Six Wives: Jane Seymour & Anne of Cleves

Summary

Podcast Summary: Not Just the Tudors – "Six Wives: Jane Seymour & Anne of Cleves"

Introduction

In the December 26, 2024 episode of Not Just the Tudors, hosted by Professor Susannah Lipscomb, listeners are treated to an in-depth exploration of two of King Henry VIII's most intriguing wives: Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. This episode delves into their backgrounds, marriages to Henry VIII, personal relationships, and their lasting impacts on English history. Professor Lipscomb is joined by esteemed historians such as Dr. Aidan Norrie, Dr. Charlotte Bolland, Dr. Valerie Shute, and Heather Darcy to provide comprehensive insights into the lives of these two queens.

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Jane Seymour: Background and Rise to Queenship

Jane Seymour's Family and Early Life

Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third wife, hailed from the Seymour family of Wiltshire. Her father, Sir John Seymour, was a respected soldier and courtier, though not of the highest nobility. Jane was likely born around 1508, the second daughter in a family of ten children. Despite her family's relatively modest status compared to other noble families, Jane received a competent education, evidenced by her ownership of books and ability to read and write, as highlighted by Dr. Aidan Norrie ([05:29]).

Service in the Queen's Household

Jane's presence at court began in the household of Queen Catherine of Aragon, as confirmed by contemporary sources like Risley's Chronicle ([07:55]). Her role involved close interaction with Princess Mary, Catherine's daughter, reflecting her nurturing disposition and loyalty to Mary ([08:38], [09:01]).

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Relationship with Henry VIII and Character

Courtship and Marriage

Jane Seymour caught Henry VIII's attention around 1534, potentially due to an incident showcasing her loyalty to Mary ([09:01]). An essential moment in their courtship involves a letter from Henry to Jane, where he expresses his "true affection" ([14:12]). This correspondence suggests a relationship grounded in respect and virtuous intentions rather than mere infatuation.

Character Contrast with Anne Boleyn

Contrary to the traditional narrative portraying Jane as the antithesis of Anne Boleyn, recent research indicates that Jane may have possessed qualities similar to Anne's, particularly in her deliberate self-presentation ([05:07], [04:43]). Dr. Elizabeth Norton emphasizes that Jane was not merely a passive figure but actively shaped her royal persona ([05:29]).

Support for Princess Mary

Jane's affection for Princess Mary played a significant role in her rise to favor with Henry VIII. She advocated for Mary's restoration to the line of succession, demonstrating her political acumen and loyalty ([28:49], [30:42]).

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Jane Seymour's Role as Queen

Economic and Household Management

As queen, Jane Seymour significantly influenced the management of royal lands and the running of the household. She became one of England's wealthiest landowners and took a hands-on approach to her domestic responsibilities ([22:57], [24:21]). Her decision to favor English gable hoods over the more fashionable French styles exemplifies her strategic image crafting ([24:38], [24:34]).

Religious and Political Influence

Jane was a staunch Catholic, actively defending her faith during the tumultuous period of the Reformation. She intervened in political matters, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace, showcasing her willingness to oppose even the king when it aligned with her religious convictions ([25:35], [26:44]).

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Death of Jane Seymour and Misconceptions

Childbirth and Tragic Demise

Jane Seymour's life was cut short by complications from childbirth. After a difficult labor lasting two days, she gave birth to Edward VI on October 12, 1537 ([33:14], [35:13]). Contrary to popular myths, Jane did not die from a cesarean section but likely succumbed to childbed fever, a common and often fatal complication in the 16th century ([37:45], [39:43]).

Legacy and Canonization

Dr. Aidan Norrie explores the idea of Jane Seymour as a saintly figure due to her pious demeanor and role in producing a male heir. While not officially canonized, her portrayal as the epitome of a virtuous queen has cemented her enduring legacy ([40:41], [42:34]).

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Anne of Cleves: Background and Betrothal

Early Life and Betrothal Plans

Anne of Cleves, born Anna von Denmark in 1515, was the daughter of John III, Duke of Cleves. Her early betrothals were strategically arranged to strengthen territorial alliances within the Holy Roman Empire. Initially betrothed to Francis, heir of the Duchy of Lorraine, the marriage was part of broader political maneuvers to secure alliances against powerful adversaries like Charles V ([51:55], [53:57]).

Educational Background

Raised in a German and Burgundian-influenced household, Anne received a practical education tailored to her future role as a duchess. Skills such as embroidery, household management, and basic mathematics were emphasized, preparing her for the responsibilities of ruling and managing estates independently ([50:42], [51:55]).

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Marriage to Henry VIII and Annulment

Political Alliances and Marriage Negotiations

In 1539, amid shifting alliances and tensions within the Holy Roman Empire, Henry VIII sought a marriage with Anne of Cleves to bolster his political standing. Hans Holbein the Younger was commissioned to create Anne's portrait, which greatly influenced Henry's perception and decision to marry her ([55:55], [56:33]).

Arrival and Initial Impressions

Anne's journey to England was fraught with delays and logistical challenges, despite Henry's eagerness to meet her. Upon meeting, discrepancies between her real appearance and Holbein's portraits reportedly led to Henry's disappointment. However, German sources suggest a more nuanced interaction, indicating mutual respect and lack of immediate discord ([60:13], [61:22]).

Annulment Process

By July 1540, Henry sought to annul the marriage, citing non-consummation and lack of compatibility. The annulment was granted on the grounds that the marriage was never legally valid, allowing Anne to leave England gracefully. Henry's generous settlement to Anne reflected his desire to maintain political favors and avoid conflict ([70:09], [71:09]).

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Life after Annulment

Independent Life in England

Post-annulment, Anne of Cleves remained in England, managing her estates independently. She maintained amicable relations with both Mary and Elizabeth, fostering enduring friendships that would later influence royal dynamics ([75:00], [78:45]). Despite pressures to remarry or return to Germany, Anne chose to remain, navigating the complexities of English politics and maintaining her status ([78:40], [79:27]).

Final Years and Death

Anne lived out her days in England, remaining a respected and influential figure until her death in July 1557. Her proper burial, orchestrated by Queen Mary, underscored the deep bond between the two women and cemented Anne's legacy as a dignified and revered former queen ([80:18], [84:24]).

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Anne's Relationship with Mary

Enduring Friendship

Anne of Cleves and Princess Mary developed a close and enduring friendship. Their mutual Catholic faith and shared experiences at court fostered a strong bond, exemplified by Anne's active support for Mary during her tumultuous reign ([82:23], [84:24]). This relationship remained significant even after Anne's annulment, highlighting Anne's role as a beloved and influential figure within the royal family ([75:00], [82:18]).

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Conclusion

This episode of Not Just the Tudors provides a comprehensive examination of Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves, highlighting their distinct yet equally impactful roles in Henry VIII's court. Through meticulous research and expert commentary, Professor Susannah Lipscomb and her guests illuminate the complexities of these queens' lives, challenging traditional narratives and offering fresh perspectives on their legacies. Jane Seymour emerges as a model of virtuous queenship and political agency, while Anne of Cleves is portrayed as a resilient and dignified figure who navigated the treacherous waters of Tudor politics with grace.

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Notable Quotes

• Dr. Elizabeth Norton ([05:29]): "Jane is almost certainly in Catherine of Aragon's household...she seeks to promote her and mother her to some extent."

• Dr. Aidan Norrie ([09:17]): "We know that Henry stops Anne sending away a woman from one of her ladies...they're the same person."

• Dr. Aidan Norrie ([37:45]): "There is absolutely no evidence [Jane died from a cesarean]... given how long she survives after the birth... it's just not possible."

• Dr. Charlotte Bolland ([42:51]): "Jane Seymour is... one of the more recognizable images... Holbein's portrait of her."

• Dr. Valerie Shute ([62:50]): "Henry was adamant that he needed to see her first... he wanted to love his bride."

• Heather Darcy ([75:00]): "They had a very close relationship at first... they continued to be involved in each other's lives."

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Further Listening

For those who haven't listened to this episode, Not Just the Tudors offers a captivating journey through history, blending scholarly analysis with engaging storytelling. To explore more episodes and access original documentaries, visit History Hit and consider subscribing for ad-free content and early access to bonus episodes.

Transcript

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit With a historyhit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.

[Eva Longoria]

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs?

[Eva Longoria]

Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Hi, I'm Maite Gomez Rejon.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Our podcast Hungry for History is back.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

And this season we're taking an even.

[Eva Longoria]

Bigger bite out of the most delicious.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Food and its history, saying that the.

[Eva Longoria]

Most popular cocktail is the Margherita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba and the.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Pina colada from Puerto Rico.

