Part 8 (1/2)

On 26 September 1534, Pope Clement died, and three weeks later the College of Cardinals elected his successor, Paul III. The new pontiff was infinitely more resolute than his predecessor, and one of his first acts was to threaten to put into effect the sentenceofexcommunication on Henry VIII drawn up by Clement but never published. Though Henry ignored this, there still remained the ever- present threat that Paul would publish his Bull and incite the Emperor to war: Henry, as an excommunicate ruler standing alone, could not expect aid from the other Christian princes of Europe.

274 The King tired of his unnamed mistress by the end of October 1534, although Anne knew by now that there were sure to be others. There are hints in contemporary letters that Henry kept several young girls for his pleasure at Farnham Castle, and Norfolk, who knew Henry well, told Chapuys that his master had always been 'continually inclined to amours'. A man called William Webbe was out on his horse near Eltham Palace one day, with his pretty sweetheart riding pillion, when he chanced to encounter his sovereign on the road. The King pulled the girl from the horse and kissed her in front of the aghast Webbe, then took her straight back to the palace with him. Such encounters were purely s.e.xual and did not last, yet there was a strong anti-Boleyn faction at court that would dearly have loved to see Anne displaced, and who did their best to encourage any amorous intrigues of the King.

Anne was now ageing visibly. The portrait of her painted at around this time shows she had already lost her looks. Her once vivacious eyes now regard the world with suspicion, her smiling lips are pinched tight shut, and her cheeks are beginning to sag. The frustration, sadness and stress she had suffered had left their marks on her face, and Henry's desire for her had cooled, leaving him susceptible to the charms of younger women. Anne had bitterly resented Henry's last affair, and had conspired with her sister-in-law Lady Rochford to have the girl removed from court, but the King found out and banished Lady Rochford instead. When Chabot de Brion, the Admiral of France, came to England on a state visit in November 1534, the King made a point of inviting a number of beautiful ladies to court to take part in the festivities. 'He is more given to matters of dancing and ladies than he ever was,' observed Chapuys hopefully. A great banquet was given in the Admiral's honour. The Queen was present; she had for some time been trying to bring about a marriage between the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Angouleme, third son of Francis I. If the French were to agree to it, then Anne would have manoeuvred Francis I into recognising her as Queen - which, to her chagrin, he had never done - and her daughter as lawfully born.

Chapuys records that at the banquet, the Admiral sat talking to the Queen while they watched the dancing. Then the King arrived and told Anne he would fetch the Admiral's secretary and present him to 275her. Moments after his departure, de Brion realised that Anne was no longer taking part in their conversation: she was glancing about the hall furtively. Then, to his consternation, she suddenly burst out laughing. The Admiral, ever conscious of his dignity, asked if she were amusing herself at his expense, but she shook her head, still laughing, although tears were in her eyes as she pointed across to where the King was standing. 'He went to fetch your secretary,' she said, 'but he met a lady, who made him forget the matter!' And she laughed again, but without mirth.

Christmas 1534 was not a happy one. Anne's favourite dog Little Purkoy (from the French wordpourquoi,presumably because of his enquiring expression), a gift from Lady Lisle, died. A great dog lover, the Queen had 'set much store' by him, and no one dared tell her the sad news until, in the end, the King broke it to her. Yet he was feeling less than sympathetic towards her at the time. She had quarrelled again with Norfolk, exercising her peculiar talent for alienating her supporters; Norfolk told the King she had used words to him that should not have been used to a dog; he, however, had retaliated by calling her 'a great wh.o.r.e'. Once upon a time, Anne might have expected Henry to avenge such a gross insult, but not any more. Henry's view was that she had provoked Norfolk beyond endurance, and he sympathised with the Duke.

