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

Khalid Elhassan March 22, 2019 24 min

34. Thomas Seymour, Diplomat

Anne of Cleves, by Holbein the Younger. The Hairpin

By all accounts, Thomas Seymour was a likeable fellow who knew how to put on the charm, so his royal brother in law made use of those talents by putting him to work as a diplomat. In 1538, Thomas was sent to the English embassy in France, and a year later, he accompanied a scouting mission to check out and report back on Anne of Cleves, who ended up as Henry VIII’s fourth wife. Soon thereafter he was sent to try and forge an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of Hungary against France, and he eventually ended up as ambassador to the Hapsburg court.

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.