Edward Seymour was swift to elevate himself to the Dukedom of Somerset when he took control of his nephew, Edward VI’s, Regency Council in 1547. The duke had twelve children as a result of his two marriages. His first marriage was to Catherine Filliol by whom he had two sons – or rather he thought he did but after his wife’s affair with her father-in-law came to light it all became rather complicated. John and Edward found themselves excluded from their inheritance on the grounds that no one knew if their father was actually their half-brother. Catherine was packed off to a nunnery where she conveniently died circa 1535 before nunneries became a thing of the past. I should point out that there is no existing contemporary evidence that Catherine and her father-in-law were rather closer than they should have been.
Seymour married for a second time to Anne Stanhope. Today’s post is supposed to be about her daughter – Anne. She had more sisters including Margaret and Jane. All three of them were noted writers of their day. Anne, the oldest married John Dudley the eldest surviving son of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick as he was when the engagement was contracted and Duke of Northumberland when the marriage came to pass. John died of goal fever as a result of being locked in the Tower following froths father’s cunning but not terribly successful plan to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
The girls received a humanist education of the kind that included Latin, French, Italian and Greek as well as other subjects. The sisters were also supposed to be notable singers. Her first marriage was supposed to seal a political alliance between Seymour and Dudley but within weeks of the marriage Seymour was off to the Tower for a date with the headsman. When John died Anne was still only sixteen or seventeen years old. An old family friend of the Seymours arranged a second marriage to Sir Edward Unton. She and her husband had seven children, though it didn’t stop him from going off on a Grand Tour. During that time and whilst her youngest child was scarcely out of babyhood she was declared to be a’ lunatic with lucid intervals.’ She was twenty-eight years old.
Anne and her sisters composed 103 Latin distichs- choric praise in couplets and rhyming quatrains- for the tomb of Margaret of Navarre which were published in France in 1550. This then makes the three young women an important voice in the development of the female written word but at the time they were regarded as political pawns on the marriage board. Marriage to John Dudley bought disaster but also financial advantage. Elizabeth I saw to it that she received an income from her jointure. Her second marriage saw her as a footnote. There is no explanation of her insanity.
There is even less known about Margaret Seymour who may have died at a similar time to her sister Jane who was born circa 1541 and died in 1561 from tuberculosis having served for a short time as one of Elizabeth I’s ladies. It was she who was the sole witness to her brother Edward Seymour’s marriage to Lady Katherine Grey.
Demers, Patricia. “The Seymour Sisters: Elegizing Female Attachment.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 1999, pp. 343–365. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2544708. Accessed 30 May 2021.
Edward Seymour (born about 1500) the eldest surviving son of Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire was following the court trajectory of many other Tudor men in terms of patronage and a slow climb up the social ladder until his sister, Jane Seymour, caught the eye of Henry VIII at which point Thomas Cromwell moved out of his accommodation to make way for Edward and his wife Ann Stanhope so that the king could speak privately to Jane whilst chaperoned by her family. Once Jane became queen Edward swiftly acquired some nifty new titles.
Henry VIII was buried on 16th February 1547 at Windsor with Jane Seymour. Their son Edward was now king with a regency council nominated by Henry VIII. It wasn’t long before Edward Seymour had nobbled the council and rather than five equal men had become Lord Protector.
Edward’s younger brother Thomas felt aggrieved. Even though he was now the Lord High Admiral (sounds vaguely Gilbert and Sullivan), Baron Sudeley and a privy councillor he felt it was somewhat unfair that his brother was the Lord Protector. What resulted was two years of rampant ambition, scandal and tragedy followed by Thomas’s execution on three charges of treason not that he was ever brought to trial.
As those of you who know me may recall one of my most favourite historical figures is Robert Carey. He’s the chap who caught the ring his sister, Philadelphia Scrope, chucked it from the bedroom window having it plucked from Elizabeth I’s finger after her demise in 1603. Robert rode for Edinburgh and did the journey in a very impressive three days.
One of the portraits is unquestionably Elizabeth in her middle years. The other is a woman who looks remarkably like Anne Boleyn because of the french hood that she wears although it has been argued that it could be Katherine Parr- there are issues over hair colouring. It has even been suggested that it is the image of a more youthful Elizabeth – now Elizabeth was unquestionably vain but would she really cart around two secret images of herself? Not being an art historian I couldn’t comment. Dr Starkey observed, at the time he curated the exhibition in the National Maritime Museum where the ring was first displayed, it is likely to be an image of Anne because despite the fact that Elizabeth knew her mother for only a very short time she was likely to be a huge influence on her daughter’s life. This view is supported by Tracey Borman in The Hidden Story of the Virgin Queen. Elsewhere it is pointed out that Elizabeth is known to have spoken of her mother only twice in her lifetime but it would also have to be said that if as Alison Weir suggests a youthful Elizabeth can be seen wearing her mother’s famous pearls in the Whitehall family group portrait along with a pendant that looks suspiciously like the letter A then she did indeed feel a closeness to her mother which History can only speculate upon.
Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603 in Richmond. She had been on the throne for nearly forty-five years. Whilst the queen had prevaricated about naming her heir, Sir Robert Cecil could see that her health was deteriorating and began making the necessary arrangements with King James VI of Scotland the son of Mary Queen of Scots. He was the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor.
19 July 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh arrested. The key event of 1603 was the so-called the Main Plot which evolved into a secondary Bye Plot that came to light in 1604 (I’ve blogged about them before). Essentially with the Main Plot there was some question as to whether James was the best person to be king Henry VII had other descendants who were English. The one we think of at this time is usually Arbella Stuart who was implicated in the Main Plot which saw Sir Walter Raleigh sent to the Tower. The plan was to depose James and put Arbella in his place. The Bye Plot was much more straight forward. It simply involved kidnapping James and forcing him to suspend the laws against Catholics.
Beccon or Becon was born in Norfolk around 1510-12, so during the first eighteen months of Henry VIII ascending the throne. He was educated in Cambridge where he studied under the tutelage of Hugh Latimer. He was ordained in 1533 – just as Henry VIII’s marital disputes were hotting up in more ways than one. Despite the fact that Henry VIII passed a series of laws that changed the management and government of the Church making Hal the Supreme Head of the Church of England, religion and belief itself didn’t change very much. Essentially Henry VIII remained a Catholic throughout his life. This was rather unfortunate for Beccon who travelled along the road towards Protestantism preaching his views to anyone who might care to hear. He was arrested in 1540 for preaching Protestantism and was forced to recant his beliefs. To avoid further problems he stopped preaching and took to writing tracts under the assumed name of Theodore Basille. Between 1541-43 at least eight works were published. Sadly for him the pseudonym ploy was not entirely successful as Bishop Gardiner wasn’t without employees who knew how to wheedle the truth out of people. Beccon found himself recanting for a second time whilst chopping up three of his books in public to show how very sorry he was for having written them in the first place. In 1546 thirteen of his books were on a list of prohibited texts that were burned as an example to the populace.
December 2 1542
