Dan Snow's History Hit - Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s Third Queen

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Jane Seymour is a paradox. Of Henry VIII’s six wives, she is the one about whom we know perhaps the least. She was the most lowly of the queens, but she had royal blood. She's often described as plain and mousy and lacking opinions, but when we do see her in the sources, she tends to be doing something that shows agency, while wearing some very flashy clothes indeed. So what can we make of Jane Seymour?In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Elizabeth Norton, author of a 2009 book about Jane Seymour and a forthcoming scholarly biography.This episode was produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code DANSNOW - sign up at https://historyhit.com/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you - what do you want to hear an episode on? You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi folks, welcome to Dan's Social History. It's that lovely time of the week when we dip our toe into what's going on in our sibling podcast, this galaxy of podcasts that we've created over here at History. Today we're going over to not just the Tudors. This episode's done very well on their feed, so I thought I'd share it here. Of all Henry VIII's wives, Jane Seymour is perhaps the one we remember the least. She is eclipsed by some of the more box office wives of Henry VIII that we have heard so much about. So what should we make of her? Well, in this episode, Professor Susanna Lipscomb

and biographer Dr. Elizabeth Norton unfurl the mystery of Jane Seymour, the forgotten Tudor queen. And if you want more on these stories, on these Tudor queens and their rich lives, both within the royal court and outside their marriage, Susie has got a series on all six starting on May 22nd, running through June. Enjoy. the Royal Court and outside their marriage, Susie has got a series on all six, starting

on May 22nd, running through June. Enjoy. Queen Jane lay in labour for six days or more Till the women grew weedy and the midwives gave o'er They sent for King Henry to come with great speed To come with great speed To be with Queen Jane and her hour of need Henry VIII's third queen is a paradox. She's the one about whom we know perhaps the least, and yet she's almost painted the most She was the most lowly of the queens

but she had royal blood and she's often described as plain and mousy and lacking opinions but when we do see her in the sources she tends to be doing something that shows agency while wearing some very flashy clothes indeed So what can we make of Jane Seymour, queen for 18 months, sister to a lord protector, wife and mother to a king, who was Queen Jane?

Joining me to talk about her is Dr Elizabeth Norton. Dr Norton has written biographies of Margaret Beauford and four of Henry VIII's wives, plus the critically acclaimed The Lives of Tudor Women and The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor. Although she published a biography of Jane in 2009, Dr Norton is now working on a new scholarly biography for Routledge, so we get to benefit from her latest research. Dr Norton, welcome back to Not Just the Tudors. Hello, thank you. It's a real pleasure to be back. I think that one of the things that's happened to Jane is that people have conflated a paucity of evidence with a paucity of character.

And because we don't have that much about her, and particularly because we don't have so many letters from Eustace Shapwee, who's the ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire, from Eustace Chapuis, who's the ambassador from the Holy Roman Empire, we end up with this perspective on Jane and her reign that is missing so much detail, but also changes how we see her as a person. It's a bit like not having the responses to Henry VIII's love letters from Anne Boleyn. And I actually went to Vienna last year to read Chapuis' letters. And part of it was that I wanted to see for myself if there were any extras because they tail off during jane's reign so i want to ask you about the nature of the sources that we have and the extent to which you think the existing material has shaped perspectives on jane yeah absolutely jane is the blank in the six wives if you like shapui's dispatches stop very soon

after she becomes queen and it's such a shame because of course it's through him we get all the gossipy detail about amberlynn by the point they've tailed off with Jane he's already speculated that she can't possibly still be a virgin and been very rude about her appearance so I think there would have been quite a lot in those missing dispatches if only we had them she also hasn't been served very well with preservation in the English National Archives. A lot of the sources that probably would have existed for her period as queen also don't survive. And she's the lowest born of the six wives by quite a large margin, which also means, of course, we don't have many sources for her early life. The Seymour family don't have much of a surviving archive. There's some at Longleat. But in general, it's not as thick as you would expect for other families. She is very poorly served for the sources. There are some out there, but you have

