Lockdown must-reads #3: Jane Seymour, The Haunted Queen, by Alison Weir

Let’s be honest: lockdown sucks!  But it does mean there’s more time for reading.  Over the next couple of weeks, I will review 10 books which all Royal History Geeks should add to their reading list.

The heart of Katherine of Aragon emanates from her surviving letters.  Everybody has an opinion about Anne Boleyn.  But Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII, is a more elusive figure.

One of her brothers would become a major political player.  Another would gain a reputation as a scoundrel.  Her son would oversee sweeping religious reforms.  But what do we truly know of the woman herself?

Combining her gifts of imagination and empathy with innovative new research, Alison Weir gives us a glimpse of the answer.  In the third of Weir’s historical novels on the wives of Henry VIII, Jane steps forward as a kind, nurturing woman who was not afraid to go for what she wanted when she believed it was right.

As the book begins, we meet a young Jane growing up at Wolf Hall.  As a girl, she ponders a career as a nun.  But then her tranquil life is disrupted by the revelation of a scandal.   

Jane ultimately decides to pursue the path of court service and the hope of an honourable marriage.  During her time in the Queen’s household, Jane grows in devotion to Katherine of Aragon.  She forms a loyalty to her and her daughter Mary that will last a lifetime.

This loyalty to Katherine is intuitively used to explain Jane’s motivation as the book progresses.  It makes it credible that the usually demure and chaste Jane eventually seizes her opportunity with the King.  It makes it believable that such a kind-hearted woman could act as an accomplice to the downfall of Anne Boleyn.  It also helps explain her determination to see the Lady Mary restored to favour.

But Weir’s Jane is not a two-dimensional character.  She feels guilt around her role in Anne’s demise.  The late Queen may have departed the mortal coil, but as the book’s title suggests, she never quite leaves Jane’s thoughts.

As the book ends, Weir experiments with some new theories on the nature of the illness that caused Jane’s tragic and premature death.  While I can’t relate to this personally, it’s clear from the reaction to the book that this has deeply touched a number of women who have themselves been through a difficult childbirth.  The book may be based on characters who lived 500 years ago.  But it touches the hearts of people today.

The book is written in a flowing, legato style.  Happily, it is heavy on dialogue.  As with all Alison Weir fiction books, it features an author’s note that sets out what is historical fact, what is imagined and what is invented.  As a true Royal History Geek, my only complaint is that I wish the note were 10 times longer.  But fear note fanatics: the author has teased that an updated version of her 1991 ‘Six Wives’ factual epic may hit shelves in the future.

Historical fiction will always divide opinion.  When an author pens a fictional account, it is free from footnotes, source criticism and histography.  They must choose a path to the exclusion of all others.  Not everyone will agree with Weir’s interpretation. 

But even those that don’t are likely to recognise ‘The Haunted Queen’ as an example of historical fiction at its best.  It opens a door to the past and offers us a moment of escape.  But it also helps us to realise that while the setting, culture and expectations are different, the trials of humanity are common to all of us.  Factual history helps us to understand our forebears.  Historical fiction gives us a chance to share their humanity.  

Six Tudor Queens: Jane Seymour – The Haunted Queen is available from Amazon.

However, please consider supporting your local book seller.  If you are based in the UK, search for your local book seller at the Book Seller Associations website.

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WATCH: Was Katherine of Aragon a virgin when she married Henry VIII?

A crisis of conscience led Henry VIII to question the validity. of his first marriage. His wife had once been married to his brother. But Katherine swore her marriage to Arthur, Prince of Wales had never been consummated.

At a distance of 500 years, is it possible to determine the truth of this deeply personal matter?

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The staggering wealth of Margaret Beaufort




The young Margaret of Somerset became the greatest heiresses of her era; but her phenomenal wealth made her a pawn to politics.

I’m hardly the first Royal History Geek to be fascinated by Margaret Beaufort.  The matriarch’s struggles, hardships and triumphs are the things that epics are made of. 

A widowed mother at 13.  A fifth column in the final days of the Yorkist regime.  Against all the odds, her valiant efforts put her descendants on the throne.  They’ve remained there ever since.

But even before the Wars of the Roses broke out, Margaret was a figure of note to contemporaries.  Thanks to the early tragedy of her father’s death, the young Margaret inherited the bulk of the Beaufort fortune. 

But just how wealthy was the young Margaret of Somerset?  Did her wealth place her among the upper reaches of England’s nobility?  Had she been a man, would her fortune have made her a major military player in the dynastic wars that dominated her life?

As so often with Margaret Beaufort questions, we must turn to the academic study by Michael K Jones and Malcolm G Underwood.  In these pages, the young heiresses’ lands are explored in detail.  Thanks largely to the fortune of her late grandmother, who was co-heiress to the earldom of Kent, by 1450 it was clear that Margaret wielded a fortune of approximately £1000 a year.

