his fickleness. Within eighteen months after their marriage he was, according to Chapuys the Imperial ambassador, paying marked attention to a young and handsome lady of the Court. The credit and pride of the concubine (Anne Boleyn) are decreasing,' he wrote in October 1534, ' and there is good hope that if the said amour continues, the affairs of the queen and the princess, to whom the lady is very much attached, will go well.' The Boleyn faction resorted to diplomacy, the imperialist favourite was defeated in the king's affection by Anne's own cousin, Margaret Shelton, a friendly rival. Chapuys wrote to the emperor, Charles v., in February 1535. The lady who formerly enjoyed the favour of this king does so no longer; she has been succeeded in her office by a first cousin of the concubine, daughter of the new governess of the Princess.' 2 But the king's fancies changed quickly. In the following September, when going on progress through the south-western counties, he visited Wolf Hall, and there, in her father's house, probably began to notice Mistress Jane Seymour, whom he knew to be a lady-in-waiting to Anne. Here was a new opportunity for the imperialist party. They watched the king carefully, they watched the new lady carefully. They found her wise and tactful in her demure gentleness, and reckoned that here was one whom they could use as a catspaw, whose beauty was less, but whose influence might be greater than that of the favourite on whom they had relied less than two years before. Within a few weeks after the royal visit to Wolf Hall the French ambassador reported that the king

1 Cal. S. P. Engl. and Spain, v. pt. i. 264. The index to this Calendar identifies this lady with Jane Seymour, upon no evidence whatever. Friedmann (Anne Boleyn, ii. 35) definitely states that she was not Jane Seymour.

2 This and the preceding letter are quoted by Friedmann from the Vienna archives.

had a new love, and Count Ferdinand de Cifuentes wrote the same news to the emperor. As yet, however, matters could go no further. As long as Katherine of Arragon lived, Henry, if he discarded Anne, must take back Katherine. By fair means or foul-the possibility is foul -a solution of that difficulty came in the January of the next year. Katherine died on the seventh day of that month, as a result, as Doctor de Lasco suspected, of 'some slow and cleverly composed drug,' without the symptoms of ordinary poisoning.

Anne Boleyn, in spite of her first transport of joy, soon saw what this meant. On the very day of the interment of Katherine 'the Concubine had an abortion which seemed to be a male child.' 'It was ascribed,' wrote Chapuys, 'to a fear that the king would treat her like the late queen, especially considering the treatment shown to a lady of the court named Mistress Semel (Seymour), to whom, as many say, he has lately made great presents.' 1

According to Wyat the miscarriage was the result of a shock that Anne Boleyn received on one day surprising the king alone with Jane Seymour, who was calmly receiving his caresses. However that may be, when the king, receiving the news of the abortion as an insult to himself, upbraided Anne with the loss of his boy,' some words were heard breake out of the inward feeling of her hart's dolours,' 2 and she retorted that he had no one to blame but himself since the misfortune had been caused by her distress of mind ' about that wench Jane Seymour.'

Later, in the March of the same year, Chapuys reported to the Spanish court that the new amours of the king with the young lady of whom he had before spoken, still

1 This and the succeeding letters in this chapter, except where otherwise referenced, are quoted from the Calendar of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., sub annis.

2 George Wyat, Life of Queen Anne Boleigne (1817), 19-20. See Miss Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, ii. 663.

went on to the intense rage of the concubine,' and that, fifteen days before, the king had put the young lady's brother [Sir Edward Seymour] in his chamber.' It was at this time doubtless that Anne, noticing a jewel which Jane Seymour wore round her neck, asked to look at it. Jane drew back, and the queen, noting her confusion, snatched it violently from her, and found that it contained a portrait of the king. Jane Seymour was no brainless beauty to be drawn into a rash flirtation with the king and be cast aside after the idle moment was over. She was flying at higher game, and there was the imperialist party behind her ready to back her up with insidious advice. She herself and her personal ambition counted for nothing to them, wider issues of politics and religion were bound up in their enmity for Anne and the Boleyn faction, and Jane was a convenient and reliable catspaw. Thus, in April 1536, Chapuys wrote to Charles v. reporting on the progress of matters. The king having been lately in London, and the young lady Mrs. Semel whom he serves,' at Greenwich, he had sent her a purse of sovereigns and a letter. The young lady, well versed in her lines, after kissing the letter returned it unopened to the messenger, and throwing herself on her knees, begged him to pray the king on her part to consider that she was a gentlewoman of good and honourable parents without reproach, and that she had no greater riches in the world than her honour, which she would not injure for a hundred deaths, and that if he wished to make her some present in money she begged it might be when God enabled her to make some honourable match.

