The Uncle Who Stalked a Princess

He crept into a teenage princess’s bedroom at night, and his dark obsession ended up costing him his head. Lord Thomas Seymour was the ruthlessly ambitious uncle of the young King Edward VI. When Henry VIII died, Seymour married the widowed Queen Catherine Parr, but his true target was the fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth. While the rest of the palace slept, Seymour would sneak into Elizabeth’s dark bedchambers in his nightshirt, violently ripping her bedclothes apart, tickling her, and slapping her buttocks as a “game.” When his wife died in childbirth, Seymour immediately plotted to marry the teenage princess to seize control of the crown. But the royal council discovered his dark schemes. They threw him into the depths of the Tower of London, and in a cold act of betrayal, his own brother signed his death warrant. On the scaffold, Seymour spent his final seconds trying to hide a secret note inside his velvet shoe, begging Elizabeth to avenge his impending death.

Interesting Fact The executioner took two massive, clumsy hacks with the axe before Seymour’s head finally parted from his shoulders. When the news of his brutal death was brought to the fifteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, she didn’t shed a single tear. She coldly looked at her ladies and said, “This day died a man of much wit, and very little judgment.”

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