I am delighted to host this guest article by Elizabeth Norton to celebrate today’s publication of ‘Jane Seymour: Patronage, Material Culture and Image Crafting.’
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Jane Seymour’s Queenship and the Greys: Two Interconnected Families
Although Jane Seymour was only queen for seventeen months, she was surprisingly impactful on the Grey family, albeit largely indirectly. Thanks to her marriage, the two families were interconnected for the remainder of the century, with their joint heirs even viewed as potential claimants for the crown in 1603.
Jane Seymour married Henry VIII on 30 May 1536, after becoming betrothed to him the day after Anne Boleyn’s execution. As such, she became Frances Brandon’s aunt by marriage, with it clear that Jane looked to establish a relationship with members of the wider royal family. We can see this in her jewellery inventory which records gifts made by Jane during her time as queen. Three gifts were made to the Marchioness of Dorset: a pomander decorated ‘with the salutation of owr lady’, a golden girdle designed to hang ‘down to the feete’ and another enameled gold girdle. These were all highly lavish presents. While it is not impossible that the gifts were made to Frances’s mother-in-law, who was then still living, the cost of these items makes it more likely that they were given to a royal recipient. This is particularly the case when they are compared to other members of the royal family who received gifts from Jane, including Margaret Douglas who received a gold enameled rosary, while Princesses Mary and Elizabeth also received lavish items. Indeed, after Princess Mary, Jane’s sister-in-law Anne Stanhope and her close friend, Margery Horsman, the Marchioness of Dorset received the largest number of gifts recorded in Jane’s inventory. They clearly had an association and were probably friends.
It is possible that one of these items was presented to Frances on the birth of her eldest child, Jane Grey. Jane Grey’s likely birth date of mid-to-late 1536 or 1537 falls entirely within Jane Seymour’s queenship. Given the baby’s very high status, coupled with her first name, she was almost certainly Jane Seymour’s goddaughter, something which created a further bond between the Grey and Seymour families. Jane Seymour obviously did not live to see Jane Grey grow up, but the role of her family in her life was far from over. Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset was also one of the senior noblemen at Jane’s funeral, accompanying the hearse along with his father-in-law, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Frances Brandon was the second ranked woman in Jane’s funeral procession, riding directly behind Princess Mary, who acted as chief mourner. She was the only one of Henry VIII’s three nieces to attend the funeral, although Eleanor Brandon’s husband, Henry, Lord Clifford, was also in attendance. Again, this suggests that Jane was known to have a particularly close relationship with Frances of all her nieces by marriage.
One major consequence of Jane’s queenship was the rise in prominence of the Seymour family, with Jane’s eldest brother, Edward, created Earl of Hertford in the days before her death and another brother, Thomas, knighted. The Seymour family had initially been a relatively lowly one: Jane’s father, Sir John Seymour was merely a minor Wiltshire landowner and the hereditary warden of Savernake forest. However, the birth of Prince Edward ensured their continuing prominence at court. While the Second Act of Succession passed in 1536 gave the regency to Jane should Henry die while their child was a minor, the king did not envisage either of her brothers taking her place. His plans for a regency council were, however, thwarted in the days following his death in January 1547 thanks to Edward Seymour’s pre-emptive measures to take possession both of the new king and the old king’s last will. No one could have predicted back in the first half of the 1530s that Edward Seymour of Wolfhall would find himself Lord Protector of England.
His younger brother, Thomas, certainly could not and he was consumed by jealousy at his brother’s elevation, as was Henry VIII’s widow, Catherine Parr, who had hoped to be appointed as regent herself. Thomas Seymour, who married Catherine in this period, formed an opposition party to his brother, working against him in parliament and at court for the next two years. His success in securing Jane Grey’s wardship from her parents in 1547 was based squarely on his relationship to Jane Seymour and Edward VI. Indeed, the idea of placing a child with a living father in wardship was a highly unusual one and is a testament both to Thomas Seymour’s prestige as the king’s uncle and what he had promised the Greys for Jane’s future. It was, of course, rumoured that he intended to marry her to the king, something which – as the boy’s uncle – may have looked possible to achieve.
Jane Grey never did secure her royal husband and eventually found herself back with her parents following Thomas Seymour’s arrest in January 1549. Her sister, Catherine, however, also had a strong connection to the Seymours. Her secret marriage to Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, son of the former Lord Protector, was an enormous scandal in Elizabethan England when it was discovered in 1561. It did, however, place members of the Seymour family – Catherine’s sons Edward and Thomas – into the direct line of succession. While Elizabeth I invalidated their parents’ marriage, there were many people in England who thought that the brothers had a very strong claim to the throne.
Thanks to Jane Seymour’s marriage, the Seymour family rose exponentially in prominence and prestige. They acknowledged this, with a descendant of Hertford and Catherine Grey gratefully receiving some of her embroidery as a gift from Charles I in the following century, proudly displaying it as an heirloom. Jane Seymour gave the family the status to aim high, with their connection to the royal Grey family an indication of just how far they had risen in their ascent from Wolfhall to Whitehall.
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