Episode 105 saw historian Alison Weir return to the show to talk about the third book in her Six Tudor Queen series, A Haunted Queen, about Jane Seymour.
Buy her book on Amazon (this is an affiliate link – you pay the same price, and the podcast gets a small commission – yay!)
Past Renaissance English History Podcast Episodes with Alison Weir:
Episode 076: Alison Weir on Anne Boleyn
First interview, 2016: Alison Weir Notes
Reviews on the book, and more Q&A sessions with Alison
Alison Weir guest post on Tudor Times: Why did Jane Seymour die in childbed?
Alison Weir interview on QueenAnneBoleyn.com
Kirkus review on The Haunted Queen: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/alison-weir/jane-seymour-the-haunted-queen/
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Episode Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast. I’m your host, Heather Teysko and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and becoming more deeply in touch with our own humanity.
This is Episode 105. And it is an interview with Alison Weir about Jane Seymour. Alison has a new book out The Haunted Queen, which is a historical fiction book about Jane Seymour. So she’s going to tell us a lot about Jane Seymour and theories about her death. So stay tuned for that.
And just a quick reminder that if you want to support this podcast, there are three main ways you can do it. First, you can leave a rating or review on iTunes that’s free, and it makes such a huge difference in helping other people to discover the show. Second, you can become a patron on Patreon for as little as $1 a show. Thank you to all my current patrons, I’ll give you a full shout-out in the next episode. And third, you can buy all of your Tudor-themed gifts and swag at the Tudorfair Shop which is tudorfair.com. And there are all kinds of cool beach stuff in there right now. So there are really cool bathing suits and beach towels and beach shawls and flip flops and all kinds of stuff in really cool patterns like one with Anne Boleyn’s portrait with the B necklace kind of woven throughout. So there are super cool stuff there right now that you should totally check out for summer. Tudorfair.com for that. So those are the three main ways you can support the podcast and all of them are deeply appreciated.
So now I’m going to introduce you to Alison Weir as if she needed an introduction, right? Alison Weir is a New York Times bestselling author of numerous historical biographies including the Lost Tutor Princess, Elizabeth of York, Mary Boleyn, Lady in the Tower, Mistress of the Monarchy, Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, The life of Elizabeth I and the Six Wives of Henry VIII, which was the first Tudor book I ever read on a winter snowstorm day in January of 1996. She also wrote the novels Anne Boleyn: A King’s obsession, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen, The Marriage Game, A Dangerous Inheritance, Captive Queen, The Lady Elizabeth and Innocent Trader. She lives in Surrey, England with her husband. I’m so grateful. She has been so generous with her time and was able to tell us all about Jane Seymour. So let’s jump right into it. I just finished your book this morning. And I’m still drawing the tears, I have today.
Alison:
Oh, my goodness. It was quite an emotional experience actually when I was writing it. Because I was living it. You have to try and get inside your subject’s head when you do when you read a book too say you know what’s it like. Somebody who’s just reviewed it just said she couldn’t put everything into the review because it just rang so many personal bells with her with what she’d been through with childbirth and everything.
Heather:
Yeah, it’s interesting, because me too, I had had two miscarriages before I had my daughter. And then I had a horrific labor that if it wasn’t for modern medicine, I wouldn’t have made it either. And so reading it, I was just kind of taken back to that and was just kind of bawling my eyes out.
Alison:
Well, me too. I had a very, very difficult long labor and it was touch and go for my son. But we pulled through.
Heather:
We do! We women are something else–
Alison:
We’re strong.
Heather:
We are! We verily are. I’m so interested to see how you get into the subjects head for each of these books. And I remember last year when we spoke about Anne Boleyn you said you didn’t have quite as much sympathy for her. But that started to change as you were writing it. I think if I remember it.
Alison:
Yes. Yes. If you start to see things from someone’s point of view, things become a little bit clearer. I mean, this is fiction, of course. So we can’t know what the real Anne Boleyn thought and we can’t know exactly what her motivations were. But I think they’re pretty clear in some cases. But when you look at her position and her insecurity, then her behavior becomes more understandable.