to pick three of them. I think absolutely it affects how we see her because she is very much treated as this figure that we can't really see. She's seen as a bit boring, a bit plain, if you like, plain Jane. And I think that comes down to the fact that we can't see the vivid detail of her life. We can see where she is, but we can't see what she's thinking. We never see inside Jane's head. Even surviving letters are very official. And we don't have any personal correspondence. So I get from what you've just said that working on Jane involves reconstruction and guesswork and joining the dots. Absolutely. And I think also what I'm trying to do with Jane at the moment is also to try and pare it back and strip away the myth,

because I think that's quite important with Jane, because there is a surprising amount of myth. And I think it's been previous attempts to fill in the dots, perhaps not as well as people could have done, or to try and flesh her out more. But we do have to really scratch around. And there are huge areas of her life where actually, we can't say something really. And I think in many respects, it's better to say

that than to try and make it up if you like. But there are many areas of her life where we can say quite a bit from the sources. So first things first, and here we go with the series of questions that we shall have to consider whether we have the sources for. Do we know when Jane was born? No. She really only appears vividly not long before she dies. In fact, we can guess roughly when she's born. Her parents marry at the end of the 15th century. Her eldest brother's born in around 1500, her eldest surviving brother. There are 10 children in the family. She's probably the second daughter of three, but we don't know where she comes in around the sons. At best guess, she's probably born in around 1508, something like that. Chapuis says she's past 25 when she marries the king, but that's as close

as we can get. What about the thing that is often said about her, the number of women in her funeral procession indicating her age? Yes, it's an interesting number. 29 is a bit of an unusual number. You wouldn't necessarily, why not have 30? It's a possibility. She might well be 29. But again, I think it's one of those things with Jane where actually it's up in the air. She's probably in her late 20s when she dies. Tell me about Jane's parentage and upbringing. What do we know? Tell me about Jane's parentage and upbringing. What do we know? Jane is the daughter of Sir John Seymour and Marjorie Wentworth.

Marjorie is of higher social status than John. She is the daughter of Henry Wentworth. They're quite well connected. In fact, she's a niece of Anne Boleyn's grandmother, in fact, the Countess of Surrey. So actually, Jane and Anne are quite closely related. And of course, also Catherine Howard. So Marjorie, to some extent, marries a little bit down. The Seymours are a good county family. They come from Wiltshire. They serve as members of parliament. They serve as sheriff on occasion. They're justices of the peace, but they're not particularly high profile. The Seymours have really arrived in the 15th century. They inherit Wolf Hall, their main manor through a female relative. So they are gentry, but not in

the same way that Anne Boleyn is gentry, for example. So they're lower down the social scale, they don't have a huge amount of contact with court. So John Seymour does come to court on occasion, he seems to have been quite a good soldier, which brings him to Henry VIII's and also Henry VII's attention. But they're not a particularly wealthy family. Again, we don't have anything specific on Jane's childhood or upbringing. We can assume that she was born at Wolf Hall because that's where the family seemed to be living. She seems to have been educated to some extent. She owns books as queen. We also have her signature which shows quite a neat hand which suggests that she can write and

that she can also read. We know she can speak some French because she's able to speak to Chapuis and other ambassadors at court. Whether she's fluent or not, we don't know. But she's certainly received some level of education. Quite often it's implied that she's very poorly educated, the least intellectual of Henry's queens. But actually, we don't necessarily know that. She does own a number of books at the time of her death, although we've only got the titles for a few. And of course, actually, her level of intellect and her level of education may not have been concomitant. But I suppose it might be fair to say, well, tell me, is it fair to say that in the litany of Henry's queens, she is comparatively lowly and comparatively unlearned? Yeah, she's definitely the lowliest. I mean, she's probably until Kate Middleton, the current Princess of Wales, becomes Queen. Jane Seymour is

