Tudor Queens of England (25 page)

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apart from a son, was a spot of peace and quiet. Anne had been a challenge in every sense of the word. She had been sexy, edgy and opinionated; a stormy and emotional companion but a shrewd and well-informed adviser. She had had her own supporters, her own networks, even her own policies. Jane was none of these things. What she did have was a good natured and imperturbable common sense. As Henry told Chapuys soon after his marriage, ‘her nature was gentle and inclined to peace’ – in short, Jane was everything that A

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When she urged Henry to take his elder daughter into his grace – which must have been within a few weeks of their wedding and before Mary’s surrender – the King told her effectively to mind her own business. Anne would have sulked furiously at such a rebuff but Jane took it all in her stride. She probably did not have any share in Mary’s submission, which came towards the end of July, but was on hand to make sure that Henry took it in good part and that the younger woman’s household was fully and sensitively restored. She was more like an elder sister than a stepmother to Henry’s daughter, who was now 21 and the two became fi rm friends. Jane clearly did not have any religious opinions, which grated on Mary’s sensitive conscience. Conservatives like the Marquis of Exeter regarded her as a friend but it is an open question whether she had any opinions of her own at all.

In the latter part of 1536, Henry had need of as much domestic peace as he could get. On 18 July his son Henry had died at the age of about 18. He may, or may not, have ever entertained ideas of legitimating him, but he was fond of the boy and felt his loss keenly. Fitzroy’s widow, Mary Howard, we are told ‘handled herself very discreetly’ but she was only 17 and they had never lived together. The young Duke’s main legacy, apart from his father’s grief, was a large tidying-up operation of people, lands and jobs because he had no direct successor in any of his functions. More importantly, the north of England was swept by rebellion. This had a number of specifi c causes, which have been exhaustively discussed, but the timing seems to have been mainly occasioned by the discovery that Anne’s death had made not the slightest difference to the main thrust of the King’s policies. She had been cast as the evil infl uence from which all his errors and abuses had stemmed and when she fell her enemies waited expectantly for everything to change. Mary had been the fi rst to be disillusioned in this respect and she had submitted and come to terms with Thomas Cromwell. The conservative leaders (or some of them), however, now felt that Cromwell had betrayed them and he became the arch-enemy whom the King must be pressed to repudiate. The rebellions, known collectively as the Pilgrimage of Grace, were powerful, but messy and ill directed. Above all the great conservative magnates, the earls of Derby, Shrewsbury and Northumberland, who had been expected to back the

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movement, held aloof. The Emperor, who might have felt compelled to support them a year earlier, was now not interested at all. The Pilgrimage collapsed under its own weight with only a few discreet pushes from the King and the Duke of Norfolk. Mary, who might have been its fi gurehead, instead confi rmed her newly established favour by repudiating it absolutely and making it clear to Charles that she was no longer prepared to be used against her father.

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Jane, whose peacemaking role had certainly played a part in keeping Mary ‘on side’, had by Christmas become a symbol of the new stability. Henry spoke of her as his fi rst

‘true wife’, which was legally the case since Parliament had confi rmed Anne’s displacement back in July.

The new queen had the immense advantage of carrying almost no political baggage. Unlike Catherine, or even Anne, she had no pretensions to noble birth and no established political persona. The King had made her to suit himself. She even dressed to please him and he made her magnifi cent. She was given the usual consort’s jointure and her attendants were chosen with great care. Jane was not fl irtatious but in the light of the recent past it was essential that no breath of scandal should touch her entourage. Jousts and entertainments were provided in her honour and several royal palaces were lavishly refurbished. Altogether there was a sense of new beginnings and Christmas was kept at Greenwich with exceptional splendour in the midst of ferociously cold weather that prevented any movement upon the river. Jane, however, was not crowned. A great ceremony was being discussed, but just before Christmas the Queen’s father, Sir John Seymour, died, and that required a fi xed period of mourning. Then in February she was found to be pregnant. That had not inhibited Anne’s coronation four years earlier, but there was no comparable point to be made this time and talk of a coronation was quietly dropped. The Queen’s health appeared to be good, but nothing must threaten her at this most delicate time. By June, all seemed still to be well but Henry was taking no risks and cancelled his summer progress in order to remain within reach. Quite apart from the fact of conception, the King seems to have been exceptionally solicitous of Jane’s welfare and it may be that he was genuinely more fond of her than of either of her predecessors. Perhaps her straightforward dependence touched him. Here was a woman with no independent resources. He was even concerned to reassure anyone who would listen that it was not she who had asked him to cancel the progress, because ‘she can in all things well content, satisfy and quiet herself with that thing which we shall think expedient.’

