possible that it was hastened on by rumours of
disquiet in the North. A few days later the nobles
and gentry who were in London were ordered to
return home to put the country in a state of
defence (_L. and P._, x., 1016).]

On the day that his second queen was beheaded, Henry obtained from
Cranmer a special licence to marry a third.[969] He was betrothed on
the morrow and privately married "in the Queen's closet at York Place"
on the 30th of May. The lady of his choice was Jane, daughter of Sir
John Seymour of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire.[970] She was descended on her
mother's side from Edward III., and Cranmer had to dispense with a
canonical bar to the marriage arising from her consanguinity to the
King in the third and fourth degrees. She had been lady-in-waiting to
the two previous queens, and her brother, Sir Edward Seymour, the
future Protector, had for years been steadily rising in Henry's
favour. In October, 1535, the King had paid a visit to Wolf Hall, and
from that time his attentions to Jane became marked. She seems to have
received them with real reluctance; she refused a purse of gold and
returned the King's letters unopened.[971] She even obtained a (p. 347)
promise from Henry that he would not speak with her except in the
presence of others, and the King ejected Cromwell from his rooms in
the Palace in order to bestow them on Sir Edward Seymour, and thus to
provide a place where he and Jane could converse without scandal. All
this modesty has, of course, been attributed to prudential and
ambitious motives, which were as wise as they were successful. But
Jane seems to have had no enemies, except Alexander Aless, who
denounced her to Luther as an enemy to the Gospel, probably because
she extinguished the shining light of Anne Boleyn.[972] Cardinal Pole
described her as "full of goodness,"[973] and she certainly did her
best to reconcile Henry with his daughter the Princess Mary, whose
treatment began to improve from the fall of Anne Boleyn. "She is,"
writes Chapuys, "of middle stature, and no great beauty; so fair that
one would call her rather pale than otherwise."[974] But all agreed in
praising her intelligence. She had neither Catherine's force of
character nor the temper of Anne Boleyn; she was a woman of gentle
spirit, striving always to mitigate the rigour of others; her brief
married life was probably happier