Chabot de Brion's secretary, Palmedes Gontier, met Anne at a court banquet on 2 February 1535, and recorded his impressions in a letter to his master sent three days later. He perceived that all was not well. She seemed extremely apprehensive. Three days later he saw her again, and noted how her face fell when she saw that there was no reference in the letters he brought from the Admiral (who had returned to France) to her daughter's proposed betrothal. When the King was out of earshot, she complained to Gontier of the long delay in receiving word on this matter, saying it had 'caused and engendered in the King her spouse many strange thoughts, of which there was great need that a remedy should be thought of. She could only conclude that King Francis intended her to be 'maddened and lost, for she found herself quite near to that, and more in pain and trouble than she had been since her espousals'. She dared not speak as openly as she would have liked, she went on, 'for fear of where she was and of the eyes that were watching her countenance'. She told 276 Gontier 'she could not write, could not see me, and could no longer talk with me.' She then left with the King, leaving Gontier to conclude that she was 'not at her ease' and that she had 'doubts and suspicions' of her husband.

It seems Henry had finally realised that marrying Anne had been a mistake. No longer did he see her through a lover's eyes: after two years of marriage, he was well able to regard her objectively, and could see little to impress him. Her arrogance, vanity and hauteur all proclaimed her inadequacy as a queen, and her public displays of emotion and temper were embarra.s.sing. She had succeeded in making enemies of those who might have been her friends, and had displayed an unbecoming eagerness to wreak vengeance upon her enemies. She had probably lied about her virginity, and - worst of all - she had failed as yet to produce a son. Not only did Henry regret having married her, he had also brutally acquainted her with the fact. Yet, given any sign that he was contemplating her removal, the imperialists would be urging him to take Katherine back, something he could never contemplate. For the time being, therefore, Anne must remain; she might yet give him an heir. A son would still solve all her problems, as she well knew, but she told Henry early in 1535 that G.o.d had revealed to her in a dream that it would be impossible for her to conceive a child while Katherine and Mary lived. They were rebels and traitresses, she said, and deserved death. Henry failed to rise to her bait, another sign that her power was diminis.h.i.+ng.

In February 1535, Mary fell gravely ill, and there were fears she might die. Even the King was alarmed, although he refused to heed his physicians' advice, and Chapuys's pleas, that she should go to her mother for whom she was pining. Katherine, in desperation, wrote to Cromwell, begging him to urge the King to let her nurse Mary herself at Kimbolton: 'A little comfort and mirth with me would be a half health to her.' She would 'care for her with my own hands and put her in my own bed and watch with her when needful'.

In March, Mary's condition worsened, and Katherine's anguish deepened, for she knew her own sickness to be mortal, and once again she begged Henry to let her see Mary. Yet still he refused. 'The Lady Katherine,' he told Chapuys, 'is a proud stubborn woman of very high courage. She could easily take the field, muster a great army, and wage against me a war as fierce as any her mother Isabella 277 ever waged in Spain.' His remarks are proof that he knew very little about Katherine's illness. Fortunately, Mary recovered, and by April she was well enough to rejoin Elizabeth's household which was then at Eltham.

In February 1535, the King found a new mistress, thanks to his wife, who had now come to terms with the inevitable and reasoned that, if Henry had to have an affair, it should be with someone sympathetic to her, and not a member of the imperialist faction. She had therefore deliberately selected her cousin and lady-in-waiting Madge Shelton, who was the daughter of Lady Shelton; Anne persuaded Madge, who seems to have been quite amenable to the arrangement, to encourage Henry's advances. In no time at all, Madge was in the King's bed, where Anne hoped she would use her influence to make Henry a little kinder to his long-suffering wife. However, the short affair resulted, predictably, in Anne once more suffering pangs of jealousy; nor did it improve her situation at all.

By mid-March, though, she was in an altogether happier frame of mind, for she had discovered she was pregnant again. By 24 June, her condition was obvious, and Sir William Kingston remarked that 'she hath as fair a belly as I have seen'. But after that no more is heard of this pregnancy, and it is safe to a.s.sume it ended in a stillbirth at around the sixth month at the end of June. Again, details of the confinement were kept secret: Henry did not wish to parade another failure before the world. Nor was Anne's disappointment helped by news brought from France by her brother that Francis I would not agree to Elizabeth's betrothal to his son. Her mood now swung from hopeful antic.i.p.ation to despair, and then to anger. 'She has been in a bad humour,' wrote Chapuys, 'and said a thousand shameful words of the King of France and the whole nation.' Sometimes she managed to hide her chagrin and grief under a faqade of gaiety. Margaret More, visiting her father in prison, told him that there had been nothing else at court but sporting and dancing, and that the Queen 'never did better'.

