There is an allegation that the teenage Princess Elizabeth was sexually abused by Thomas Seymour after Henry VIII<\/a>\u2019s death in January 1547. Seymour was the brother of one of her stepmothers, Jane Seymour<\/a>, and the husband of another, Katherine Parr<\/a>. So what\u2019s the evidence and did it happen?<\/p>\n Nearly everything we know about this case comes from Elizabeth\u2019s servants. Her governess, Kat Ashley, and Thomas Parry, her \u2018cofferer\u2019, or accountant, testified in response to a Privy Council<\/a> investigation in 1549 into whether Seymour tried to marry Elizabeth without the council\u2019s consent.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> Here are the facts as best we know them.<\/p>\n Thomas Seymour asked the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth to marry him by letter in February 1547, within a month of her father, Henry VIII\u2019s, death. Seymour probably believed that marrying Elizabeth would increase his hold on power; his brother, Edward Seymour<\/a>, Duke of Somerset, had just been made Lord Protector, and the ambitious Thomas was probably envious of Edward\u2019s position. Elizabeth rejected his proposal elegantly, also by letter, saying she was too young (she was 13 years old; he, at 38, was 25 years older than she) and would be in mourning for her father for two years.<\/p>\n Within a month or so of receiving her rejection, Thomas Seymour married the queen dowager Katherine Parr, Henry VIII\u2019s widow and Elizabeth\u2019s stepmother. Katherine had been in love with him since before her marriage to Henry, but it is possible that Thomas married her to get closer to Elizabeth.<\/p>\n At almost exactly this time, Elizabeth started living with Katherine. Soon afterwards, Thomas moved in to live with his new wife.<\/p>\n According to testimonies given in 1549 by Elizabeth\u2019s governess and companion, Kat Ashley, and her cofferer, Thomas Parry, from June 1547 \u2013 within days of Seymour\u2019s arrival \u2013 Elizabeth started to receive early-morning visits from him. He would \u201cmake as though he would come at her\u201d and she would shrink back. The next day, she rose earlier so that he wouldn\u2019t find her in bed, but when he arrived, she was still dressed only in a nightdress, he in a short nightgown, \u201cbarelegged in his slippers\u201d. He greeted her and reached out to \u201cstrike her on the back or the buttocks familiarly\u201d. Another time he climbed into Elizabeth\u2019s bed, while she was still in it. She continued to get up earlier \u2013 if she were dressed, he would bid her good morning and then go on his way.<\/p>\n Kat Ashley \u2013 in her depositions \u2013 said that she grew concerned about his visits, and came to sit in her mistress\u2019s rooms in the early mornings, but that Seymour continued his behaviour. She maintained that she told him to \u201cgo away for shame\u201d and squared up to him on one occasion saying that word of his behaviour was getting out. Seymour replied that \u201che meant no evil\u201d.<\/p>\n On two occasions, Katherine Parr joined Seymour in his morning visits to the now 14-year-old girl, and they tickled her in bed. On another occasion, Seymour wrestled with Elizabeth in the gardens at Hanworth on an autumnal day, with Katherine nearby \u2013 he cut Elizabeth\u2019s gown \u201cinto a hundred pieces\u201d while Katherine \u201cheld her\u201d. The nature of Katherine\u2019s holding is not clear \u2013 held her down? Held her to protect her? Laughingly participated in mere horseplay? We don\u2019t know how Elizabeth reacted.<\/p>\n Soon after this incident, Katherine asked Kat Ashley to keep watch on Elizabeth\u2019s behaviour. She claimed that Seymour claimed to have seen Elizabeth \u201ccast her arms about a man\u2019s neck\u201d in an embrace, but no one else in the household had seen it and Ashley came to believe that Katherine had made it up to get her to spy on Elizabeth and Seymour.<\/p>\n Katherine and Seymour moved to his London house for several months, and Elizabeth did not go with them. When in spring 1548, she arrived to join them, he started up his morning visits again. Kat Ashley says she again reprimanded him for coming in a state of undress into \u201ca maiden\u2019s chamber\u201d.<\/p>\n In June 1548, Katherine wrote to Seymour, and asked Elizabeth to arrange a messenger to get the letter to him. Elizabeth wrote on the outside of the letter, in Latin, \u201cThou, touch me not\u201d, then deleted it, and wrote instead, \u201cLet him not touch me\u201d \u2013 suggesting his advances were unwanted, but that she feared to speak too directly to him about it.<\/p>\n Kat Ashley said, however, that Elizabeth \u201cdid bear some affection\u201d towards Seymour and would blush when he was spoken of.<\/p>\n Finally, on 11 June 1548, according to Thomas Parry, Katherine came across her husband and stepdaughter embracing in a room alone together, and Katherine reacted with anger: \u201cthey were all alone, he having her in his arms, wherefore the queen fell out\u201d with Seymour and Elizabeth.<\/p>\n The very next day, Elizabeth went to live with Sir Anthony and Joan Denny \u2013 Kat Ashley\u2019s sister \u2013 at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, and Katherine and Seymour went to Sudeley Castle. It is not clear whether Elizabeth chose to leave or was sent away.<\/p>\n Throughout that summer, Elizabeth was ill with migraines, jaundice, digestive problems, and irregular menstruation. About 60 years later, an urban legend started to circulate that Elizabeth had been pregnant during this time \u2013 but the evidence is laughably slender and easily refuted. It seems more likely that Elizabeth was stressed and traumatised by the separation from her stepmother and the sexual harassment by her stepfather.<\/p>\n Katherine wrote Elizabeth affectionate letters while they were apart. On 5 September 1548, a week after giving birth, Katherine died. There had been no reconciliation in person between Katherine and Elizabeth since the events in June.