This content is taken from 20 May 1536 – The Betrothal of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour on The Anne Boleyn Files.
At 9am on 20th May 1536, just one day after the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII became betrothed to Jane Seymour, daughter of Sir John Seymour, soldier and courtier, and of Margery Wentworth. Jane had served both of the King’s previous wives as a lady-in-waiting, having come to court in around 1529.
Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, wrote to Seigneur de Granvelle informing him of the betrothal:
“Has just been informed, the bearer of this having already mounted, that Mrs. Semel [Seymour] came secretly by river this morning to the King’s lodging, and that the promise and betrothal (desponsacion) was made at 9 o’clock. The King means it to be kept secret till Whitsuntide; but everybody begins already to murmur by suspicion, and several affirm that long before the death of the other there was some arrangement which sounds ill in the ears of the people; who will certainly be displeased at what has been told me, if it be true, viz., that yesterday the King, immediately on receiving news of the decapitation of the putain entered his barge and went to the said Semel, whom he has lodged a mile from him, in a house by the river.1
It is clear from Chapuys’ letter that the King’s relationship with Jane was hot gossip and that it had caused some suspicion because of the fact that it must have started before Anne was dead. Even Chapuys, who refers to Anne as “the putain” (whore) appears to disapprove of the King rushing to see Jane after he’d heard that Anne was dead. As to Chapuys’ views on Jane, here is what he said in a letter to Antoine Perrenot: