May 19th-30th, 1536/May 19th-30th, 1997: Anne Boleyn is executed, Jane Seymour gets married
Henry VIII and Jane Seymour were married by Archbishop Cranmer in a private ceremony in the Queen’s Closet at Whitehall Palace. Henry’s third wedding came only eleven days after the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. As part of the preparations for the royal wedding, Anne’s falcon badges were hurriedly replaced with Jane’s personal emblem, ‘a phoenix rising from a castle amid flames and Tudor roses painted in red and white’ (Weir, Pg. 343) and her initials removed to make way for her successor’s. The job was completed in such a hurry at Hampton Court that the ‘As are still visible underneath the Js’ (Weir, Pg. 343). As for the actual wedding vows, David Starkey states that they would have been the same at each of Henry’s marriages. The King swore first: ‘I, Henry, take thee to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, and thereto I plight thee my troth.’ (Pg 6.) Then the Queen replied, ‘I take thee, Henry, to my wedded husband’, followed by the same vow as Henry’s but with the promise to be ‘bonny and buxom in bed and board.’