Alas, it pitieth me to remember into what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come f mused More. These dances of hers will prove 278.

such dances that she will spurn our heads off like footb.a.l.l.s, but it will not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.

None knew better than he how easily the King's favour could turn to wrath.

Around this time, Cromwell, earning the approval of the reformists and the Queen, was preparing an enquiry into the abuses said to be rife within the religious houses. Closure of minor houses, or badly run ones, had been commonplace since the days of Henry V, and had accelerated under Wolsey, but this was something of quite a different order. Cromwell meant to have every monastery and convent visited and reported upon, with a view to its possible closure and the appropriation of its wealth by the Crown.

It was a masterful plan, and it had great appeal for a king who had long since squandered his father's fortune and was now desperately in need of funds, and who as its supreme head, was trying to divest the Church of England of the kind of abuses that had corrupted the Roman Church as well as any lingering allegiance to the papacy. It is doubtful if either Henry or Cromwell foresaw the far-reaching social consequences that would result from the closure of a large number of religious houses, nor that they envisaged much opposition from the English people, who had not protested overmuch about the break with Rome. Cromwell was made Vicar General in January 1535, and given permission to arrange for the visitation of every religious house in England. His report on the wealth of the Church - theValor Ecclesiasticus -was compiled by July 1535, and in that month the King's commissioners began their visitations, starting with minor establishments.

Queen Anne vigorously supported the reforms. After she became queen, she had become the focus of all the hopes of those who had secretly embraced the Lutheran faith; they imagined she shared their views, which was not so, although she did constrain the King to be tolerant with heretics. One Protestant, Robert Barnes, who had once fled from England for fear of persecution, was able to return, thanks to Anne's protection, and preached openly in London, unmolested. In 1534, Anne secured the freedom of another convicted heretic, Richard Herman, whom Wolsey had sent into exile for having advocated the translation of the Bible into English, something of 279which Anne herself was strongly in favour. Not for nothing did Miles Coverdale, in 1536, dedicate his English translation of the Bible to both Henry VIII and 'your dearest wife and most virtuous Princess, Queen Anne': this book, with Anne's initials beautifully embossed on the cover, is now in the British Library. It is a fact that not a single heretic was burned while Anne was queen. Her tolerance was unusual in an age that favoured rigid religious practice. However, it also lent ammunition to her detractors, for, to many, it was proof that she was herself a heretic.

In 1533, Anne had tried to save Catesby Priory from closure at the request of the nuns, and even offered to buy it herself. However, when the King learned that the nuns were unable to support themselves, he was compelled to refuse her request. Two years later, Anne would not have been so anxious to help. In 1535, she sent her officers to examine the famous phial of the Holy Blood at Hayles Abbey in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, which had been revered for centuries; back came the report - it was the blood of a duck, renewed as necessary by the monks who charged pilgrims to see it. The Queen ordered it to be removed from public view, but as soon as her men had gone, the monks put it back, and people still flocked to see it. In December 1535, Anne visited Syon Abbey, and harangued the nuns about their popish forms of wors.h.i.+p.

Of the ten bishops preferred to sees while she was queen, seven were of the reformist persuasion, and in this her influence was plain. 'What a zealous defender she was of Christ's Gospel!' John Foxe would write many years later; and the Scots reformer, Alexander Aless would one day tell Elizabeth I that 'true religion in England had its commencement and its end with your mother'. Elizabeth's first Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker, began his career as Anne Boleyn's chaplain, even though Anne knew he favoured the teachings of Luther.

