This might be the closest to a factual answer as we’ll ever get … any evidence to the contrary would have long ago either been exposed or destroyed … most likely the latter because who wants to rename two states to Slut-tonshire …
Maybe she was gay …
A lot more detail in Thomas Seymour’s Wikipedia entry -
He was arrested much later, long after Elizabeth was gone - while trying to seriously influence the young King Edward to give him regency power in place of the council led by his brother. At that point the council tried to dig up any and all proof that Thomas was trying to do anything that would offend the royal family. All the lesser servants around Elizabeth were also arrested, impressing on her the seriousness of the situation. They tried (and failed) to get her to admit conspiring with Thomas, even though she’d been out of his household for a year or so.
Which goes back to my previous point - if there’s been any serious suggestion that he’s violated a young member of the royal family, I suspect he’d have been taken care of much faster and quietly. The suggestion was that he was trying to marry her to reinforce his attempt to take over the kingdom.
Edward Seymour was the Lord Protector, Thomas was his brother. They were both brothers to Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife. At the time of the accusations, Elizabeth was living withThomas Seymour and Katherine Parr who had married him after Henry VIII died. She was his sixth queen.
From what I was reading:
Jane was tolerant of Thomas’s horseplay with Elizabeth until she (Jane) became pregnant and then caught (?) Thomas “in embrace” with Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s governess had complained about the appearance of impropriety before that. Jane sent Elizabeth to live elsewhere. Later Jane died in childbirth.
It was after Thomas then spent too much time sucking up to Edward, trying to get him to replace the council of Regents, that this came to a head. According to Wikipedia, at one point Thomas tried to enter Edward’s apartments after hours, and then shot a noisy spaniel… he was arrested, and questions about someone approaching the King’s rooms with a loaded pistol, along with his earlier political attempts, led to charges he was conspiring a coup.
They then tried to drag Elizabeth into the mix, claiming she was a conspirator - this was a year after she’d moved to a different household, and at only 15. She denied this long enough and well enough that she escaped any punishment.
Thomas was executed, and conveniently, the massive fortune that Jane inherited from Henry VIII and Thomas inherited from Jane was forfeit back to the crown.
Found this detail, in the legal summary of Thomas’s behavior:
The website also mentions that Elizabeth took to getting up early so she would not still be in bed when Thomas came around. Some rumors of the times suggested Elizabeth was sent away because she was pregnant, but there’s zero proof of this. Plus, a guy that engages in noisy horseplay in a house full of servants when everyone is getting up is probably not looking to get nookie. There’s no mention of sneaking around the house after sunset.
Thomas apparently tried to woo Anne of Cleves (Henry’s 4th wife) and then married Katherine Parr (#6) far too fast, 4 months after Henry died (The traditional “year of mourning” is to guarantee that there’s no surprise heir) . Then he applied to marry Elizabeth after she’d moved out and Katherine had died, while befriending Edward and trying to persuade him to replace the regent’s council with himself. Definitely ambitious.
The familiarity and his attempt to get engaged to Elizabeth drew suspicion that she was complicit in his attempt to replace Edward. What better claim to the throne than to be married to the next protestant in line?
Besides the fact that Elizabeth spent virtually her entire life with someone in the same room, childbirth was very dangerous. Two of her step mothers, Jane Seymour and Katherine Parr, died shortly after giving birth as did her maternal grandmother Elizabeth of York. If she did have a physical relationship with anyone, it probably would have been Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. But I think after seeing the public relations disaster that her half-sister Mary Tudor’s marriage to Phillip II of Spain was, and realizing marrying an English noble would cause problems with other noble families, she stayed chaste. And was lucky enough that when she died, James VI of Scotland with two male children was available. Dying 30 years earlier without a clear heir. might have set off War of the Roses 2.0
And of course, her mother and a stepmother were executed by an annoyed husband. (She was probably safe from that fate). Her sister suffered a failed “false pregnancy” which caused assorted political turmoil. Her father went through 6 wives. Her dear brother died very young. All in all, not an argument for happy motherhood or wedded bliss.
Another “scandalous behaviour” I ran across was that the household thought it was inappropriate for Thomas Seymour and Elizabeth to have had an unchaperoned boat ride one night…
According to David Starkey he thinks the evidence suggests Elizabeth enjoyed this horseplay with Thomas Seymour. I think this is one of those occasions where you’d have to look at as many original documents as possible. It certainly would be convenient for Elizabeth to later claim she took to getting up early in order to avoid Seymour.
