Historians and history-buffs alike have strong opinions about facts and persons and those opinions aren’t universal. Nevertheless, there tends to be enough commonality that two “camps” will spring up regarding an event. For those interested in the Tudor era, there is often a spilt into (let’s overly-simplify it for the sake of argument) people who are Team Anne Boleyn or Team Jane Seymour.
Both these factions vociferously defend or lambaste Henry VIII’s second and third queens according to their interpretation of the historical narrative. Team Jane is certainly winning the narrative race. She is usually depicted as the meek blonde Henry chose to replace the brunette seductress of whom he had gotten tired. While Anne is depicted as a deliberate homewrecker who destroyed a marriage to get a crown, Jane is seen as a passive agent of her brothers and anti-Boleyn plotters, the sweet girl Henry loved and who had no choice but to marry after he beheaded Anne Boleyn.
I’m firmly on Team Anne and the ‘poor widdle Jane’ narrative drives me absolutely bonkers because the Sweet Jane ideology does NOT fit the known historical facts.
Jane Seymour, the supposedly gentle and good, accepted the gifts of man who was so married that his wife was pregnant at the time, was coached on how to win him, affected coyness in order to make herself more appealing, accepted rich gifts but returned money so she could have her cake yet pretend she wasn’t eating it, and allowed herself to be moved into a convenient room near his bedchamber … just in case she could convince Henry to leave Anne Boleyn and marry her instead. This is the polar opposite of what Anne Boleyn did.
When Henry first began pursuing Anne she did everything she could do to politely tell the king that she was uninterested in a liaison … She never boldly told him, “Swive off, varlet!” because that would have meant the political and economic destruction of her and her entire family. When her polite rebuffs didn’t seem to be working on her would-be swain, Anne packed her bags and fled to Hever Castle. She refused to return to court, even with her mother there to act as chaperone, no matter how much Henry whinged about it … and believe me, the king definitely whinged about it. He wrote to her repeatedly, begging her to come back to court and love him like he loved her.
Henry’s belief in his own appeal would not allow him to comprehend her rejection. In the disbelieving shock of a man who had never been told no in his life, that he had “been told that the opinion in which I left you is totally changed, and that you would not come to court either with your mother, if you could, or in any other manner; which report, if true, I cannot sufficiently marvel at.” He moaned that, “turning over in my mind the contents of your last letters, I have put myself into great agony, not knowing how to interpret them, whether to my disadvantage, as you show in some places, or to my advantage, as I understand them in some others, beseeching you earnestly to let me know expressly your whole mind as to the love between us two. It is absolutely necessary for me to obtain this answer, having been for above a year stricken with the dart of love, and not yet sure whether I shall fail of finding a place in your heart and affection, which last point has prevented me for some time past from calling you my mistress.”
In missives the king also complained that Anne didn’t write him back, not grasping that her lack of response to his letter is the early renaissance equivalent to not returning a phone call. It is so blatantly a brush off that it is hard to understand why Henry didn’t see it that way. It is also hard to understand how or why any historian has been able to interpret the lack of response as the ploy of a woman playing hard to get. If she had played any harder to get she would have had to have beaten Henry over the head with a stick … and I’m not sure he would have understood the stick.
One of Henry’s letters is obviously dealing with her outright (but polite) rejection. He told her that although “it is not fitting for a gentleman to take his lady in the place of a servant, yet, complying with your desire, I willingly grant it you, if thereby you can find yourself less uncomfortable in the place chosen by yourself, than you have been in that which I gave you”. Anne’s previous message to him is not known for certain, since her letters to him weren’t kept, but based on Henry’s reply she must have written to him that she was the king’s loyal servant only and uncomfortable being called his mistress. How much clearer could she have been?
I find in astounding that anyone can accuse Anne of being “come-hither” when her letters to the king can be so clearly inferred to have said “go away”, yet there are historians who are as convinced of the king’s irresistibly as Henry was himself. They just cannot believe Anne was really saying no. Victorian writer Paul Friedmann explained that “Anne kept her royal adorer at an even greater distance than the rest of her admirers. She had good reason to do so, for the position which Henry offered her had nothing very tempting to an ambitious and clever girl … it cannot be considered an act of great virtue that Anne showed no eagerness to become the king’s mistress” (1884). Alison Weir claims that Anne “often failed to reply to the King’s letters, probably deliberately, for everything she did, or omitted to do, in relation to Henry was calculated to increase his ardour (2007). David Starkey wrote that Anne’s coolness toward Henry was because she had “guessed” it was “beyond Henry’ power to give her up” (2009). What was it, exactly, that was Anne supposed to do in order to prove that she sincerely did not want to be involved with Henry? Apparently just saying no, running away, and refusing to have sex with the king is somehow not convincing.
Nor did Anne plot to destroy the king’s marriage. Henry had already been making plans to divorce Katherina of Aragon and marry another noblewoman for the political alliance and potential heirs before he began harassing Anne Boleyn. He stopped having sex with Katherina altogether in 1524, and there is evidence he and Wolsey were plotting the dissolution of the marriage in 1525. The news of Henry’s intent to divorce Katherina didn’t become public until later in 1527, but it had been in the works prior to the first indication of the king’s obsession with Anne. Even in the spring of 1527, Wolsey thought of Henry’s divorce as a way to get the king to marry a French princess. No one suspected that Henry wanted to make Anne anything but his chatelaine.
When the king started talking marriage it was no doubt clear to Anne that Henry was never going to let her go. No one, no matter how much he loved her, would agree to marry her as long as Henry wanted her. She was either going to wed the king or stay single for the rest of her life. The universal condemnation for an unmarried woman who wasn’t a nun made the choice of spinsterhood a very bitter pill to swallow. If she wanted security and a family and a place in society, she was going to have to marry her stalker.
Anne sent Henry a customary gift on New Year’s Day, probably in 1527, that was of great import. It was a pendant of a ship with a diamond being “tossed about”, and there was a small figure of a woman on board. Henry, no stranger to leaping to conclusions that best suited himself and familiar with romantic symbology, easily understood the gift to mean that Anne was seeking his protection. She had finally, after a long chase, given in. To this day her pragmatic bow to the reality of her situation has been taken as a sign she wanted Henry all along.
Clearly, based on the facts as they are known, Jane Seymour’s behaviour toward her royal swain could not have been more different than Anne’s sincere attempts to discourage Henry’s interest in her. The idea that Jane had no choice but to indulge Henry is also taradiddle. Anne said no to him for YEARS. Anne had fled the court and there was nothing stopping Jane from doing likewise. If Jane’s family were pressuring her, she could have still resisted – just like Anne did. Jane Seymour was either flattered and eager to be queen or she was too spineless to resist her family’s coercion. Neither of those options is flattering and both of them look exceedingly lame when contrasted to Anne’s fierce resolve not to be Henry’s new mistress. Sweet little Jane was either a home-wrecker or a doormat, and neither of those things are admirable.