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

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

22. Elizabeth Did Her Best to Thwart Seymour, But He Kept Creeping on Her

Princess Elizabeth’s governess, Kat Ashley. Wikimedia

According to later testimony by princess Elizabeth’s household staff, including her governess, Kat Ashley, Thomas Seymour started subjecting the young girl to early morning visits in her bedroom as soon as he moved in. As the governess put it, he would: “make as though to come at her“, and she would shrink back from him. Elizabeth tried to thwart him by waking up earlier, so he wouldn’t catch her in bed when he stopped by, only for him to counter that by visiting her earlier still, to ensure that she was in bed when he dropped by.

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.