There was also a suspiciously large amount of money left in Elizabeth’s will to one of Dudley’s long standing servants. The implication being it was left in order to keep him quiet.
I think this is one question we’ll never know the answer to. I would not be surprised at any of the possible answers. Personally, I go for the middle ground; Elizabeth most probably had Clinton/Lewinsky levels of sexual fun. Most likely with Dudley than anyone else.
I wish I could find a cite now, but I remember reading that Spain had placed spies in the Royal Laundery to confirm the presence (or lack) of menstrual cloths.
Amusing Internet/Google/Data-mining anecdote: no matter how I loaded the Booleans the Google search was hopelessly inadequate–even on the one or two hits “menstruation,” was even present, the subsequent cites and pages invariably were on general history introductions until page x results of This-Isnt-What-I-Want-And-Is-Unlikely-To-Ever-Be.
Why? The Elizabethan Period.
She died about age 70; any servant would have to be at least the same age (shenanigans happened up to age 14) and would be serious old news and irrelevant. (The only possible other explanation is that the servant was her child?) I doubt a thin 14 year old center of political firestorm could really hide a pregnancy.
I mentioned this in another thread in Cafe Society awhile ago. I was reading a biography of Arbella Stuart last summer. One of the appendices featured a letter from the French Ambassador about Arbella’s first appearance at Elizabeth’s court when the girl was about 13 or 14; like her cousin James VI of Scotland, Arbella was a serious contender for Elizabeth’s heir.
The French Ambassador writes as if it’s generally known that the young girl is actually Elizabeth’s illegitimate daughter by Robert Dudley–which is of course nonsense, but it made me wonder how many of these rumors were based on Arbella’s appearance at court plus her early, secluded childhood.
QEI - 1533, Arabella - 1575. By the time Elizabeth was 42 I’m sure she was watched like a hawk for signs of last minute heir creation.
I assume if she’d relented and married even a day before any child was born, it would be the heir? So any carrying on with Dudley that resulted in a pregnancy - she would have also had to consider the need for insurance in case she died in childbirth, too. And by 42, I assume she’d mastered the art of expressing her will no matter the situation of any male around her.
You’re right, it makes little sense.
Sorry, it was one of Dudley’s servants not Seymours. I was talking of her rumoured “affair” with Dudley.
When the shit hit the fan over Thomas Seymour - one interpretation was that he intended to kidnap the king and make himself Regent by force. So he was arrested. Then apparently anyone around him was arrested; Elizabeth was questioned for weeks because he’d put in a request to try and marry her. All her servants were arrested and questioned. They were questioned at length about anything that happened between Seymour and Elizabeth. The worst that was documented was the tickle sessions and the item that they’d taken a nighttime barge ride alone. (Whether that means “alone” or “only servant(s) with them”, not clear - I assume servants were not considered adequate chaperones.)
But again, with Dudley - if she’d found herself pregnant, she would have to calculate the risk of death in childbirth; plus, that if she did not marry, the child would not be legitimate, would not be heir. I would suspect she would favour her own child over Mary Queen of Scots or her son James. (Mary was in her custody from 1567 to 1586, when she was beheaded for plotting against Elizabeth, so I assume there was no love lost).
As for other options - has modern society made us more open-minded? I was under the impression that oral sex, and anal sex with women, were not particularly common activities in the more “sheltered” medieval times. ( they were I suspect, something “only the French did”?)
Indeed. While obviously the intrigues of court add additional import to the matter of who is sleeping with whom, there’s plenty of earthy 16th and 17th century material to demonstrate that the common people’s obsession with sex wasn’t much different from today’s, and that includes alternative forms. And no, I’m not linking to it but the phrase “the French vice” is relevant here.
It may not have been polite, but it certainly wasn’t taboo.
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I would agree that the definition of “virgin” at the time was “has her vagina been penetrated by a penis?”. But I would also assume she didn’t partake of oral or anal sex.
Remember that personal hygiene standards in Europe at the time were, um, well… Many people never bathed. They didn’t have an infinite supply of clean toilet paper. My guess is that oral and anal sex were taboo in part because they were disgusting, and would have been disgusting to most modern Americans who enjoy those activities. Especially oral sex. Put your mouth on WHAT!?
People in Tudor times may not have had full baths regularly, but it was expected to wash one’s privy parts daily.
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I don’t know if the above is true but if any class of society had the ability to clean themselves on a semi-regular basis it was the nobility.
People in modern times, with hot and cold running water and private bathrooms, still fail to do what is expected in regard to hygiene.