I would like to think that Henry loved her the best for other reasons besides Edward but I'm afraid I just can't believe it. He proved himself to be a man with a short attention span where women are concerned. Even through his twenty years with Catherine of Aragon he strayed. So it wouldn't surprise me if she was just another fling. Even if she still gave him Edward, albeit illegitimate, he would probably have passed her over eventually like Bessie Blount. She might have done well from it money-wise though.

Its impossible to say.  If Anne had borne a son, she coud've been safe enough. If Katherine had lived (and she had to die sooner or later!) then there would in effect still be two Queen's in the kingdom, with the vast majority of the country still loyal to Katherine and Anne regarded as nothing more than the King's concubine. So, that was no solution to Anne's problems.

Given the circumstances, would the people have accepted Anne's son as the legitimate hier to the throne, at that time? I doubt it.  Elizabeth was regarded as a bastard by all the foriegn powers that mattered, and the Pope (this rendered her almost worthless in the marraige market). What Henry needed, was an unquestionably legitimate son, who's pedigree and status could under no circumstances, ever be doubted. Henry needed to avoid disputed successions at all costs, England had only just emerged from   the Wars of the Roses. In addition, there are the dubious circumstances surrounding Anne and Henry's marraige (Henry was, afterall, bigamously married to Anne until Cranmer declared the Aragonese marraige invalid, several months after the Boleyn marraige had taken place). So thier marraige wasn't quite so lawful, but no one would've dared point that out to Henry at the time!

The row with Cromwell wasn't a row. She threatened to cut his head off over a year before her downfall, and neither Cromwell or Anne seemed to bear any grudges once that had blown over, so its unlikely that that played any part in her downfall. Cromwell himself laughed the incident off, Anne continued to call him “her man”.

Anne was a commoner, and had no powerful foriegn ally. Not even the French, who wouldn't have dared to anger the Pope by acknowledging her as Queen of England. She had no defences from the powerful enemies who surrounded her every waking moment of her life.  On the contrary, the Pope was imploring the French and Spanish to invade England and forcibly return Henry to the See of Rome. This was causing extreme headaches all round.

Now, with Katherine of Aragon safely in her grave, and a new candidate for Queen consort waiting in the wings, Henry needed to avoid a repitition of history. There was no way that Henry was going to divorce Anne, take another wife and yet again find himself in the situation of having two potential Queens, both alive and dividing the loyalties of the nation, and making him the laughing stock of Europe. He needed a totally clean break, and only with Anne well and truly out of the way, could he achieve that.

Conveniently enough, rumours about Anne's past had been cirulating for years. Most of it p*rnographic, all of it probably lies. Henry brushed it all off when it suited him, but then when he suited him again, he decided to believe it. Sets up a commission to investigate the allegations, and the rest is history.

In short, the marraige was doomed.

EDIT: Sorry for the length of this post, but I've been partial to good waffle.

It probably started out as just a fling with Jane, at least for Henry, and if a lot of different events didn't happen at the same time it may have stayed that way.  Jane was in the right place at the right time and the Seymours saw their opportunity and took it.  There is some (slight!) evidence that Henry regretted marrying Jane – frustration at the fact that she didn't become pregnant right away and may have delayed her coroantion until she was.  Unfortunately by the time everyone was sure she was, Henry had his hands full with the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Though I suppose he could have her crowned at York afterwards like he said he was going to…

Interesting point. I wonder if he regretted giving Anne so much power and decided to keep his subsequent women in their proper place. Perhaps he didn't want to risk Jane getting above herself. That would be especially true if he noticed that she was using the same tactics to entice him as Anne. I wonder though if he'd noticed that whether he'd be so enamoured of her.

Didn't Henry's father, Henry VII, wait until his wife gave him a son before he had her crowned?

Of course, there was more to it than that. Elizabeth of York was the daughter of Edward IV, whose death started the whole Richard III grabbing the throne from his nephew, Edward V (one of the Princes in the Tower), and Henry VII seizing advantage of the unrest to challenge and topple Richard and found the Tudor Dynasty. Even though Henry VII's and Elizabeth of York's marriage united the Yorkist and the Lancastrian branches of the royal family, Henry VII didn't want his claim to the throne to be simply that he had married the daughter of a previous king. So, he claimed the throne and crown alone, and crowned Elizabeth only after she had given him a son.

