Who Was Jane Seymour? 

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Little is known about Henry VIII\'s third wife, who rose from a position as Anne Boleyn\'s maid of honour to become "the fairest of all the King\'s wives"

Kate Phillips plays Henry VIII\'s third wife in the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel\'s Wolf Hall 

Jane Seymour was born at Wulfhall in Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. The fact that 29 ladies rode in her funeral procession in 1537 – traditionally one for every year of life – suggests that she was born between October 1507 and October 1508, into a family of Wiltshire gentry. The daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth, she was a descendant of King Edward III of England, and therefore Henry VIII’s fifth cousin. Her father was knighted in the field by Henry VII for his services in the fight against Cornish rebels at Blackheath in 1497. Her mother Margery was of more illustrious stock than John: her first cousin Elizabeth Tylney was mother to Anne Boleyn, and Elizabeth’s brother Edmund Howard was the father of Henry’s fifth wife, Catherine Howard. Margery was considered a great beauty, and was the muse of the poet John Skelton, who described her as “benign, courteous and meek” in a poem composed in her honour.

Jane was one of ten children, of whom six survived. Her sister Elizabeth’s second marriage was to Gregory Cromwell, son of Henry’s chief minister, and the main subject of Hilary Mantel\'s novels, Thomas Cromwell. Her brother Edward reached the higher echelons of court and briefly ruled England on behalf of his young nephew; her brother Thomas eloped in 1547 with Catherine Parr, Henry’s widow, and is known for a prolonged flirtation with her stepdaughter, Elizabeth I. Both were executed for treason during the reign of Jane’s son, Edward VI. Mantel mentions rumours flying through court about the alleged affair between Edward’s first wife, Catherine Fillol, and his father John: there is no contemporary evidence for this, but some have speculated that an early proposed marriage between Jane and William Dormer was rejected by the Dormers because of the scandal.

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It is possible that Henry first noticed Jane, the queen\'s maid of honour, while staying at Wulfhall with Anne Boleyn in the summer of 1535; soon afterwards he began to court her, and their affair was noticed in November by the French ambassador. From 1536 Henry courted Jane openly, promoting her brothers at court and sending her expensive gifts (which, in some accounts, she prudently returned). Anne Boleyn – spoiler alert – was executed for high treason, incest and adultery in May 1536. Henry became engaged to Jane on 20 May, the day after Anne’s execution, and they married at the Palace of Whitehall on 30 May. During her pregnancy in 1537 she apparently craved sweets and quail, which the devoted Henry ordered for her from France. Edward was born at Hampton Court Palace on 12 October, 1537; on 24 October, Jane died, probably from puerperal sepsis, or “childbed fever”. She is the only one of Henry’s wives to receive a queen’s funeral and to be buried beside him in Windsor Castle. The king wore black until well into 1538 and waited over two years to remarry, the longest interval between any of his six marriages.

Some see Jane as having coquettishly manipulated the king into disposing of Anne; for others she was meek, chaste and quiet, and she was called by royal advisor John Russell "as gentle a lady as ever I knew". Jane Seymour’s motto as queen was "Bound to obey and serve", and she banned the extravagant entertainments and French fashions favoured by Anne Boleyn. Although not particularly well educated, she was a highly skilled embroiderer, and promoted peace at court, helping to reconcile Henry with his first child, Mary.

Kate Phillips, who plays Jane Seymour in BBC’s Wolf Hall, was accused by historians of being “too pretty” to play Henry VIII’s third wife, whom Hans Holbein painted with a large forehead and double chin. John Russell, however, called Jane "the fairest of all the King\'s wives".

In Wolf Hall Jane is a shadowy figure, a servant whom Henry knows as "the little girl who always cries". In Bring Up the Bodies she has become "a plain young woman with a silvery pallor, a habit of silence, and a trick of looking at men as if they represent an unpleasant surprise". Henry claims that "she has no guile in her", yet there are hints of her ambition and coming prominence, for example when Anne Boleyn finds a drawing of a headless queen in her bed, which had been made that night by Jane. While the second novel in Mantel’s series traces Henry’s growing desire to replace Anne Boleyn with Jane, the anticipated third volume, The Mirror and the Light, is expected to tell the story of this mysterious woman.

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