The Temptation of Elizabeth Tudor
Elizabeth Norton
England, late 1547. Henry VIII is dead. His 14-year-old daughter Elizabeth is living with the old king’s widow Catherine Parr and her new husband Thomas Seymour. Ambitious, charming and dangerous, Seymour begins an overt flirtation with Elizabeth that ends in her being sent away by Catherine.
When Catherine dies in autumn 1548 and Seymour is arrested for treason soon after, the scandal explodes into the open. Alone and in dreadful danger, Elizabeth is closely questioned by the king’s regency council: Was she still a virgin? Was there a child? Had she promised to marry Seymour? In her replies, she shows the shrewdness and spirit she would later be famous for. She survives the scandal. Thomas Seymour is not so lucky.
The Seymour Scandal led to the creation of the Virgin Queen. On hearing of Seymour’s beheading, Elizabeth observed ‘This day died a man of much wit, and very little judgement’. His fate remained with her. She would never allow her heart to rule her head again.
Other books by Elizabeth Norton
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The Lives of Tudor Women
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The Illustrated Six Wives of Henry VIII
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Elfrida: The First Crowned Queen of England
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The Boleyn Women: The Tudor Femmes Fatales Who Changed English History
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Bessie Blount: Mistress to Henry VIII
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England’s Queens: The Biography
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Anne Boleyn: In Her Own Words & the Words of Those Who Knew Her
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Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty
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Anne of Cleeve’s: Henry VIII’s Discarded Bride
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Catherine Parr: Wife, widow, mother, survivor, the story of the last queen of Henry VIII
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She Wolves: Notorious Queens of England
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Anne Boleyn: Henry VIII’s Obsession
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Jane Seymour: Henry VIII’s True Love
