On this day in Tudor history, 30th August 1548, Catherine Parr, Queen Dowager (sixth wife of King Henry VIII) and wife of Thomas Seymour, Baron Seymour of Sudeley, gave birth to a healthy daughter at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Thomas and Catherine named the little girl Mary after her godmother, the future Queen Mary I.
Lady Mary Seymour would soon be orphaned, and by the age of two she had disappeared from the records. What happened to Mary Seymour?
I talk about the various theories regarding Mary Seymour's fate. What a Tudor mystery!
Also on this day in Tudor history:
- 1501 – Death of Thomas Grey, 1st Marquis of Dorset, courtier and son of Elizabeth Woodville by her first husband, Sir John Grey of Groby. Dorset was buried in the collegiate church of Astley in Warwickshire.
- 1525 - The Treaty of the More, negotiated by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, was agreed by Henry VIII and Louise of Savoy, who was acting as regent while Francis I was imprisoned by Imperial forces. He had been captured at the Battle of Pavia. It was an about-face for Wolsey as he had, in the recent past, been allying England with the Empire, rather than France. By the terms of the treaty, Henry VIII agreed to help secure Francis I's release, and to give up claims to several French territories. In return, France was to award England with a pension of £20,000 per year.
The treaty was known as the Treaty of the More because negotiations took place at Wolsey’s property in Hertfordshire, “The More”. - 1534 – Death of Thomas Belchiam, Observant Franciscan friar and Catholic martyr. The twenty-eight-year-old friar was starved to death at Newgate Prison. Belchiam had allegedly called the King a heretic. It is also alleged that there was an earthquake at the time of his death.
- 1582 – Death of Richard Curteys, Bishop of Chichester. He was buried at Chichester Cathedral. In 1600, a collection of ten of his sermons on Psalm 25 was published as “The Care of a Christian Conscience”.
- 1595 – Death of William Vaux, 3rd Baron Vaux, English peer and Catholic recusant. He was imprisoned in Elizabeth I's reign for his Catholic faith and for harbouring Edmund Campion, a Jesuit priest.
- 1596 – Death of George Gower, English portrait painter and Sergeant Painter to Elizabeth I, in the parish of St Clement Danes in London. He was buried at the church there.
This is a very curious mystery and it’s a pity her death wasn’t recorded because she was the daughter of an ex Queen and was raised by the ex Duchess of Suffolk, herself a woman of renown and note at Court.
As you say the romantic wants her growing up and getting married but there isn’t any evidence for this, although we can’t find a grave either, but that is not unusual, especially as it may have been marked by a plaque or something. William Seymour was buried in the Beauchamp Chapel in Warwick and is celebrated with a small brass plate and honestly, blink and you would miss it. If the area of the Church in which she was placed was altered her grave could well be lost.
Very 😢 sad. RIP Little Mary Seymour.
So sad but really interesting, thanks Claire
It is very sad when you think that Catherine, Thomas and little Mary were all dead in just a few short years of each other.
Very sad. Truly, to be an unwanted burden, then to be practically hardly noted, very sad. Michelle t
I just wish we could find a document that says what happened to her, what she died of.
I also really, truly wonder about Catherine, Dowager queen, with Thomas Seymour. Here was a very intelligent, savvy woman, who managed to get out of that heresy charge and get the better of Henry, falling for such a rake as Seymour. Could be have, for once, been sincere? Or did this intelligent woman call for the charms, only because she was married to old, sickly, men 3 times before and was determined to marry nearly anyone who didn’t for that description? To me, the whole marriage with Seymour is a mystery, too.