The effect on Henry can be imagined. The man in him was piqued, the king surprised. His love and desire towards the said lady were wonderfully increased by this, Chapuys reported. Moreover, the king declared she had behaved most virtuously, and to show her he only loved her honourably he did not intend henceforth to speak

with her except in the presence of some of her kin. This was an easy compromise. Within a few days Thomas Cromwell was ordered to remove from a chamber to which the king had access by a secret gallery, and Jane Seymour's brother Edward and his wife were lodged there instead. Nothing could have been better devised. The king could see Jane whenever he wanted, and she had been well drilled by the enemies of Anne Boleyn 'by no means to comply with the king's wishes except by way of marriage, in which,' as Chapuys wrote, 'she is quite firm.' Moreover, she was advised to tell the king boldly how his marriage was detested by the people and how none considered it lawful. She was also to choose her opportunity when none were present but titled persons who would say the same on their oath, if the king put the question to them. 'Certainly it appears to me,' Chapuys informed Charles V., 'that if this matter succeed it will be a great thing both for the security of the Princess (Mary) and to remedy the heresies here of which the Concubine is the cause and principal nurse, and also to pluck the king from such an abominable, and more than incestuous marriage.' The ambassador himself soon took a definite step in favour of Jane's cause. He refused to dine with Anne and the king, and saying it was not without good reason, waited instead in the hall until the royal party had dined. Afterwards, while watching Cromwell and Henry discussing the possibility of alliance with Spain, he 'conversed and made some acquaintance with the brother of the young lady to whom the king is now attached.'

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Before the end of April the ambassador reported to Charles v. that the conspiracy against the concubine was in full swing. The grand ecuyer, Mr. Caro (Sir Nicholas Carew), continually counselled Mrs. Semel and other conspirators, "pour luy faire une venne." In the next month he wrote to Antoine Perrenot, the Emperor's Secretary of

State, telling him, something of the quality of the king's new lady.' She was of 'middle stature and no great beauty, so fair that one would call her rather pale than otherwise.' As for her age the ambassador reported her over twenty-five, and added, 'I leave you to judge whether, being English and having long frequented the court, "si elle ne tiendroit pas a conscience de navoir pourveu et prevenu de savoir que cest de faire nopces." She was not, Chapuys judged, a woman of great wit but she might have good understanding. She was said to be proud and haughty, but to bear great reverence to the Princess (Mary). Honours might make her change, but that as yet no one could tell.

Already, before Anne Boleyn's arrest on the second day of May, the king and Mistress Seymour had planned out their future marriage, and evidently part of the plan was that after the death of Anne the king should wait until he was requested by Parliament to marry. Thus, to cover his affection for Jane, she was lodged seven miles away, in the house of the master of the horse (Sir Nicholas Carew), and the king announced publicly that he had no desire in the world to marry again unless he should be constrained by his subjects to do so.

Meanwhile Jane still played her part well and, to the ambassador's satisfaction, used all means in her power to persuade the king to replace the Princess Mary in her former position. The king only called her a fool, and told her she ought rather to solicit the advancement of the children they would have between them and not any others. She had thereupon replied that in asking for the restoration of the Princess she conceived she was seeking the rest and tranquillity of the king, herself, her future children and the whole realm. 'I will endeavour by all means to make her continue in this vein,' Chapuys wrote to the emperor.

In the meantime, while Anne was awaiting her con