Heather:
Yeah. And it’s such a great way to bring these characters to life through historical fiction, because there’s only so much that the records can give you and historical fiction kind of fills in those gaps.
Heather:
It does, but it doesn’t always do, it’s a clue to character. For Anne Boleyn, there’s a lot of information, but not much information we have for Katherine of Aragon. She’s the easiest of the lot so far, because Anne Boleyn, we don’t have all the letters. For Jane Seymour, we can have two Janes. You could have the one who is the virtuous and willing and biddable instrument of an ambitious family and an ardent King. You could have the scheming, adventurous, determined to topple her predecessor. And she gets what she wants.
Heather:
Before you started writing this book, did you have a specific view on her? Did you lean one way or another?
Alison:
I had a rather different view. I thought she had a certain amount of ambition. And but I also thought that she had the makings of a matriarch and that that might have been in keeping with her family. But having looked at her story again, when I looked at the evidence forensically, I went through it for clues as to character, and I think that she was not confident.
And that’s clear, particularly in the early weeks of her marriage, when she’s very diffident about receiving the Spanish ambassador. And Henry makes apologies for her. Later when she’s pregnant when she’s got into seclusion, he says, he won’t go too far, because she’s horribly afraid, his being away from her. But this isn’t someone who’s very confident. And I did see she was quite a stickler for her maid-of-honor to have all the correct number of poles on her attire. She was strict about that. She said, she wanted Lady Mary back at court, his daughter, because she had no one else to make merry with, who was of her status. This isn’t to me a snobbish …. it’s someone who probably feels lacking beside all the great leaders of the court. And it’s compensating by overstating that status. So that’s how I see it. Yes, I think she may have been the matriarch. But I don’t get that impression so much from having looked at her from this point of view. But again, it’s a fictional representation, but it is drawn on a lot of research.
Heather:
Sure, and it seems like she probably through her early life hadn’t really had that much reason to feel confident
Alison:
No, I mean, this is a big question. Why were her younger sisters married first? Why was it that lady … was so desperate to break? Not for her, her son’s betrayal to Jane not to go ahead? What does that make Jane feel? The only one of the explanations which I’ve got from the books is that she wants to become a nun, which would have meant they would just pass her over for marriage, and perhaps said, to wait to test your vocation given the religious spirit of the times. But that’s just a fictional representation based on trying to answer the question why no husband was found. And it is also based on the fact that she pleaded for the monasteries to be safe. She was clearly a traditionalist. ….was distressed. That was also… close to something. Did she ever at one time want to enter a convent? So it’s just it’s a supposition. There were negotiations for marriages that fell through but we don’t know that. There’s no record.
Heather:
Do you think that early scandal in her family would have affected that at all with her father?
Alison:
Possibly. We can’t say the certain there was a scandal. If you read the author’s note at the end. We got two 17th century sources for it, but the fact remains that Edward Seymour did disinherit his sons by his first wife. She did retire to a convent. Also her father disinherited both her and Edward. It’s a strange situation. And then you get these two explanations coming up in the 17th century, right?
Heather:
But something strange had happened there.
Alison:
Well something strange had, and one wonders whether this was a known secret. This was the reason for Lady Dorma wanting to not get involved with that family.
Heather:
A couple of things came up for me as I was reading. It’s interesting how she handled Anne’s downfall and kind of reconciling. I love to play pop psychologist, I guess, how would she have reconciled in her own rise and Anne’s downfall? She would have known that at least some of those charges weren’t true because of the dates.
Alison:
She would have been able to work that out. No, I don’t think she would have known. I think she might have put two and two together. But whether she actually saw those charges is another matter.
Heather:
And then you have her witnessing Norris and Anne coming out of the tower.
