#catherine fillol

[isadomna]

Edward Seymour & Catherine Fillol

Although no marriage had been arranged for Jane, her parents had provided a bride for their eldest surviving son, Edward, in around 1519. The chosen bride was Catherine, daughter of Sir William Fillol of Woodlands in Horton, Dorset. Jane came to know Catherine Fillol well during her childhood although there is no record that the pair were close. The age gap was large and Catherine may always have seen Jane only as her husband’s younger sister. Jane shared in the joy of the rest of her family when Catherine bore Edward two sons in quick succession: John and Edward. Even before she reached home in 1533, Jane would have been aware that things had changed and that Catherine would no longer be there. The marriage had entirely broken down by 1528, the year of the death of Catherine’s father. Before his death, Sir William disinherited his daughter, son-in-law and his grandchildren. 

What happened in Edward and Catherine's marriage? Possibly a scandal came to light, and she was repudiated by her husband. Rumour suggests that Catherine’s repudiation was on the grounds of infidelity and this affected both her future and that of her sons. It is likely that Edward did indeed find his wife in a compromising position with a gentleman of his acquaintance. To the shame of both Jane and the rest of her family, it has been suggested that that Catherine’s lover was a gentleman that the Seymour family knew very well indeed.

Edward Seymour was often away from his family in the 1520s and he left his wife alone with his parents at Wolfhall. Catherine must have felt lonely and it has been suggested that her father-in-law, Sir John Seymour, sought to comfort her during this time. According to this interpretation, Sir John and Catherine became lovers, defying both church law and all convention. This affair lasted some time and, when Edward discovered it, the consequences were explosive. Edward sent a distraught Catherine to a nunnery and, whilst he talked openly of divorcing her, he never took the final step, instead waiting for her early death to allow him to marry again.

From the trauma that followed Edward’s discovery of the affair, enough doubt was cast on the paternity of Catherine’s elder son, for Edward to cease considering himself his father. The younger son, who escaped this censure, also received his father’s anger. The relationship between Edward and his father would also have been irreparably damaged and, whilst relations between the two men somewhat cooled following Edward’s second marriage to the aristocratic Anne Stanhope, they were never fully mended. Edward received a land grant in 1540, the grant details the line of heirs for it after Edward's death. The inheritance would first go to the children with his second wife, and if that line died out, it would then go to his second son by Catherine Fillol. His eldest son John is excluded entirely. 

Elizabeth Norton, Jane Seymour: Henry VIII's True Love

[demolina]

Some requests: history + adultery between in-laws (like Jane Seymour's father & Catherine Fillol, to give an example) / history + moments so incredible that they seem legend/fairytale stuff / history + sibling rivalry / history + women who involved themselves in wars (creating alliances, fighting, commanding armies, organizing supplies, etc) / history + rebel daughters / history + people with dark/black eyes / history + tour favorite hairstyles/headdresses

Hi, anon! I will try to make some of your requests :)

[thathell-blog]

are you upset with edward?

No, I am not. I do, however, wish to find one Miss Fillol and wring her whore neck. 

[fideidefenswhore]

Who is your most hated Seymour? For me, it's John, Thomas, Edward and Jane.

roflmao, tbf, i know intellectually that there's not enough there there to justify hating john seymour, but he does give me bad vibes...whatever happened with catherine fillol was weird and i do get the sense he was involved even if not in the rumored way. and also, when siblings hate each other to such an extent, it's often bcus they were pit against each other by their parents, so i get the sense he was not a good father (there's some debate on whether he died late 1536 or 1535, tbf, but if it was the former it's strange that none of children seemed to mourn his death, that he wasn't mourned at court as the queen's father, etc) . margery doesn't have enough about her known for me to judge; it's sort of weird to me that this stereotype has fallen she and jane had a bad relationship and her favorite child/daughter was elizabeth (this occurs in like...several...novels). we don't have an equivalent positive remark to 'next to mine own mother, no woman alive i know better' (AB, about her own, and to bridget wingfield), nor any records of them often being in each other's company during significant events or eras, but we don't have anything negative either. i get you have to make choices in fiction and 'neutral' is not an interesting one but like...damn.

