Mary Seymour - Speculations of An Adult Life

Speculations of An Adult Life

Victorian author Agnes Strickland claims in her biography of Catherine Parr that Mary Seymour did survive to adulthood, and in fact married Sir Edward Bushel, a member of the household of Queen Anne of Denmark, consort to King James VI of Scotland and I of England. Strickland's theory incorporates that perhaps the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, after her marriage to Richard Bertie in 1553, and before she fled England during the Marian Persecutions which started on 20 January 1555, she provided an honorable marriage for Mary with Bushel. The problem with this theory is that Lady Mary would have been aged six at the time.

Mary was also believed to have been removed to Wexford, Ireland and raised under the care of a Protestant family there, the Harts, who had been engaged in piracy off the Irish coast under the protection of a profit sharing arrangement with Thomas Seymour. A lozenge-shaped ring inscribed "What I have I hold" reputed to have been an early gift to Thomas by his brother Edward passed down through her descendants the Seymour-Harts up to at least 1927.

There was reference found in old Elizabethan texts of 'The Late Queen's heir.' However, this could be various other women. Historian S. Joy states that "Mary definitely lived past the age of 10, but after that little is known."

The latest theory, comes from Linda Porter who has done extensive research and written her own biography on Lady Mary's mother, Queen Catherine.

In an article in History Today, published in July 2011, Porter states:

In January 1550, Lady Mary Seymour was allowed, by act of Parliament, to inherit any of her father’s property that remained. There was not much left but no claim was ever made and, thereafter, Catherine Parr’s daughter disappears from the historical record completely. What could have happened to her?

The answer to this compelling Tudor mystery seems to lie in a Latin book of poems and epitaphs written by John Parkhurst, Katherine Parr’s chaplain, who had previously served the Duke and Duchess of Suffolk. The discovery was made by the American academic, Janel Mueller, but has been overlooked by historians. I am grateful to Jean Bray, the archivist at Sudeley Castle, for drawing it to my attention. In Parkhurst’s Ludicra sive Epigrammata juvenilia, published in 1573, appears the following poem, which translated reads:

I whom at the cost
Of her own life
My queenly mother
Bore with the pangs of labour
Sleep under this marble
An unfit traveller.
If Death had given me to live longer
That virtue, that modesty, That obedience of my excellent Mother
That Heavenly courageous nature
Would have lived again in me.
Now, whoever
You are, fare thee well
Because I cannot speak any more, this stone
Is a memorial to my brief life

Though no name is given, this must surely be the epitaph that Parkhurst, who would have known Lady Mary Seymour, wrote on her death. It suggests, as has long been conjectured, that she died young, probably around the age of two. She may well be buried in Lincolnshire, near Grimsthorpe, the estate owned by the Duchess of Suffolk, where she had lived as an unwelcome burden for most of her short, sad life. —Linda Porter, History Today, Lady Mary Seymour: An Unfit Traveller", Volume: 61 Issue: 7 2011.