<\/p>\n The newly single Seymour sent his nephew, John Seymour, to accompany Elizabeth as she moved to set up her own household at Hatfield soon after, and (according to Thomas Parry), Seymour told John to enquire of Elizabeth: \u201cwhether her great buttocks were grown any less or no?\u201d<\/p>\n Rumours started to circulate about this time that Seymour planned to marry Elizabeth. Parry asked her if she would marry Seymour if he asked; she replied, \u201cwhen that comes to pass, I will do as God shall put in my mind\u201d \u2013 a characteristically ambiguous response. Parry thought Elizabeth aware of Seymour\u2019s interest but that it was not reciprocal.<\/p>\n In January 1549, Seymour was arrested for trying to kidnap the king, marry Elizabeth without the council\u2019s consent, and make himself de facto king. Ashley and Parry were questioned to find out if Elizabeth was in on it. With their testimonies, and her own witty defence, Elizabeth managed to extract herself from blame, and Seymour was beheaded on Tower Hill on 20 March.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> As Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry\u2019s evidence was given in response to the 1549 Privy Council investigation into whether Seymour tried to marry Elizabeth without the council\u2019s consent, it was in their interests to appear as if they had acted impeccably throughout. That might mean that Ashley pretended to have been shocked or to have tried to send Thomas Seymour away, when she never actually did so.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know how Katherine felt: was she jealous? Did she think Elizabeth was just a young girl infatuated with her handsome husband? Did she see it as mere high jinks? Or did she resist seeing what was happening in front of her face?<\/p>\n It seems possible that she saw it, at first, as a bit of fun \u2013 and then, as Elizabeth matured, and when Katherine herself fell pregnant, became concerned that it was something more worrying. It is possible that Katherine sent Elizabeth away in order to protect her, as the heavily pregnant Katherine knew that she would soon have been going into confinement and would not be able to stop Seymour\u2019s advances.<\/p>\n We also don\u2019t know how Elizabeth felt. Kat Ashley said that Elizabeth blushed when Seymour was spoken of, but this might not indicate affection, or fancy, so much as shame.<\/p>\n From a modern perspective, a 13\/14-year-old is a child and cannot give consent. But a 14-year-old of aristocratic birth could marry in Tudor England, even if it were not normal to cohabit (and, therefore, consummate a marriage) until the age of 16.<\/p>\n We cannot conclude with absolute certainty that he did, but he visited her in a state of undress, when she was in her nightgown, and his behaviour was thought to be shameful by her servants. If we cannot say for certain that he sexually abused her, we can, at least, say that he seems to have been trying do so; he harassed her and made her deeply uncomfortable, as indicated by her note on Katherine\u2019s letter. He also may have been trying to groom her into marriage at a future point.<\/p>\n These incidents from her childhood seem very likely to have affected the adult queen. It may well be that Elizabeth\u2019s later decision not to marry was associated with this sexual harassment, at a pivotal period of her life. When she wrote \u201clet him not touch me\u201d, she prophesised not just about Thomas Seymour but about all the men she would encounter. As a result of Seymour\u2019s actions, Elizabeth knew that when a man came a-courting, he would have one eye on her and one on the throne, and she was determined not to let any of them get their hands on it, or her.<\/p>\n \u00a0This article was first published by HistoryExtra in May 2017<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Professor Suzannah Lipscomb Published: Monday, 13 June 2022 at 12:00 am Elizabeth I may have been the one of England\u2019s longest reigning monarchs but, from her very first breath to the day she died, Elizabeth I was surrounded by enemies who threatened her crown and her life. There is an allegation that the teenage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":15117,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"9"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth.jpg",620,413,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth.jpg",620,413,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth.jpg",620,413,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth.jpg",620,413,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/46\/2022\/06\/did-thomas-seymour-sexually-abuse-the-teenage-princess-elizabeth.jpg",620,413,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Professor Suzannah Lipscomb Published: Monday, 13 June 2022 at 12:00 am Elizabeth I may have been the one of England\u2019s longest reigning monarchs but, from her very first breath to the day she died, Elizabeth I was surrounded by enemies who threatened her crown and her life. There is an allegation that the teenage…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/15116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Watching Becoming Elizabeth<\/em>? Find out more about the real history that inspired the drama:<\/h4>\n
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<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>What was Thomas Seymour\u2019s relationship with Elizabeth?<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Learn more about Elizabeth I as Queen of England<\/h4>\n
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<\/div><\/div> <\/div> <\/section>What we know \u2013 and don\u2019t know \u2013 about Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth<\/h2>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Did Thomas Seymour sexually abuse Elizabeth?<\/h2>\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"