[Eva Longoria]

Listen to Hungry for history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Merry Christmas everyone. I hope you've had a joyful and peaceful holiday so far and are not too knee deep in washing up here on Not Just the Tudors. We could think of no better company than those forever fascinating Six Wives of Henry viii. Earlier this year, we took a deep dive into the lives of these six incredible women who changed the monarchy and England forever. As a special treat, we've joined two of those episodes together in in turn to create bumper episodes. Last time we looked at the great Renaissance queen Catherine of Aragon and the tragic Anne Boleyn. Do go back and have a listen to that if you haven't already. This time I turn to Henry's third and fourth wives, Jane Seymour and Anne of Cleves. The exhibition I visited for the recording six the stories of Henry VIII's queens at the National Portrait Gallery in London has now ended, but the stories in these episodes remain timeless and ever fascinating. So first to Jane Seymour, six wives, six lives about whom we think we know everything. But beyond their mostly doomed marriages to Henry VIII and in many cases, tragic ends, here were six women who shaped history in their own unique ways. The National Portrait Gallery in London is hosting a new exhibition called Six Lives, displaying the images that have shaped our perception of Henry VIII's queens. It was just the excuse I needed to bring together the most illuminating interviews about them from the not just the Tudors archives across six episodes. I'll also be exploring some of the latest research and speaking to the curator of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition, Dr. Charlotte Bolland. To paint an even fuller portrait of each of Henry VIII's wives. In 2023, I visited Vienna's Kunsthistorische Museum hoping to see Holbein's great portrait of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII's third wife. It was out on loan and I resorted to buying a picture of it. Cut into a puzzle of a thousand pieces from the gift shop. Jane remains a relatively elusive queen. To attempt to understand her is is to piece together a puzzle. In this episode I'll be speaking to some of the historians who have tried to do so. Dr. Elizabeth Norton, Dr. Aidan Norrie, and the National Portrait Gallery's Dr. Charlotte Bolland. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. And this is not just the Tudor. Jane Seymour and Henry VIII were married in the immediate aftermath of Anne Boleyn's death. The traditional narrative is that Jane was the complete antithesis to Anne Boleyn. On some level this is true. She was certainly a contrast in terms of looks. Anne was a brunette with dark eyes and honey colored skin. Jane had pale blue eyes, alabaster skin and fair hair. But the popular image of Jane goes further. It depicts her as little more than a doormat. Dr. Elizabeth Norton explains why that is.

[Eva Longoria]

She is very much treated as this figure that we can't really see. She's seen as a bit boring, a bit plain, if you like plain Jane. And I think that comes down to the fact that we can't see the vivid detail of her life. We can see where she is, but we can't see what she's thinking. We never see inside Jane's head. Even surviving letters are very official and we don't have any personal correspondence.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Recent research suggests that Jane was not quite Anne's antithesis in terms of character in the way that we have imagined her to be. Perhaps we've all been falling as Henry did for Jane's own deliberate self presentation. So let's start at the beginning. What do we know about Jane's family background, upbringing and education?

[Eva Longoria]

We can guess roughly when she's born. Her parents marry at the end of the 15th century. Her eldest brother's born in around 1500. Her eldest surviving brother. There are 10 children in the family. She's probably the second daughter of three, but we don't know where she comes in. Around the sons, at best. Guess she's probably born in around 1508, something like that. Chapuy says she's past 25 when she marries the King, but that's as close as we can get. Jane is the daughter of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth. Margery is of higher social status than John. She is the daughter of Henry Wentworth. They're quite well connected. In fact, she's a niece of Anne Boleyn's grandmother, in fact, the Countess of Surrey. So actually, Jane and Anne are quite closely related, and of course, also Catherine Howard. So Margery, to some extent, marries a little bit down. The Seymours are a good county family. They come from Wiltshire. They serve as members of Parliament, they serve as sheriff on occasion, they're justices of the peace, but they're not particularly high profile. The Seymours have really arrived in the 15th century. They inherit Wolf hall, their main manor, through a female relative. So they are gentry, but not in the same way that Anne Boleyn is gentry, for example, so they're lower down the social scale. They don't have a huge amount of contact with court. So John Seymour does come to court on occasion. He seems to have been quite a good soldier, which brings him to Henry VIII's and also Henry VII's attention. But they're not a particularly wealthy family. We can assume that she was born at Wolf hall because that's where the family seemed to be living. She seems to have been educated to some extent. She owns books as Queen. We also have her signature, which shows quite a neat hand, which suggests that she can write and that she can also read. We know she can speak some French because she's able to speak to Chapuy and other ambassadors. Of course, whether she's fluent or not, we don't know, but she certainly received some level of education quite often. It's implied that she's very poorly educated, the least intellectual of Henry's queens, but actually, we don't necessarily know that. She does own a number of books at the time of her death, although we've only got the titles for a few.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane came to Henry's attention because she was already at court. By definition, that means that she was in the Queen's household, the only place for a woman of gentry status to find a place at court, and we have fairly good evidence that this was so. In fact, Jane was in the household of more than one queen.

[Eva Longoria]

Jane is almost certainly in Catherine of Aragon's household and we know this because of Risley's Chronicle. Risley's Chronicle is pretty much a contemporary source. It's a very good source. Charles Risley, the writer, has very solid court connections, so I would assume that it's true. And he simply says, as an aside, she served Queen Catherine, so I think we can believe it. It would make sense. We know from other references to Jane, she's been a long time at court. We don't know when she started, we don't know when she left. She doesn't seem to have made any lasting impression. And it would account for the fact that she is very fond of Princess Mary. And that's one area where we really can see Jane quite vividly. She is clearly very fond of Catherine of Aragon's daughter Mary, and seeks to promote her. And not just seeks to promote her, also seeks to mother her to some extent, which I think is quite an important aspect. My guess would be that she perhaps wasn't with Catherine for very long. Catherine's household is obviously being denuded. People are leaving, people are being sacked. She obviously can't have been too active in support of Catherine because she finds a place with Anne Boleyn, presumably quite easily.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

At some point, Henry noticed Jane. Dr. Aidan Norrie thinks it may even have been as early as October 1534, because of an incident that happened then that bears Jane's hallmark of loyalty to Mary.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

We know that Henry stops Anne sending away a woman from one of her ladies, and according to Chapuyse, that woman had been interceding on behalf of Princess Mary. And given how much time Jane would spend trying to sort out Mary's position and get her restored to favor, it seems likely that they're the same person.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane only properly emerges, however, in the sources. In early 1536, in correspondence written by the Imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuy, Elizabeth Norton explains.

[Eva Longoria]

He says that the King sends a letter and a purse of gold to Jane and when she sees a messenger with them, she refuses to take them. And she throws herself on her knees and she says, I'm not going to take these, I'm an honourable woman, I'm of good parentage. She basically says, I will accept a gift from the King on the day of my marriage, but until then I cannot take this. And it's clearly quite a rehearse, quite a practice scene. Obviously, we don't know the contents of the letter. There is a suggestion that it's Henry asking her to be his mistress, and earlier evidence suggests that might well be the case. There's an account of Anne Boleyn finding Jane on Henry's lap.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Aiden Norrie is not sure about this story because the original source, the autobiography of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Ferrier, later lady in Waiting to Marry the first, ties it to a suggestion that Anne was so furious at seeing Jane on Henry's knee that she miscarried.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

That really is just the most biased source you could come across because it comes from. From the life of Jane Dormer, the Duchess of Ferrier. So she is an ultra Catholic who is writing much later on. She's writing based on her service to Mary I. She has absolutely everything to gain by pointing out just how quote unquote wicked Anne was, because in her account, Anne is almost somehow bringing on the miscarriage herself out of she sheer anger at what she's seen Jane and Henry doing. I both love and hate the idea that a woman can just bring on a miscarriage because she wants to spite her husband. I don't think that's actually in any way, shape or form possible. But it's a nice kind of story, I think, that does fit both what Jane Dormer is saying, the kind of image that she wants to present about Anne's downfall.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But whether or not this detail is fanciful, Elizabeth Norton clearly they're in some.

[Eva Longoria]

Kind of relationship and clearly they haven't slept together, because Henry is absolutely smitten by Jane's response. He declares that she's this pure woman and that to show how honourable his intentions towards her are, he won't see her alone, so she will have a chaperone. So he actually moves her brother Edward and his wife into apartments which are actually connected to his by a secret staircase. Thomas Cromwell actually moves out so that Edward Seymour can move in, which means that Henry can meet with Jane, but he can show that his intentions are honourable, that he's not planning to make her his mistress. And of course, if he's not planning to make her his mistress, the implication is he's considering making her his wife.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But how did Jane feel about that? How much had she been responsible for nurturing Henry's interest in her? Or was she a candidate being pushed forward by others?

