Did Thomas Seymour Groom Elizabeth Tudor?

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 November 2021

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1547, the 14-year-old future Queen Elizabeth I is living with her step-mother Queen Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour, uncle to Elizabeth's half-brother King Edward VI. But when Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth, she is sent away by Catherine. Later, when Seymour is arrested for treason, Elizabeth and Seymour's relationship comes under close scrutiny.

In this edition of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb talks to Dr. Elizabeth Norton about this harrowing and potentially damaging episode from the early life of the Virgin Queen.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	In today's episode of Not Just The Tudors, we're going to be talking about something that
0:07.2	some may find upsetting. We're going to examine the allegation that the teenage princess Elizabeth,
0:13.4	also known as Lady Elizabeth and later to be Queen Elizabeth I, was sexually harassed
0:18.9	or abused by her stepfather Thomas Seymour after Henry VIII's death. This is long before
0:25.8	Elizabeth became Queen and long before her virginity became famous. This is Elizabeth as a newly
0:31.5	orphan teenager and it reflects on a series of incidents that happened in 1547 and 1548,
0:38.6	which were recorded in 1549. The purpose of today's episode is to examine the evidence
0:44.8	systematically and to see if we can reach a conclusion about what exactly did happen between
0:50.7	Elizabeth and Seymour in these years. To do this, I'm joined by Dr. Elizabeth Norton. Dr. Norton
0:57.8	has written many wonderful books on the lives of Tudor women, and indeed one book called Just
1:02.7	That, The Lives of Tudor Women, and she's written books on Henry VIII's wives, and on people
1:07.7	like Margaret Beauford and Bessie Blount. You might recognise her voice from her appearance on the
1:12.8	recent series The Bellins on BBC 2, and she examined the case of Thomas Seymour and Princess Elizabeth
1:19.4	Infrarenzic detail in her book The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor, published by Head of Zeus.
1:32.3	Dr. Norton, it's an absolute joy to speak to you about this extraordinary topic. I mean, it's a sort
1:38.6	of real life, almost criminal investigation that we're going to be carrying out at a distance of
1:44.2	almost 500 years, and you've written this wonderful book about it where you've examined all of the
1:48.8	evidence and forensic detail, and so let us start perhaps by picking up the story in February 1547.
1:55.6	So, 28th January, Henry 8th died. His orphaned nine-year-old son Edward had become king, and Edward's
2:04.6	half-sister Princess Elizabeth, though normally now known as Lady Elizabeth, for reasons we
2:09.4	can't go into. It was 13 years old, also an orphan, and was sent to live with her stepmother,
2:15.0	Catherine Par, and it's there where Thomas Seymour saw her. So, would you like to introduce us
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Hit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Hit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.