Alison:
This is my own fictional thread, but as later becomes clear in the book, she realizes that she was wrong. But she doesn’t say anything about it, right? She suffers guilt. I mean, this is where The Haunted Queen comes from. She suffers guilt. She does know. I mean, she’s privy to some of it, she had to be, Henry would told her some of it. She did know. But I’ve just added my own reading of it. We don’t know for certain.
Heather:
Right, right. And it’s interesting that I also wonder about how she would have thought about Cranmer officiating their wedding? Do you have any thoughts about that?
Alison:
Well, I think she would probably have had reservations about it. But she was overwhelmed by it all, I think.
Heather:
Yeah, I’m sure it would have been. I think so.
Alison:
I mean, I might be wider than mark. I don’t know. But everything I’ve looked on in Jane, is that she’s not pushy. We’ve got no letters from her halfway. We’ve no clues. This is the problem. She is a blank slate in some cases. She may well have had issues about Cranmer.
Heather:
You have a theory on her death, which you go into detail with, you talk about that in your author note as well. And you’ve done research with midwives and people who are experts in this and doctors, yeah, of course. And I just wonder if you can tell a little bit about this theory of her death that you have.
Alison:
Yeah, when I was looking at the evidence, again, for her final illness, noticed and wrote down the chronology and added in all the information we had at each stage. And it seemed to me there were two distinct illnesses. And the first one didn’t come on until four days after the birth. And it didn’t seem to me to fit the pattern of puerperal fever or puerperal sepsis. And I thought, Oh, dear, I can’t go any further than that. I met all sorts of theories, and looking at the very few symptoms, but few descriptions of symptoms that we have. And see that is not mentioned once. And this was a condition that was known, there will probably been described as such.
So I thought, Oh, God, I can’t take this any further. I don’t want to stick my neck out. But something in the book is, it’s all wrong, because I thought the first illness is food poisoning. And so I went on Facebook, I said, basically, if they’re a doctor, and experienced critical care, or a nurse that’s been on one of my to like…. And she came back to me and she said, “If you send me the information, I’ll have a look.” And then she did. she came up with this theory, and which actually proved to be the right one. … just way too much as we’ve only got these sources to go on. And she said, “I can show it to some doctors at the hospital if you’d like.” And I said, I’ll be very grateful. So she showed it to three doctors, and I’ve got loads of emails with this debate going on between them, but they gradually came to agree that it’s very unlikely that that was puerperal sepsis.
And then they were looking at it, they all thought it was a combination of factors. They thought that the first illness, I was right, the first illness was probably food poisoning. And then dehydration from diarrhea could have been a contributory factor. Also, a blood clot lying in bed as women were supposed to do, could have caused one or more blood clots, pulmonary embolisms, whether they changed her linens or she got up to… it could have dislodged a piece of clot.
So it’s a combination of dehydration and embolism. Possible postpartum blood loss, we don’t know that. There’s no evidence for it. And anemia, to which there were pointers. So they thought all these things coming together could have caused pulmonary embolism could lead into cardiac respiratory failure, shock, and death. And that’s on the symptoms we have. The description of her taking…the people around … had to take great cold at the end indicates the shock and sinus turning blue at the extremities and we had an experienced midwife here. They also came around to that opinion independently and then the critical care nurse described to me blow-by-blow the stages of Jane’s illness. She said she’s seen it countless times. So even today, she couldn’t not have been saved, if you see what I mean. But I mean, all I can say is that this is the likeliest scenario given because Jane was young, her heart was young. And so this account for the time it took for her to die.
Heather:
And for the fact that she was well for the first several days afterwards, and there was no evidence.
Alison:
Yes, that’s right. She was she was sitting. I mean, she was signing letters on the evening that child was born to in the morning. She was signing letters on the evening after the birth. And she was also sitting up in bed the following Monday. That child was born on Friday morning. On the Monday in the evening, at midnight, she was receiving guests after the christening ceremonially. She flooded all her room in velvet robe so she was okay then. It was on Tuesday she started to fall ill and possibly they given her rich food at the time of that christening banquet or something?