[Eva Longoria]

Edward Seymour would very much like his sister to be queen. Chapuy is brought into, to some extent, the conspiracy with Princess Mary, so he says Princess Mary would support a new wife. Thomas Cromwell seems to be supporting the Seymours. We can see this in moving apartments, but also in conversations he has with Chapuys. So there's clearly a party around Jane. Chapuy suggests that she's being schooled in what to say to Henry. So to some extent she probably is. But I think it denies her agency to suggest that she's really just a cipher. And I do have an issue with that because I think actually there's no evidence at all that she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't desire it, because she clearly does enjoy being queen and we can see that in things that happen later in her life. She likes the fun clothes, but she also likes some of the other aspects of being queen and we can see that in the sources. So I think it denies her agency to say that she's being solely coached. She almost certainly is being advised, but I think it goes too far to say she's being coached. I think she knows the story of Anne Boleyn, how Anne Boleyn became Queen. And to some extent she's emulating that. She's holding out for marriage, but she's also created her own Persona. This is a woman that will choose, bound to obey and serve as her motto. She's clearly created how she wants Henry to perceive her. And I mean, he falls for it, absolutely buys into this. I just don't see how a woman can be as successful as she is without really having any. Her own sort of personal input. And I think really we should credit Jane with the fact that she's able to persuade Henry to marry her.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

One letter from Henry to Jane survives from their courtship, presumably sent while Anne was in the Tower. Although not demonstrating the sheer infatuation of his bieutoux to Anne, there is something in it that is reminiscent of those heady notes. Sending the letter along with a gift.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

He writes, my dear friend and mistress.

[Eva Longoria]

The bearer of these few lines from thy entirely devoted servant will deliver into thy fair hands a token of my.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

True affection for thee, hoping you will.

[Eva Longoria]

Keep it forever in your sincere love for me.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But his main concern is to warn.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

Her of something advertising you that there.

[Eva Longoria]

Is a ballad made lately of great derision against us, which if it is seen by you, I pray you to pay no manner of regard to it. I am not at present informed who is the setter forth of this malignant writing. But if he is found out, he shall be straitly punished for it.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

He signs off thus, hoping shortly to.

[Eva Longoria]

Receive you in these arms.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

I end for the present your own.

[Eva Longoria]

Loving servant and sovereign, HR Aiden Norrie, assesses it.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

I love the idea that it is responding to a ballad that is saying naughty things. Shall we say they were very successful in suppressing it because the ballad does not seem to have survived. And obviously Henry is trying to avoid Jane knowing about it, so he doesn't recount the details of it in the letter to her. He's clearly worried about it. And so I wonder if it's trying to say something about Jane's virtue, her chastity, whether they've already been sleeping together, perhaps suggesting that she isn't a virgin already. Given the way that Henry is almost frightened about what Jane might think about the ballad if she. She comes across it. Given that we know that cult gossip is something that can be really dangerous in the period, it makes sense that would be the content of the ballad or something along those lines. And that's why Henry does not want Jane to know about it, but also to not be upset by it.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Do we see here, then, a relationship of real affection, or was he on the rebound?

[Eva Longoria]

He's clearly not committed to ending the Boleyn marriage, really, until not long before Anne's fall. Elizabeth Norton is able to get Chapuis to finally recognize her as queen that Easter. It's by no means a certainty that he will end his marriage to Anne that April. So I think to some extent he's keeping his options open. I think he's seeing how it plays out with Jane. It is a bit reboundy. It's often suggested that Henry ricochets around. He goes for glamorous Anne Boleyn and then he goes for homely Jane's Seymour. And I think that's quite unfair. I think Jane, again, suffers quite a lot from comparison with Anne Boleyn. And they're often treated as a dichotomy, if you like. Anne Boleyn is this. So Jane Seymour must be this. And I think they're a lot more similar in a lot of aspects than I think we necessarily give them credit for. So it is a little reboundy. Henry is interested in Jane. She's this virgin. She's very pure, she's very modest. But Anne Boleyn, of course, presents herself as a virgin before her marriage to Henry VIII as well. Henry does have a thing about virginity, so I think he is interested in Jane. He's clearly attracted to her because he wouldn't have married her if he wasn't attracted to her. It's his own free choice. I think the Persona of being this virgin figure, obedient, quiet, I think that does appeal to him. So it is, to some level, a rebound relationship. But I think in general, he really gets to know Jane in that period in March, April, early May. And that's really what makes the decision for him, that he's going to marry her, because he doesn't have to marry her. He can still behead Anne Boleyn if he wants and then marry somebody else. I think this is another area where Jane's reputation very much suffers because, of course, she becomes betrothed to Henry the day after Anne's execution. It doesn't look good. What I would say is even Anne didn't realize she was going to be beheaded in the Tower. She says, they'll send me to a nunnery. To actually behead your wife is really unusual. Anne's enemies in Europe are quite shocked by it. Even Eustace Chapuy is shocked by Anne's beheading. I think it's really unlikely that Jane would have realized that Henry would behead Anne and really it's not something she desired because it sets a precedent. Because if he can behead Anne Boleyn, of course he can behead Jane Seymour if he wants to. So I think it's unfair to charge her with Anne Boleyn's death. That comes from Henry. He certainly didn't have to execute Anne to get rid of her, because most people had doubts about the validity of that marriage anyway. So I think she was probably in a state of fear and we can see that an occasion while she's Queen, she's talked about as a woman who isn't very secure. Her coronation keeps being postponed and it's postponed because of plague. But there is an implication that perhaps she is disposable in a way, that Anne Boelyn was also disposable. So I think we can extrapolate that Jane's reaction is probably not one of great joy that Anne Boleyn is executed. And actually it does set a. A very dangerous precedent for her. And we see that with Catherine Howard.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Of course.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The wedding took place on 30 May 1536.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

We don't even know who performed the ceremony, which is incredible.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Aiden Norrie.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

I've tried very hard to narrow down the list in terms of which mainly bishops were available. Tranmer was available, and given that he is the Archbishop of Canterbury, I think it likely it was him. But the fact that we don't know who did it tells you that it was clearly very quick. But I think it's a reminder of how capricious and changeable Henry was, but also how concerned he was with having a male heir. The sooner you're married, the sooner you can start popping out babies. It's clearly at the back of his mind and you do wonder how Jane feels about it. So they're married on the 30th of May, but she's not really formally introduced in court until Whitsun, So that's like the 4th of June. So they do get a little bit of a honeymoon in a sense. So clearly there is still a little bit of a romantic spark there.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

From Henry Chapuis, writing the day before, before Anne's death, had been scathing about Henry's new love interest, describing her appearance in disparaging terms as of middling stature and no great beauty, and implying that she had been at court so long that she was unlikely to be a virgin. But once she was Queen, the general report of her character was positive.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

Of all of Henry's later wives, she is the one that from the very beginning everyone is saying very nice things about whether or not there was politics behind their opinions of her. So John Russell writing to Viscount Leo, the Lord Deputy of Calais, saying that she is a gentle lady as I ever knew and fair, a queen as any in Christendom. What is to be gained by writing to Leal that if it's not the truth? Obviously I'm not suggesting that he was going to say awful things because there is a chance the letter will be read and all of that, but you don't need to go down that line of the effuse praise if it's not based in truth, or at least not far from the truth. And even someone like Cromwell writing to Bishop Gardiner, who is the ambassador in France at the time, saying that Henry has chosen the most virtuous lady and the various gentlewoman that liveth again, he's writing to Gardiner in France. Why does he need to lie? Essentially? So clearly everyone likes the choice. Perhaps in some ways it's to do with with the speed of it in terms of there isn't all the baggage of the King's great matter and eventually becoming Queen. We haven't got all of that negative baggage that Anne could never escape from. Jane very luckily doesn't have to deal with any of that.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane seems to have stepped into her role as Queen with some confidence. In fact, some of her decisions during the one year and five months of her queenship suggest that the modesty she had displayed during courtship was at least partly strategic.

[Eva Longoria]

She takes control of the Queen's lands. I mean, she becomes one of the wealthiest landowners in England at a stroke when she sees the Queen's lands and actually there is evidence of her taking quite A strong interest in those. We can also see her taking over the running of her household. She appears quite often in the Lyle letters and she does seem to be quite a strict mistress. There's suggestion that she orders one of her new maids to get rid of all her French hoods and wear English gable hoods because they're less becoming. I think it goes too far to suggest that Jane bans the French hood, which is obviously much sexier than the gable hood. The French hood is where you can see the hair. When you see portraits of Anne Boleyn, she's normally wearing the French hood, whereas Jane is wearing the gable hood that looks like the roof of a house. Jane did own a French hood. She probably wore them on occasion. But she does seem to have tried to present this air of modesty in her household, which is quite sensible, because, of course, Henry has drawn his previous two wives from his wife's households, so perhaps not displaying the maids as particularly attractive isn't necessarily a bad thing. We know that she dresses very richly. Surviving evidence of jewelry and of her dresses show that she really does enjoy the finer things of being queen. She's got red velvet, she's got furs, she's got a huge amount of jewellery. She clearly dresses to impress. So I think it's really unlikely that she's trying to appear as this dowdy little woman. I think actually she looks good when she's at court, but she doesn't necessarily want other people to look as good as.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Her strategic coup was Jane's choice of motto Bound to Obey and Serve. Not only was it a kind of mission statement, but it also carried connotations of Catholic orthodoxy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Foreign.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

It's a very interesting motto and the choice of a motto that is clearly based on something from the Book of Job. Bound to obey and serve. In some ways, I'm always tempted to read it as a direct, almost smackdown of Amberlynn, because it is very clearly distancing from Anne's kind of form of queenship. But while Jane obviously has to be on board with the royal Supremacy, she doesn't really have a choice in the matter. She is still very clearly what you might call traditionally Catholic. This is a very Catholic understanding of both wife and particularly queen. If we're thinking about the very Catholic understanding that queens are the earthly embodiment of the Queen of Heaven, it makes sense. That's the motto she would choose and the role that she would want to present herself as having.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane's Catholicism underpinned her religious and political interventions as queen in defending her faith, she was more outspoken than most popular depictions of her would suggest.

