Janet Wertman talked about the downfall of the Seymour family for Tudor Summit 2017.
Check out her three-book series The Seymour Saga.
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Transcript: Janet Wertman on the Seymours
Heather: So the next speaker is Janet Wertman and I have to say I read her book Jane The Quene, and it was really great. So I’m so excited that she is here speaking today. I wanna introduce you to Janet and then will go right into the questions.
So by day, Janet Ambrosi Wertman is a freelance grant writer for great nonprofits. By night, she writes historical fiction. She has harbored a passion for the Tudor era since she was eight years old and her parents let her stay up late to watch The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R. Janet lives in Pacific Palisades, in California with one husband, two dogs, and not too far from her three grown children.
Her debut novel, Jane the Quene, is the first book in the Seymour Saga trilogy. The Path to Somerset will follow in 2018. I’m so excited to have Janet here, we’re gonna go right into the questions.
Why the Seymours?
Janet: It was actually a very happy accident. I started out, I’m gonna say 30 years ago writing a book The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn. It was Anne Boleyn had written the secret diaries. So it was her diary entries and interspersed with Elizabeth reading them and taking direction for her own life. I dig around with this whole thing, and I wrote a little bit here and a little bit there.
Finally, after the birth of my third child, I said I’m gonna do it. I wrote 150-pages in and I researched a small little piece and pop up this notice about a book that had just been published called The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn. Which was exactly my book.
I went into a horrible depression for a little bit and was able to emerge by telling myself, “Well I’ll just make a Jane story. I’ll tell Anne’s story thru Jane.” And it took me a few years and a couple of drafts to really decide, “No, Jane’s story just have to be told.” I really ended up, really with the Seymours. I’m glad that I did because they really occupied an incredible place in Tudor history in terms of both -they have the front row to watching it, and the front row in shaping it. They really are the perfect ones to tell someone’s story.
Heather: Yeah, that’s amazing. Ideas, they have a shelf life.
Janet: They do. If you don’t take them off the shelf someone else will.
Heather: Exactly, yeah. that’s amazing. So in your book Jane The Quene, I’m really interested in how you portrayed her. She had to kind of justify her behavior to Anne. I kind of wonder how you started to see her character and how you think she would have excused what was happening with Anne.
Janet: So I love this question because that is the entire theme of Jane The Quene, and that’s morality. It was clear to me that Jane thought of herself as extremely moral and the issue from me was the basis of that morality. Actually, I was lucky that I was coming to it from a vantage point of having written about Anne Boleyn, because I came to it with a framework of Anne’s death being a complete and utter shock.
That was really forefront in my mind, what was supposed to happen was kind of like a natural, divine retribution thing where people really resented that Anne had taken Henry away from Catherine, and now Jane’s going to take her away in exactly the same manner. Perfect symmetry all along.
Then boom she finds out that it’s going further than that, and that was the point in which as authors, that you’re supposed to torture your characters and that’s what pretty much what I got to give Jane. Which was to put her through all of the different moments where she found out a little bit of the time that, no, this was really something that’s much more sinister than that.
So I have like that first moment when she finds out and it’s just upsetting. Then when Edward comes and tells her that the charges had been and he describes the charges and she said something “Wait a minute. These dates are wrong. This didn’t happen.”
But then as she’s sitting there and started to get more and more nervous, what’s happening is Henry’s going out on his bars all night with women who are throwing themselves at him and they don’t care that all of these dates don’t add up and that this isn’t going on. When you think about it, to just displease Henry was death. The whole witchcraft thing that people believed of her anyway, that was a capital crime. So the extent of it all kind of seeped into Jane’s mind and she switched over from fear of contributing to Anne’s death to the fear of this whole new life being taken away from her and all kind of came together.
Heather: Yeah. What’s interesting because she almost got swept up. I often see Anne Boleyn as getting swept up with events, like she was in control and then it all just went totally out of control for her. It’s kinda like that with Jane where she kind of thought she understood what was happening and then it starts getting to be a much bigger and more deadly kind of game that she ever could have imagined.