the lowest born acknowledged British Queen. And I think that's not really controversial. The fact that she got anywhere near the throne is quite surprising. So yes, she's definitely the lowliest. She doesn't have the aristocratic background that the other queens of Henry VIII have. And she's certainly not as well educated as Anne Boleyn, as far as we can tell. She might well outstrip Catherine Howard, possibly, in education, but it's simply they're a generation before it becomes fashionable to educate girls. So she is competent enough, but I would highly doubt that she's had any kind of humanist education. Her brothers, Edward and Thomas, become notable, obviously in their own

right, and her sister Elizabeth. You said we don't know exactly about the order of the births. Do we know anything about the relationships between the siblings? Yeah, so again, we can extrapolate a bit. Surprisingly, actually, the brother James closest to, at least from my reading, is Henry, who is the middle brother, who is the brother that stays in Wiltshire. He comes to court a little bit and then goes home and lives a long and presumably happy life. He is the one that Jane very much promotes when she's Queen. He is appointed to quite a lot of manorial offices in the Queen's lands. Also, when she dies, when some of her jewellery is distributed, he receives most of the Seymours. Thomas also receives some of Jane's jewellery and seems to be quite connected with her. Edward not so much when she's queen. He does crop up in some of the records

surrounding her. I think the age gap is probably quite large between Edward and Jane. He's certainly the eldest surviving son, most likely the eldest surviving child, whereas she's much more in the middle. So he may well have left home before she's really old enough to form a relationship with him. But certainly Henry and Thomas she's close to. Her sisters, there's not really any evidence of closeness actually to her sister Elizabeth or her sister Dorothy, which is quite surprising. Elizabeth, of course, appeals to Thomas Cromwell and then later marries Cromwell's son Gregory. But actually, there's no evidence that I've come across of interaction between the two sisters,

which is somewhat surprising. It's possible there's a bit of an age gap. I would expect the sisters to be quite close in age based on facts of their life and when they marry and when they leave home, but it's possible that they're not as close as we would think they would be. I want to ask you about why you think

we don't have things like letters between her and her sister. Perhaps it's because they're in each other's company, not enough to need to write to each other. But given that Jane is the mother of a king, one would expect that subsequent historians and archivists would have been very keen to hold on to any material that did exist. Yeah, absolutely. You would think that it would survive. We only have three original surviving letters of Jane. And the third one, there are lots of versions of it because it's a birth announcement for Edward VI. But actually, her letters are very mundane. One is recommending someone to Thomas Cromwell to promote and the other one is asking for some deer to be sent to

the Boys of the King's Choir. So pretty dull stuff, really. So as far as we know, there are no surviving personal letters from Jane and certainly none to her sister, which is quite surprising because Elizabeth, her sister, has quite a few surviving letters, which suggests that if they had existed, they might have survived. But again, we can't really say. And as I understand it, she entered Catherine's service. Tell us about the evidence of this. So again this is one of those areas with Jane where we don't have much

to go on. Jane is almost certainly in Catherine of Aragon's household and we know this because of Risley's Chronicle. Risley's Chronicle is pretty much a contemporary source. It's a very good source. Charles Risley the writer has, has very solid court connections. So I would assume that it's true. And he simply says as an aside, she served Queen Catherine. So I think we can believe it. It would make sense. We know from other references to Jane, she's been a long time at court. We don't know when she started. We don't know when she left. She doesn't seem to have made any lasting impression. And it would account for the fact that she is very fond of Princess Mary. And that's one area where we really can see Jane quite vividly. She is clearly very fond of Catherine of Aragon's daughter, Mary, and seeks to promote her. And not just seeks to promote her, also seeks to mother her to some