On its own, this doesn’t tell us much.  Such a figure would be no great income today.  How far did a grand go in the 1450s? 

WATCH: my video discussing the wealth of Margaret Beaufort

To get some sense of an answer we must wind the clock back to seven years before Margaret’s birth.  Ahead of a new tax to fund the war with France, all landowners were assessed and their annual income calculated.  The findings have come down to us.

If Margaret were alive in 1436 and in possession of her fortune, she would have ranked among the top 20 landowners.  Given that there were about 60 titled families at any one time, this placed Margaret in the upper-third of noble society.  Those with lands to the value of £25 a year were deemed wealthy enough to tax.  Margaret’s income was 40 times that sum.

However, we need to be very, very careful about this.  Seven years is a long time.  Income from land was subject to the stewardship of the landlord and, at least to some extent, market forces. 

Furthermore, it’s clear from other evidence that the rich then – like the rich today – had gone to some length to disguise the extent of their wealth. 

As an indication however, it remains illuminating.  Chris Given-Wilson, the great late-medieval historian, estimates that an earl would typically enjoy £1000-1500 a year.  This is clearly the category that Margaret was in.  Nonetheless, money was not always so logically linked to title.  Some earls – such as Devon, Westmoreland and Suffolk – seemed to have less.  Some could claim considerably more.  There were also a handful of wealthy barons who enjoyed fortunes greater than some earls.

Margaret, however, did not have an income worthy of a major power broker.  If we take numbers from the 1436 list, add together the various titles and estates that were consolidated in the late 1430s and 1440s, we get a sense as to who the major players were at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses.  

The Duke of Buckingham enjoyed almost £3000 a year, the Duke of York £3500 and the mighty Earl of Warwick £4,400.   As stated earlier, these figures should be taken as conservative.  Studies on the Duke of Buckingham for example, suggest his income was double this sum – at least in some years.   

At the beginning of the Wars of the Roses, the Earl of Warwick was probably the richest noble in the land

Margaret’s wealth was both extraordinary and unremarkable.  What made it so significant was her sex.  It was unusual – thought not unique, even in her own time – for a woman to be in sole possession of such a staggering sum.  And that staggering sum, of course, was up for grabs by a future husband.

Under the common law of primogeniture, women would only inherit a parent’s fortune if they were devoid of a brother.  The eldest son would typically inherit the lot.  But when there was more than one daughter (and no son) the girls had to share it out equally.

Great landowners hated the idea of daughters inheriting.  This was not out of pure misogyny.  They loathed the thought of their estates being divvied up among daughters and used to bolster the ambitions of the lesser Lords their girls would marry.  As a result, many deployed legal devises – such as entails – to block female inheritance. 

For whatever reason, the Beauforts never deployed such a devise.  As her father’s sole surviving legitimate child, Margaret’s status as a major heiress was established within the first two years of her life.

Money was important to Margaret.  When her son seized the throne, she would be granted plenty more of it.  But this early fortune would lead to trauma.  Before she was seven years old, she was abandoned to the machinations of the medieval marriage market.  Her money, along with her trickle of royal blood, made her a pawn of politics from her earliest years.

Thank goodness that the matriarch of the Tudors was a born survivor.

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As if we weren’t excited enough…Weir teases Twitter with beautiful Boleyn book artwork

At the beginning of the year, this site listed a number of books we were most looking forward to hitting our shelves.  At the top of the list was the second installment of Alison Weir’s six novels telling the stories of Henry VIII’s curious Queens.

‘Anne Boleyn: a King’s Obsession’ will debut in book stores on May 18th.  Across social media, the best-selling author and historian has been hinting that the novel will explore new and potentially controversial theories about Anne’s relationship with Henry and her attitudes toward female advancement.    Given that Weir has previously stated that writing fiction gives the historian a greater degree of freedom when exploring thoughts and theories, anticipation is high as to what remains to be revealed.

However, for those more interested in a fresh take on one of history’s greatest love epics and the downfall of the original tragic heroine, there’s just as much reason for eager excitement.  If the new artwork and endorsements from fellow writers released last week are anything to go by, absorbing the new book is going to be a beautiful experience from start to finish.

The USA cover for the second ‘Tudor Queens’ book

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Was Margaret Beaufort’s final marriage ever more than a business arrangement?

This is the last video on Margaret Beaufort’s marriages – but NOT the last video in the Margaret Beaufort min-series.

Let me know what you think…

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How did Margaret Beaufort feel about her marriage to Henry Stafford?

We’re continuing to ask questions about Margaret’s marriages – this time to Henry Stafford.

Is it me, or do I look particularly cute in this vid 😉

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Did Margaret Beaufort ever love Edmund Tudor?

I promised you a mini-series on Margaret Beaufort.  And a mini-series on Margaret Beaufort you will get.

