Lady Margaret's Penance

I named the title character after one of our admins, who has a not dissimilar name in real life.

This story is the sort that I draft out, and often throw away - for the rework necessary is not as spell binding as getting the outline onto paper. If anyone would like to flesh out this work, I would be delighted with any assistance.

The scene is England, in a vague time span of about 1547 -1550. Henry VIII died in 1547, but I wanted him still alive when the real-life 1550 letter got written, when Elizabeth was aged 16, and at the center of Seymour's daily early morning visits to her bedroom, to tickle and to spank her. On her bare bottom, according to Kat Ashley.

My tale ends with the tattle-tale, Lady Margaret,receiving her retribution from Seymour. An opening scene-setter involving Seymour and Liz might be good...

Regards

Dave

So some anachronisms are OK.

Wait a minute. Jane Seymour is dead then. Catherine Parr is Henry's surviving spouse.

Sorry - I should have made it clear: Thomas Seymour routinely visited Elizabeth Tudor's bedroom in the early hours of the day, and it is he who deals with Lady Margaret. This is a M/F tale - but we might add a M/f lead in as an appetizer.

When, in real life, Kat Ashley wrote and told him to stop it, Catherine Parr was the person who actually ensured that the practice did stop. Possibly because she knew that the matter was now known to a wider audience. It is said that she was sometimes present when Thomas dealt with Elizabeth.

Is this true? If so, what is the source material? What was the pretext for Seymour's attentions? No wonder Elizabeth never married.

I don't know the original source, but it is mentioned in many accounts of Elizabeth's life. It seems to have occurred while Thomas Seymour was married to Catherine Parr, Henry VIII's widow.

If you make it clear that the story you are writing is historical fiction, there is no need for anything beyond the setting to be true or accurate. The author is free to invent or rearrange facts as necessary, only constrained by the willingness of the readers to suspend disbelief.

I have also been working on a historical fiction story based on a real American politician who was known as a pro-segregation firebrand. Less known, was his half-black daughter whom he visited and supported through college age. I have (naturally) made it into a spanking story, even though there is no historical basis for doing so; that is where the "fiction" part of historical fiction comes to play.

Occasionally I return to that story, but I really doubt that it will ever see the light of day. For one thing, that daughter is still alive.

That's interesting and I'll try to check it out. I do agree that with historical fiction the writer should be free to invent characters and change events somewhat although that might irritate purists. When I wrote Anne of Wulfstedt I tried to at least get the timeline and the main historical figures right, but I had to keep checking my sources to insure that I wasn't committing any major errors. The reason I like historical settings is that nearly all forms of CP you can think of were culturally acceptable, especially judicial/religious punishments. The political correctness that you have to work around now had yet to be invented.

This was Kat Ashleigh's testimony at the trial of Thomas Seymour:

"Incontinent after he was married to the Queene, he wold come many mornings into the said Lady Elizabeth's Chamber, before she was redy, and sometimes before she did rise. And if she were up, he would bid hir good morrow, and ax how she did, and strike hir upon the Bak or on the Buttocks famylearly, and so go forth through his lodgings; and sometimes go through to the Maydens, and play with them, and so go forth: And if she were in hyr Bed, he wold put open the Curteyns, and bid hir good morrow, and make as though he wold come at hir: And she wold go further in the Bed, so that he could not come at hir."

The famed letter that brought these incidents into the open is part of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, but I cannot track it down with google any more.

And there is also a reported incident where Catherine Parr restrained Elizabeth, in the garden, while her husband Seymour cut the girl's dress into hundreds of pieces with the tip of his sword. A most odd occurrence, which would surely have terrified the young girl. However, at Seymour's later trial, Elizabeth managed to remove all charges of impropriety towards her.

I'm all in favour of inventing characters in historical dramas, but not of playing fast and loose with the facts. For example, I remember an English Civil War novel where after the qualified Royalist victory in the first major battle of the war at Edgehill, the King marches on London but is repelled in a tough battle at Turnham Green, then just outside London to the west. In fact, he won an unexpectedly tough battle at Brentford and then faced, at Turnham Green, an unexpectedly large and well-armed Parliamentary army swelled by the London militia. He retreated without a fight. The inaccuracy annoyed me, but inventing a Royalist commander there wouldn't.

Similarly I once read a quite exciting spy/action novel set in a late 20th-century Bavaria on the edge of a Communist take-over. The shooting and chasing was credible enough, but the political scenario and descriptions showed the author hadn't the faintest about politics. A Le Carre, for example, would make the politics relatively credible.

I think that unless you're writing a History text book, your only constrain should be your imagination. It's a great fun playing with half truths and gossips and legends. Of course if you don't want to deceive your reader you can always set your story in parallel reality universe.

I'm an engineer and telecom specialist and it annoys me to hear Star War space battles with full sound in space and everyone firing laser cannons as one would fire machine guns, but I propose that most of the public doesn't care, we want simply to be entertained. Look at Dan Brown books.