what's interesting about edward and thomas is that, even before their sister becomes queen, edward is not spoken of well by his contemporaries. very early (iirc, 1535) on, his 'small conscience' is decried, and he becomes such an avaricious figure that cromwell and the king have to interfere in his attempts to manipulate and loophole property laws to his own advantage and the impoverishment of others (and, not usually in his favor, despite him being a royal in-law). thomas, however, seems like he's better liked in the 1530s, although this can maybe be attributed to him being more of a nonentity (a comparative example is some tudor authors insisting GB was 'better liked' than his sister anne-- not true, it seems-- or more often, that their sister mary was...which is probably true, but also probably more indicative of relative lack of power and positions and leverage than 'kinder' personality)...it's not until the 1540s that we get comments of the same genre ("somewhat empty of manner"). thomas thus seems more like a figure of gradual corruption, his arrogance was increased by his nephew becoming king, it seems, and resentment brought out an ugly side of his character (arguably, the same with edward, just earlier on).

it's extremely unpopular to say this on here, but yeah, jane is definitely not a favourite of mine, either. but i don't think my reasons for this are really common...i don't care if she slept with henry before marriage, i don't care if she didn't, i just find her biographers weirdly contradictory in their judgements of her character, the nature of her rise, and her own beliefs. there's also like, this sense of historic illiteracy from some of her defenders...joining a royal household (as far as the most prestigious positions, that is) was not the equivalent of serfdom (as in, they could leave at any time). jane's supporters were courtiers who hated anne, so it's reasonable to assume she did, as well. so, there's this sort of moral hypocrisy about jane as a figure and her advancement and how she came to her position that has always prevented me from warming to her as a figure. 'she hated anne and all she stood for' explains her involvement in her downfall, but not her securing the position in her household in the first place. and by virtue of her close proximity to anne as queen, she also knew that it was nigh impossible that she was actually guilty of the accusations of adultery.

what else...her defenders insist that the oaths of supremacy and succession were anathema to her moral compass, yet she likely did have to have had taken them herself, just as a subject, and if not that then definitely as a member of anne's household. this wouldn't have martyred/imperiled her life, althought it probably would have her career (elizabeth darrell never took these, so i wonder if the penalty for women was different...? barton is often cited as an example but this was not in her indictment. princess mary seems to almost have been a victim of this, but it might've been more that her signing was more important since she was a rallying point for dissenters).

and even if jane never took these, the presence of noblewomen serving anne as queen lent to her greater image of royal legitimacy. she had to have known that, and if she didn't believe her position was legitimate...then why be part of that tapestry? there's not an equivalent to her predecessor to be made here, not when anne left her own predecessor's household and began her own as soon as she came to believe catherine was not legitimately queen or henry's wife. any credulousness towards contemporary report of this time would suggest anne was extremely hostile towards her rival, but there is a difference between declaring that you'd sooner watch your rival hanged before revering them and, well...actually doing that (...effectively, if not literally).

actually, i don't think there's actually much to suggest jane was set against the religious supremacy unless you make some suppositional leaps (the dissolution wasn't so explicitly connected here, her support of mary as princess, even if rather cosmetic, could be seen as support for her decision not to take those oaths herself for nigh on two years...). nor against succession acts as brought by parliament, since the same illegitimized any potential rivals to her future children, and she seemed to make a point in one of her only pieces of writing we have in emphasizing edward's legitimacy (implicitly, at the expense of her stepdaughters).

the narrative fiction i probably dislike about jane the most is this idea that she was so reverent of catherine's memory, it's really fucking weird, honestly... it bothers me because i know it's embellished to increase reader/viewer (the tudors comes to mind) sympathy and somehow for me it does the opposite, lol. there's something about the concept of her trading on the memory of this beloved woman (who, herself, probably didn't even remember jane, there's nothing to suggest any kind of friendship between them) who was exiled, this woman whom jane did not a single thing for (not even abstaining from joining the household of her rival), that just really grosses me out. henry was the one who was her husband, and obviously he was a fucking asshole to and about her, but there's at least something more...direct, in his attempted erasure of her memory. it's always bothered me that it's never acknowledged that the antecedent (which was carried on throughout) to jane's queenship was the erasure of both her predecessors, the illegitimization of both their daughters, both of them being subordinated, and, more or less (mary present for christmas, elizabeth not, but both there during the rebellions) equally expelled from court.

