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edmundhoward · 8 months

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In you other blog you talked about your ideal JS/Seymours tudor adaption.May i ask you if you have some ideas on how to characterize Js and her family?

so! i have unfortunately lost my entire mind writing this. hope you can understand. i’ve just done the parents for now, and will get around to adding thoughts on the rest later!

john seymour

i think it’s interesting that he spent “more than a year in limbo” wrt his title/inheritance — with his father dying in mid may 1492, and there being an inquisition to confirm an heir to somerset a few weeks later. (was there some uncertainty/challenge over succession?) he doesn’t seem to have been granted his whole inheritance (including his mother’s lands) until 20 december 1493. this early instability could lend itself to characterisation; giving john a crucial wound that would propel him within the narrative.

john was the eldest son of his parents, his mother the first wife of his father, yet the potential uncertainty in his claim to somerset could well be characterised as a fundamental insecurity. this would be compounded by the loss of his first born son (in 1510, not even a year later he would be listed as one of the pallbearers and mourners at the funeral of henry’s son in 1511, as well as being listed as one of the mourners), losing another son who dies young, and two more children in 1528 to a pandemic. of course, he had other children — but it’s still the loss of children, within a patriarchal and (late) feudal system.

no doubt it would impact his relationship with his family, and peers. that same sense of instability, within a transactional and increasingly competitive system, would surely define his career. numerous complaints against him can be found in star chamber cases; female plaintiffs brought forward accusations that john, sheriff and justice of the peace for wiltshire, was undermining them. one woman accused john of “orchestrating the disruption to her property [...] her jointure”, and john has been described as a man “who had a reputation for being overbearing”. david loades describes his career as marked by “periodic litigation”. he also potentially had what loades describes as “a falling out with wolsey”, where personal and political perhaps merged — because in mid 1530 john served on the commission to assess what lands and goods wolsey held in wiltshire, and more definitely he had some kind of dispute with william essex in 1528 (the same year two of his children died), describing him to thomas cromwell as “enemy essex” in 1531. then, of course, there's the suggestion that he had a quasi-incestuous affair with his daughter-in-law, katherine filliol, although of course unsubstantiated contemporaneously, and only suggested in the 17th century marginal note (“repudiata, quia pater ejus post nuptias eam congovit”).

so, domineering chauvinism, entitlement, and a deep-rooted insecurity. ambition, but without creativity; this is not a man noted for revelry. he impresses henry vii enough for honours, and is on good terms with henry viii. he’s competent and successful militarily — knighted for valour at blackheath — and he was made knight of the body by the end of henry vii's reign. he was present at the field of cloth of gold in 1520 (where he was permitted eleven servants when the standard allowance for knights was four), and accompanied henry viii to meet emperor charles v in 1520, and was present when charles visited england in 1522. david loades suggests that john might have been something of a father figure to the young henry viii. he was on good terms with thomas cromwell, and in 1532 he was created a groom of the privy chamber, “perhaps at cromwell's intercession, because we know that he was infiltrating his friends into privy chamber positions by that time”. this is the man who built a huge estate, fit to accommodate a king since henry viii visited multiple times, only for wolf hall to be abandoned within a generation. this is the man who dies before seeing his daughter become queen of england. sound and fury signifying nothing.

for me, the seymours truly are the meeting point between the irrational agitation and recklessness that comes with mediocrity and stagnation (they’re gentry but they’re not standouts, everything about them is neatly acceptable but boring and unadventurous/unambitious) and the intense anxiety and paranoia of deep-rooted unsettled instability. all of this is something that festers under a feudal, patriarchal system. this, for me, would be the thematic throughline for the family — but would be exemplified in john seymour.

primary sources: david loades, the seymours of wolf hall

margery wentworth

it’s rather sweet that john was granted wardship to her father, before they were betrothed to each other. following her birthdate being presumed to be in the late 1470s, she would have been in her mid-teens when she married john. so, a young match. it’s not known exactly when her eldest son, john, was born but edward was born around 1500 and the couple have a pretty reliable pattern of annual pregnancies following, so it’s reasonable to assume that john was born around 1599. given that they married in 1494, we can maybe infer that they waited before fulfilling their conjugal obligations. when he died, she never remarried.