[Eva Longoria]

The evidence suggests that Jane is quite opinionated.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Elizabeth Norton, it was claimed that she.

[Eva Longoria]

Actually spoke out for the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace, where she actually threw herself on her knees before Henry and said, do you think this might be God's judgment for you ruining so many churches? And that's very outspoken and going against what the King himself is thinking. So that's quite interesting. There's talk of her being regent. The second act of Succession that's passed actually gives provision for her to be regent should Henry die while their child is still a minor. Also, when Henry is considering going against rebels himself in the Pilgrimage of Grace, he's going to leave Jane in charge of the Council at Windsor, which again suggests that she does have some level of political input. What we can see of Jane, she is quite politically active to some extent. She also is involved in some of the nunneries and religious houses during the dissolution of the monastery. One particularly is Catesby Nunnery, which she seems to have spoken out for to try to save the house.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Aidan Norrie agrees that Jane's intercession for Catesby Priory reveals both her faith and her activism.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

In the one hand, Jane is interfering or meddling with the dissolution of the monasteries. But again, what's interesting here is when Henry does start with the dissolution of the monasteries, initially, there's never any sense that every single monastery in England is going to be dissolved. There is an understanding, understanding that the number will certainly be pruned, but there will still be some. And you can almost see this in the way that Joyce, Barclay, the Prioress and Jane are trying to convince Henry to let the Priory at least continue in some form. And there's no written records of what Jane herself said. But Joyce writes to Cromwell saying what the Queen has said, and I don't think she would have lied there, she would have told the truth. And the fact that she says that Jane has offered to buy the Priory so that the nuns can remain there is quite revealing. So Jane has not been successful in convincing Henry to leave the Priory alone, to not dissolve it. But Jane is going, okay, you've made this decision, let me buy it for them so they can live out their life. And there's no reason, as far as I can tell, it's a Secession nunnery. There's nothing that kind of screams the Queen should be interested in this. But the commissioners had said wonderful things about it, so wonderful, in fact, that Henry thought that they'd been bribed to say wonderful things, which I think is revealing for Henry's kind of general distrust about everyone and everything. And if we're thinking about Jane's Catholicism, it and her piety and the various kinds of expressions of her faith, a lot of that's not going to be recorded or done in a public way, just by the very nature of it. But this does seem to be a very clear example of her wanting to.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Act on her faith as queen. Jane also took on the role of stepmother, even to Mary, who was only her Jr. By eight years.

[Eva Longoria]

We can see her interacting with Elizabeth to some extent. She's obviously Anne Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth Norton. She's still a toddler, she's not even three. But Jane does seem to have bought her some clothes on occasion. After Jane's death, some gifts of Jane's property are given to Elizabeth, which suggests that's something that Jane would have wanted. Elizabeth also visits court on occasions. She does have a relationship with Elizabeth. It probably is somewhat difficult, given what's happened to Elizabeth mother. But again, that's extrapolating, if you like, with Mary. We're on much firmer ground. Jane is clearly very fond of Mary, Said, in fact, that she'd already spoken out for Mary before she's married Henry, about reinstating her in the succession, bringing her back to court. Jane is absolutely instrumental in Mary being brought back. Henry probably would have brought Mary back anyway. He likes to keep his options open and we can see his marriage alliances, which is still going on after she's been declared illegitimate, that he is keeping his options open about whether or not Mary is one of the heirs to the throne, even though she's legally illegitimate. But I think Jane helps to smooth the process. She provides a human face, whereas Henry still insists that Mary recognises her illegitimacy. At the same time, Mary's getting letters and presents from Jane saying, come to court, spend time with me. And they clearly do have a very affectionate relationship with. They play cards together, for example. And Mary is Jane's chief mourner when she dies. And that's the role that you would give to the closest relative of the same sex. Jane has a mother, she has sisters. So the fact that it's Mary, I think, demonstrates just how close the relationship was. And it's also Mary who pays off members of Jane's household, who gives the charitable alms at Jane's funeral as well. So I think the two are very close.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

As well as genuine affection and a shared faith. Jane's advocacy of Mary was also likely to have been another strategic decision.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

At the end of the day, until she has a child, Henry will have to be succeeded by one of his daughters. That is really the only outcome. And if you have Mary, the daughter of a very popular queen, Mary herself is quite popular. Having her position in this kind of weird liminal flux, that's not good for Jane, not good for any children she might have, particularly if she only has a daughter. If you have a son, fine, the boy will always take precedence over the daughters. But if you only have a daughter and you've got the really popular princess who has reached the age of majority, can inherit the throne. I think it is very much in Jane's interest to have Mary not only her kind of position at court clarified, but to have her at court so you can keep an eye on her. If she's off doing her own thing, okay, you can keep an eye on her, you can reduce the number of staff and kind of keep tabs on her. That's very different to having them in front of you, having sight of them. She must have liked Mary, had some kind of affection for her. You don't do this if you hate the person. But lots of things about the early modern period, it can be more than one thing. It can be both selfish in a I want her position sorted, but it can also be an acknowledgement of both the Catholicism that she represents and they probably had very similar views, their faith. But in a lot of ways, Jane was a pragmatist, a realist, and she was the one married to Henry viii. If Mary had have been executed, which was not impossible, if the trial had have gone ahead, which it almost did, you're not going to find her guilty. And of course, the punishment for treason is death. We'd seen what happened with the Pilgrimage of Grace. You can only imagine the tumult that would have ensued following the execution of the King's daughter. Surely it would not have gone well. And you can almost imagine Jane thinking about that and realizing that it's better to have this sorted because it solidifies all of our positions.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The desire to have her own child may have been pressing.

[Eva Longoria]

She gets married at the end of May 1530, 1536, just in June. And then she's not pregnant until around the end of January, start of February. She gives birth in October, so she probably was somewhat worried. And there are rumours that her coronation was being postponed until Henry could determine whether or not she could bear him a child. She probably starts to realise she's pregnant around Easter in 1537. And I think her abiding emotion would have been relief that she's finally pregnant. Pregnant. We know that Henry has had some problems. Obviously, he admits to impotency in the Anne of Cleves marriage. There are rumors dating back to his marriage to Anne Boleyn that he's perhaps having trouble in the marriage bed, so the problem probably lies with him. But of course, in the 16th century, it would always be blamed on the woman. So she realizes she's pregnant and suddenly Henry can't do enough for her, so he's sending to France, to Calais, for quails, which she seems to have desired to eat in her pregnancy. Princess Mary also buys her quails and also a cucumber during her pregnancy. There's celebrations when the baby quickens, when she feels the baby move. And also, Henry's very solicitous. So actually, he says he's not going to travel too far from her in case she hears some rumour that might upset her. She's concerned as well, in fact, and we can see this. There's plague in London towards the end of her pregnancy. And actually one of Cromwell's servants notes to Cromwell, saying that actually Jane seemed very frightened when there's talk of plague, and Henry's quite relaxed about it, which is somewhat surprising for Henry because he doesn't like disease. But actually, really, it's Jane who is really frightened by the fact that there seems to be plague coming closer to the court. And actually, it's agreed that she'll be somewhat cloistered away. People won't be able to come into contact with her too much. So she's clearly very worried about the outcome of her pregnancy, understandably so, because the entire focus of the country is on this baby. And Henry didn't give Anne Boleyn that many chances to bear him a son, probably three pregnancies, which isn't that many chances in the 16th century.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane's pregnancy came to term, but her delivery would be no easy matter.

