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A Tale of Two Elizabeths: Two Queens Who Rewrote History

Khalid Elhassan September 15, 2022 39 min

A Creepy Courtier’s Bad End

Edward Seymour, Thomas Seymour’s older brother. Wikimedia

Thomas Seymour hated his older brother Edward, Lord Protector of England in the reign of the siblings’ underage nephew, King Edward VI, and sought his ruin. Despite that, Edward Seymour went out of his way to try and save his kid brother from himself. When the Privy Council grew alarmed at Thomas’ brazenness, such as efforts to stir up rebellion, and alliances with pirates in a bid to secure their support, the Protector invited his younger brother to come and explain himself. Thomas failed to do so, and instead, tried to kidnap the king. On the night of January 16^th, 1549, Thomas Seymour tried to break into the child monarch’s apartments.

His attempt was foiled when one of the king’s spaniels woke the place up with its barking. So Thomas shot it dead. The next day, Thomas Seymour was locked up in the Tower of London. In light of the fact that he had been caught outside the king’s bedroom at night, with a loaded pistol, there was little that his older brother – or anybody else for that matter – could do to help. Thomas was charged with thirty three counts of treason, convicted, and sentenced to death. Parliament passed a Bill of Attainder against him on March 5^th, 1549, and he was beheaded fifteen days later.

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.