© Pinterest – sadly there are no existing portraits or images of Étiennette de la Baume
There is no secret that the lustful gazes of Kings are ever-watchful of fresh, young maidens whose elegant beauty and irresistible innocence could easily tempt them to pluck them—again, I couldn’t make a better pun if I tried—from the crowd and seduce them endlessly until they fall into their bed.
But the truth of the matter is that despite a King’s reluctance to take their wives’ feelings into consideration, it is always difficult to keep an affair under the sheets when a King is never left alone. Literally—there would have been a servant sleeping at the bottom of the King’s bed to ensure that he was not only safe but that any matters would be resolved and he would only be dismissed when the King was intimately engaged. Meaning that he was busy sleeping with either his wife or his latest conquest.
Hence why the King would preferably chose to either secretly visit the lady in question’s chambers when the court was either preoccupied or later in the night when there would be more time for him to sneak around in the dark or he would sneak away from the palace to meet up with his mistress at an undisclosed location, most likely coming up with the excuse of hunting or visiting a trusted friend for some political advice or some sort.
As if the Queen was really that stupid, come on, women have brains and it wouldn’t have taken her long to realise that another woman was in her husband’s bed.
There would have only been a handful of opportunities during the King’s life for him to indulge in clandestine relationships without the risk of his beloved wife discovering the affair and one of them was during a war—something Henry took full of advantage of when it came to his war against France in 1513.
. . .
As mentioned in our ‘Catherine of Aragon; Queen of England and Wife of Henry VIII’ post, in 1513, Henry engaged in a war against France which led to him being outside of the country for possibly months on end whereas his heavily-pregnant wife was left helpless in England with the King of Scotland setting his gaze on undefended England.
Now, after successfully defeating King Louis XII of France, Henry celebrated his victory at the court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria (who was Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands during this time) and it was there that he met his next confirmed mistress—Étiennette de la Baume.
And the reason for why she is a confirmed mistress is because this mistress personally confirmed the relationship in a handwritten letter to Henry which we will look at in further detail throughout this post.
. . .
Étiennette de la Baume was the daughter of Marc de la Baume, Lord of Chateauvillan (a French noble), and a Flemish maid of honour in the employment of the Duchess’ court and, although her date of birth or anything about her life, it would be assumed that she would be a young teenage girl between the ages of twelve to sixteen years-old. Notably, she was not the first of Henry’s mistresses in the employ of Margaret of Austria, in fact, it would be have been around a similar time that Thomas Boleyn was dispatched to the court of the Duchess and brought along his almost-twelve-year-old daughter Anne to remain there to advance her education. Yes, that’s right, Henry’s second wife and Catherine of Aragon’s ‘replacement’ would have been either sent there or arrived shortly after Henry began his affair with Étiennette.
What might have attracted Henry to Étiennette is a number of possibilities such as her beauty (as the Duchess would have only employed young girls that she felt had potential to attract wealthy husbands with their looks) or her sophistication (the Duchess’ court was known as being ‘un école d’éducation princière et un centre de haute civilisation’, which translates to ‘a princely school and a centre of high culture/advanced civilisation’. She produced sophisticated, elegant and civilised young ladies who, in her opinion, would leave her court to serve other established, sophisticated women and marry well in society. Meaning that Étiennette obviously had some elegance or beauty that attracted a King to take her as his mistress.
. . .
The exact details regarding when or how the relationship between Henry and Étiennette started or how long it lasted are not known but Henry’s desire to keep the affair under wraps was working well until a sudden unexpected letter from none other than his Flemish mistress in 1514, spilling the juice about how she was Henry’s mistress and alerting the Queen (who would have probably seen this letter) that the King’s war in France did not prevent him from finding fresh ladies to pursue. A part of this letter has survived over the last 5 centuries containing the information that confirmed her relationship with him after she sent him ‘a bird and some roots of great value’ (something only a mistress would do toward a King, otherwise it would have been really weird for a stranger to send the King a random gift) and it reads as follows;
‘When Madame [Margaret of Austria] went to see the Emperor, her father and you at Lille, you named me your page "et n'avoie autrement nom de par et dautre chouses" and when we parted at Tournai you told me, when I married, to let you know and it should be worth to me 10,000 crowns or rather angels. As it has now pleased my father 'me marrier'. I send bearer, an old servant of my grandfather to remind you... la plus que your very humble servant. E. la Baume.’ {1}
Other fragments of the letter speak of how Henry called her pet names and said other beautiful things but most importantly, of his promise to send ‘10,000 crowns or rather angels’ upon her marrying under (what is assumed from the letter) her father’s pressuring or guidance. Essentially, she is writing to Henry to inform him of her marriage to Jean Neufchatel (who was sixty-two at the time) and almost requesting that he himself, the King of England, send her a dowry—which we assume is as payment for her services as his mistress or perhaps in return for her giving her virginity to him, as it is assumed that she would have been a virgin at the time in order for Henry to make such a promise.
However, whether this promise was fulfilled or not remains a mystery to this day but what we do know is that when Étiennette de la Baume married her husband Jean Neufchatel, she was his third wife and most likely more than forty-years his junior. Sadly, the marriage was a childless one and that is all that we know of the marriage. Due to the number of second marriages for women who marry young (and marry much older men), it is possible that Étiennette married a second time and might have had children. But once again, the lives of Henry’s less significant mistresses prove to either be less interesting to history or not of much importance to be recorded in the first place.
. . .
What surprises me is the fact that Étiennette de la Baume had the nerve to write the King of England a letter requesting that he fulfil his promise of paying her (essentially) for sleeping with him. I do not know if this is because she believed she was owed it for losing her virtue or because she believed it would hold her a place in history as the mistress of a King, as, even then, women knew that mistresses of Kings were well-known in history, and that letter is the exact reason behind why she’s being written about in this post today.
So, her tactics proved to be very smart indeed.
Shame her part in Henry’s life is not more known, as history favours his other mistresses such as Bessie or Mary and Anne Boleyn.
But her affair with Henry would have impacted his Queen nonetheless.
. . .
Speaking of Henry’s more favoured mistresses, the next mistress on our list will be forever known to history as being the mistress who did what a Queen is supposed to do; produce a living male heir.
The one and only; Bessie Blount…
- Have a ‘Tudor-fic’ week!
References:
1. The Tudors Wiki (2020). Who were the Mistresses of King Henry VIII? The Tudors Wiki [online]. Available from: http://www.thetudorswiki.com/page/MISTRESSES_of_the_King
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