← Back to the front page

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

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

19. Seymour Took Chutzpah to New Levels in Defending His Sexually Abuse of Elizabeth

When Katherine Parr questioned her husband about what he was up to with Elizabeth, he put on an indignant routine, and claimed to be aghast at the kinds of dirty minds that could have possibly misinterpreted or misunderstood what he was doing. Indeed, in a piece of mental jujitsu, he basically argued that backing off would be an affront to his honor, and would let the bad guys win. Thus, the only right thing to do in the circumstances would be keep doing what he was doing. As he exclaimed: “By God’s precious soul, I mean no evil, and I will not leave it!“

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.