Heather:
Sure. And sometimes in popular movies and culture, they talk about that it was maybe cesarean or that it was obvious during the labor itself that there were horrible problems.
Alison:
But the latest story, it’s a later story and there cannot be any truth in it. The result would have been a speedy and very agonizing death. She would not have been sitting up writing letters or hosting a christening gathering, after which she would not have survived 12 days. Cesarean was usually performed then in a routine procedure on a dead mother to get the child out. I’ve got to say, that I think the earliest don’t quote me on the date, that the earliest time it’s recorded as being performed on a living mother is 1580’s. I think there’s also data about 1615.
Heather:
Right. Also, I was interested to read your description of her labor. You talked about a mixture of a drug that she was given with the poppy seeds and a number of things that really knocked her out. And she almost slept through much of it. And I thought that was really interesting, because a lot of times we’re told about it before epidurals and before medicine, that women just embraced this earth Goddess Mother, you just did it and everything like that. And it was interesting to see that even then people were trying to medicate this, and we’re trying to kind of provide comfort, and some of that actually seemed fairly effective in at least knocking you out.
Melita:
Yeah, I did some research on that. That was one preparation I read about and it would have had that effect. Yeah, we don’t know what she was given, but I did a lot, a lot of work on obstetrics in those days and what remedies and in some of it was surprisingly modern. They sometimes use birthing chairs. And it was in breathing exercises, and even giving birth in water.
Heather:
Right. And I think it’s interesting, also just the idea of having these images and the girdles that you would… And it was interesting, too, because I studied self-hypnosis for my labor. And right, it was, well, interestingly, my OB and everybody in the hospital was amazed at how peaceful I was and how quiet I was. And everybody kept coming in and asking what was going on. They were really blown away by it until I had to be induced, and then they manually broke my water. And it all kind of went to heck after that. But it was interesting, because so much of that rang true in terms of this hypnosis study stuff that I was looking at. And, you know, just focusing on other things and having these and I can imagine that the mental, almost like the placebo effect, kind of thing of believing that the saints were there with you and believing that Our Lady was there helping you with all of this and the particular saints that looked out for childbirth and for mothers would have a very powerful effect on you.
Alison:
Oh I think it would. I think a lot of these mind over matter. I think I think the mind can be very powerful, it can actually induce pain, or control it. Sure the pain is felt in the brain. So I think that they would have believed in the herbal remedies, they would have believed in the magical powers, something like Our Lady’s Girdle. They also wrote prayers on scrolls and wrapped around long strips of paper and wrapped them around the mother’s middle.
Heather:
Yeah. And it’s interesting in that series that Helen Castor did on the medieval lives that as the disillusion continued in it, as you were told not to pray to these to these saints, and like what how that would have affected women in childbirth.
Alison:
It must have affected women a hell of a lot. Because I mean, this is part of their lives, the saints, but for some people there was that part of their family. Go and talk to them saint so and so in the church, and have a word with–
Heather:
Oh, yeah, I live in Spain. It’s still like that here.
Alison:
Oh I know. I know it is.
Heather:
So I also want to touch on your theories about her early miscarriages too.
Alison:
Well, they all just theories. There’s no actual proof.
Heather:
But you have some, it explains–
Alison:
Yes, I mean there was a sort of turning point because we know this affair was established by October 1545. Henry visited Wulfhall in September. Some people say, well, that’s where he fell in love with Jane when he didn’t because she’d been in …household she’d been in Katherine’s house so he would’ve known her. Perhaps not very well but she was a recipient of the gift of one Christmas or New Year a little bit earlier.
So he did know of her. Maybe though it was when things were going wrong with Anne and the marriage is not right. Henry is looking for something rather gentle … we don’t know but the affair is established by October 1535 but it’s not until February 1536 or that Jane returns a letter with unopened …to henry. She kneels down and kisses her letter and says perhaps he would send it again when it’s such time when she would make a good marriage. It’s a bit of a hint.
