Page:The Queens of England.djvu/350

310 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. pears to be the proof adduced of her residence in France ; and as this portrait is a pendant to one of Anne Boleyn, both painted by Holbein, and in similar habiliments, the evidence, if not quite conclusive, may be received as probable. Jane Seymour was the eldest of the eight children of Sir John Seymour, of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire. The Seymours were a country family of no particular distinction, though tracing them- selves from the Normans. The mother of Jane, however, a Wentworth, claimed a more ambitious descent, and an alliance with princely blood. Whether Henry really believed in the truth of this claim, disputed by able genealogists, or that he wished to give distinction to the object of his choice, certain it is that he applied for and obtained a dispensation, on the ground of kindred, for his marriage with his third queen. It was not only on this occasion that Henry sought to make it ap- pear that the object of his affection had claim to royal blood, for when he ennobled Anne Boleyn by creating her Marchioness of Pembroke, he took care that the patent should contain an al- lusion to this point, by its stating that a sovereign should sur- round his throne with many peers, the worthiest of both sexes, especially those who are of royal blood. There is no doubt this creation was but a preface to the regal dignity to which he was bent on elevating her, and the terms of the patent a sort of excuse to his subjects for the inequality of the future queen he meant to give them ; for, blinded as he was by his passion, he could not but be sensible that his wedding a subject must give dissatisfaction. How must the heart of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn have trembled and her conscience smote her, when she discovered that one of her own maids of honor was enacting toward her the treacherous part that she had played toward her royal mistress Katharine ! And yet, although both Anne and Jane were alike culpable in listening to the guilty vows of a married man — the husband, too, of their good queen — Anne Boleyn was less blameable than Jane, for Anne sought not the love of Henry — nay, more, retired from the court to avoid it, and had it not been for the efforts and interference of Cardinal Wolsey, urged on by Henry, would have become the wife of Percy, the object of her affection. Long did she cherish this passion, and resist all the vows with which Henry pursued her, while Jane Seymour secretly laid herself out to attract the king and win him from Queen Anne, conscious, as she must have been, of the destruction it must bring down on her unhappy mistress. It is said, that such faith did Anne place in the love