Janet: And there is nothing really that she could do to influence it. I mean, she can walk away but somebody else just would have walked, right? She could not have stopped what was happening.
Heather: Yeah, for sure. So can you talk a little bit about the role of her brothers and the way she was being groomed to this kind of new role and just how… There’s so many parallels with Anne Boleyn because when you think about Anne Boleyn and her family kind of the stereotype, that they were pimping her out sort of thing for Henry. And then you see a sort of similar thing with Jane, that her brothers are getting her all ready for this. As I was reading your book, I was thinking although in so many ways that it’s similar to Anne’s story, but it’s just kind of a different take on it obviously. I mean it’s a different woman. So can you tell me a little bit about her brothers, and the way they were grooming her?
Janet: So I had a different take than a lot of people do, so a lot of people… I mean it comes down to us that clearly Edward was telling her exactly how to play the political base. I mean, she had instructions that in the middle of… when there’s gonna be a crowd, she would tell the King that his subjects abominated his marriage and everyone would agree and that would you know, how people influence Henry.
But at this point in time that whole “This is how exactly how you act with them”, that kind of feels like mansplaining to me because Jane was right there. Jane served Catherine of Aragon. Jane watched and saw the entire thing. And right down to it, Jane’s character was such that this was the way that she was going to be acting no matter what.
She was 29 unmarried. This was her basic character. So the idea that they basically told her “Act like this, treat him like this,” I didn’t buy into that so much. I had her kind of going rogue in a couple of places. I credited her entirely with turning down a gift when he offered it to her just because I think that’s something that she would have done.
Heather: Yes, so that’s interesting. She did have this front-row seat to watching and play the part of a seductress who took a King away. Do you think that’s kind of easier to her? Like having watched somebody else do it? Do you think it was a natural sort of part of her personality? Or do you think she had to work for it?
Janet: A little bit of both because I think she resented Anne for taking Henry away from Catherine, even though that marriage needed to end and in order for a son to be produced. And so following in that footsteps would been a natural thing. Well, yes I agree it was natural for her.
Heather: Yeah. So then, I didn’t ask you this. I kinda go in rogue here a little bit. I skipped here to what happened after she died. Do you wanna talk a little bit about what her, what was like for the rest of her family, and like what she was like as a queen?
Janet: Sure. She didn’t get much of a chance as a queen. I think she probably would have been a really good one but the big thing was the whole rescuing Mary and helping to bring Mary back to court and get her reinstated as Henry’s heir. I think that was a wonderful thing she did and also a part of her whole “God wants her to do this and that” was okay. So that was her focus throughout.
Heather: And then she was also kind of sympathetic to the Pilgrimage of Grace people as well, wasn’t she?
Janet: She was pretty Catholic. She did not really approved of the dissolution of the monastery. She didn’t really approved of a lot of these stuff. A lot of people believe that when she became Queen, the King would actually go back to the Pope. But that was a little naive. Once he got to be his own boss, and once Cromwell came up with the idea of refilling his treasury by dissolving the monasteries, there was no going back. That was gonna happen.
Heather: Yeah. What do you think it would have been like if she had lived? Do you think the dissolution would have gone on as much as it did? Do you think that– There wouldn’t be an Anne of Cleves, so do you think Jane and Cromwell would have butted heads ever?
Janet: That’s a fascinating question. I think they, Cromwell and Edward, were really good friends. Her sister Elizabeth was married to Cromwell’s son. So, I think there would have been, I don’t know, there would have been love and happiness in the kingdom. It would have been a very different place.
Heather: And Catholics and protestants would have gotten together and they just would have hugged each other.
Janet: That’s right.
Heather: That’s interesting. So then after, she died sadly just after her son was born. Can you talk to me about the role of her family while Henry was still alive during that kind of 10 year period, when Henry was still alive and what role did her brothers play and her father or anything in the family?