extent, which I think is quite an important aspect. My guess would be that she perhaps wasn't with Catherine for very long. Catherine's household is obviously being denuded. People are leaving, people are being sacked. She obviously can't have been too active in support of Catherine because she finds a place with Anne Boleyn, presumably quite easily. Now, she fully emerges in the sources in April 1536. And as you say, we've got a bit of evidence before that, that she's in Anne's household, which explains in part why Henry notices her. Let's talk about the incident that is recorded by Chapuis though. Can you retell it for a start, the incident that brings her into the limelight and then what you make of it? Yes, Jane is definitely in Anne Boleyn's household. She probably gets there through the family connection. Her mother is a cousin of Anne's

mother, and that probably is what brings her to court. But she doesn't seem to have been the most loyal of cousins. There are a few kind of recordings and some not such good sources. But the best one is Chapuis, where he says that the king sends a letter and a purse of gold to Jane. And when she sees a messenger with them, she refuses to take them and she throws herself on her knees. And she says, I'm not going to take these. I'm an honourable woman. I'm good parentage. And she basically says, I will accept a gift from the king on the day of my marriage. But until then, I cannot take this. And it's clearly quite a rehearsed, quite a practiced scene. Obviously, we don't know the contents of the letter. There is a suggestion that it's Henry asking her to be his mistress. And earlier evidence suggests that might well be the case.

There's an account of Anne Boleyn finding Jane on Henry's lap, for example. There's another later account of Anne snatching Henry's portrait, a miniature from around Jane's neck. Clearly, they're in some kind of relationship. And clearly, they haven't slept together because Henry is absolutely smitten by Jane's response. He declares that she's this pure woman and that to show how honourable his intentions towards her are, he won't see her alone. So she will have a chaperone. So he actually moves her brother, Edward, and his wife into apartments, which are actually connected to his by a secret staircase. Thomas Cromwell actually moves out so that Edward Seymour can move in,

which means that Henry can meet with Jane, but he can show that his intentions are honourable, that he's not planning to make her his mistress. And of course, if he's not planning to make her his mistress, the implication is he's considering making her his wife. Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? It's all by inference because presumably, as I understand, we don't have any evidence before Anne is in the tower

that Henry is planning to make Jane his wife, except what we can infer. It's striking, isn't it, that Henry is once again obsessed with the idea of virginity and of this kind of modest display. We're very familiar with the way in which men seem to find that attractive, but Henry certainly does. The other thing I wanted to ask you about this is that some historians in the past have written that Jane's performance is on the basis of having been coached. Again, without any evidence. What do you make of that?

It's very commonly suggested that she's coached. She clearly has a party. Edward Seymour would very much like his sister to be queen. Undoubtedly, Puy is brought into, to some extent, the conspiracy with Princess Mary. So he says Princess Mary would support a new wife. Thomas Cromwell seems to be supporting the Seymours. We can see this in moving apartments, but also in conversations he has with Chapuis. So there's clearly a party around Jane. Chapuis suggests that she's being schooled in what to say to Henry.

So to some extent, she probably is. But I think it denies her agency to suggest that she's really just a cipher. And I do have an issue with that because I think actually there's no evidence at all that she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't desire it because she clearly does enjoy being queen. And we can see that in things that happen later in her life. She likes the fine clothes. But she also likes some of the other aspects of being queen.

We can see that in the sources. So I think it denies her agency to say that she's being solely coached. She almost certainly is being advised. But I think it goes too far to say she's being coached. I think she knows the story of Anne Boleyn, how Anne Boleyn became queen. And to some extent, she's emulating that she's holding out for marriage. But she's also created her own persona. This is a woman that will choose bound to obey and serve as her motto. She's clearly created how she wants Henry to perceive her. And I mean, he falls for it absolutely, you know, buys into this with Jane. I just don't see how a woman can be as successful as she is without really having any,

her own sort of personal input. And I think really we should credit Jane with the fact that she's able to persuade Henry to marry her. That's very well said, because you can't imagine anyone saying the same of Anne Boleyn. She was being told how to act. And it really does make Jane, in that previous telling, into a puppet. And doesn't, as you say, accord her agency. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga.

