Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII King of England and Lord of Ireland, died of puerperal fever after having given birth to the long-desired male heir. For two years Henry was an inconsolable widower, then married again three times.
Jane was born at Wolf Hall, Savernake, Wiltshire. The father is Sir John Seymour, descendant of Edward III Plantagenet (1312-77); the family is old and distinguished, the brothers Thomas and Edward will achieve high office before being both accused of high treason and beheaded during the brief reign of Edward VI, whose uncles they are through their mother.
Jane is a kind, mild-mannered girl. She barely knows how to write her own name: at home only the boys have a tutor. But when she enters court as a maid of honour of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, the good queen has her study together with her daughter Mary. But when in 1533 the sovereign falls in love with Anne Boleyn, exiles his wife from court and marries Anne, her brothers oblige her to pass to the service of the new queen.
It is in that role that the king begins to notice her: while Anne is lively and often quarrelsome, Jane is sweet and submissive. Henry falls in love with her, and to free himself of his second wife, contrives against her scandalous accusations, adultery and incest: the penalty is death.
The innocent Anne Boleyn ascends the scaffold on 19 May 1536. The sword that has decapitated her has not yet been wiped clean, her body with its severed head is still in a willow basket in the Tower chapel awaiting burial, when Henry travels to Wolf Hall and becomes engaged to Jane. On May 30 he marries her.
Once she has become queen – her motto is ‘bound to obey and serve’ – Jane seeks to improve Henry’s relationship with his daughters: indeed the king has disinherited Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, and declared Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, a bastard. She is successful: Mary returns to court, Elizabeth is confirmed as third in line of succession to the throne.
In February 1537 Jane is expecting a child. The sovereign is delighted, lavishes attention on her, orders that prayers be said for her in all the churches of the kingdom. Autumn approaches, the crows chase away the swallows, and at Hampton Court the mists start to rise from the river. The beautiful baby boy is born on 12 October: he has his father’s blue eyes and his mother’s blond hair. They name him Edward.
She is exhausted after three days’ labour. She begs to be allowed to rest.
The Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, informs the sovereign that there are new outbreaks of plague in the country. So only four hundred people, of the two thousand that would have the right, are invited to the baptism. The ceremony takes place at midnight in the spectacular royal chapel, with its azure ceiling adorned with gold stars. Next to the baby the little Elizabeth, her hand held by her sister Mary. Then the four hundred guests return to Jane’s rooms to take their leave.
On 15 October Jane has a serious haemorrhage, high fever, she no longer has the strength to speak. She dies on 24 October, at the hour when the rose-coloured bricks of Hampton Court begin to glow in the early sunlight. The little Edward sleeps peacefully in his cradle, while all the kingdom feasts him. She has not been able to hold him in her arms for more than a few moments.
Henry is devastated, grants her a magnificent funeral, all the nobility of England attend, twenty-nine ladies – one for each year of her age – dressed in black, with white shawls over their heads to show that Jane died in childbirth, follow the casket to St George’s Chapel, at Windsor. In the same chapel Henry too will be buried, together with the woman he describes as ‘his perfect spouse’. And perhaps she was: she gave him the son he so desired, and she left before he could get tired of her.
Legend has it that on the day of Jane Seymour’s demise, the pale figure of a young woman climbs the great staircase of Hampton Court and walks through the rooms that were hers.
Translated by Colin Sowden.