Janet: That’s book two. It’s called The Path to Somerset because that is basically what Edward Seymour had to do to get from Jane’s death to the point that he took control after Henry’s death. So when we talk about the role of the Seymour family, so her father died before she actually have her son. So he never got to see that.
Tom was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, but never a member of the Privy Council. He disappeared once Catherine Parr came on the scene because they were kind of courting, and he needed to be kept away. So it was really all about Edward. And the role at the time of the Seymour– The entire story of the Seymours is Edward’s.
He was on a roller coaster ride, where the basic trajectory was way up but he had a couple of ups and downs in between. So he was much more protestant than Jane was. Well, he was basically protestant and Jane was not. And allied with Cromwell. So during the whole Anne of Cleves thing, he just kind of watched and learned and didn’t have much of a huge role.
Henry, it was interesting, put him on the Privy Council but he was the only guy there without a portfolio. What I mean is, you got to be on the Privy Council because you were the secretary, or lord privy seal, or this, and you were automatically on the council. Instead Henry just put him on without nothing technically to do.
He was a little bit lesser than the others and he just kind of sat there and was happy to be there. So Anne of Cleves comes along and the Catholics start grabbing into that. They did that a little bit ahead of time and Anne of Cleves was almost like Cromwell doubling down on that even though it was on a political note.
But then Henry doesn’t like her. She’s gone and Edward loses a lot of power largely because her successor is Catherine Howard. And Catherine Howard is a member of the Duke of Norfolk’s family and they kind of take over the whole the King’s brother-in-law, not really brother-in-law, but the uncles and the family members.
So he loses a lot of that plus they’re all Catholic, and he’s just kind of messed up. But then she goes away in that whole thing, and Catherine Parr comes along. That’s when Edward really transcends on his own, and he becomes the guy that Henry relies on. Henry had been having problems with Scotland that he’s been trying to deal with for the last decade and he just says “Edward go fix it.” The specific instructions to burn the entire place and Edward goes ahead and does exactly that. So those are like, “Oh, check! Excellent!”.
Henry’s going off to France to try to take Boulogne and the siege is not quite working. He calls Edward from up down from Scotland and Edward comes in and– although he tried to keep that a little bit secret. So it’s during this time that Edward really was coming up and grabbing on to power. So those were the exciting times.
Heather: Yeah, yeah. So then let’s talk about kind of Henry’s life as it was ending and he had Boulogne, and then coming back, and there was still a lot of religious upheavals where the Catholics seem like they were kind of getting some control back. So what was like that swirl around Henry in the last year or two of his life?
Janet: So the Catholics made a big push. Everybody made a big push because they realized “Oh my goodness. He is not doing well,” and whoever is closest to him when he dies, that’s gonna be who controls forevermore. So Gardiner made his move against Catherine Parr but that got foiled. But then right before Henry died, the wheels just came off of the wagon for the Catholics.
Almost exactly at the same time, I mean literally, you have Gardiner screwing up on the same day as Surrey was arrested. Henry’s not doing well, so Henry’s idea for after he dies is that to avoid one person gaining too much power and taking it away from his son, he’s gonna create a council that it’s gonna work by majority rule.
The problem is that didn’t really reflect as what Tudor England was like, they look to a single person. So they knew that one person was going to come to control. Surrey decided “Well, that should be my dad.”
Heather: And that would be the Duke of Norfolk?
Janet: Yes the Duke of Norfolk. So first he told everybody that “The Duke of Norfolk, my father is the only one who can do this and he should be that.” That’s pushing it a little but nobody’s gonna give him trouble for that. Then he starts to, he spoke to a few people about actually forming cabinets and promising positions, and that’s getting a little fuzzy as well.
But then he loses his mind and he quarters the arms of William the Confessor unto his shield and that is something that only royalties are allowed to do. And boom, Henry goes nuts, arrests him, tries him. Great trial by the way. He tries to escape and he actually crawled down the privy hole and made it apparently halfway before they caught him and hold him back up. Then he got executed.
