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Unexpected and Surprising Facts About England’s Iconic Queens

Khalid Elhassan February 13, 2022 38 min

26. The Slimy Courtier Who Creeped on Queen Elizabeth I in Her Childhood

Thomas Seymour, 1^st Baron Seymour of Sudeley (1508 – 1549), was one of the Tudor era’s slimiest figures. He and his older brother Edward pimped out their sister Jane Seymour to King Henry VIII, then married to but soured on Anne Boleyn. After the king had Boleyn’s head chopped off, he married Jane in 1536, and she gave him a son, the future King Edward VI. The Seymour family were catapulted from minor country gentry and into the upper reaches of the aristocracy. Thomas Seymour’s older brother Edward gained more power, however, and Thomas resented that. Soon, the siblings had morphed into mortal enemies. Thomas adopted a two-track strategy to increase his power. Gain personal influence over his nephew, the child King Edward who ascended the throne in 1547, or wed one of the king’s sisters, Mary or Elizabeth.

King Henry VIII hands power over to Edward VI and his Regency Council. Wikimedia

Less than a month after the death of her father, King Henry VIII, Thomas Seymour wrote a letter to thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, asking her to marry him. An alarmed Elizabeth wrote back that she was too young – Seymour was 25 years older – and that she planned to mourn her father for the next two years. Thomas was not interested in Elizabeth because of who she was as a person, but because of what she was. She was the king’s sister, and a potential heir to the throne if the sickly Edward VI kicked the bucket. Seymoure wanted a princess – any princess – and to hedge his bets, even as he tried to get Elizabeth to marry him, he also proposed to her older sister, Princess Mary. She also turned him down.

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.