[Eva Longoria]

Jane goes into labor on 10 October. It's clearly a very difficult labor. It takes two days. In fact, they have processions through London to pray for her safe delivery, so there's clearly concern. On 12 October, she gives birth to a son, Edward VI, and the country erupts into celebration. And, I mean, she must have been exhausted. She's been in labour for two days, but she seems to be okay. The baptism is on the 15th of October, and she's well enough to attend some of the ceremony, so she appears Lying on a kind of daybed, wrapped in furs and you wouldn't expect expect the mother to attend the christening anyway. So actually there's nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that she's able to attend. She's clearly considered to be well enough.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

In the hours after the birth, Jane dictated a letter to Thomas Cromwell informing him by the inestimable goodness and grace of Almighty God we be delivered and brought in childbed of a prince. The letters suggest to Ada Norrie that Jane did not imagine she was about to die.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

Clearly the birth was traumatic. Three nights even by our standards is a horrific labour. But she doesn't die for almost two weeks. It's unlikely that she was imagining herself dying when she wrote this letter. So this isn't a I'm going to die, I need to create a legacy for Edward, I need to provide for him when I'm no longer going to be here. She is very much kind of thinking about she is Queen, she has just given birth to a boy, she is almost imagining her role and how it will continue. She is the queen and then she will be the King's mother. And she's very much trying to most secure her position. The fact that she was well enough to be welcoming guests to Edward's baptism. She clearly wasn't bedridden and unable to walk, so she must have been well enough to do that and even kind of just think about how traumatic for her body a three day labour must have been. The fact that she was able to be up and around suggests that maybe it was something a little bit later on.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Aida Norrie is also very keen to dispense dispel the enduring myth that Jane was delivered by caesarean section and that that was the cause of her death.

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

There is a very strong myth that develops that Jane died after giving birth to Prince Edward via cesarean. There is absolutely no evidence for this and as I said, given how long she survives after the birth and the fact that she is able to be up and welcoming guests to the baptism, it's just not possible. No one in early modern England is surviving for almost a fortnight after having a baby. Cut out of them in the early modern period. Indeed, for most of pre modern history, Caesarean is a last ditch attempt. Generally it's often performed either when the mother has already passed away but the baby is still alive, or the chances of the mother surviving are incredibly low to begin with. Okay, we're on wife number three here, but number three is a bit different to number six. I Don't think he would be wanting to discard her as easily as some of the stories about her caesarean suggest. I think a lot of them actually have more to say about Henry. So there's sort of two versions of the story. One says Jane is the one who makes the decision that cut the baby out, have the son, you'll find someone else to replace me. She's dutiful, but I can't imagine a woman in her position actually saying that, because apart from anything, I can't imagine how painful a caesarean in 1537 would have been. That's not something you would decide to do. But the other version is that Henry is the one who makes the decision because essentially he can find another wife, but he's had so much trouble having a son that he wants the baby to survive. And so I think that says more about how people are viewing Henry and his general cruelty and capriciousness, rather than anything historically grounded.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The actual truth, Elizabeth Norton suggests, was something far more prosaic.

[Eva Longoria]

However, she then falls sick very quickly. She clearly has a fever. She lasts quite a long time for childbed fever. She does quite well, and there are a few reports that suggest perhaps she is going to recover. But it really becomes quite clear quickly that she's not. And she dies on the 24th of October, 1537, so 12 days after the birth of her son. Obviously, we know that she's died from complications from childbirth. It's most likely straightforward childbed fever. She has a midwife. She will also have doctors involved. They don't wash their hands. Nobody understands about hygiene in the period. So it's very common to contract an infection after childbirth, particularly after difficult labour. They've got no antibiotics, there's nothing they can do about it. You just have to simply see whether they get better or not.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Aidan Norrie wonders if Jane should not be remembered as the queen who died, but as the queen who was effectively canonized. Could Jane be called a saint?

[Dr. Aidan Norrie]

If we think about the canonization process, when someone is declared a saint, nothing has actually changed. You are merely acknowledging a fact. The person is already a saint. You are just recognizing that they are. And if we think about the many popular cults that grew up around various people, many of whom might be what we called formally canonized, but many who were not. And in some ways, yes, it is a little bit flippant. I don't think Jane is a saint in the sense of you pray to her to have an illness healed, but she certainly cultivated an image of saintly Queenship, and I often say boringness can be a virtue. And in a period of political tumult and upheaval, a queen consort who is entirely not political and is not being involved is actually something that's incredibly strong. So if we think back to Jane's own mother in law, obviously she never met her, but had Elizabeth of York had a similar personality to, say, Anne Boleyn, I think Henry VII's kingship would have been very different. Having the calm, stable, invisible consort is, in a lot of ways an attempt to present a form of continuity and stability that may or may not be there. You don't want people talking about the queen like they were with Anne Boleyn. It is literally the antithesis of what you want a queen to be doing. You want them as the ultimate woman that people are looking up to and aiming to emulate. You don't want them the subject of gossip.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

It is this sacral quality and her delivery of a surviving son that together explain why, although Jane's interiority is somewhat hard to access, her exterior appearance is still well known. Dr. Charlotte Boland of the National Portrait Gallery.

[Dr. Charlotte Bolland]

Jane Seymour is, in a way, one of the more recognisable of the queens, or rather one image of Jane Seymour is one of the more recognizable images, and that is Holbein's portrait of her, which survives not only in his portrait drawing, but also the painting, then contemporary versions produced in his studio, and then records of the great Whitehall mural, the copies that have survived from the mid 17th century. So Holbein's image of Jane is very much fixed. And I think it's really interesting how portraits are used in commemoration, why that might be, and that Jane was the only queen other than Catherine Parr, whose portrait seems to have been in Henry's possession at the time of his death, that he kept her image. And of course, her family had a vested interest in proclaiming their connection to her and therefore to Edward. And so we have records of them paying Holbein for copies because they want to have her image all over the place. And so she's unknowable and rather distant. But in this one static memorial that becomes a memorial almost immediately after its creation, it doesn't have a sort of normal, practical bit of life. It becomes commemorative so quickly.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

And while the documentary evidence may suggest that Anne and Jane were antithetical in colouring, the surviving portraits actually indicate two women who looked quite similar.

[Dr. Charlotte Bolland]

Trying to get a close sense of what someone's appearance was is really interesting in these portraits, because particularly the sort of restrictions of a gable hood skew our perception of what someone looks like. The proportions of their face has such an impact and also of their colouring. So that kind of often dominates the sort of imagination so much. But if you were to dress Anne and Jane in the same way, that you might have a very similar, perhaps representation. And I think it is intriguing, the question as to whether some of the later images identified as Anne Boleyn, if they might have started off as being Jane Seymour's. If that's a thought that has happened before that an artist in the 17th century, the 18th century, trying to find an Anne Boleyn, used a Jane Seymour.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Jane had died, but her son Edward survived long enough to become king. And as he acceded to the throne, his father, King Henry viii, was interred not in Westminster Abbey, but the traditional burial place of Kings, but in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle with the wife he thought had served him best of all. In a moment, we turn to the often misunderstood and misrepresented Anne of Cleves. Don't go away.

[Don Wildman]

In case you haven't heard, in the us, it's a presidential election year. We're going to hear a lot of this is America. No, no, you're all wrong. This is America. But on American History hit. We're leaving that to the rest of them. Join me, Don Wildman, twice a week, where we look to the past to understand the United States of today. With the help of some amazing guests, let us introduce you to the Founding Fathers, guide you through the west wing of the White House and shelter you on the battlefields of years gone by. To find out just how we got here. American History hit. A podcast from History Hit.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Her birth name was Anna von Denmark, Duchess of Julius, Cleave and Berg. We know her by an Anglicized version of her name, Anne of Cleves, depending on whether you count Anne Boleyn. Anne of Cleves was the second or third of Henry VIII's wives to have been raised outside of England. She was the first and only wife whom he did not know in person in advance of their betrothal. This was a political match designed to give Henry another chance at begetting sons, but also to offer defense for England in the midst of trying international circumstances. The break with Rome had taken its toll. In 1538, the Pope had published his long threatened edict excommunicating the King of England. He named Henry a heretic who could be lawfully deprived of his throne. Making war on England was now the official recommendation of the Catholic Church. To make matters worse, that same year, the King of France, Francis I and the Holy Roman Emperor, who had long been at each other's throats, had met face to face and promise each other perpetual peace and to be foes to each other's foes. Should France and the Empire decide to conspire against Henry, as Thomas Risley put it, England would be made but a morsel amongst these choppers. Henry needed allies and the ruling family of the United Duchies of Julius Cleve Burgh looked a possibility. Dr. Valerie Shute explains.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

Her family's strategic importance for Henry VIII was that there were many duchies in Germany that, though they were considered part of the Habsburg Empire, were actually ruled independently. So Cleves was one of them, Saxony was another of them. And Duke John of Cleves, he had four children, and his oldest daughter, Sybilla, was married to John Frederick of Saxony. So they were both connected to the Habsburg Empire and they were connected to the Schmalkaldic League. So for Henry viii, they were strategically significant as a potential family to marry into whenever he was considering a fourth marriage in 1538 and 39.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Let's dig a little more into the history of this family with Anne's biographer, Heather Darcy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Her father was a hereditary Duke of Clevesmark. So the territory started off as an earldom, I suppose you could say, because it was originally the Counts of Cleves, and then at one point the Count of Mark, who had the last name Fondermarque, married the heiress of Cleves. And I believe that was in the late 14th century. Then in the early 15th century, Adolf, who was a Count of Cleves, Mark is then elevated to duke. So the territory becomes a dukedom instead, or a principality, if you will, instead of just an earldom or a county, and he marries into the Burgundian noble family. And so there's a lot of cross culture that's imported into Cleves Mark. So Anna would have grown up in very German setting, but also with a heavy Burgundian influence. Her mother was the only surviving child of William IV of Ulichberg. And as a result, in German culture at the time, women could not rule their own territories. So whoever married Maria would then rule Julichenberg. So that's where those two come from. Anna's father was one of three children. He had a sister, also named Anna, who was quite rebellious. And then also she had an uncle who unfortunately died young.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