Norfolk got saved but Surrey got executed. Then completely independently, Gardiner, again on the same day decides that he’s not going to trade lands with Henry. So Henry would trade lands with people as a hobby. He had done that for his entire life. But this latest scheme was to make his dominions easy to manage, surveyed, to really protect Edward and admittedly, every single one of this exchanges was very heavily weighted towards Henry. But they had gotten the original lands from him anyway.
Especially since the last person who tried to say no to Henry was Carew and he got executed. So you didn’t say no and Gardiner did. So all of a sudden you have the Catholics with no power right as Henry’s dying. That’s it. They took it.
Heather: So then just thinking about Edward and Edward’s upbringing. Edward’s tutors were all quite really Protestants and he was raised Protestant even before Henry died. So can we talk a little bit about after Henry died? Just his Protestantism and how Edward was involved with that? ‘Cause presumably then, after so many Edwards, it’s like the Tudors and their names, Thomas, Edward. So how the Edward Seymour would have been involved with the Edward the King, his Protestant religious leanings? How he maybe would have guided that even if he hadn’t been Protector but then of course. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that?
Janet: So Edward Seymour’s Protestant, Anne Seymour’s Protestant. Anne Seymour, his wife served Catherine Parr, was one of her ladies. They were good friends until after. Then the whole rules of precedence changed a little bit. Interestingly after Edward VI was King, I’m gonna call Edward Seymour, Somerset for you. Talking about after Henry’s death, we’ll call him Somerset so I don’t have to deal with the whole Edward thing.
So, Edward the King translated something. He did this huge treaties on the Evils of the Pope and he dedicated it to his uncle. So clearly Somerset continued to have real influence over the whole Protestantism and push for Protestantism over the Catholics. But he also did not push Mary, as far as King Edward would have liked. Edward really did not understand the political need to make exceptions for things like that and wanted his sister to be treated as any other subject. Edward had a long history with Mary. That kind of got him into trouble with his sister a little bit.
Heather: So then let’s talk about Edward’s relationship with his Seymour relatives during this period and kind of the picture of what was happening with them.
Janet: So Tom – a lot of people hate Edward Seymour for allowing his brother to die. That’s almost a nice way of putting it. What they usually say is he killed his brother because of his ambition. I come at this completely different way. I blame Tom for absolutely everything. I think he went absolutely nuts and that there was no excuse for what he did.
He tried to take power away from his brother. So first, the tactic was, Somerset was both Lord Protector and Governor of the King’s Person and Tom tried to get to be Governor of the King’s Person. He made that push really hard when he married Catherine Parr because presumably, the two of them would have done a really good job with that.
But then she died and that whole under the bed circumstances that came. Then Tom tried to take more control. It was stuff that he really wasn’t supposed to do because it’s dangerous for the kingdom. But then at the end of everything, in the middle of the night, he breaks into the King’s bedchamber and makes into the bedchamber and the dog that Edward sleeps with got out started barking and Tom Seymour–
Now, when you read the contemporary accounts, they said he shot the dog. But I had grown up on Six Wives of Henry VIII, so I always seen “taking a sword out and slashed the dog away”. This dog is slaughtered in the middle of the night on the King’s floor with the King just 2 feet away. Then that’s absolute treason. The fact that Somerset had signed his death warrant to me was, I think that was a protective gesture because somebody had to sign the warrant.
The choices in this matter are the Lord Protector or the King. If Edward Seymour hadn’t done it then that 9-year-old boy, or he would have been 10 now, the 10-year-old boy would have had to do it. He saved him for that so I actually give him– As hard as it was, and it was clearly hard, the contemporary account makes it clear that it was very difficult for him. But that whole fighting with Tom really, it made things very difficult for him with the rest of the Council and put him in a very difficult position and contributed to his own downfall.
Heather: So how do you explain Tom? Let’s talk about Tom for a second. He’s a character. If you’re gonna pop psychologize on him or something, how do you kind of explain Tom Seymour?