But in March, Cromwell vacates his apartments at Greenwich which are connected to the king’s by a secret gallery for …so that Edward Seymour and his wife can live there and Henry can see Jane chaperoned by her family. What’s been going on in the meantime? Which made me wonder.
And there are these two disparate sources which can have no connection one is the Spanish Ambassador in Rome, the Imperial Ambassador and one is a man called John Hill in England both suggesting, once in rome, they’re saying that Jane’s five or six months gone with child when she gets married and this John Hill is saying all the king’s hands was made fast under her grace, under the queen six months before. Certainly he wasn’t made fast in it. There’s no question of any any betrothal. That can’t be. … all events … as a married man six months before.
So made fast might mean a sexual connection so it made me wonder but also, I’m not the first person to think this, there was a Francis Hackett a journalist who wrote a biography of Henry VIII in his 20’s. He posed the question- why the haste? Why did Henry have to get betrothed to Jane on the morning after Anne’s execution. I mean yes, the… are there but isn’t this a bit drastic? If she was pregnant it would have galvanized into action by the haste of Anne’s downfall. Of course, that would put a whole new complexion on my theory of that it’s only Cromwell who brings down Anne Boleyn because if Henry knows Jane’s pregnant it gives him a motive to and it puts him into the picture. It was Cromwell who masterminded it but there is no evidence that Henry actually told him to do it. In fact the evidence suggests that Anne was recovering favor.
Heather:
Yeah and then Cromwell went away…
Alison:
Cromwell went away because he felt he was in danger but we can’t know this if Jane was pregnant, if henry knew this he’s have every reason in the world to want to get rid of Anne. So that’s the evidence and if she was pregnant well of course again it would account for the gap between the marriage and the conception of it would, of course, that’s not if you’re trying to get pregnant that’s not really much you know. Waiting six, seven months.
But there’s also this account of Mary being brought back to court when Jane was pregnant in October. …and historians discount this passage because they say it can’t be right even if the passage puts it in December. But actually, she came back to court in October to the same place, Windsor, so clearly it’s just been the data is incorrect and it’s written a few years later but that’s not too significant given the fact that we accept other passages in this particular account. But people think, well she couldn’t possibly have been pregnant with … December, so let’s just discount that but what if it’s October and she is pregnant? In that case, it’s pretty good evidence for pregnancy that was lost.
Heather:
Right and that would fit with how fertile her family was and her mother was and you would think that she was young enough, that if they were trying to get pregnant it would have happened.
Alison:
Yes, and her mother also lost children, to begin with.
Heather:
Sure, interesting to think about. I want to jump into some questions that people on my Facebook page had for you. Okay, Nikki had asked about the miscarriages, we talked about that. Roxanne asks “When compared to her two strong-minded predecessors with powerful personalities, Jane’s character seems elusive, almost obscure. I’m curious, was it different? And in what way to bring Jane the woman, not the third one who gave birth to the long-awaited heir to life on the pages of this book. Is she as relatable as a character as Catherine or Anne for the author?
Alison:
This is what I was saying earlier. We could have gone two ways with her. And what I did is sort of looking at forensically into her, into clues for her character and that’s pretty much all I can say. I’ve gone with what I think is probably a credible reading of it, I hope. How it comes across to other people is a different matter. They may have a different view of Jane and they may disagree with it but I have tried to keep true to the source. I tried to reconcile all the sources about or into what I hope a cohesive portrayal.
Heather:
Sure, sure. The next one, she says “I’m only about halfway through the new book, we’re always told by historians how Jane was quiet and meek, yet Alison brings her to life and shows her that she was no dummy, and certainly needed to have spirit and character in order to have the guts to be Henry’s wife and to try to guide him back towards the old religion and promote Mary back into the line of succession. Does this mean then that although Jane was not as feisty and cunning as Anne, she was just as astute and had a strong resolve? You kind of address that.