Here’s my mutterings on her first (proper) marriage.

What think you all?

NB: I make two mistakes in this video – one I didn’t realise until I uploaded it.  Can you spot it?

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A new video mini-series on Margaret Beaufort

Hi geeks!  Currently ‘shooting’ a new video mini-series on the mother of the Tudors. Got some great questions in that I was going to answer all at once – but the video got way, way, way too long.

So here’s the intro.  Pretty soon all the clips about Margaret and her marriages should be up.  Hope you enjoy!

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Was Henry VII the first King to ‘give peace a chance’?

King Henry VII.jpg

I’ve never been that interested in the debate around ‘when medieval England ended.’  It’s not a question that a contemporary could ever have asked and I don’t totally see the point in it.

Nonetheless I agree that saying the battle of Bosworth field was the ‘end of the medieval era’ is far too simplistic.  People would not have looked out of their windows the day after and seen a radically different world.

That said, it is clear that the Tudor dynasty ushered in a new era in the way that England was governed.  What fascinates me at the moment, is how much that may have been down (at least in part) to Henry VII’s personal style of Kingship.

I like Henry.  It’s a shame that he gets so little attention in comparison to his showy son and chaotic Yorkist predecessors.  But I genuinely believe he was a man of good character.  Part of the reason for this, is that I believe he was less blood thirsty than your typical ruler – even if he was not adverse to tyrannical tendencies.

On the fact of it, my claim seems strange.  This is, after all, a man who won the crown in battle and had to bear arms more than once to defend it.  But when we take a minute to consider the context and other facts, I do think my comments have some credibility.  For example:

  • He did not seek glory in foreign battles.  Establishing his claim to the French throne was of little interest to him in contrast to the Henrys that had gone before him and the one that would succeed him.  There is an added irony to this in that he was the grandson of a French princess and arguably had a far greater claim to that throne than he did to the one he occupied.
  • He was remarkably lenient with those who crossed him, Perkin Warbeck being the most obvious example.  This is not to say that he wasn’t a man of his times.  His eventual murder (because that’s what it was) of the vulnerable Earl of Warwick was almost unforgivable – but it seems that he did this for the sake of his dynasty rather than out of any blood lust.
  • He did not generally take part in battles himself.  You could argue this made him a coward.  But it does reinforce the argument that tales of great chivalry and conquest were of little personal interest to him.

Perhaps, after the Wars of the Roses, he thought England bored of battle.  Maybe his own experience of a life on the run had exhausted his appetite for conquest.  But whatever else can be said in critique of the miserly usurper, Henry Tudor, I would much rather live in a country with a high tax economy than one where my life was often in danger.

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Anne Boleyn is one of history’s villains. So why do we love her so much?

Anne boleyn.jpg

Maybe it was ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’’.  ‘The Tudors’ probably packed a punch.  It could just be the natural fascination we all have with tales of triumph that turn to disaster.  But whatever the reason, Anne Boleyn is loved by 21st century history geeks.

I guess her courtship with Henry had all the great ingredients of a classic love story – and her downfall the perfect tragedy.  She captures the imagination of the romantic, and as Alison Weir notes, in our 21st century mindset, she has reached the status of ‘celebrity’.

She deserves our interests – maybe even our fascination.  But should she really command our love?

Let’s recap for a minute.  This is a woman who ruthlessly forced a devout and caring woman off the throne and did her level best to ensure that she was treated as badly as possible for the remainder of her life.  As Queen she did all she could to see the Lady Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s daughter humbled and harmed.  If anyone got in her way, she destroyed them.

I’m not sure I’d want a girl like that for a friend.

Perhaps we’re reacting to centuries of Anne being treated unfairly.  The ruthless ‘qualities’ that allowed her to prosper were much admired in men.  Indeed, the equally savage Henry VIII has gone down in history as one of England’s greatest Kings.  And of course, the (almost certainly) false charges levied against her have meant that previous generations regarded her as a sexually perverse harlot.

Her intelligence, her cunning and her determination now receive much greater recognition from historians.  This is positive.  But am I the only one that thinks there’s something freakishly ironic about how the blogsphere fawns over Anne as if she’s some kind of tragic heroine.  If the character of Anne Boleyn was cast on Eastenders she would be seen as far worse than a soap bitch.  She would be hounded as an undisputable villain.

Okay Boleyn fans…are you going to let me get away this this?  Show me where I’m going wrong.

Posted in <a href="https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/category/anne-boleyn/" rel="category tag">Anne Boleyn</a>, <a href="https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/category/henry-viii/" rel="category tag">Henry VIII</a>, <a href="https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/category/katherine-of-aragon/" rel="category tag">Katherine of Aragon</a>, <a href="https://www.royalhistorygeeks.com/category/tudor/" rel="category tag">Tudor</a> 15 Comments