Unwanted Female

Catherine Parr (1512-1548) became Henry VIII's 6th and last wife. He was her 3rd husband, and although a faithful and in every aspect a good wife to him, she married him out of duty: The king bid, and she did. Actually, that seems to have been the case with all of her previous husbands, so who is to blame her, when she chose the fourth one out of love? She was infatuated with the brother of the king's third wife, Jane Seymour, the mother of King Edward VI, namely Thomas Seymour. Maybe only because she was the richest widow in England at that time, he also "was very much besotted by her". Anyway, they got married.

 

Thomas Seymour

He always struck me as a typical social climber who got his chance when his sister married the king and gave birth to his sole male heir, the new king. Marrying the king Henry's widow was a step upwards on the steep social ladder, but he can't have respected her very highly, as he started a more or less dangerous flirtation - or maybe more? - with the future Queen Elizabeth I when she moved in to live with them, 14 years old.

A very young Princess Elizabeth

What did Seymour feel for his wife, Catherine, was it love, was it some kind of veneration? To me it doesn't look like that which may be the cause of his not caring for the daughter, they had, and who cost her her life because of childbed fever: Mary Seymour, born August 30, 1548. As it is none of the parents seemed to care for this hapless infant who was to become a burden on those who did. Unfortunately - and strangely - her mother didn't leave her only child anything, only her husband who thus became very affluent. As to the child's father, the by now rich widower, then he was executed for treason and maybe even piracy. His large fortune was forfeited when he was convicted for treason, and he didn't seem to care for his daughter and thus didn't secure her social position before he was executed. Neither her maternal nor paternal uncles wanted to commit themselves to her upbringing, now that her father had left her penniless.

 

 MAYBE Mary Seymour, IF she reached adulthood 

The infant was reluctantly accepted as a foster child by the closest friend of her mother, Catherine Brandon, the widow of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She may have felt it was her duty, but she didn't like it, and it was costly: Being the daughter of a former queen, little Mary had her own household staff, and was to be clothed according to her station, all of it very costly. Had she had some dynastic value it might have been all right, but no, she didn't as she didn't have any dowry. The poor girl was without purpose in a world that had put down marriage as the only female career possibility.

Presumably Mary Seymour as a child 

 

Mary's foster Mom, Catherine Brandon, was complaining about the situation all the time, as she was to pay for Mary, her food, toys, clothes, and her servants. When she took on the obligation of raising the girl she was promised a pension for her, but somehow that was "forgotten". Around 1550 the child even seems to "disappear" from history, but some think she did attain adulthood and even had children of her own. Unfortunately there are no proofs, so those who think she died an infant, aproximately two years old, are very likely right. As to her grave nobody knows where it might be: This child that cost her mother her life "went up into thin air". That's what happens to many or even most of us who are forgotten a generation or two after we die, but somehow it seems so sad that it happened to an orphaned child who was not appreciated by those who ought to have loved and cared for her.

 

 

https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/katherine-parr/ 

 

 

Britannica

 

 

Wikipedia