenix life gave breath:
It is to be lamented much
The world at once ne'er knew two such.
After her death, Henry wore black and did not remarry for two years. Henry always remembered her with affection, forgetting the youthful days he spent with Catherine of Aragon and his obsession with Anne Boleyn. Historians have speculated that it was Jane's "achievement" of securing Henry a male heir that made her so fondly remembered. When he died in 1547, Henry was buried beside her.
Jane's two ambitious brothers, Thomas and Edward, used her memory to improve their own fortunes. After Henry's death, Thomas married Henry's widow, Catherine Parr, and also had designs on the future Queen Elizabeth I. In the reign of the young King Edward VI, Edward Seymour set himself up as protector and effective ruler of the Kingdom. Both brothers eventually fell from power, and were disgraced and executed.
Jane was widely praised as "the fairest, the discreetest, and the most meritous of all Henry VIII's wives" in the centuries after her death. One historian, however, took serious umbrage to this view in the 19th century. Victorian scholar Agnes Strickland, author of encyclopaedic studies of French, Scottish, and English royal women, said that the story of "Anne Boleyn's last agonised hours" and Henry VIII's swift remarriage to Jane Seymour "is repulsive enough, but it becomes tenfold more abhorrent when the woman who caused the whole tragedy is loaded with panegyric."
Modern historians, particularly Alison Weir and Lady Antonia Fraser, paint a favourable portrait of a woman of discretion and good-sense -- "a strong-minded matriarch in the making," says Weir. Others are not convinced.
Hester W. Chapman and Professor Eric Ives resurrected Strickland's view of Jane Seymour, and believe she played a crucial and conscious role in the cold-blooded plot to bring Anne Boleyn to the executioner's block. Dr. David Starkey and Karen Lindsey are both relatively dismissive of Jane's importance in comparison to that of Henry's other queens -- particularly Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Parr. Joanna Denny, Marie Louise Bruce and Carolly Erickson also -understandably- refrain from giving overly-sympathetic accounts of Jane's life and career.
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