Janet: Narcissistic, grandiose. So he was a good-looking guy who got away with something with a lot of the court women. Women kind of threw themselves at him and he just kind of coasted a lot though life. Henry didn’t trust him. There’s a really great story at the end when Henry was close to his death that they were talking about maybe putting Tom on the Council. You know he could barely sit up in bed and he was weak and all of a sudden he said “No!” That’s how strong he have felt when he just didn’t want Tom to be involved with making decisions and running the country.
Tom simply didn’t have the personality. He was rush, impetuous, and not that bright. After Catherine Parr died, he lost his mind.
Heather: So you are not a Tom sympathizer then?
Jante: No, I’m not.
Heather: It doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to redeem of him but I know there’s some people who really do their best to try.
Janet: You know there’s a big thing going on where everybody is just being redeemed now and in that phases we can try. But between what he did to Edward and what he did to Elizabeth, I find it really really hard for me.
Heather: Yeah. What was Edward’s downfall then? In this family, the Seymours who rose and then they lasted for what, 20 years or so and then they fell. What was his downfall then?
Janet: John Dudley. In a word. Basically. So Edward was not a people person, Tom was. It would have been nice if he was a little bit warmer, but he wasn’t. He instituted a bunch of policies that didn’t really work. One of the big ones was the way he treated Scotland. So he had seen such success back in Henry’s day when he went and burn it to the ground. That’s the policy that he continued. That trick stopped working and started backfiring because it drew Scotland into France’s arms and cost a bunch of money. It just messed up the front. Bad idea.
Then the second thing he did was he really, he cared about the people. He tried to relieve the people’s misery. He was against enclosures. So the nobility was basically turning arable farmland into pastures, enclosing them. That had the effect of, it took away jobs from people and it took away food. So the entire countryside was starving and poor, and they were rising up.
Heather: Wasn’t he like supportive of the Kett’s Rebellion? Or he wanted to end the land enclosures after what happened with Kett’s Rebellion?
Janet: He got in trouble because he was seen as not being as ready to put down the rebellion as he should have been. They really wanted him to be a lot more bloodthirsty because he was the guy on the Council side. Nobody shouldn’t be doing this and everybody was looking at him and they were the ones who were enclosing their lands. So right there, there was that huge push in between them.
Then Dudley, Dudley was ambitious I mean he came back from absolutely nothing after his dad was executed when Henry first came to the throne. He just very slowly came right on up and we know exactly how ambitious he was. So by what happened later, he just saw a way to destroy Edward, which he did. I mean essentially he took, I’m gonna call it a drunken statement, a drunken private “Yeah I should bring them all here and just kill them all.” and “Oh look he’s plotting to kill us.” And use that as a way of moving him out of the way.
Janet: Yes.
Heather: Okay. So what do you think is the kind of legacy of the Seymour family? What did they left us with?
Janet: Candle in the wind. Basically. It was fascinating. They had such an amazing opportunity and it is such– It’s almost a shame. I mean Edward VI had the potential to be amazing, he also had the potential to be a real tyrant and we don’t know which way he would have gone. But unfortunately, we have no idea. The theme of book three is betrayal. First, it was Tom and then it was Somerset.
Heather: So that leads me actually asking about your book. Where can people learn about your work and what books have you written that they can read?
Janet: Okay so I have written Jane The Quene. I have also written and almost finish the final edits on The Path to Somerset. And I’m hoping to put that out this spring. I’ve got a very rough draft of The Boy King but that was gonna be at least a year and a half. I’ve got a critique, two critique groups actually and editing and there’s so much things that’s gonna be done there. But everything’s on Amazon and bunch of libraries, in independent bookstores. You can find it all on my website JanetWertman.com.
Heather: Great! So is there anything that I should ask that I haven’t asked you that you’d like to put in here? You’re allowed to say no.
Janet: We’ve covered a bunch of tons. We’ve covered all three books and basically all the topics.
Heather: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us and share your Seymour knowledge.
Janet: Oh please. I love this stuff! This is an absolute obsession. It’s very rare that I get to just talk about all the details. It was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for doing this! I love the first summit and I’m looking forward to this one.
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