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Throughout the summer the astrologers were predicting the birth of a prince. They knew that that was what the King wanted to hear, and they had a 50 per cent chance of being right – perhaps rather higher, given the number of times they had 132

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been wrong in the past. Henry was suffi ciently convinced to have a stall prepared in the Garter Chapel at Windsor for the new Prince of Wales, but again perhaps he was whistling in the dark. Like many women at the time, Jane seems to have been quite uncertain when her time was due. She withdrew into the customary seclusion at Hampton Court in late September, which suggests that she expected to give birth in late October. In fact she went into labour within a fortnight, on 9 October. After an easy pregnancy the birth was bitter and protracted, lasting two days and three nights and leaving Jane exhausted. However, the agony appeared to be worthwhile for the child was a boy, alive and perfect. Henry is said to have wept with emotion, as well he might considering what suffering he had created in the quest for this child. Rejoicings thundered round the country in a way that had not been heard since the ill-omened birth of Prince Henry 27 years before. The new Prince was named Edward, and on 15 October was christened with great splendour in the chapel of the palace where he had been born. The godfathers were the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of Norfolk; the godmother the Lady Mary. No more complete a symbol of reconciliation could be wished for. On 18 October the infant was created Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester and on the same day his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, was promoted to the Earldom of Hertford.

Unfortunately, the Queen did not make a good recovery. On the day of the christening she had been well enough to sit in the ante-chapel and receive the congratulations of the guests, but three days later puerperal fever developed; by 23 October she had become delirious and late on the night of the 24 October she died. Henry’s dynastic ambitions had claimed one more life, although it would be hard to blame him in this case. Jane had been such a gentle soul, and her passing was bitterly mourned: ‘… and of none in the Realm was it more heavelier taken than of the King’s Majesty himself, whose death caused the king immediately to remove into Westminster, where he mourned and kept himself close and secret a great while …’

His father had mourned likewise in similar circumstances 34 years before. Henry, who had been relieved by the death of his fi rst wife, and gratifi ed by that of the second, was genuinely and deeply distressed by that of the third. She was, he declared, the dearest of them all and when his own time came he chose to be buried beside her. However, for the time being life went on and he had the son for whom he had longed.

Henry had had little experience as a widower. In fact he had lacked a wife for barely a month out of the previous 28 years. This time, however, he was to remain unwed for over two years, and when he was tempted back into matrimony it was into the disastrous alliance that we have already noticed, with Anne of Cleves.