So Anna, or anne, born in 1515, was the second daughter of a duke from United Duchies in Northern Germany that were independent and strategically well placed within the Holy Roman Empire, fitting with German norms. Anne's education was both segregated by sex and distinctly more practical than that of Henry's other queens.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

There was this concept of the fallen simmer or the ladies rooms.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Heather Darcy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

No boys over the age of 12 were allowed to be there, so it was all women. They were not locked up during the day, but that's where they did most of their learning and they all spent time together. We know that Ana learned card games. I believe she probably learned how to play chess, because I know her elder sister did. She would have learned practical things like basic mathematics so that she could run a household, because presumably Anna, as a hereditary duchess, would have married an old woman and would have had to know how to take care of the household while he was gone. They also learned things like how to mend clothes, how to embroider, how to cook, and she did bring those traditions, I believe, with her to England. The other thing that was very common with German princesses or German noblewomen is they would send each other gifts of increasing skill and embroidery to compete with each other.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

An English marriage was not her. Her intended fate. In 1527, when she was not even 12 years old, Anne was betrothed to Francis, heir of the Duchy of Lorraine. The purpose of this was territorial expansion. Heather Darcy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Again, Anna and her brother were both betrothed to children from the Lorraine ruling family. There was an Anne of Lorraine, to whom Wilhelm was initially betrothed, and. And then there was Francis of Lorraine, the Duke of Lorraine's son, to whom Anna was betrothed. They are the great grandchildren of Philippa of Guelders. Philippa of Guelders was a twin sister of Duke Charles of Guelders. Duke Karl had no children, he had no heirs. And the Fondemak family had tried to wed Aunt Anna to Duke Karl, and instead she eloped, which is what made her feisty, in my opinion. So they'd been trying for a while to gain access to this territory, and it was thought that if Anna married the Duke of Lorraine's son, then their offspring would of course, be entitled to having that territory and hopefully they could eventually consolidate it. Likewise, if Wilhelm goes on to have children with his wife, they could consolidate that territory. Anna, when she was betrothed, was no older than 11 years. There is some evidence that the contract was de futuro, meaning that there were certain conditions that her father had to fulfill in order for the marriage to be put into effect, and that was that Anna's father had to pay a dowry. He had to pay dowry monies in the interim. Zabilla, of course, she's betrothed to Johann Friedrich of Saxony in 1526 as well. This is all part of one large document. But Sibylla becomes the electress of Saxony and her father had to put up the dowry for that. Typically in the German marital system at the time, German women would marry down, not up. So overall, the van de Macht sisters are fascinating that both Anna and Sibylla married up by quite a bit. Bottom line, her father's out of money, he doesn't pay the contract in time. Duke Karl says, well, we're not going to do this. This is off. You can't marry a my great grand nephew or whatever the term would be. And that happens in 1535.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Not only was this first betrothal revoked, but the territory it was supposed to help acquire, guelders, had by 1538 become an object of dispute with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V himself. Valerie Shute explains the first betrothal was.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

Made when she was a child. So like many royal women, she was betrothed quite, quite early. And sometimes, as we know, those betrothals simply didn't work out, or the alliance, as the children got older was no longer as important as it was. And that was the case with Anne. Whenever she was young, she was contracted to marry Francis of Lorraine, and that had to do with the inheritance of the Duchy of Gelders. So Anne and Francis were going to be given the the Duchy of Geelders together if they were married. And as they got older, the Duke of Guelders may have changed his mind, or the Duke of Cleves may have changed his mind. And actually, whenever Anne's brother William took over as the Duke of Cleves, he claimed Guelders for himself. And he and Charles V then fought for control of gelders for seven years.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

In the midst of this dispute, in early 1539, an English emissary, Christopher Mont, was sent to Julius Cleeve to assess the possibility of a nuptial alliance between England and the duchies. Thomas Cromwell was keen on the match. He instructed Mont to send her picture thither so he might persuade His Majesty, thereby. Eventually a portrait did arrive, but it wasn't good enough for Henry, so he sent his court painter Hans Holbein the Younger, to capture her likeness. What can Holbein's images tell us about Anne's appearance? That's such an interesting question, Dr. Charlotte Bolland.

[Dr. Charlotte Bolland]

I think it gives really interesting Insight, because it is about the clothing. It's the main thing. And that question of the role that mismatched tastes can pay in different sort of expectations. And so in that idea of what a woman should look like, that having a different kind of silhouette, different profile, if that was part of the problem, that was a hurdle that she didn't realize she had to overcome in her reception in England. I think that it's really interesting to think about what Holbein was doing. So on the occasions where he'd already painted Christina of Denmark as part of those marriage negotiations, and then in producing the image of Anne that other portraits had been sent to England of Christina and of Anne that had been deemed as no, I need to see this person through Holbein's eyes. I know that idea that Henry understood how Holbein saw people and so therefore he would be able to match up, have an idea of the real individual from Holbein's work. I think it's really interesting to think about the difference in scale and media of the portraits that Holbein produced, because we have the Cristina of Denmark that survives in the National Gallery. So this incredible full length portrait that clearly entranced Henry and that Holbein must have taken a lot of time to create. And you get the feeling that he thought this would be it. This was the job that needed to be done and arguably it was successful. But then for grander, yes, geopolitical reasons, that whole alliance falls apart. And so the idea that actually the image of Anne and the painting that survives in the Louvre and being painted on vellum, it's a much kind of faster job. Oh, I've got to do this again. And then contrasting yet again with the miniature that survives in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection, which I think is so resonant as an object, because this is a portrait that you're meant to hold and to have you encounter it one on one, you might perhaps discuss it with someone. But it's about your eye contact with that small person. And we know from Henry VIII's letters with Anne Boleyn that he sent his image to her in a bracelet. This idea of the role of sort of small images of your beloved was part of the way he liked to perform falling in love. And that I think this was a sort of tool that he commissioned from Holbein to help that process. And it's intriguing because it's one of the rarer miniatures to have ultramarine. So it's the more expensive materials rather than azurite in the Blue and ultramarine has its associations in the way that you paint the blues of the Virgin Mary. And there's also lovely parallels in the materiality of the miniature with the fact that they're mounted on playing cards as their kind of support. And so at the time that Henry was falling in love, looking at a kind of playing card of Anne of Cleves, that she was learning to play cards in Calais to try and learn how to build a relationship with him. So this great sort of. Of the materiality of these portraits, I think, is so interesting to think about how they functioned.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The pictures were convincing. Henry projected his fantasy onto Anne's image. And in September 1539, Anne and her mother and brother consented to her marriage to the English king. Soon after the contract was signed, it was agreed that Anne would set out for England within two months. The question was how.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

The marriage contract was signed in early October in both England and Cleves. Valerie Chute and I think Henry VIII was very anxious to get his bride over and in fact, he wanted to put her in a boat and sail her to England because Henry was very proud of his navy and that's how he thought would be the fastest way to get her, her to England. And the ambassadors of Cleves were very hesitant to put her in a ship and send her over. And they did blame weather on that. It was the wrong time of year. They didn't want to put her in the North Sea and ship her to England because of the potential for bad weather, for shipwrecks. They even said Anne's complexion could get damaged. And eventually they chose this land route and it seemed to be just as treacherous, perhaps, and very long.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

The progress moved at the glacial speed of five miles a day.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

Her train, the people with her, there were more than 200 of them. So I think there may have just been a lot of people to move. I also think it may have been over unfamiliar terrain. So there were some. Some English attendants with them, but not many. So it may have been lots of German people going through unfamiliar lands trying to get to Calais. I think they experienced bad weather. That's certainly what happened in Calais, where they were stuck for an additional two weeks. And it seemed like they traveled in winter, which just may not have been the best time to move a few hundred people across the middle of Europe to try to get to England.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

All this delay made Henry impatient to meet his new bride. Rather than wait to meet her at the appointed time at Greenwich on New Year's Day 1540, he rode to Rochester in fancy dress. To accost her. What happened next is disputed. The English eyewitness accounts all date from six months, months later. Heather Darcy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Of course, the English account of Anna and Henry's first meeting is created for purposes of the annulment proceedings. And that's the story that we have, where Henry goes in disguise and he has furs and he meets Anna and she's hideous, and he's so disgusted that he leaves. According to the German sources, which were written by Ollis Legge, whose name is Heinrich Ba, but he's nicknamed Olesleger, he is a Vice Chancellor of Cleveland at this time and is eventually elevated to Chancellor of Cleves. He was with Anna, and a few days after her marriage to Henry, he writes back to Anna's brother Wilhelm and mother Maria about what had gone on. Apparently, I tend to think this is more truthful, but of course, the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Henry does show up in disguise at some point. Anna does realize who it is. Henry presents Anna with a crystal goblet that had a gold foot and a gold lid and had diamonds and rubies on it. Also a gold chain with, I believe, rubies and pearls, no mention of furs. He stays there with her and has dinner with her. This is, of course, at Rochester Castle. He leaves for the evening, but stays close enough to her that he can come back and have breakfast with her the next day. So very, very different. And we don't hear any mention of any type of discord between the two of them until we look at the documents that were created for purposes of the annulment.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

