Jane Seymour Dies: Henry VIII Loses His Truest Queen

Jane Seymour died of postnatal complications just twelve days after giving Henry VIII the male heir he had spent two decades and two wives pursuing. Born around 1508 into a modest gentry family in Wiltshire, she served as lady-in-waiting to both Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, watching from close quarters as Henry discarded each wife in turn. She was quiet where Anne had been bold, pale where Anne had been dark, and her demeanor suggested the submissiveness that Henry's court had begun to value after the turbulence of the Boleyn years. Henry married her on May 30, 1536, just eleven days after Anne Boleyn's execution, and Jane became queen of a court still processing the sight of a crown falling from a scaffold. Her pregnancy was the most politically consequential in Tudor history. Without a male heir, the dynasty's survival depended on her body. She gave birth to Edward on October 12, 1537, at Hampton Court Palace after a labor that lasted two days and three nights. The christening was elaborate. Jane attended, carried in on a litter because she could not stand. She developed puerperal fever within days, likely caused by retained placental tissue and the unsanitary conditions of Tudor childbirth. She died on October 24, 1537. Henry mourned her publicly and privately with an intensity he showed for no other wife. He wore black for three months. He called her his "truest wife," the only queen he chose to be buried beside. Her son Edward VI inherited the throne at nine years old when Henry died in 1547. Edward himself died at fifteen, and the Tudor succession Jane had secured lasted barely six years beyond her son's coronation.