October 3 - Jane Seymour’s coronation is postponed

On this day in Tudor history, 3rd October 1536, imperial ambassador Eustace Chapuys wrote to Emperor Charles V informing him that Jane Seymour’s coronation was being postponed.

 

Several dates for Henry VIII's third wife's coronation are mentioned in the contemporary sources, but they all passed by without the coronation taking place, and building work on Westminster Palace in preparation for the coronation came to a halt.

 

Why wasn't Jane Seymour crowned when her predecessor, Anne Boleyn, had been given a lavish coronation?

 

Find out more about what happened in 1536 and 1537 in today's talk from historian Claire Ridgway. 

 

Also on this day in Tudor history, 3rd October 1518, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, sang a mass to Henry VIII and the French ambassadors at St Paul's Cathedral in celebration of a treaty between England and France. This mass wasn't the only celebration, there was also a banquet and a lavish masque of lords and ladies dressed beautifully and disguised with masking hoods. And the masque included some well-known courtiers, people like Sir Francis Bryan and Bessie Blount, the King's mistress. Hear a contemporary description of that masque in last year’s video - https://youtu.be/O1KNCNb5O7c