Alison:
I think that’s a good question. I think she did have strong, strong principles sometimes. And she must have taken a lot of I think she had courage, moral courage, it must have taken a lot to speak out to endorse the demands of the rebels at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, when they’re actually committed to Henry’s feuds. They’re traitors. So that must have taken some guts. It really does. And I keep returning to that. …might when I do a talk on her, because it’s a real clue to her character that there is strength there. I wouldn’t say feisty. I certainly wouldn’t, because I talked about the lack of confidence earlier. But here’s someone who cares about things who have principles, who stands up for what she believes. She didn’t stand up to him but she pleaded for Mary. She got Mary back to court, and that shows that she actually had tenacity. I think there is a strength in her. It’s a quiet strength.
Heather:
Let’s see Candy asked, “In her portraits, she’s not particularly attractive. Wondering what Alison thinks about her portraits as compared to her actual appearance. Do you have any thoughts on them?
Alison:
Well, I would say that there are several portraits that we know of Jane that are attested to be Jane, and she looks very different. But Holbein was a master portrait painter. His is a very unattractive rendering. But it probably is pretty accurate, or that’s very different from one or two or the other ones. Just the moment, I’m beginning to thinking that I might have uncovered another portrait type of Jane, but I can’t say very much about. At the moment, word on the jury is going on, in which she does look a lot more attractive. So it’s very hard to know what she actually looked like. She was pale, definitely. And that might be the clue to the anemia. She seems to have an angular face. It’s the prim lips, the type prim button lips that get me on the Holbein portrait. And also the eyes, her eyes are so wary. Somewhat …. But we don’t know. You cannot. You should never judge people on their looks. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And for Henry, what people were saying was she was the most gracious lady. They said she was the complete opposite to and in every way. They talk about her gentleness.
Heather:
And Anne was never considered particularly beautiful either. So it seemed as if to Henry, the personality was a lot more important, I suppose.
Alison:
But I mean, it’s just what beauty is. I say it is a very personal thing. What appeals to you? And Anne obviously had charisma. She had sex appeal for Henry, and he was enthralled to her.
Heather:
Sasha asks, “Does Alison believe Jane actually wanted to marry Henry seeing the fate of the two women that came before her who were better educated and certainly more cunning? It can’t have been easy.” Well, you kind of addressed that. Well, you do talk about that a lot in your book and the responsibility to her family and things like that, too. Would you like to elaborate on that at all?
Alison:
Yes, I mean, I think I’ve played it along the way that way, I mean, we have no evidence to the contrary. In fact, we’ve got some evidence that it’s true, that she did come to love Henry, and rely on him. She didn’t want to be apart from him. She obviously saw him as her protector, but there must have been something between them. And this is a good marriage. He’s very caring of her. The only time he’s brutal is when she speaks out against him. And she’s lucky that’s all he did. He clearly was really riled by it. He told her to shut up and said it’s reminded of the last queen that died who’ve meddled too much in politics. It’s a really nasty…. But it’s typical of Henry who’s all bluster. But this is genuinely a good marriage. And I think even if maybe she wasn’t, she must have been overwhelmed in the beginning under the thought that he’d gone for her. I mean, if she’s gonna make a play for him, she surely has done it much earlier.
Heather:
And then a final question here is “Were her brothers comparable, do you think to the Boleyns in their desire to climb high?”
Alison:
Yes, I think they were. I think they would, they were incredibly ambitious.
Heather:
Interesting. Well, that’s all of the main questions here. You’ve been so generous with your time. It’s always been a joy to speak with you.
Alison:
Pleasure.
Heather:
Thank you to Alison Weir for taking the time to talk to us about Jane Seymour. Remember to go out and get her book if you want to read the full story. It’s a really great book. I highly recommend it. So I’ve got links on my website at Englandcast.com. Remember to go shopping at tudorfair.com for all your Tudor beach gear. Go to Englandcast.com for the complete show notes and book recommendations and I will be back in your feed next week with an episode on how the Tutors would have celebrated the summer solstice. So stay tuned for that. All right, I will talk with you again soon. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great week. Bye, bye!
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.