Jane Seymour, third wife of Henry VIII of England
Keeper of the Falcons sounds like a character from Game of Thrones, doesn't it? That HBO series is at least partly inspired by the War of the Roses (aka Cousins' War), a long-running conflict in which my Hungerford ancestors figured actively. They were titled aristocrats in England, and several of their wives had royal ancestors, for which there's lots of surviving records. If I made the effort, some of them are bound to lead back to Charlemagne; I have followed one of them back to Elinor of Aquitaine; best I can tell she's my 25th ggrandmother, through a couple of English Kings, a Queen of Portugal, and miscellaneous other titled folk, including ten generations of
Hungerfords. One could go on about the beheadings and attainders and redemptions and restorations and military glory and diplomatic triumphs, but that's not really what this post is about.
Instead, let's consider Sir William Dormer (est. 1503-1575) whose daughter Anne married a Hungerford. The name William was a common one amongst the Dormer family, so it's hard to sort this fellow's early years out from numerous contemporaneous cousins of the same name.
William's father,
Sir Robert, had a fortune based in the wool trade. Henry VIII conferred a knighthood upon him in 1535, and appointed him
Keeper of the Falcons the next year, a post he held until his death in 1552, at which time William inherited the same post, continuing it forward under Protestant King James & Catholic Queen Mary. He also had good relations with Queen Elizabeth I. All of which is to say, the Dormers had to have been good at the treacherous politics of the royal court.
1535-1536 was a tumultuous time in England around the corridors of power. It must have been exceptionally challenging for the Dormers, who managed to emerge from it fairly well.
Here's a timeline. Most of the events are pretty well known, though the exact sequence perhaps not so widely known.
- Jun 1491 - birth Henry Tudor
- Nov 1501 - Arthur, Crown Prince, marries Catherine of Aragon
- Apr 1502 - Henry's older brother, Prince Arthur, dies
- Apr 1509 - King Henry VII dies, Henry VIII succeeds him (age 17)
- 11 Jun 1509 - Henry VIII m. Catherine of Aragon
- 24 Jun 1509 - Henry VIII coronation
- Feb 1516 - Catherine's only surviving child, Mary, is born
- Jun 1519 - Elizabeth Blount gives birth to acknowledged illegitimate son of the king, Henry FitzRoy
- est 1525 - Henry first becomes interested in Anne Boleyn
- 1527 - Henry writes the Pope asking for annulment of marriage to Catherine of Aragon
- abt 1531 - Catherine of Aragon banished from court, her rooms given to Anne Boleyn
- 1532 - Archbishop of Canterbury dies, new appointment Thomas Cranmer, unbeknownst to the Pope is an ally for annulment
- Jan 1533 - secret wedding between Henry & Anne Boleyn
- May 1533 - Cranmer declares Henry & Catherine marriage null and void, & Henry & Anne's marriage valid
- Sep 1533 - Anne Boleyn gives birth to Princess Elizabeth
- 1534 - Pope Paul III excommunicates Henry VIII (finalized Dec 1538; Cranmer also excommunicated)
- 1534 - Anne Boleyn has miscarriage, Henry is already tiring of her
- by Sep 1535 - first known reference to Robert Dormer, a wealthy wool merchant who was beknighted, as Sir
- abt 1535 - William Dormer is engaged to Jane Seymour
- Jan 1536 - Catherine of Aragon dies; Anne Boleyn miscarries a son
- 1536 - Sir Robert Dormer appointed Keeper of the Falcons
- 19 May 1536 - Anne Boleyn beheaded for treason
- 20 May 1536 - Jane Seymour betrothed to Henry VIII
- 30 May 1536 - Jane Seymour married to Henry VIII (Jane died, of complications of childbirth the next year, but left a male heir behind
- Jun 1536 - Henry FitzRoy, Duke of Richmond and illegitimate son of the king dies; parliament was on the way to legitimizing him as heir to the throne at the time of his death
- Oct 1537 - Jane Seymour gives birth and dies 2 weeks later; Prince Edward lives and later becomes king
One moral of the story, apparently, is that if Henry VIII casts his eye upon your girl, you better find a new one. It seems plausible that the Dormer family was rewarded, specifically, for giving Jane Seymour up. William Dormer is best known for this, the girl he didn't marry. Interest in the woman he married instead, and their offspring, is considerably less. But since I'm descended from them, one could argue that my very existence depends on the execution of Anne Boleyn and royal appropriation of William Dormer's first fiancée, Jane Seymour.
Lucy Hungerford (1506-1604)
daughter of Anne Dormer & Sir Walter Hungerford
At any rate, William Dormer found another woman to marry, Mary Sidney. Their daughter Ann married Sir Walter Hungerford in 1558. It was an epically dysfunctional union. He accused her of adultery, wouldn't acknowledge his children, and filed for divorce in 1568 on those grounds and that she had tried to poison him.
The charges weren't proven, and the divorce was denied. Sir Walter spent three years in Fleet Street Prison rather than pay her support or £250 in costs levied against him for the divorce proceeding. According to wikipedia, letters 1570 from Anne survive bemoaning her impoverished state.
The Dormers had remained Catholic through Henry VIII's founding of the Protestant Church of England; some had become expatriates in an English Catholic community at Louvain, Belgium. Anne got permission to visit her dying grandmother there in 1571, and never returned to England. She died in Belgium in 1603. Her children remained in England.
Walter Hungerford, declaring he believed his wife Ann dead, married in 1596 a mistress who had borne him several children, only a few weeks before he died. The marriage was declared invalid in the disputes over the will. All in all, it was an ugly mess, and probably fueled lots of gossip.
Anne & Walter's first born, Lucy (1560-c.1604), married a nobleman, Sir John St. John, and bore him as many as 10 children. He died in 1594, and she next married Sir Anthony Hungerford the next year. (They were very distantly related 6th cousins.) With him, she had five more children, the youngest of whom was Thomas (1603-1663.)
Thomas and his older sister Anne were the immigrant ancestors in that line, arriving in New England 1638. Thomas settled in Connecticut, dying in New London in 1663. Anne and her husband John Lee, settled at Ipswich, Massachusetts where he died in 1671. (Her death record, no earlier than the 1650s. may be lost.) Catholic aristocrats were not typical settlers in the early colonial days of New England, but even without knowing the particulars, it's easy to imagine why they might be willing to leave England behind for a fresh start in the New World.