Edward Seymour was born c. 1500, the son of Sir John Seymour (1474-1536) by his wife Margery Wentworth. In 1514, aged about 14, he received an appointment in the household of Mary Tudor, Queen of France. When Seymour's sister, Jane, married King Henry VIII in 1536, he was created Viscount Beauchamp on 5 June 1536, and Earl of Hertford on 15 October 1537. He became Warden of the Scottish Marches and continued in royal favour after his sister's death on 24 October 1537.
After the marriage of his sister, Jane Seymour, to King Henry VIII in 1536, he rose rapidly in royal favour. He became earl of Hertford in 1537, and in 1542 he was appointed lord high admiral, a post he soon relinquished. He commanded the English forces that invaded Scotland in 1544 and sacked Edinburgh; a year later he won a brilliant victory over the French at Boulogne.
After the death of Henry VIII (Jan. 28, 1547), Hertford was named protector by the regency council that Henry had nominated to run the government for the nine-year-old king Edward. He soon became duke of Somerset (1547) and for two and a half years acted as king in all but name. His chief rival for power was John Dudley, earl of Warwick. Somerset tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Scots to join a voluntary union with England, but, when his appeal was rejected, he destroyed all chances of reconciliation by invading Scotland and defeating the Scots at the Battle of Pinkie (September 10, 1547). In domestic affairs, the Protector proceeded with moderation in consolidating the Protestant Reformation in England. He repealed Henry VIII’s heresy laws, which had made it treason to attack the king’s leadership of the church; the first Book of Common Prayer, which was imposed (1549) by an Act of Uniformity by Somerset, offered a compromise between Roman Catholic and Protestant learning. Nevertheless, these and other apparently moderate measures stirred up antagonisms that resulted in Catholic uprisings in western England in 1549.
Somerset attempted to aid the rural poor by forbidding enclosures and this action led to his downfall. The landowners foiled his efforts; the desperate peasants revolted in Norfolk under the leadership of Robert Kett; and in October 1549 Somerset was swept from power and imprisoned by a coalition of Warwick and the propertied classes. When the coalition broke down, he was released in February 1550 and ostensibly reconciled with his rival. But in October 1551, the Duke of Northumberland (as Warwick was then called) had Somerset imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of treason. Four months later he was executed.
Edward Seymour married twice. Firstly in about 1527, to Catherine Fillol, (or Filliol) (c. 1507-1535) a daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Fillol (1453-1527), of Fillol's Hall, Essex and Woodlands, Horton, Dorset. Catherine bore two sons, whose paternity however was questioned by her husband after it was alleged that she had had an affair (possibly with her father-in-law, Sir John Seymour), which resulted in both being excluded in 1540 from their paternal and maternal inheritances and all their claims to their father's dignities being postponed to his children by his second wife. Ironically these two sons remained faithful to their father during his misfortunes and both were imprisoned with him in the Tower of London.
Secondly, before 9 March 1535, to Anne Stanhope (c. 1510-1587), only child and sole heiress of Sir Edward Stanhope (1462-1511) by his wife Elizabeth Bourchier (c. 1473-1557), daughter of Fulk Bourchier, 10th Baron FitzWarin (1445-1479). Seymour's suspicions about the fathering of Catherine Fillol's sons led him to pass an Act of Parliament in 1540, entailing his estates away from the children of his first wife in favour of the children of Anne Stanhope. By Anne, he had ten children.
She was Queen of England from 1536 to 1537 as the third wife of King Henry VIII.
She was a writer during the sixteenth century in England.