And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder.

Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Can I ask what you think is going on from Henry's perspective? We've talked about the modesty issue, but do you think it's a rebound relationship? So it's interesting with Henry because he's clearly not committed to ending the Boleyn marriage, really until not long before Anne's fall.

He's able to get Chapuis to finally recognise her as queen that Easter. It's by no means a certainty that he will end his marriage to Anne that April. So I think to some extent, he's keeping his options open. I think he's seeing how it plays out with Jane. It is a bit reboundy. It's often suggested that Henry ricochets around. He goes for glamorous Anne Boleyn, and then he goes for homely Jane Seymour. And I think that's quite unfair. I think Jane, again, suffers quite a lot from comparison with Anne Boleyn. And they're often treated as a dichotomy, if you like. Anne Boleyn is this, so Jane Seymour must be this. And I think they're a lot more similar in a lot of aspects. And I think we've necessarily given

credit for. So it is a little reboundy. Henry is interested in Jane. She's this virgin. She's very pure. She's very modest. But Anne Boleyn, of course, presents herself as a virgin before her marriage to Henry VIII as well. As you say, Henry does have a thing about virginity. So I think he is interested in Jane. He's clearly attracted to her because he wouldn't have married her if he wasn't attracted to her. It's his own free choice. I think the persona of being this virgin figure, obedient, quiet, I think that does appeal to him. So it is to some level, a rebound relationship. But I think in general, he really gets to know Jane in that period in March, April, early May. And that's really what makes the decision for him that he's going to marry her because he doesn't have to marry her. He can still behead Anne Boleyn if

he wants and then marry somebody else. And I think this is another area where Jane's reputation very much suffers because of course, she becomes betrothed to Henry the day after Anne's execution. It's very much like in Hamlet with the funeral bait meets it coldly furnished forth the marriage table. It doesn't look good. What I would say is even Anne didn't realise she was going to be beheaded. In the tower she says they'll send me to a nunnery. To actually behead your wife is really unusual. Anne's enemies in Europe are quite shockednery. To actually behead your wife is really unusual. Anne's enemies in Europe are quite shocked by it. Even Eustace Chapuis is shocked by Anne's beheading. I think it's really unlikely that Jane would have realised that Henry would behead Anne. And really, it's not something she desired, because it sets a precedent. Because if he can

behead Anne Boleyn, of course, he can behead Jane Seymour if he wants to. So I think it's unfair to charge her with Anne Boleyn's death. That comes from Henry. He certainly didn't have to execute Anne to get rid of her because most people had doubts about the validity of that marriage anyway. So I think she was probably in a state of fear. And we can see that an occasion while she's Queen, she's talked about as a woman who isn't very secure. Her coronation keeps being postponed, and it's postponed because of plague. But there is an implication that perhaps she is disposable in a way that Anne Boleyn was also disposable. So I think we can extrapolate that Jane's reaction is probably not one of great joy that Anne Boleyn is executing. Actually, it does set a very dangerous

precedent for her. And we see that with Catherine Howard, of course. I'm reminded of Richard Burton, who of course played Henry VIII once saying, divorce is like killing after the first time, it's easier. And I suppose you're absolutely right in terms of this sense of precedent being set. And of course, you're right to point to the fact that Henry could have just said, hold on a second, it was all done in the wrong order. I married Anne before my marriage to Catherine was annulled. An argument could be made to challenge the legitimacy of that marriage. So he does annul his marriage to Anne Boleyn, he just then also beheads her. There's no legal justification for beheading Anne Boleyn. He doesn't want another ex-wife hanging around. He doesn't want any questions over the legitimacy of this new marriage. Because of course, once the ambulance said he hasn't got

