Henry VIII Marries Jane Seymour

    On May 30, 1536 - only eleven days after the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII married his third wife, Jane Seymour.

    The wedding was performed by Archbishop Cranmer at  Whitehall Palace in the Queen’s Closet, a side chapel where the queen heard daily mass. Jane had been preparing for this event for weeks - even before Anne’s arrest. She had a new, elaborate wardrobe. Seamstresses must have been sewing day and night to get it completed in time.

    As a wedding gift, Henry gave his new bride a magnificent gold cup designed by Hans Holbein. It had her phoenix emblem and their entwined initials on its elaborately engraved surface, along with Jan’e chosen motto, Bound to Obey and Serve. To get it done in time, Holbein must have started working on it months before, long before Anne’s fall.

    The wedding was kept a secret for a few days yet to come. Even Henry recognized the people had been horrified at what he’d done to his last wife. A few days prior, he had ordered his council to “beg” him to remarry “for the good of the realm,” to which he had graciously consented. But that didn’t stop the ballad writers, who composed works lamenting the sad fate of Anne Boleyn. And so, realizing his actions were seen as distasteful, Henry married Jane quietly and decided not to announce it for a bit until outrage cooled.

    Despite her humble motto and demure demeanor, the new queen had an agenda. Her supporters had given her their assistance because Jane promised to advance their goal: to get Princess Mary restored as Henry’s heir. Jane realized that part of the reason Henry had come to despise Anne was her strong and bold avocation of her causes. Jane intended to try a more outwardly submissive approach. Her first effort was a failure. Henry retorted that instead of worrying about Mary, Jane ought to be seeking the advancement of the children she would have with Henry.

    She didn’t intend to give up, but she had to be subtle about it. In the meantime, all traces of the previous queen were being erased. Anne’s emblems, initials, and badges were being ripped off the palace walls. Anne’s falcon was re-carved to become Jane’s phoenix, and her secondary emblem of the leopard was being refitted with new tails and heads to become Jane’s panther.

    Only three years prior on this same date, Anne’s coronation procession had begun. And now England’s new queen was waiting impatiently in the wings for her status to be announced.

    Did Jane feel any trepidation when she considered what had happened to her predecessor? Or did she assure herself she knew how to handle Henry and that her supporters would keep her protected? Did she console herself that if Anne hadn’t been technically guilty, she still “deserved” to die because of what had happened to Queen Katharine and the heresy of the new church?

    In any case, the die was cast. In the end, Jane had no more choice than Anne Boleyn had when Henry said he wanted to marry her. A king’s proposal was not something that could be declined. For better or worse, Jane Seymour was the new queen of England.

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Was Having an Heir Henry VIII's Primary Motivation?

Some people explain Henry VIII's matrimonial turmoil by saying, "Henry VIII needed a son! He did all of these things because he had to have an heir for England." But is that actually true? Was Henry's foremost thought having heirs for the kingdom to prevent civil war?

Henry stopped sleeping with Katharine of Aragon around 1524 after he was told by physicians it was unlikely she would have any more children. Though he toyed with the idea of taking another wife as early as 1520, he didn't get serious about seeking an annulment until 1527 when he became obsessed with Anne Boleyn. He married Anne in late 1532 and three years later, after Anne miscarried a son, Henry had her executed on trumped-up charges of adultery.

His execution of Anne cannot be put down to his quest for an heir. Anne was still obviously fertile. He had no reason to believe a subsequent pregnancy would not be successful. She was not yet twenty-eight years old when she died, and according to the standards of the day, she had a few more fertile years left. But Henry despised his wife by this point and wanted to marry Jane Seymour - who was roughly the same age as Anne.

Jane Seymour died from complications after childbirth, giving Henry his heir. But he needed a "spare," and so the search for a new wife began before Jane was even in the ground. Henry himself had been the "spare," and he well knew that royal families could not rely on a single prince to continue the dynasty.

But Henry thought he should be an exception to a thousand years of royal marriage customs in which profitable unions were arranged by ambassadors and finalized by proxy before the bride was dispatched to her new homeland. Henry tried to convince ambassadors to send him eligible princesses so he could look them over in person before deciding if he'd marry them, something that would be humiliating in the extreme for the princesses who were rejected, and for their home countries. The French ambassador wryly suggested Henry might want to also "try" them and keep the one that was the sweetest. It's recorded that Henry at least had the grace to blush at that, but he whined,

"I trust to no one but myself. The thing touches me too near. I wish to see them and know them some time before deciding."