What had happened? Valerie Shute offers her explanation of why Henry didn't take to Anne when they met.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

For all of Henry's other wives, all five, he had seen them first. And I think he believed in chivalry. I think he believed that he was going to love his bride. He loved Catherine of Aragon before he married her. He lusted after Anne Boleyn before he married her. And I think that with Anne of Cleves, or who was ever going to be his fourth bride, Henry was adamant that he needed to see her first. And I think this was because he wanted to love his bride. He knew he would see this woman and love her. And when it came to the Hans Holbein portraits, we know the newly restored portrait that's in the Louvre that looks beautiful, and then the little miniature that is at the va, and it wasn't originally in that box, it was originally out of the box and probably a square, and I think he probably carried it with him. It was a portrait that he would look at and say, I'm going to marry this woman. And he probably talked himself into loving her. This was the woman he was going to love and marry and hopefully have children with. And when he saw her, and I don't know if it happened at first sight because these sources from January when he met her, none of them report a bad meeting. It's not until the July depositions that we hear Henry didn't really love her from the beginning. And I think he was just disappointed. He had convinced himself he loved this woman. Maybe she didn't look like the portrait. She certainly didn't speak English. There would have been cultural differences. She would have dressed funny compared to the English or French dress he was used to. And she just didn't live up, up to what he built her up to be in his mind. And even over the few months they were married, I think between the linguistic and the cultural barrier, they just didn't fall in the way that he hoped they would.

[Don Wildman]

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[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Heather Darcy suggests that there may have been an underlying foreign policy question determining Henry's response to Anne.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

And what was happening. In the background is the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles V's wife, His beloved wife, dies in early May of 1539. Henry's ambassadors had just started asking Wilhelm about whether or not he had a sister available to wed Henry. Wilhelm inherited Gelders, which we talked about a little bit earlier in June of 1538, against his father's advice, because his father knew that the Holy Roman Emperor had a ton of claims to this property for various reasons. Then, unfortunately, Anna's father dies in February 1539. So just a few months before Charles V's wife Isabella passes away. Isabella passes away. Charles V is an absolute wreck. He goes and hides himself away in a monastery for all of summer 1539. At the same time, you have Wilhelm saying, oh, yeah, King of England, this is a great Idea. Please do marry one of my. My sisters, because then I will have the Elector of Saxony's army and your army, in case I go to war over this piece of territory called Guelders. And that's the part that Cromwell didn't pick up on. So you have kind of a cold war brewing between, if I can call it that, or an ongoing diplomatic incident between Wilhelm and Charles V that is being mediated by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, who goes on to be Holy Roman Emperor after Charles passes away. And when Charles comes out of mourning, he finds out that this negotiation has been going on and in my opinion, decides to let it happen, because he's still trying to play nice to Wilhelm and says, hey, Wilhelm, I have this pretty niece, Christina of Denmark, perhaps you'd like to marry her and I'll just let this go with the King of England. And he, out of friendship, also with Henry viii, allows Anna to go to England at the same time that Anna is traveling to England. So late November and into December, December of 1539, Wilhelm secretly goes to France to negotiate for a French bride from the French royal family. Effectively, what this would do is if he did go to war with Charles V over Gelders, he could create a pincher move, militarily speaking. You've got the English and the English Channel. They could stop any ships from going up past their countries and getting into the Low Countries. You have the Elector of Saxony, which was the most powerful electorate at the time, and their army. You have the Ulic Kleifferberg army, and you have the French army. That could all do a pincher move, because Gelders is kind of in the middle of all this and defeat Charles V. So that was a great idea to someone who is 22 years old. Henry VIII did not like that idea. And by the time Anna arrives in England In January of 1540, several members of her troops that came along and that I think probably intended to stay a bit longer, decided to go home right away because it was becoming too dangerous for them to be in imperial territory or to cross over imperial territory. And Wilhelm enters into a marital contract for Marguerite of Navarre's daughter, Jeanne d'albret. And I believe that was in summer of 1540, so right after Anna's annulment. So all these things happen. But that's what I think went wrong for Anna's marriage to Henry was that Anna's brother was sneaking behind Henry's back and not telling him his plans. And then, of course, we do actually have the cleves War in 1543.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

I offer a third possibility that when Henry appeared before Anne in disguise, she recoiled. Her limited education had not taught her the games of courtly love. She did not anticipate his masquerade. She had not been warned that the King of England had gone to seed. She did not know that she would have to dissemble in the face of his obesity and amidst the reek of his pus filled ulcer. He saw himself reflected truthfully in her eyes and it was enough to turn him right off her. Perhaps all three theories are correct. Using the excuse of her previous betrothal, Henry sought to find a way out of the marriage before their ceremony. But to no avail. On the 6th of January they were married. Later, Henry would insist that the marriage had never been consummated. But to all appearances they were happy. In their few months of marriage they traveled from Greenwich to Westminster to Hampton Court for Easter and back to Whitehall for May Day tournaments. Valerie Shute believes that Anne had an impact even in her short tenure as queen.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

She was culturally successful. She brought in artists and she had all of this patronage power and I think that was her success as a queen. She wrote in books, she was given books. She had a beautiful book of hours that has now been chopped to bits and is back in Germany and she was written about. There are phenomenal poetry books that were written at the time of her marriage to Henry.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But Henry had charged Cromwell with extracting him from the union. When Cromwell failed, he fell. The juggernaut of Henry's desire thundered on. In early July, an ecclesiastical commission was set up to investigate the validity of the marriage. The conclusion was foregone. Henry and Anne, it determined, had no, never legally been married. Though shocked and saddened, Anne was gracious, reconciling herself to the clergy's conclusion. Henry's gratitude was manifest.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

He made a very generous settlement on Anne. Valerie Shute Lots of lands, lots of money, and not even just lands and money, but position. And I think that was done for a few, few reasons. So firstly, she didn't put up a fight and I think he had annulled two previous marriages where both women put up a fight and she did not. And I think part of it is this was very much a thank you. He could have really gone up against, similar to Catherine Maragon, but not to the same extent. An international fight, some international pushback. She had a brother and a brother in law and they had their allies and they really could have fought back against the annulment and they didn't and she didn't And I think that part of this generous settlement was maybe a thank you for taking it graciously. I think part of it was recognizing her status. I think part of it was trying to appease Duke William and divorcing Anne. He also essentially broke off the political alliance that the two of them had formed. And I think some of this was to show, outwardly, we may not be married, but I'm not that bad a guy. He makes Anne write these letters to her brother. I agreed to this. Everything is okay. And I think this was very much an outward gesture, as much as he was trying, trying to placate Anne. I think this was very much a big outward gesture for other people to see, too, that Henry could leave this marriage but not sever so many political ties in the process.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

But why did Henry dare take the risk? In short, because Francis and Charles were no longer friends. Valerie Shute.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

Again, it was a very big risk politically, and I think that's so much of why he entered the marriage, was he, at the time thought he needed the political allies because there was the chance that Francis and Charles and maybe even the papacy were going to invade England. That was a threat. And Henry perceived it as a real threat, no matter how real or not it may actually have been, and aligning himself with the Schmalkaldic League and those people, people connected to them, because Cleves wasn't actually part of it, it was just on the outskirts. It gave him political allies. But by May, the political threat of Francis and Charles coming into England really was no more. And Henry was able to back out of the political allies he had made with Cleves and the German duchies, to go back to the more traditional allies that he was used to, Francis and Charles. And I think those were maybe more powerful, certainly, than the Dukes of Cleves. And I think those were the allies that Henry sought. So he was able to disconnect from one group and try to connect himself back to another. But it was still a risk. There was still a risk that the German duchies could have retaliated. There was a risk that somehow Charles V could have retaliated. Those were still duchies technically under his control, even if they ran independently. It was all a risk. And I think that so much of it had to do with Henry and Anne not necessarily being compatible in the marriage and the outer threat not being so great. And that let Henry slowly back himself out of the situation.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Henry married Anne's lady in waiting, Catherine Howard, just days later. What is perhaps remarkable is that Henry and Anne remained on very good terms.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

It seems that Anna got along well with Henry's daughters, Mary and Elizabeth.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Heather Darcy.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