She was also a patron of the new learning. In 1533, Erasmus dedicated two books to her father, and referred in each preface to 'the most gracious and virtuous Queen Anne'. She also a.s.sisted the French humanist Nicholas Bourbon, who had been imprisoned in France for his religious views - Anne earned his undying grat.i.tude for securing his release, and even after her death, when her name was never uttered, he would boldly dedicate one of his treatises to her memory.

280 As she grew older, Anne consciously cultivated a new image for herself, that of G.o.dly matron. She rarely appeared in public without a book of devotions in her hands. She aided scholars, particularly poor ones, and provided money for their education, maintaining several at the University of Cambridge, and she entrusted her nephew and ward, Henry Carey, to the fine tutelage of Nicholas Bourbon. She also helped Wolsey's b.a.s.t.a.r.d son, Thomas Winter, when he returned penniless from his studies at the University of Padua, which had been paid for by the King.

Anne's charities were widespread, yet little publicised during her lifetime. She had begun them in 1532, when she had, among other good deeds, sent money and medicine for the relief of the mother of Richard Lyst, a lay brother in the convent of the Observant Friars at Greenwich. Lyst had at one time been much against her, but her kindness softened his heart, and he became such a staunch supporter that other members of the community scathingly referred to him as Anne's 'chaplain'.

Anne gave alms weekly to the poor to the value of 100 crowns, together with clothing sewn by herself and her ladies. Throughout her reign, she discreetly provided also for widows and poor householders, sometimes giving out 3 or 4 for cattle or other livestock. When visiting a town or village, she sent her almoner ahead to find out from the parish authorities if there were any needy families in the district. A list would be drawn up, and the Queen would make grants of money towards their support. After her death, there was found among her papers a list of grants she intended to use for the relief of poor artisans. At the end of the sixteenth century, George Wyatt estimated that her charities had amounted to at least 1,500 yearly for the poor alone. He also commended her work for the poor in providing them with garments she had sewn herself; he had seen with his own eyes examples of her needlework in the fine tapestries on display at Hampton Court; yet, in his opinion, far more precious in the sight of G.o.d 'were those works which she caused her maidens to execute in s.h.i.+rts and smocks for the poor'.

In the spring of 1535 the shadow of treason, real or imagined, and the King's wrath with those who opposed his marriage and his policies hung over England. In April, an Oxford midwife was jailed for 281 calling the Queen a 'goggle-eyed wh.o.r.e and a bawd', and a priest, Robert Feron, was also imprisoned for saying that 'the King's wife in fornication, this matron Anne, be more stinking than a sow'. But these were just the little fish. To snare more influential traitors the King would unleash a minor reign of terror, as he demonstrated to his subjects just how terrible his justice - and his vengeance - could be.

In May, the Prior of the London Charterhouse and four Carthusian monks, having denied the royal supremacy, suffered traitors' deaths at Tyburn. Sir Thomas More watched the men being tied to hurdles at the Tower, and noticed that they were 'as joyful as bridegrooms going to their marriages'. Wearing their habits, they were dragged by horses through the streets of London, strung up on the gallows, and left to hang until half-choked. Then they were cut down and revived with vinegar, so that they might suffer the full horrors of the punishment required by the law for treason: castration, disembowelling, and decapitation. After their deaths, their bodies were cut into quarters, which were publicly exhibited. The monks died bravely, before a shocked audience, and news of their end was greeted with horror throughout Catholic Europe. Of course, it was Anne who was blamed for the atrocity. She herself considered that justice had been done, and remained unmoved: one of the condemned men had had the effrontery to allege that Henry had once had an affair with her mother.

On 7 May, for the last time, Fisher and More refused to take the oath. Anne was constantly urging the King to put them to death, and 'when the Lady wants anything, there is no one who dares contradict her, not even the King himself,' wrote Chapuys. Anne was then pregnant, and must be humoured, since when Henry 'does not want to do as she wishes, she behaves like someone in a frenzy'.