she's descended from edward iii, so “it was through her mother that jane seymour was able to claim a drop of royal blood”, as well as kinship to other notable families. the pair would have been raised and educated under margery's parents: her father was henry wentworth, himself the only son and heir of philip wentworth. henry would be taken prisoner (released two years later), and his father philip would be executed, as part of the lancastrian army, in 1464. so, that similar sense of uncertainty carries over to margery's family too, as well as a connection to the war of the roses and the destabilising, disruptive environment that fundamentally exposed the weaknesses of the system they worked within. henry would receive rewards under henry vii, being invested as knight of the bath and knight of the body, and possibly introduced his son-in-law to court and nurtured his early court prospects. it is likewise potentially what established margery at court, where she seems to do well for herself. margery and her husband were on a pardon roll when henry viii succeeded to the throne, for reasons that are unknown, and she would ultimately become the muse of the romantic court poet, john skelton.

surely there must have been something about her, for her to have been singled out as an inspiration for john skelton. compared to flowers (primrose — a symbol of youth, new beginnings, in antiquity a symbol of aphrodite, and columbine — symbolic of doves/the holy spirit), margery is described as “benign, courteous, and meek”, so an idealised sixteenth century woman. he describes her as virtuous (“virtues well comprised”), with “wordes well devised”. that and the fact that she was a muse for john skelton lends itself to her being a successful gentry lady if not much of a court presence — indeed, she doesn’t seem to return to court, even when her daughter becomes queen. but what is charming is the fact that margery was a romantic ideal for the man who would tutor her future son-in-law; bringing it full circle to when margery hosted henry viii at wolf hall in 1535, about to court her daughter jane, would be delicious.

so that is the base of how i would characterise margery: “never a prominent figure […] content [with] supervising the education of her children and running the household” at wolf hall. considering wolf hall would host henry and queen anne boleyn in 1535, it is reasonable to conclude she was confident in this role. beyond this, i think we could reasonably characterise her as stolid, and practical: her daughters received “the solid teaching befitting a future country gentlewoman rather than that of a great lady in the making”, including music, hunting, embroidery and management of the estate. her daughters wrote in (it seems like) secretary hand, with elizabeth seymour’s described as “neat and confident signature in a masculine ‘secretary-hand’, not the usual female sprawling italic” by diarmaid macculloch. so, it would not be unreasonable to characterise her as pragmatic, or sensible. i'd love to tie that into the nature imagery that lends itself to the seymours as caretakers of savernake forest, which is followed up with subsequent allegories between jane seymour and nature (trees, branches, flowers — tudor roses blooming on seymour hawthorn bushes), especially in opposition to the popular idea of the boleyn ‘continental gloss’.

she would ultimately lose four children young, and later outlived jane and thomas. indeed, she endured several losses in quick succession, with two children lost in 1527, her husband dying in 1535, and jane dying in 1537. she witnessed thomas’ disgrace and execution, the loss of her daughter-in-law katherine parr (so reminiscent of jane's death) as well as the early death of her granddaughter mary. she also witnessed edward’s fall from grace. it feels like a very rapid familial rise and fall, not with a bang but a whimper.

it’s not clear what her relationship was like with her family. her will lists her son-in-law, clement smith, as a witness, which suggests that she was living with him and her youngest daughter, dorothy, at the time of her death. her will details that she made mention of several family members. reciprocally, upon her death an act of the privy council details that her son edward proclaimed his “natural love towards [his mother]” in requesting to “honor her funeral remembrance as his own affection might have leaded”, or otherwise commemorate her with a period of formal mourning and a state funeral, which was snubbed out of pettiness towards edward, at this point in disgrace. it suggests genuine affection for his mother, the king’s grandmother. it makes it poignant, then, that edward seymour was not included in his mother’s will. it’s also not clear if edward vi was particularly close to margery, but the council dictated that “private men should reserve their private sorrows to their own houses, and not to dim the gladsome presence of their prince with such doleful tokens”.

primary sources: elizabeth norton, jane seymour: henry viii's true love; william seymour, ordeal by ambition

#they could tell boccaccio a tale; those sinners at wolf hall #john seymour #margery wentworth #seymour adaptation tag

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