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Physically, Henry was almost spent. Almost, but not quite, and on the rebound from Anne he married Catherine Howard, who was so unusual that she merits a whole chapter to herself. The King emerged from that experience chastened, humiliated, and feeling his age. He was not, however, prepared to admit defeat and as his councillors continually pointed out, one son was not enough to secure the dynasty. Whether he was still capable of begetting a child remains an open question, but in 1543, at the age of 51, he married for the sixth and last time. The statute which had condemned Catherine Howard had made elaborate provisions against any such event being repeated. It was now high treason for anyone to conceal the prenuptial infi delities of any future Queen. Moreover two of Henry’s wives had now ended on the block for adultery. There was consequently no rush of candidates. Nor did any courtly family wish to embrace the fate of the Boleyns or the Howards. For about a year after Catherine’s fall, the King occupied himself in renewing his alliance with the Emperor, and in provoking the Scots into the invasion that ended so disastrously for them at Solway Moss in November 1542. Henry now had no Thomas Wolsey or Thomas Cromwell to lay potential policies before him, but his experience was vast and he was able to manage quite satisfactorily on his own. He did not, however, like living on his own and although no one was now prepared to take the risk of introducing nubile damsels into his presence, he nevertheless kept an eye open for himself and, early in 1543, he became friendly with another Catherine, the 31-year-old Lady Latimer. Catherine came, like Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour before her, from a major gentry family with marginal links to the peerage. She was the oldest child of Sir Thomas Parr of Kendal in Westmorland, who had made his mark in the early days of Henry’s reign as a companion in arms but who had died young in 1517. His widow did not remarry and the details of Catherine’s upbringing are obscure. She was highly intelligent, but not notably well educated and it is probable that she stayed in her mother’s modest establishment until she married in 1529 at the age of about 17. Her mother, Maude, had retained links with the court and managed to secure for her a match with Edward Borough, the son and heir of Thomas, Lord Borough. This was a good match in every respect save one: Edward’s health was poor, and he died in 1532 leaving his widow childless and probably still a virgin. By that time Maude had also died but the family rallied round and in 1533

she had been married for a second time, to Lord Latimer of Snape in Yorkshire. John Neville was a man of about 40, with two grown children by his previous (two) marriages. Catherine was passably good looking and sexually frustrated but she made a good job of being Lady Latimer and ran her husband’s great Yorkshire household with fi rmness and competence. The Latimers survived the Pilgrimage of Grace with diffi culty and the experience seems to have ruined 134

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John Neville’s health. They moved to London in 1537 and Catherine was able to establish (or re-establish) a network of friendships at Court. This seems to have happened through the Seymours, who were riding high at that point. Through Jane she met the Lady Mary, about four years her junior. The Seymour position was not affected by the death of the Queen, and Catherine, whose husband was by this time an invalid, became emotionally involved with Thomas Seymour, Jane’s dashing and unscrupulous younger brother. Catherine was wise and discreet and no scandal attached to their friendship, but he was clearly on the look out for a rich widow, which he hoped she would shortly become. By January 1543 Lord Latimer was in a bad way, and it looked as though the couple’s wishes were about to be fulfi lled. And then Henry became interested.

Henry was no longer looking for excitement, sexual or otherwise. What he wanted was a calm and sensible companion – someone who could soothe his increasingly violent fi ts of bad temper, ease the pain of his various ailments and quietly do as she was bidden. About 16 February he sent her his fi rst recorded gift and message. On 2 March, Lord Latimer died. Left to her own devices, she would almost certainly have married Thomas Seymour. Several years later she wrote to him, ‘… as truly as God is God, my mind was fully bent, the other time I was at liberty, to marry you before any man I kno

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owever, the King took precedence, and daunting though it must have been, the prospect of becoming Queen was also attractive. By June 1543 Catherine’s presence in the Privy Chamber was suffi ciently conspicuous to attract comment, and on 12 July Henry married her in the Queen’s closet at Hampton Court and another gentry family had made it to the top.

Catherine was not a political animal except in one very important sense – she was an evangelical. Quite how this had come about is not clear, but Lady Latimer appears to have become interested in things intellectual after her return to London in 1537. Within two years the court was dividing along religious lines, into evangelicals and conservatives. At fi rst the latter appeared to be carrying all before them. Firstly the Act of Six Articles, then the fall of Thomas Cromwell and fi nally the King’s marriage to Catherine Howard appeared to give them an unassailable advantage. The latter, however, turned out to be a liability and the Howard ascendancy that she brought with her alienated many – including the Seymours. By 1543 the Earl of Hertford and his brother were fi rmly in Archbishop Cranmer’s camp and Catherine went with them. The evangelicals, however, were not Protestants and her friendship with Mary was not impeded; in fact it seems very likely that Mary coached her in her belated struggles with Latin and encouraged her to read the Bible. The Queen enjoyed having theological discussions with her much more learned husband, and was not short of opinions,