← Back to the front page

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

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

18. Seymour’s Wife Enabled His Sexually Abuse of Her Stepdaughter

Katherine Parr accepted her husband’s protestations that he was just having innocent fun with princess Elizabeth, and dismissed the complaints of scandalized servants and household staff as unwarranted. Indeed, in a bid to demonstrate just how little credence she gave to the wagging tongues, Katherine took to joining in the “romps” between her husband and stepdaughter. She even reportedly held the teenaged girl down on a few occasions, while Seymour went about tickling the girl and slapping her butt. On another occasion, Seymour wrestled with Elizabeth in a garden, and Katherine Parr stepped in to hold the girl down while he cut the princess’ gown “into a hundred pieces“.

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.