Friday 1 January 2021

Jane Seymour Part II

 Its  hard to get a picture of Jane’s personality.  There are no letters from Henry to her, and her reign as queen was very short.  She caused no scandals, and died when her child was a newborn..

She seem to have engaged willingly in a flirtation with Henry, which infuriated Anne Boleyn.

Anne was afraid that having lost her baby in January, Henry was angry with her for failing to provide a male heir.  Katherine had died in January so if he were to end his marriage to Anne, people would not say that he had to return to Katherine…

There are stories of Anne berating Jane for accepting a present from Henry of a locket.. but Henry is supposed to have told his angry wife that she should shut her eyes to his other relationships as Katherine had done.

Anne herself was behaving eccentrically in the months after her miscarriage… She flirted with the young men of her circle, encouraging them to declare their love for her…  which with her marriage to Henry under strain was playing with fire.

There was a convention of “courtly love” where young men professed admiration for the queen, but Anne was not a royal like Katherine had been and she did not seem to be able to keep the playing and flirting at a reasonable conventional level.  She encouraged it and then became frightened.  She found that young Mark Smeaton, one of her musicians, was also “sighing for love of her” and told him that she could not speak to him as she did to the other young men who were gentlemen…because he was of an inferior station. But her conduct did give a wrong impression.  

When Anne was arrested and charged with adultery, Jane may have believed that it was true and pursued her own romance with Henry…

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