So, there certainly was a precedent for waiting, and Henry VIII might also have been thinking not so much of keeping Jane in her place, but that it was damned expensive having these splashy coronations for a wife that didn't work out. And that he could dangle Jane's promised coronation at York as bait to keep the papist sympathizers in line. If she had lived, I wonder if he would have continued to find reasons to postpone her coronation if the unrest in the north of England had continued. Or maybe Jane having a son (and living to influence both her husband and son) would have made the protesters content to bide their time until Jane could either soften Henry or until Henry died and Jane could be regent or co-regent for her son. But Jane died soon after the birth of (the future) Edward VI, and none of Henry's later wives became pregnant, so maybe he didn't feel coronations were necessary for them. He'd come a long way from the romantic and idealistic gestures of his youth; now he was old, fat, cranky, and suspicious of everyone's motives.

Now, there's a what if – what if Jane had lived? When Henry died, would he have left her and her brothers as co-regents for Edward? Would the brothers still have embraced Lutheranism/Protestantism, or would they have opportunistically stayed true to Rome with their sister wielding power as Queen? Would Edward have been as fanatically Catholic as he was fanatically Protestant in reality? Mary could have been the favored sister and Elizabeth an afterthought (likely she wouldn't have been raised Protestant, either). The Church of England dies in its infancy, no Elizabethan Age, no flourishing of the Renaissance under Elizabeth… What would we have called Mary if she had peacefully succeeded Edward?

Hannah,

You and I are on the same page! I just posted on another topic a very similar response to yours! I think that just like all men, he wanted a fiesty woman WHEN he wanted her to be fiesty! On his own terms! I think he regretted the amount of power she and her whole faction had and that he had to move mountains to be with her.

I am surprised that the witchcraft issue wasn't more pursued because it would have been much easier to write all his mistakes for the past 10 years as being manipulated by witchcraft! I would like to believe that this was not pursued perhaps to protect Elizabeth from being suspected of inheriting her mother's witch-ness (LOL couldn't think of a better term! Witch gene perhaps?)

I also wonder how dismayed Henry was by Anne's experience in the bedroom once their relationship was consumated.

I think Jane Seymour was the “girl you bring home to mom” and that she was to be crowned only when and if she gave him a son. She would have had a role similar to Katherine of Aragon as a complacent mannequin who the people would have accepted, not made waves and kept her mouth shut!

Riddle me this: Would she have agreed to be his mistress if Anne's Queenship was not in question?? (what I mean to say is: if Anne was secure in her marriage would Jane have been able to deter Henry's advances with her “chastity & purity” or would she have succumb to a fate similar to Mary Boleyn, Bessie Blount?)

XO-Gina

Gina said:

Would she (Jane) have agreed to be his mistress if Anne's Queenship was not in question?

I'll give Jane the same consideration I gave Anne and assume her virtue wasn't a cynical ploy. I do find it interesting, though, that even Chapuys, who hated Anne, had at first allowed his prejudices against the English to color his opinion of Jane. Writing to the Imperial minister, he wrote that he doubted her virginity, “being an Englishwoman and having been so long at court” where immorality was rife. But he assumed Henry wouldn't mind, “…since he may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not.” (both Starkey and Weir relate this story)

To me, that calls into question the reliability of believing gossip against either Anne or Jane, without something more to back it up.

Impish_Impulse said

Gina said:
Would she (Jane) have agreed to be his mistress if Anne’s Queenship was not in question?

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I’ll give Jane the same consideration I gave Anne and assume her virtue wasn’t a cynical ploy. I do find it interesting, though, that even Chapuys, who hated Anne, had at first allowed his prejudices against the English to color his opinion of Jane. Writing to the Imperial minister, he wrote that he doubted her virginity, “being an Englishwoman and having been so long at court” where immorality was rife. But he assumed Henry wouldn’t mind, “…since he may marry her on condition she is a maid, and when he wants a divorce there will be plenty of witnesses ready to testify that she was not.” (both Starkey and Weir relate this story)

To me, that calls into question the reliability of believing gossip against either Anne or Jane, without something more to back it up.

Personaly, I’m starting to think Jane was playing for time WRT Anne’s pregnancy. If it was a living boy, Plan A…Henry’s mistress and hope she could influence Henry with some pillow talk.

Plan B was far more daring….discredit Anne with the help of the newly emerging Pro-Jane faction with backing from Chapuys ..

Katherine’s long awaited death was suddenly and in true Henrician style over-shadowed, first by Henry’s justing accident and then by Anne’s miscarriage. Jane and /or her supporters could now envision a compliant Jane as queen uttering thier words to Henry while she was constantly pregnant like her Seymour and Wentworth fore-mothers.