At 9am on 20th May 1536, the day after his second wife had been executed, Henry VIII became betrothed to Jane Seymour, daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth. Their betrothal was meant to be kept secret but Chapuys recorded that the news got out:
“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…”1
Jane is first mentioned in the primary sources, in relation to Henry VIII showing an interest in her, on 10th February 1536 in a letter from Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, to Emperor Charles V. In the letter, Chapuys was pondering the reasons for Anne Boleyn’s recent miscarriage (on 29th January) and one reason he gave was the King giving Jane Seymour “great presents”.2 The King’s interest in Jane, therefore, dated back to at least January 1536 but may simply have been a courtly love flirtation while Anne was pregnant.
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