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40 Facts About the Tudor Era’s Awful Courtier, Thomas Seymour

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

28. He Sought to Increase His Power by Marrying 13 Year Old Princess Elizabeth

Ticked off that his older brother seemed to be hogging all the power via his control over the underage king Edward VI, Thomas Seymour figured he could get his own access to power by controlling another royal: princess Elizabeth. Less than a month after the death of her father, king Henry VIII, Thomas Seymour wrote a letter to 13 year old princess Elizabeth, asking her to marry him. An alarmed Elizabeth elegantly rejected his proposal, writing him back that she was too young – Seymour was 25 years older – and that she planned to mourn her father for the next two years.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.