Cromwell convinced him of the political benefits and Henry married Anna von Kleefes, a princess from a small, but strategic, German duchy. Anna came from a very fertile family. Her grandfather was nicknamed "the babymaker" because he fathered a whopping sixty-three illegitimate children, aside from the four legitimate ones he had with his wife.

However, Henry disliked Anna and sought to divest himself of her as soon as possible. Had his primary desire been heirs for his kingdom, Anna would have been a perfect choice, a young, healthy woman of royal blood from a very fecund line. But Henry didn't even attempt to have children with her. 

His primary concern in this matter was not the good of his kingdom. Henry's actions were a shocking violation of royal marriage protocol. He lowered England's prestige in the eyes of the world, and put his nation at risk of war.

Had he wanted to seek the hand of another princess, it would have been very difficult to convince other countries to send him a wife when he might reject her - as he tried to do with Anna - or dissolve the marriage. England's king could not be trusted to do the right thing by their princesses.

While he waited for his annulment from Anna, Henry's interest had been drawn to one of her ladies in waiting. But Henry wasn't the only one who had lusted after Katheryn Howard. His "rose without a thorn" had been plucked before Henry discovered her.

Henry didn't bother with a trial that time. Katheryn was executed by Bill of Attainder, and it became illegal for a woman to conceal her sexual history once the king had expressed an interest in marrying her. It's recorded by Chapuys that Henry lashed out at his council and blamed them for this long parade of "ill-conditioned wives."

His final wife was Kateryn Parr, not the best choice for a baby-maker. Kateryn had been married twice before, and neither marriage had resulted in a pregnancy. She was thought to be infertile as a result. No one was surprised when her marriage to Henry produced no children, but they were surprised when she remarried after Henry's death and became pregnant by her next husband. 

Henry's marital tribulations were not because of his quest for children, but because of his personal desires. He chose his wives based on emotion. To modern people, that seems reasonable, but for his era, it was considered a foolish reason to select a spouse. Parents could have pointed to Henry's own matrimonial turmoil as an example of the results of choosing a spouse on such an ephemeral basis.

His rejection of Anna von Kleefes because he wasn't attracted to her was bizarre. Every royal marriage started out with people who weren't attracted to one another. Henry himself wasn't very concerned with whether his sister, Mary Tudor, would be attracted to her husband when he married her off to the elderly French king. But Henry thought he should be an exception to a thousand years of royal marriage tradition.

By marrying his wives' ladies in waiting, he lowered the prestige of his royal blood, and weakened his line's claim to the throne. The Tudors were already considered upstarts with a shaky claim, and the reason his father chose Katharine of Aragon to marry his son was because of the stability conferred by her impeccable royal lineage. Katharine actually had a stronger claim to the English throne than the current heir, Arthur Tudor. It's probably why Henry thought it was a good idea to marry Katharine himself, after his brother died. Thus, Henry's claims of concern that not having heirs might lead to civil war are weakened by the fact he married his subjects. As Elizabeth I knew, marrying a subject and favoring one noble family over another was a way to invite conflict into a nation.

Elizabeth may have later bragged about her blood being purely English, but she might have been stronger if she could have called on the assistance of family in other countries. That was the purpose of royal marriage: to create strong alliances between countries. But Henry's marriages were for reasons of personal satisfaction which brought little or no benefit to his nation.

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Love and Marriage During the Tudor Era

A good marriage during the Tudor era was one which brought prosperity to the family of the bride and groom. For the groom, it might be a good dowry and for the bride, advancement in status or in valuable connections for her family. The emotions of the couple involved were not really a consideration. They might never have met until they stood before the altar.

The higher up the social class, the less likely a person was to have choice in their spouse, and the younger they were likely to marry. Margaret Beaufort wed her first husband at twelve, the minimum age for a full marriage, according to the church.

When two families decided their children should wed, a period of negotiation began. The father of the bride was expected to pay a dowry commensurate to the bride's social status. This custom sometimes allowed the daughters of the gentry to "marry up" to cash-strapped nobles. The contract would also cover the jointure given by the husband, which was the funds and property allotted to the wife in case of her husband's death. This could also be an agreement which settled a portion of the dowry or husband's property for the wife's use during their marriage.

Tapestry showing the wedding of Arthur Tudor
to Katharine of Aragon

More than the marrying couple's future might depend on their marriage. Researcher Ralph Houlbrooke writes:

A father’s ability to provide for the rest of his children often depended upon his heir’s making the most advantageous match available to him. The connection can be seen quite clearly in a document like the will of Thomas Stonor (d.1431) who wished the proceeds of the sale of his son’s marriage to be used to marry his five daughters.