any living ex-wives, it's quite neat, but there's no legal reason to do it. Let's have a thinker then about Jane as Queen. What evidence do we have of her behaviour as a head of a household as Queen? And also, what can we make of her character and allegiances as demonstrated by her actions? We've got more to go on when Jane becomes queen. This is suddenly where she becomes somewhat visible. She takes control of the queen's lands. I mean, she becomes one of the wealthiest landowners in England at a stroke when she sees the queen's lands. And actually, there is evidence of her taking quite a strong interest in those. We can also see her taking over the running of her household. She appears quite often in the Lyle letters, and she does seem to be quite a strict mistress. There's a suggestion

that she orders one of her new maids to get rid of all her French hoods and wear English gable hoods because they're less becoming. I think it goes too far to suggest that Jane bans the French hood, which is obviously much sexier than the gable hood. The French hood is where you can see the hair. It's when you see portraits of Anne Boleyn, she's normally wearing the French hood, whereas Jane is wearing the gable hood that looks like the roof of a house. Jane did own a French hood. She probably wore them on occasion, but she does seem to have tried to present this air of modesty in her household, which is quite sensible because, of course, Henry has drawn his previous two wives from his wife's households. So perhaps not displaying the maids as particularly attractive isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So it's less about her own prudery and more about a sense of caution, perhaps? Yeah, absolutely. And we know that she dresses very richly. Surviving evidence of jewellery and of her dresses show that she really does enjoy the finer things of being queen. She's got red velvet, she's got furs, she's got a huge amount of jewellery. She clearly dresses to impress. So I think it's really unlikely that she's trying to appear as this dowdy little woman. I think actually she looks good when she's at court, but she doesn't necessarily want other people to look as good as her. Other aspects of her as queen, she takes on the role of stepmother. We can see her interacting with Elizabeth to some extent.

She's obviously Anne Boleyn's daughter. She's still a toddler. She's not even three. But Jane does seem to have bought her some clothes on occasion. After Jane's death, some gifts of Jane's property are given to Elizabeth, which suggests that's something that Jane would have wanted. Elizabeth also visits court on occasions. She does have a relationship with Elizabeth. It probably is somewhat difficult given what's happened to Elizabeth's mother. But again, that's extrapolating, if you like. With Mary, we're on much firmer ground. And Jane is clearly very fond of Mary, said in fact that she'd already spoken out for Mary before she's married Henry about reinstating her in the succession, bringing her back to court. Jane is absolutely instrumental in Mary being brought back. Henry probably would have brought Mary back anyway. He likes to keep his options open. And we

can see in marriage alliances, which is still going on after she's been declared illegitimate, that he is keeping his options open about whether or not Mary is one of the heirs to the throne, even though she's legally illegitimate. But I think Jane helps to smooth the process. She provides a human face, whereas Henry still insists that Mary recognises her illegitimacy. At the same time, Mary's getting letters and presents from Jane saying, come to court, spend time with me. And they clearly do have a very affectionate relationship. We know they play cards together, for example, and Mary is Jane's chief mourner when she dies

and that's the role that you would give to the closest relative of the same sex. Jane has a mother, she has sisters, so the fact that it's Mary, I think, demonstrates just how close the relationship was and it's also Mary who pays off members of Jane's household, who gives the charitable alms at Jane's funeral as well. So I think the two are very close.

And there's a sense also that Jane is more opinionated than the popular image of her suggests, isn't there? This is an area where, because we don't have Chapuis dispatches, I think we've got some real blanks. But the evidence suggests that Jane is quite opinionated. It was claimed that she actually spoke out for the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace, where she actually threw herself on her knees before Henry and said, do you think this might be God's judgment for you ruining so many churches? And that's very outspoken and going against what the king himself is thinking. So that's quite interesting.

There's talk of her being regent. The second act of succession that's passed actually gives provision for her to be regent should Henry die while their child is still a minor. Also, when Henry is considering going against the rebels himself in the Pilgrimage of Grace, he's going to leave Jane in charge of the council at Windsor, which again suggests that she does have some level of political input. What we can see of Jane, she is quite politically active to some extent. She also is involved in some of the nunneries and religious houses during the dissolution of the monastery. One particularly is Catesby Nunnery, which she seems to have spoken out for to try to save the house.

