Mary Seymour

• Name — Mary Seymour • Born — 30 August 1548 • Birthplace — Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire, England • Died — Late 1550? (purportedly aged ~2) • Noble Family — Seymour • Father — Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley • Mother — Catherine Parr

• Short Title — Restitution of Mary Seymour Act 1549 • Type — Act • Parliament — Parliament of England • Long Title — An Act of the Restitution of Mary Seymour dawghter of the Lorde Seymour late Admirall of Englond. • Year — 1549 • Citation — 3 & 4 Edw. 6. c. 14 • Territorial Extent — England and Wales • Royal Assent — 1 February 1550 • Commencement — 4 November 1549 • Repeal Date — 16 June 1977 • Repealing Legislation — Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1977 • Status — Repealed • Original Text — https: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=pst.000017915519&view=1up&seq=201 • Collapsed — yes In 1549, the Parliament of England passed the Restitution of Mary Seymour Act 1549 (3 & 4 Edw. 6. c. 14) removing the attainder placed on her father from Mary, but retaining Thomas' lands as property of the Crown. As her mother's wealth was left entirely to her father and later confiscated by the Crown, Mary was left a destitute orphan in the care of Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, who appears to have resented this imposition. After her second birthday in 1550, Mary disappears from historical record completely, and no claim was ever made on her father's meagre estate, leading to the conclusion that she did not live past the age of two.

Victorian author Agnes Strickland claimed, 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 Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI and I. Strickland's theory suggested that the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, after her marriage to Richard Bertie in 1553, and before she fled England during the Marian Persecutions in or after 1555, arranged Mary's marriage to Bushel. The problem with this theory is that Mary would have been aged only six at the time. A more modern theory, from Linda Porter, author of a 2010 biography on Katherine Parr, suggests that a 1573 Latin book of poems and epitaphs written by John Parkhurst, Katherine Parr's chaplain, contains the following reference to Mary: Porter suggested that this was an epitaph written by Parkhurst, on the occasion of Mary's death around the age of two. Porter further speculates that Mary is 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."

The 2007 novel The Red Queen's Daughter by Jacqueline Kolosov speculates an alternative history where Mary Seymour becomes lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth I. The 2009 novel The Stolen One by Suzanne Crowley depicts Mary being raised by a 'witch' in the English countryside. A similar premise allows Seymour's supernatural powers to help her friend Alison Bannister search for her lost child in the 2016 novel The Phantom Tree by Nicola Cornick. The 2022 drama series Becoming Elizabeth portrays Mary’s birth.

Mary Seymour is recorded as writer.