In practice, these agreements sometimes fell apart. Katharine of Aragon was left in a state of limbo after her young husband Arthur Tudor, died shortly after their wedding. Katharine's father and father-in-law bickered for years over the payment of her dowry. Mary Howard was another woman whose marriage agreement was never kept. After her husband, Henry FitzRoy died, his father, King Henry VIII decided that Mary should not inherit the estate because the union had never been consummated (on the king's own orders.)

Marriage was not intended to bring either party personal happiness. A couple hoped to come to an affectionate accord, but not romantic love, as we think of it. If a couple found love, that was a nice bonus, but not considered necessary for a successful marriage.

While he was still married to Katharine of Aragon, Henry VIII wrote in a song, "I love true where I did marry." Katharine, for her part, truly loved Henry. Perhaps the only one of his wives who did. It's doubtful she fell in love with him before their marriage, because they didn't meet very often. Hers was a love that grew over twenty years of marriage, bearing and burying multiple children, and raising together a daughter. Theirs, in other words, was the ideal union, except for Katharine's inability to give Henry the son he wanted so badly.

Not everyone saw this system of marrying children as a business matter as beneficial. The poet Thomas Heywood wrote:

How often have forced contracts been made to add land to land, not love to love? And to unite houses to houses, not hearts to hearts? which hath been the occasion that men have turned monsters, and women devils.

The wedding itself could be a simple affair. A legally binding marriage required only that the man and woman refer to themselves as husband and wife in front of witnesses.  (Katheryn Howard's marriage to Henry VIII was invalid because she was legally married to Francis Dereham for this reason.) Even stating the intention to marry was legally binding and required a dispensation from the Pope to break. Couples could also be married by proxy, having another person stand in for the bride or groom and take the vows for them. Princess Mary Tudor Brandon even had a proxy consummation of her marriage to the King of France by having a courtier touch her bare foot with his leg.

Sexual intercourse between a married couple was supposed to be for the purpose of begetting children only. The physical pleasure of the partners was part of that duty; it was thought a woman had to orgasm in order to conceive. Once she was pregnant, intercourse had to cease. Nor could the couple have sex during her times of menstruation.

Sex was also forbidden on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, feast days, fast days, during Lent, during Advent, three days before taking communion, and during the daytime. There's a humorous flow chart that lists them. After childbirth, sexual relations were forbidden for about a month; some theologians proscribed a longer period after the birth of a girl than a boy. All told, the church forbid sexual relations roughly 40% of the year, not including a woman's menstrual cycle or childbearing.

Woman in childbirth, seated on a
"groaning chair"

Childbirth was a journey into the shadow of death for a Tudor woman. Some estimates of the number of women who died from complications of childbirth run as high as 20%. Two Tudor queens, who ostensibly had the best care money could buy, died from complications of childbirth: Jane Seymour and Elizabeth of York.

Noble and wealthy women usually turned their children over to wetnurses to feed. The church forbid sexual intercourse while a woman was nursing, and women were expected to get pregnant again as quickly as possible.

Parental distance from children was also encouraged. Affection would spoil the child, they were warned. And, as many probably felt, it was best not to get too attached, because of the high infant mortality.

A woman could fully expect to lose half of her children to childhood disease or accident before they reached adulthood, so large families were encouraged. Richard Fermor, whom is said to have brought Will Somers to court, is believed to have had ten children, only five of whom survived to be old enough to marry.

Ralph Josselin's diary entry on the death of his ten-day-old son illustrates the distance some parents tried to have with young children. He said that the boy, also named Ralph, "was the youngest and our affections not so wonted unto it."

Because of the expectation of losing children, names were sometimes repeated within a family's children, hoping one child would survive to carry it on. As an example, there were two brothers at the court of Henry VIII, both named Thomas Culpepper. (Because of the confusion, scholars are still uncertain to which brother to attribute certain actions.) Elizabeth Woodville had two sons named Richard. Chapuys heard as a rumor that Anne Boleyn was planning on naming her newborn daughter "Mary," which he felt was another of Anne's attempts to have her daughter usurp Mary's place, but even if Anne had re-used the name, it wouldn't have been unusual. Lord Hoo had two daughters by different mothers named Anne, and Elizabeth Howard had a half-sister also named Elizabeth.

It certainly makes for a challenge in research!

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