In June, more Carthusian monks were executed for refusing to acknowledge the King's supremacy. They were chained upright to stakes and left to die, without food or water, wallowing in their own filth - a slow, ghastly death that left Londoners appalled. In the King's view, such measures were necessary to bring his subjects to heel, and while the monks suffered, he feasted with Anne at Hanworth, and allowed himself to be persuaded that Fisher, too, ought to die for his obstinacy. Two days later, the former bishop 282 was put on trial for treason and sentenced to death, and two days after that, three more monks of the Charterhouse suffered at Tyburn. Fisher himself was beheaded on 22 June 1535 on Tower Hill at the age of seventy-six. A shocked populace blamed Anne for his death, and it was partly for this reason that news of the stillbirth of her child was suppressed - people would very clearly have seen the hand of G.o.d in it. Anne herself suffered pangs of conscience on the day of Fisher's execution, and attended a ma.s.s for the repose of his soul, though by the evening of the next day she had composed herself sufficiently to stage for the King's entertainment a masque depicting divine approval of recent events in England. Henry was so pleased to see himself cutting off the heads of the clergy that he told Anne she must have the performance repeated on the Eve of St Peter, a day formerly dedicated to honouring the Pope.

The political executions of 1535 gave Chapuys fresh cause for concern over the future safety of Katherine and Mary, who had also refused to take the oaths or acknowledge the royal supremacy. One Monday in June the King sent a deputation of his Council to Kimbolton to search Katherine's rooms for anything incriminating that might be hidden there. The councillors made no secret of their anger at not finding what they were looking for, and at court the advantages her death would bring were spoken of quite openly. On 30 June, Cromwell told Chapuys that 'if G.o.d had taken to Himself the Queen, the whole dispute would have been ended, and no one would have doubted or opposed the King's second marriage or the succession.' Fortunately for Katherine, the fear of Charles V, bent upon vengeance, was enough to stay Henry's hand.

Others were not so fortunate. On 1 July, Sir Thomas More was tried for treason in Westminster Hall and condemned to death. He mounted the scaffold on Tower Hill on 6 July, and died bravely by the axe, saying he was 'the King's good servant, but G.o.d's first'. If there had been tremors of horror at Fisher's death, there were shock waves now, and they reverberated around Europe, where the consensus of opinion was that Henry had gone too far this time. Even Henry had serious doubts that he had been right, and characteristically he blamed Anne Boleyn for More's death.

Then there was Father John Forrest, a member of the Order of Observant Friars at Greenwich, and a former confessor to Katherine 283 of Aragon, who had been imprisoned for espousing her cause in 1533. In 1535, he was attainted and sentenced to be burned at the stake. Katherine, hearing this news, wrote offering what comfort she could to Forrest, signing herself 'your very sad and afflicted daughter, Katherine'. He replied promptly, saying her words had 'infinitely comforted me', and asking for her prayers, 'that I may fight the battle to which I am called. In justification of your cause, I am content to suffer all things.' However, on the following day, the King was graciously pleased to commute his sentence to life imprisonment. For some years to come Forrest would continue to a.s.sert that Katherine had been the King's true wife, and by May 1538 Henry had had enough, sending him to an agonising death at Smithfield: he was suspended by chains about his arms and waist above a slow-burning fire, and slowly roasted to death. His execution provoked murmurs of protest, and the French amba.s.sador complained to Francis I that he had 'to deal with the most dangerous and cruel man in the world'. Mary's former tutor, Richard Fetherston, and Katherine's former chaplain, Thomas Abell, were also condemned to death in July 1540, their crimes being described as high treason. Even after both the women involved in it were dead, his 'great matter' remained a sensitive issue with the King for the rest of his life.

One person who escaped Henry's clutches was Reginald Pole, who had condemned the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn in 1533 after choosing exile on the Continent. Still hoping to gain his support, however, in February 1535 Henry asked Pole if he would set out in writing his opinions on the King's marriages. It was an invitation that Pole could not resist, and he spent several months working on a reply. When it came, it would be so d.a.m.ning, so offensive to the King, and so provocatively treasonous that Henry's suppressed dislike of Pole grew overnight into pathological hatred, and his reaction was ultimately so savage that Pole's friends knew he would never be able to return to England while the King lived.

