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Throughout history, there are a mere handful of Kings who have remained faithful to their loyal wife and Queen, something that was quite rare and odd for a King to do. Kings of the past were often encouraged to have affairs by those close to them as this allowed many of the King’s loyal advisors or courtiers to influence the King if their daughter/sister/wife/female relation was chosen to be the King’s mistress. Whilst King Henry VII was very loyal to his wife Queen Elizabeth of York, his son Henry VIII sadly did not follow in his footsteps and this can be seen through his numerous affairs during his first marriage to Catalina de Aragon or Catherine of Aragon as she is also known.
A marriage that was brought to an end by Henry VIII’s infatuation—or obsession, shall we say—with Anne Boleyn, the woman who refused to be his mistress and managed to make the King of England fall head over heels with her and put a ring on her finger and make her the new Queen of England.
Unfortunately, history has a habit of repeating itself and despite Henry VIII’s deep love for his second wife, he would prove just as faithless to her as he had been to her predecessor. Very early on into their marriage, rumours of the King’s eye wandering filled the court and spread paranoia into the heart of the now pregnant Queen Anne Boleyn.
Whilst the exact date is unknown, we do know that Henry VIII was either attracted or begun an affair with ‘a very handsome young lady’. No further descriptions or information is provided in regards to the young lady’s identity, which might as well tell us that it was just a rumour spread to shame Queen Anne Boleyn, however it is from the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys that we are made aware of this.
Both Eustace Chapuys and the French Ambassador at the time, Charles de Solier, comte de Morette, wrote of this ‘very handsome woman’ appearing sometime during 1534 with there being some confusion over how far into Anne’s second pregnancy did the King first become interested in this young lady.
In his letter on 23rd September 1534, Eustace Chapuys reported to the Holy Roman Emperor that;
‘Ever since the King began to entertain doubts as to his mistress’ reported pregnancy, he has renewed and increased the love which he formerly bore to another very handsome young lady of this court; and whereas the royal mistress, hearing of it, attempted to dismiss the damsel from her service, the King has been very sad, and has sent her a message to this effect: that she ought to be satisfied with what he had done for her; for, were he to commence again, he would certainly not do as much; she ought to consider where she came from, and many other things of the same kind. Yet no great stress is to be laid on such words, considering the King's versatility, and the wiliness (astuce) of the said lady, who knows perfectly well how to deal with him’ [1]
Whilst Eustace Chapuys gives us little information about the possible identity of this ‘very handsome young lady’, he does tell us in another letter dated just weeks later on 13th October 1534 that;
‘The wife of Mr. de Rochefort has lately been exiled from Court, owing to her having joined in a conspiracy to devise the means of sending away, through quarrelling (fasherie) or otherwise, the young lady to whom the King is now attached. As the credit of this latter is on the increase, and that of the King's mistress on the wane, she is visibly losing part of her pride and vainglory. The lady in question has lately sent a message to the Princess, telling her to take good heart; that her tribulations will come to an end much sooner than she expected; and to be assured that, should the opportunity occur, she will show herself her true friend and devoted servant.’ [2]
What this tells us is that, whilst Eustace Chapuys himself will not reveal the identity of the young lady involved, the Queen herself is aware of her identity and has made an attempt to remove her from court and failed. This ‘wife of Mr. de Rochefort’ has been punished for her assistant to the Queen by being exiled from court by the King who is clearly not happy about Anne trying to interfere in his affairs—and this lady is Jane Boleyn, the Viscountess Rochford (spelled Rochefort in this letter), who is Anne’s sister-in-law by her brother, George. For Anne to attempt to remove a woman from the King’s court, a woman who has the romantic interest of the King in her keeping, and risk the King’s wrath (and receive it), it shows just how fragile Anne’s favour with the King was and how paranoid she was that another woman would replace her, just as she had with Catalina de Aragon.
It also tells us that this young lady had the respect and friendship of the Lady Mary, whom Eustace Chapuys refers to as the Princess in this letter as he did not acknowledge Anne’s marriage to the King as valid nor Princess Elizabeth as legitimate. If this young lady did have the respect and friendship with Mary Tudor, it only made things difficult for Queen Anne as Mary was her ‘enemy’ because many of her subjects still viewed Mary as the true heir to the throne, not her daughter Elizabeth or the child she was carrying at that point in 1534.
Some have believed the identity of this ‘very handsome young lady’ to be Henry VIII’s future third wife, Jane Seymour, as she had a connection with Mary Tudor prior to her marriage but we simply do not have any evidence of this as most historians trace Henry’s first interest in Jane Seymour to early 1536, two years later. Although this is still a possibility as it is believed Jane first joined the court as a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon, just like Anne, in 1532 and would then become a lady-in-waiting to Queen Anne Boleyn.
However Kathy Lynn Emerson, the author of A Who's Who of Tudor Women, believes the possible identity of this young lady to be one Elizabeth Hervey/Harvey, referred to as Bess, who we also have very little information on. Kathy Lynn Emerson, along with David Starkey and Carolly Erikson, believe Bess was the ‘very handsome young lady’ in question and that Henry VIII would have become interested in her very early on in Anne’s pregnancy in 1534 with Starkey pointing out that Bess would later be sent away from court with no clear reason why in 1536 and that if Bess had been the mistress in question, she had lost the King’s interest by then. Erikson further adds that there was an Elizabeth Harvey within Catherine of Aragon’s household in 1536 who, upon Catherine’s death, was refused on her request to become a part of the Lady Mary’s household [3]. Might this have been the same woman, who knows?
The hit television series The Tudors tried to replicate this affair with ‘a very handsome young lady’ by creating a fictional mistress by the name of Lady Eleanor Luke who, in this instance, is threatened by George Boleyn (after finding out that the King is interested in her) to leave court or suffer the consequences. In this fictionalized version of events, Lady Eleanor Luke does as she’s told and leaves court, further infuriating the King who begins to become disgruntled with Anne’s interference in his affairs at court.
It seems like the mystery of this lady will remain a mystery as the secrets of the past were closely guarded by those who knew them and I’m sure Eustace Chapuys knew exactly what he was doing when he refused to name who this ‘very handsome young lady’ was. It’s almost as if he knew that the identity of this woman would plague us all these centuries later…
Until next time!
- Have a ‘Tudor-fic’ week!
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Very interesting article!