So Catherine Howard, of course, then marries Henry right away after the annulment, so that Anna's brother can't come back and say, wait a minute, I don't like your process here. This isn't legal. And she has her downfall in November of 1541. And there's instantly an idea that Anna might remarry Harry and for Wilhelm, that would be amazing if Anna remarried Henry, because then he could have access to this once more. Henry dithers, I believe, in part due to his closeness with Anna, whether that was romantic closeness or just out of friendship or whatever it was, and doesn't actually remarry until he marries Catherine Parr, smack in the middle of the Cleves War, where prior to that, Henry had a secret alliance with, with Charles V that he built up and at the same time is constantly having Wilhelm bother him. Hey, remarry my sister. Remarry my sister. Remarry my sister. And I think that there was a closeness and that there was a high degree of respect from Henry to Anna. There's also an item in the Folger Shakespeare Library that was gifted by Anna after her annulment. We don't know what year, but it was gifted by Anna after her annulment to Henry the 8th. And it is a prayer book. And in it at the end she signs it, and I don't remember the exact words, but basically says, I hope that you think of me whenever you look at this book. And the daughter of Cleves. So whether that was just a nice diplomatic gesture for a New Year's gift to me, that's a little bit more intimate because she actually signs it and inscribes something in it. So I think those are the reasons why we can see that they got along as far as, were there any issues while they were married? But I'm sure there were. I mean, you have two strangers coming together, you have a language barrier. I don't know that it was always easy, but again, you don't have the major description of any issues between them. Until preparing for the annulment, Anne did.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Now what she'd been brought up to do. She managed her estates.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

I think it's very impressive in many ways that she did not remarry Valerie Shute, and she ran her own households for 17 years post divorce. She took care of herself financially. We know she was involved with the financial running of her estates. We know that she liked to pay for dresses. We have some of her expense accounts still. She paid for dresses, she played dice, she played cards, she had entertainment, and she ran her own house, household. And she would have been a very independent woman and a very unusual independent woman, and that she was foreign, living in England and doing all of this more or less on her own, with some distant guidance from her brother and a cousin who stayed in her household with her and, I think helped oversee things. But we forget or we get used to the idea that Anne was the ugly wife who was put away, and that just isn't the case. She just continued to manage herself and her properties independently, yet keep herself involved in English politics enough to be friends with two queens. We think that she and Elizabeth had a relationship, although the letters between them, some of them may have been falsified, but we do think that she had these friendly relations. And even after the divorce, she was still considered important internationally. We know that the books that were written about her in the 1540s that kind of lament her divorce, because Henry shouldn't have mistreated this important international woman in this way. And so she was still involved in politics, even if the marriage wasn't intact.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Why didn't she go back to Cleves? Valerie Shute thinks it was an active choice.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

England seemed very culturally different compared to Cleves. So as far as we know from her upbringing, there was no music, there was no dancing. She got a very traditional female education. She probably read or understood her own language, but no other languages. And I think that going to England, she would have been exposed to many more things. And I think she may have simply enjoyed being independent. If she would have gone back to Cleves, the first thing that would have happened is that her brother would have tried to marry her off again, and maybe she just didn't want to. And if she stayed in England, she had finances, she had her own properties and she was more or less in control of herself.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Heather Darcy thinks she had no choice.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

It was too dangerous for her to go home.

[Eva Longoria]

She.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

She was effectively a political refugee there. She was trapped there. And I don't think that either Henry or Wilhelm wanted to be responsible for sending her back to Germany and risking her being captured. So she didn't really have the choice to go home. She initially wanted to, and then she was fine being in England under Henry. And then at a point during the reign of his son Edward, she did want to go back, but she kind of got forgotten about by Wilhelm to a certain extent. As far as I know, there's not too Many sources about her life afterwards. We do know that she corresponded with Wilhelm and with her sister Zabilla. Unfortunately, all of her letters that she sent out of the country and that she received from her family were read. The small glimpses that we have, we don't know her true feelings very well. There is One letter from 1552, I believe, under the reign of Edward VI that Anna sends home to Wilhelm where she says that the English are English and we're still strangers here. So she was unhappy, I believe, under the reign of Edward vi. And of course, when Edward becomes king, he has no reason to really care about Anna. I suspect that Anna and Edward were more so strangers than Anna would have been with Mary or Elizabeth. And he starts taking away Anna's properties and, well, whether it was him or his uncles, who can really say, but starts taking away Anna's properties and she just kind of becomes an afterthought. And Wilhelm is forced to send ambassadors repeatedly to England to ask that Anna's monies that she was to receive as Henry VIII's beloved sister, that she actually receives those. So I heard at a seminar once, and I've not been able to verify this at all, and I frankly haven't pursued it too heavily, but I'm under the impression that at one point she might have been forced to sell some of her clothes at auction to pay her bills. On the other hand, she was free to come and go. She did have her own territories, she was able to hunt, which was a pastime that she very much enjoyed. She was able to be German, if you will. There are some remarks over her cooking, which was thought very odd for a noble woman in England. And of course, as we discussed earlier, that's one of the primary skills that she would have learned. She would have been very well equipped to run her own household again because of her German upbringing. So I think she was okay under Henry VIII. I think that her biggest obstacles under Henry VIII's reign was, of course, watching her homeland be destroyed by Charles V and then watching her sister Sybilla also face the army of Charles V in 1547, right after, I suppose, right after Henry dies. But those would have been her main obstacles, I think, would have been heartbreak for her homeland under Henry VIII and then never knowing where her finances were going to be under Edward. Virginia.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

One bright light in all this was Anne's enduring friendship with her stepdaughter, Mary.

[Dr. Valerie Shute]

They had a very close relationship at first. Valerie Shute Mary met Anne very early on, whenever she first came to England. I think her and Elizabeth were even in the reception party that met them at Greenwich. Although there's conflicting accounts what royal women were actually there, they did seem to keep up a type of relationship. There are letters shared between the two women. Anne went to visit Mary and Mary went to visit Anne. Now, we still only get very few glimpses in the records sometimes. These meetings between women aren't always captured or seemed important enough to be lost or simply mentioned in a sentence, but they did connect. They did write letters. During Edwards reign, Elizabeth would go to Mary when she felt she was being mistreated to see if Mary could intervene on her behalf financially whenever Edward started to take Anne's properties away from her. And when Mary came to the throne, Anne was in the procession for the coronation with Princess Elizabeth right behind Mary. They were acknowledged as the two most powerful women in the country, and I think that was very important. And whenever Mary was even looking for a husband, Anne suggested one of her own relatives. She continued to be involved in Mary's life and I think too, the women shared a religious interest. Anne would have been brought up Catholic, and for all intents and purposes, we don't know if she ever converted to Church of England. And it doesn't seem like she did. Her funeral was Catholic, that's what she requested, and Mary took that over and had her buried with a Catholic ceremony at Westminster Abbey. So it seems like the two women enjoyed a close relationship.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Anne died 17 years after the annulment in July 1557. It is because of her friendship with the then Queen, Mary. Heather Darcy concludes that the woman who was Henry's wife for the briefest of times has the most queenly of tombs.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

If you go to Westminster today, if you stand at the main altar to your right, you see this low tomb that's engraved with the lion of Ulich, which is for her mother, and then the escarbuncle of Cleves, which is that gear shape that we see, and her initials. It's not spoken about on the audio tour. If you listen to that. I've only used the audio tour, but on the other side there is a plaque that says anne of Cleves, 1515-15. But Mary organizes for Anna a proper duchess's burial. There is a huge funeral train, there's all the heraldry of her family and all the proper steps are taken for her to be properly honored for her station. And then she's buried where she is, in a very, very prominent place. So I think that that shows that Mary and Anna had to have had a close relationship. Because why would Mary have gone to all that trouble out of her own pocket to bury this woman if they were not friendly with each other? We also have a record that Ana and Elizabeth rode together in a chariot behind Mary's chariot when Mary rode through London during her coronation. And again, I'm not sure why Mary would have included Ana in that if they were not friends with each other.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Anne was just 41 at her death, young even by Tudor standards. She was the last of Henry VIII's queens to die. Anne of Cleves survived them all. Next week I'll be revisiting the Queen who didn't stand a chance, Catherine Howard, and the one who got away, Catherine Parr. We're always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for some subjects that we can cover. So do drop us a line at notjusttutorsistoryhit.com or on xotjusttutors. Remember that you can also listen to all of these podcasts on YouTube and watch hundreds of documentaries when you [e-mail] subscribe. It's well worth it. And if you'd be so good as to follow not just the tutors on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast, you'll get each new episode as soon as it's released. I consider it a Christmas gift. Thank you.

[Eva Longoria]

Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Like, what's the history behind bacon wrapped hot dogs?

[Eva Longoria]

Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Hi, I'm Maite Gomez Rejon.

[Professor Susannah Lipscomb]

Our podcast Hungry for History is back.

[Eva Longoria]

And this season we're taking an even.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

Bigger bite out of the most delicious food and its history, seeing that the.

[Eva Longoria]

Most popular cocktail is the Margherita, followed.

[Maite Gomez Rejon]

By the Mojito from Cuba and the Pina colada from Puerto Rico.

[Eva Longoria]

Listen to Hungry for history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.