I was talking about this with @lucreziaborgia earlier, and I’m really over people lauding Chapuys as some sort of feminist ahead of his time just because he supported Mary.
a) Having a special affection for one woman doesn’t preclude a man from misogyny,
b) He was about as misogynistic as any other 16th century European man (in his case, from the Duchy of Savoy). He wasn’t anachronistically so, but he still absolutely was.
There’s this tendency to dismiss some of the worst things he said about Anne Boleyn as, “well, those aren’t tones of misogyny, he just didn’t like her because he thought/believed she was threatening Mary”.
That could be a strong point, if he didn’t casually disparage another woman, too.
His initial reports of Jane Seymour were basically “she’s kind of ugly, and too pale, and probably not even a virgin so like…we’ll see.”
Of course, once he found out she interceded on Mary’s behalf he gushed about how she was a mediator, gentle, “we stan” etc. but like…
That he so readily made snide remarks about a woman’s physical appearance and gossiped about his own ideas about her chastity does constitute misogyny, and there’s no getting around that.
A Marian blogger once made a very good point (I’ll have to scrounge it up later) that we see Mary distancing herself from Chapuys once she’s reinstated at court and not being as big a source for Eustace as she had been formerly.
Of course, this is in part because she no longer was so desperate for help and guidance, but it also begs the question if she came to believe (true or not) his advice had hurt her cause more than it helped. It’s a very interesting question to debate, and one that’s always resonated with me.
Chapuys wasn’t a cartoon villain, but neither was he an infallible bastion of morality. There’s this tendency to portray him as either the Tudor Gossip Girl or, my ~favorite, as one who was So Above the English court and their “backwardness.” If he was either, he likely wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did as the Imperial Ambassador to England.
Anyways, you make great points re: his misogyny toward Jane. I believe he also made a remark it must have been Jane’s capacity in bed that captivated Henry, although I may be confusing that with another envoy. Chapuys may have had genuine fears about what Anne could have been capable of doing to Mary in her height of power, but it’s undeniable hysterical misogyny fed into that.
16th century men will be 16th century men.
Honestly, I didn’t even disclose the worst of what Chapuys said about Jane:
lmao yes that’s the quote I’m referring to, like if that’s not showing his true colors then what is 🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️🤷🏻♀️
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