With the loss of Anne's child around the end of June, Henry ceased playing the doting husband. In the summer of 1535 the Venetian amba.s.sador reported that he was 'tired to satiety' of Anne, and there 284were rumours at court that he wished to put her away. Once he accused her of having been responsible for the recent executions, and for having been the cause of all the present troubles in his kingdom. Anne retaliated swiftly, reminding him he was more bound to her than man could be to woman. Had she not delivered him from a state of sin? Had she not helped to make him the richest prince in Christendom? Without her, he would not have reformed the Church, to his own great profit and that of all his subjects. Henry ignored her: Anne had done all these things and more, but she had failed to bear a living son.

Anne's chief consolation nowadays was her little daughter, and she often visited her at Eltham or Hatfield. Sir William Kingston thought Elizabeth to be 'as goodly a child as has been seen', and 'much in the King's favour, as should be, G.o.d save her!' Henry too was proud of his red-haired daughter, and liked to show her off to visiting amba.s.sadors, sometimes dressed in rich clothes, and sometimes naked, so that they could see how well formed she was. Elizabeth had been weaned off breast milk at the age of one, at the King's express command, and with the Queen's a.s.sent. Orders were relayed from the royal parents through Cromwell to Lady Bryan, who had instructions to approach Mr Secretary on any matter relating to her charge. This meant that Cromwell's duties now ranged from overseeing the closure of the monasteries to approving nursery routines.

Anne was delighted when, in July 1535, King Francis at last agreed to enter negotiations for the marriage of Elizabeth to his third son. Yet it was Mary to whom people were looking when they considered the future. Elizabeth was not yet two, and if anything should happen to the King, Mary would have an infinitely better chance of holding the throne. Even Cromwell decided at this time to lend Mary his support, and discussed with Chapuys the possibility of altering the Act of Succession with a view to naming Mary the King's heir. The Queen got to hear of this, and her anger knew no bounds, but although she threatened Cromwell with execution, he paid little heed: 'She cannot do me any harm,' he told Chapuys.

Only five days after More's execution, Chapuys noted that his Majesty was happily dancing and flirting once again with the ladies of his court. When William Somers, Henry's fool, proclaimed to the 285court: 'Anne is a ribald, the child is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d!', Henry was angry - so angry, in fact, that Somers had to leave court for a while - but he did nothing more, whereas once he would have acted swiftly to punish anyone who slandered his wife.

In the summer of 1535, the King and Queen set off on a progress westwards towards Wales. There was, however, little of the usual holiday atmosphere, for Henry was troubled by news lately arrived from the Continent that the Emperor was about to take Tunis from the Turks, thereby depriving them of a great naval base and stemming the tide of their encroachment upon the eastern reaches of the Empire. What concerned Henry was that, if Charles were successful in this enterprise, his armies would be free to fight elsewhere, and England might be a prime target for invasion. Henry knew he was regarded as a schismatic rebel, and he feared Charles would make this the excuse to interfere on his aunt's behalf.

Late in July, the royal party arrived at Winchcombe; from thence they rode into Wales, and then back through the south-west of England, and so into the county of Wilts.h.i.+re. On 4 September, Henry and Anne arrived at Wulfhall, a half-timbered manor house on the outskirts of Savernake Forest, where they were to stay for six days. Wulfhall was the home of the Seymour family, hereditary rangers of Savernake Forest, and its present owner was Sir John Seymour, whose daughter Jane was one of the Queen's maids of honour. There is no evidence that Henry VIII's courts.h.i.+p of Jane Seymour began during this visit, yet it is significant that mention was made of it in diplomatic reports within two months, and it may well be that the traditional a.s.sumption that it began at Wulfhall is the correct one.