[fideidefenswhore]

Did john seymour have a relationship with his daughter in law? I thought he did but I was reading kyra kramer say there was no evidence for it

There's like, a note about that on some 17th century text? I think that's the extent of that evidence.

Basically we're working backwards when we look at the Seymours, but we see that Edward Seymour disinherited his sons by Fillol via Parliament and that she was forced into a nunnery, it has to be adultery allegations of some kind, was it with her father-in-law (questions of consent here if so, she was a young teenager, they lived in his household and he was head of that household, they were beholden to him financially, was she in much of a position to refuse advances? coercive consent etc), any of the servants of the household, Thomas Seymour himself (Suzannah Dunn theorized this as reason for the deep-held animosity between the brothers), all of the above (you'd think rumors would reach farther were that the case); who knows.

Edit:

Okay, I’m going to have to look more into the claim that she was placed in a convent, because Loades was the preeminent historian on the Seymours and he doesn’t even mention that...seems odd:

“His bride, who he wed at some point before 1518*, was Catherine Fillol, the daughter and co-heir of William Fillol, who had lands in Dorset and Essex. Given his youth at the time, this was almost certainly an arranged match for which his father was responsible, and in spite of producing two sons it was not a success. At some point after 1530 he repudiated her, alleging adultery. This did not affect the legitimacy of their children, but they played no part in his subsequent career, and had no claims to his titles. [...] Both were children when their mother was repudiated, and were brought up by her until her death in 1535**, at which point their care reverted to their father. However, he remarried Anne Stanhoppe [...] They were provided by out of their mother’s inheritance*** and in 1538, probably on Anne’s insistence****, were excluded from their father’s properties and titles by Acts of Parliament in 1538.

His future was reserved for his children by Anne [...] His sister Jane, for all her gentle nature, never showed the slightest interest in her nephews.”

*again...they were both very young, it just overall seems like a very sad situation

**????

***I’ve also read elsewhere that Edward didn’t actually pay them what they were owed of their mother’s inheritance, so, idk

****male historians always say this, lmao...Edward was a grown-ass man, he is the one accountable for the decisions he made about his children (that they weren’t claimed illegitimate assumes he still recognized them as such, they had the surname, etc) edit: the source for AH being the one that pushed this is the same that says Edward Seymour divined Catherine’s adultery via sorcerer in France, so...hill of salt?

Edit 2:

Okay, here’s information on the will by Catherine’s father, might shed some more light:

“Her father must have had a certain degree of confidence [in her], for in 1519 he named her executor of his will [...]

Yet William’s affection for his daughter must have radically altered, [for in 1527] he disinherited his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, [...] his only legacy to Catherine an annual pension, ‘as long as she shall live virtuously and abide in some religious house of women.’

It appears that in 1528 Catherine and Seymour had separated, but the precise reason remains obscure. 

[133 years after the fact, historian Heylin recorded ‘a story’ that Seymour while in France divined his wife’s infidelity by magic... ?]

The ‘contingent’ provision in Parliament [disinherited] John Seymour entirely, [his younger son Edward could inherit if Edward had no other male heirs]

There is a marginal note in Vincent’s Baronage in the College of Arms [suggesting adultery between father-in-law and daughter-in-law]. However, while John Seymour did have an illegitimate son, also named John, there is no evidence supporting this suggestion of incest nor anything that suggests Edward Seymour’s relationship with his father was permanently ruined. 

After his father’s death, John sought the restitution of his mother’s inheritance [...] Sir Edward was restored in blood by Parliament in March 1553.”

[fideidefenswhore]

there was a long thread on twitter that was like ‘these are all the similarities btwn alicent hightower and anne boleyn so this is why you should hate her btw’ and i was like joke’s on you, i love her even more now. 