And she's not the only one, in fact. Cromwell's commissioners actually tried to save Catesby. Surprisingly, it's obviously quite a popular house, but it does show Jane taking the initiative and acting by herself. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings.

Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Given that we know comparatively little about what's going on inside her head, we have a comparatively great number of paintings of the outside of it. And of course, it's dangerous to attempt to read character into 16th century portraits. But what do you think we can learn from them?

The best portrait of Jane, and the one on which many are based, is the Holbein, which is in Vienna, which of course shows Jane wearing her gable hood. She's wearing rich red fabrics, lots of jewels. To modernize, she doesn't look particularly attractive in that portrait. And that often gets pointed out. She's got a double chin. She looks quite severe. The clothes, to some extent, overwhelm her. We see the clothes, we see the headdress. We don't necessarily see Jane at first. It's clearly a very human likeness. It's a Holbein, which is obviously better than anything that survives for Anne Boleyn, for example. So I think we can see something of the real Jane. The reason that she's survived so well with portraits

in a way that Catherine Howard, for example, we don't have a confirmed likeness. With Jane, of course, she remains important to the Tudor dynasty. So it is Jane who appears in the family of Henry VIII, which is painted in the 1540s is Jane who appears in the family of Henry VIII, which is painted in the 1540s. And she appears in the Whitehall mural, which doesn't survive, but there are many copies. And that's because she becomes effectively a founding member of the Tudor dynasty. We have Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, and then we have Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. She remains important until Edward's death, the death of her son in 1553, and then her importance just vanishes. But until that point, she is considered a very significant

figure in the dynasty. And that's why we have so many portraits. And so many of them posthumous, as you say. Well, as you've mentioned, of course, in 1537, when we do not have that much evidence about her, we do know that she becomes pregnant. Do you have any sense of when she would have first known or how the pregnancy was before we get to how it ended? Yes, she actually takes quite a while to become pregnant. She gets married at the end of May 1536, just in June. And then she's not pregnant until around the end of January, start of February, she gives birth in October. So she probably was somewhat worried. And there are rumours that her coronation was being postponed until Henry could determine whether or not she could bear him a child.

She probably starts to realise she's pregnant around Easter in 1537. And I think her abiding emotion would have been relief that she's finally pregnant. We know that Henry has had some problems. Obviously, he admits to impotency in the Anne of Cleves marriage. There are rumours dating back to his marriage to Anne Boleyn that he's perhaps having trouble in the marriage bed. So the problem probably lies with him. But of course, in the 16th century, it would always be blamed on the woman. So she realises she's pregnant and suddenly Henry can't do enough for her. So he's sending to France to Calais for quails, which he seems to have desired to eat in her pregnancy. Princess Mary also buys her quails and also a cucumber during her pregnancy.

There's celebrations when the baby quickens, when she feels the baby move. And also Henry's very solicitous. So actually he says he's not going to travel too far from her in case she hears some rumour that might upset her. That's an interesting one, because it suggests that he did believe that it would have been hearing about the news of his fall that had upset Anne Boleyn into miscarriage in January 1536. Yeah, I agree. I think it probably does. I think there's probably not a particular reason to doubt that being at least identified as the cause of the miscarriage. And it might well be the case in that it would have been a big shock to Anne Boleyn to hear that Henry has been injured because she's going to have to try and keep hold of the throne for her unborn child or for Princess

Elizabeth, which would have been quite difficult to do, I think. Henry is certainly concerned that Jane will miscarry. She's concerned as well, in fact, and we can see this as plague in London towards the end of her pregnancy. And actually one of Cromwell's servants notes to Cromwell saying that actually Jane seemed very frightened when there's talk of plague and Henry's quite relaxed about it, which is somewhat surprising for Henry because he doesn't like disease. But actually, really, it's Jane who is really frightened by the fact that there seems to be plague coming closer to the court. And actually, it's agreed that she'll be somewhat cloistered away, people won't be able to come into contact with her too much. So she's clearly very worried about the outcome of her pregnancy.