Wulfhall has long since disappeared. In the sixteenth century, it was a substantial house that had already been standing for at least 300 years. The manor of Ulfhall (probably derived from 'Ulf's hall', after a Saxon or Danish thane) was recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. The house Henry stayed in was built along traditional lines around a courtyard, with a chapel and a recently incorporated innovation, a long gallery, which was quite novel in the 1530s. Surrounding the house were three gardens.

Sir John Seymour was well known to his royal visitor. A man with a sound reputation for being a capable administrator, he had at 286one time carried out diplomatic missions abroad on the King's behalf. He had been Sheriff of Wilts.h.i.+re since 1508, and Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset since 1518. He was also a Justice of the Peace for Wilts.h.i.+re, and an extensive landowner in that county. The Wulfhall estate itself comprised 1,270 acres, most of which had been converted to pasture for sheep, conforming to the prevailing agricultural trend. For all this, however, Sir John ranked quite low on the aristocratic scale, and for him this royal visit was a signal honour.

Sir John, then nearing sixty, was the father of a large family. His wife was Margaret, the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead in Suffolk; as a young girl at Henry VII's court she had been a celebrated beauty, and the poet laureate, John Skelton, had written in her honour a poem ent.i.tled 'To Mistress Margery Wentworth', praising her maidenly virtues and her 'benign, courteous and meek' qualities. Mistress Margery had been married to Sir John Seymour around 1500 and for him it was a brilliant match, for although the Seymours were said to have been descended from one of William the Conqueror's Norman knights, surnamed St Maur after his birthplace in Touraine, they had never been more than country gentry. Their first certain ancestor came from Monmouths.h.i.+re; a branch of the family was already established in Wilts.h.i.+re at the end of the fourteenth century, and provided a Member of Parliament for Bedwyn Magna, the village near Wulfhall. The manor of Wulfhall had come to the Seymours by marriage to the heiress of the Esturmi family in the early fifteenth century, through which they also acquired the hereditary guardians.h.i.+p of Savernake. Thereafter, they proudly displayed in the manor house the great ivory hunting-horn, bound with silver, that was the symbol of their office. Gradually, by lucrative and advantageous marriages, they had, like the Boleyns, increased not only their land and wealth, but also their social standing. The marriage of Sir John Seymour to Lady Margaret Wentworth, however, was the most prestigious of them all, for Lady Margaret was descended from Edward III and Henry 'Hotspur' Percy, the hero of Shrewsbury. She was, in all respects, a most desirable wife for a man like Sir John, who was considered to be one of the foremost in the rising cla.s.s of gentry known as 'new men', solid, respectable, loyal to the crown, and owing their status 287to wealth rather than breeding. Such men were greatly favoured by Tudor monarchs distrustful of the ancient blood of the older n.o.bility.

Of the ten children born of the marriage, four died young, probably of plague. Two of the surviving sons, Edward and Thomas, were to play prominent parts in English history. The other son, Henry, shunned public life and led the existence of a country gentleman. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was a widow in 1535, her husband having died the previous year. The other daughters were Dorothy, later the wife of Sir Clement Smith, and Jane.

Unhappily, there had been a rift in the Seymour family some five years before the royal visit, and the ensuing scandal had shocked even Henry VIII's courtiers. Young Edward Seymour had been sent to court at an early age, and had served as page to both Mary Tudor when she was Queen of France, and the King himself. When still quite young, he had been married to Katherine, the daughter of Sir Edward Fillol. Very little is known about the marriage apart from the fact that Katherine bore two sons, John and Edward, in 1528 and 1529. A year later, Edward was shattered to discover that his wife and his father had for some time been lovers, and that there was every possibility that Sir John had fathered Katherine's two children. Edward's retaliation was swift. Katherine was bundled into a nunnery, where she died within five years. For a time, Edward spoke of divorcing her, though he did not do so, but he disinherited her two boys, and would have nothing to do with them. After his wife's death, he remarried immediately, his bride being the formidable Anne Stanhope, a lady who would rule both her husband and her family with a will of steel, and whose pride would be notorious.