Jane Meutas

Jane Meutas (or Mewtas, or Mewtis, or Meautis, or Meautys) (c. 1517 – c. 1551) was an English lady of the Queen's privy chamber who became the wife of the courtier Peter Meutas. Her name is sometimes given as Joan, and her maiden name was Astley or Ashley. Her husband was knighted on 18 May 1544, when she became Lady Meutas. She is the subject of a portrait sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger which is believed to date from the 1530s and is in the Royal Collection.

Life

Jane Astley, a lady of the privy chamber of Queen Jane Seymour, married her fellow courtier Peter Meutas in 1537, before 9 October. He was a man of action, tall, strong, an expert in small arms, with fair hair and a long beard. A follower of Thomas Cromwell, Mewtas had seen action in the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and the same year had been appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber and master of Bethlem Hospital. In 1537, he gained two further preferments, as Comptroller of the Royal Mint and Overseer of Artillery.

The couple had a child who was baptized in February 1539. This was probably their son Henry, or perhaps their daughter Frances, who later became a gentlewoman of the chamber to Queen Elizabeth I and married Henry, second Viscount Howard of Bindon. Jane and Peter Mewtas had at least two other sons, Thomas and Hercules, of whom Hercules was their youngest.

In August 1540 Jane Meutas and others ladies of the court visited Portsmouth to see a newly built ship. They sent Henry VIII a joint letter which was signed by Mabel, Lady Southampton, Margaret Tallebois, Margaret Howard (sister of Catherine Howard), Alice Browne, Anne Knyvett (daughter of Thomas Knyvett), Jane Denny, "Jane Meowes", Anne Bassett, Elizabeth Tyrwhitt, and Elizabeth Harvey.

Peter Mewtas was one of the dignitaries who met Anne of Cleves at Calais in 1540 and was knighted on active military service on 18 May 1544 at Edinburgh. In 1545, he was appointed Governor of Guernsey, where his works at Castle Cornet included the building of the new 'Mewtas Bulwark'.

Family After the death of Jane Meutas, Peter Meutas married another woman called Jane (died 1577). Peter's children (by both wives) included Henry Meautys (1526-1588), who married Ann Jermy, daughter of Sir John Jermy of Metfield and Brightwell, Suffolk, their children included Thomas Meautys (father of the civil servant and politician Thomas Meautys), and Margaret Meautys, who married Sir Thomas Wilson. Thomas Meautys. Hercules Meautys, who married Phillipa, daughter of Richard Cooke (1531-1579) of Gildea Hall. Frances Meautys, a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, she married (1) Henry Howard, 2nd Viscount Howard of Bindon, (2) Edmund Stansfield.

Drawing by Holbein

Holbein's portrait of Jane Meutas is a drawing in black and coloured chalks on pink prepared paper, 283 x 212 mm, and has the name 'The Lady Meutas' written clearly on its face. To the right of the head, Holbein has added a schematic sketch of his sitter's hands. On one finger is a heart-shaped leaf which German painters of the time used as a symbol for the colour green, taken to represent an emerald ring. The same leaf symbol appears in Lady Meutas’s oval medallion.

Bartolozzi was famous for his stipple engravings and developed his technique to imitate the subtleties of Renaissance and baroque chalk drawings.