[fideidefenswhore]

What, then, did Jane know – or not know – of what went wrong?  In the aftermath, when Katherine [Fillol] was despatched to a nunnery, Jane went to Catherine of Aragon, that gentlest and most pious of queens:  Jane appears in records of the queen’s household from around this time.  Which, ironically, was exactly when the king made his first, tentative move to persuade his queen to stand down, step aside, pursue a religious vocation.  How bizarre that Jane should come – perhaps for refuge, perhaps for rehabilitation – from a home in which exactly that had just happened, only to have to witness the same all over again, but writ large.  Very large, because Catherine of Aragon was no Dorset girl;  she was a princess of the Holy Roman Empire, crowned queen of England, loyal spouse of two decades’ standing and mother of the sole heir to the throne.

What Inspired Suzannah Dunn to write The May Bride?

[fideidefenswhore]

somerset groveling...

[fideidefenswhore]

"other people are interesting too!" would be a lot more nice if it wasn't just demanding their fave got the most media. I mean they aren't exactly unbiased in this. if Js had all the media they wouldn't want it stopped to give Ab a fair chance. Js and Coa are still 2 of the famous 6 wives. it not as if we never hear about them. as media goes, they don't do too bad. not like medieval queens or even just tudor men. I don't hear no one saying let's have a show all about Philip sidney or they wish Henry fitzroy got more representation or whatever. i mean, it could be worse for antis

I would say COA is by far, also the most venerated and remembered as "the true Queen", but yes, they are both famous for that reason.

I mean, as far as JS goes, there is content, but most of them don't seem interested (I'm speaking of Instagram circles but it seems like the only one they consider 'canon' is Alison Weir's... fascinating because within it she is a sniveling, sanctimonious hypocrite that cries the entire day of Anne Boleyn's coronation at the injustice of her wearing white, since Anne is, of course, a whore that's had premarital sex... then lets Henry hit it raw once Catherine dies [because that becomes when it's morally acceptable to her...tbh, I think this is why it's the one they love this one the most, Jane is #1 COA/Mary I Stan here, it borders on celebrity worship] for five months pre-marriage, wears white upon her own 1st promenade as Queen, doesn't see the irony) in what's out there? I'll be real, I only read May Bride because I was interested in what happened with the whole Catherine Fillol (so like again...is Jane even 'niche'? Do you know who it's really hard to find a novel from the perspective of? Elizabeth Seymour. I was only able to find and check out one from the library) situation and it is almost impossible to find any novels about her, this was like the only one, otherwise I would not bother, I think the Seymours were trash (Margery Wentworth and Elizabeth Cromwell can stay...the rest of the major players, thin ice). I have also read Adrienne Dillard's novel which is half JS-POV, only again for two reasons: 1) I read Raven's Widow and loved it, 2) I've been reading her interviews about this book for years as she's been in-progress in the research and writing stage, she said she had absolutely no interest in romanticizing Henry/Jane, which I was all for... I think that was a very toxic relationship.

I have also, on that note, seen them complain that there are no Henry/Jane sex scenes in any media depictions which is like... I thought you all said he was unequivocally terrible at sex and think the idea of AB having bad sex is funny? Why would you want to see that, if you like Jane...? 

[fideidefenswhore]

Wait, 'not this Catherine', meaning...?

Oh yeah, that wasn't super clear, so (spoilers for a novel published in 2014 about 500-year-old dead people), it's a very character-driven book (I mean, there is plot, but it's almost incidental to the character-driven stuff), basically what it presents is that...Jane and Edward Seymour's antipathy towards AB is bound up in with happened with Catherine Fillol. So, Anne is a 'shameless woman' like Catherine was; or at least, that's how they view things.

SD also gives Jane the motivation of 'usurping her heroine's usurper' (...yawn); but by and large the more compelling aspect of the novel is how Jane is actually intentionally anodyne and "dull" to distance herself from the scandal that has attached itself to her family name.

I mean, I suppose it makes sense as she presents it, Jane venerates Catherine of Aragon because she sees her as the foil of Fillol (and she is still working through a lot of guilt at having befriended someone that betrays her brother): dutiful, gentle, and loyal. I'm just rather tired of it in Tudor novels (and nonfiction) when there's literally no evidence that suggests Jane had any especial reverence/loyalty for the first Queen she served; just because she had absolutely none for the second... it's literally just logical fallacy to assume that (if A, then B, therefore, A). That, or, as it generally does, affirms confirmation bias of truly some of the most boring people (Jane was good because she was a COA stan also and they have innate goodness...).