Understandably so, because the entire focus of the country is on this baby. And Henry didn't give Anne Boleyn that many chances to bear him a son, probably three pregnancies, which isn't that many chances in the 16th century. And Jane is lucky insofar as she gives birth to a son, but not lucky in the nature of that birth or indeed the outcome for her. Talk us through it. Yes. So Jane goes into labour on the 10th of October, and it's clearly a very difficult labour. It takes two days. In fact, they have processions through London to pray for her safe delivery. So there's clearly concern.

On the 12th of October, she gives birth to a son, Edward VI, and the country erupts into celebration. And I mean, she must have been exhausted. She's been in labour for two days, but she seems to be okay. The baptism is on the 15th of October, and she's well enough to attend some of the ceremonies. So she appears lying on a kind of daybed, wrapped in furs, and you wouldn't expect the mother to attend the christening anyway. So actually, there's nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that she's able to attend. She's clearly considered to be well enough. However, she then falls sick very quickly,

and she clearly has a fever. She lasts quite a long time for childbed fever, but she does quite well. And there are a few reports that suggest perhaps she is going to recover, but it really becomes quite clear quickly that she's not. And she dies on the 24th of October, 1537, so 12 days after the birth of her son. Obviously, we know that she's died from complications from childbirth. It's most likely straightforward childbirth fever. She has a midwife. She will also have doctors involved. They don't wash their hands. Nobody understands about hygiene in the period. So it's very common to contract an infection after childbirth, particularly after a difficult labour. They've got no antibiotics. There's nothing they can do

about it. You just have to simply see whether they get better or not. Yes, that is one of the horrifying things about the past. It's why when people say to me, what period of history would you like to live in? I always say now. Yes. Beth, what is it that attracts you particularly to Jane? Is it that sense of mystery? Why is it of the six queens, she is the one who compels your attention? I think it's a mixture. And partly, I feel slightly drawn to the underdog. And to some extent, she's not the underdog. If you ask Henry VIII, who the most successful of his queens were,

absolutely, it's Jane. And yet, actually, she is the underdog. I did one of those things at Southwark Cathedral recently, where you do talks and people vote on the most successful of the wives. And Jane Seymour got six votes. There were probably about 300 people there. So she's not very popular. And I think a lot of that is to do with the fact that Anne Boleyn is so popular. And again, we have this dichotomy that if Anne Boleyn is your favourite queen, then Jane Seymour must be your least favourite queen. And I think that's very unfair. I think I don't really like pitting the queens against each other anyway, because I think they're all individuals.

They all have different circumstances. And I don't think it's very helpful necessarily to compare them. But I think Jane does tend to get a rough deal. And it's also the mystery, as you say, you can go to an archive and you can sit there for days and not find anything. And then you can just find something that's interesting that hasn't been necessarily found before with Jane. So I think that's really interesting. And I also think she suffers a lot from quite a lot of myths about her,

which I'm trying to unpick. Hopefully I will. Well, I'm sure you will. And we'll look forward to the fruits of that research. I'm chuckling to myself at thinking about how you must respond to Six, the musical, if you don't want to hear the wives compared to each other. Maybe we'll have to go to that someday so I can see your visceral reaction. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. And especially about this, this would be your specialist subject, I think, on Mastermind, wouldn't it? So thank you for coming on. Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure. And thanks to you for listening to not Just the Tudors from History Hit.

And also to my researcher, Alice Smith, and my producer, Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, so do drop us a line at notjustthetudors at historyhit.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at Not Just Tudors. And please remember to follow Not Just the Tudors wherever you get your podcasts, so you get each new episode as soon as it's released. you