Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/317

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Seymour
317
Seymour

1587, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Two anonymous portraits of her belong respectively to the Duke of Northumberland and Earl Stanhope. By her Somerset had four sons: (1) Edward, born on 12 Oct. 1537, died before May 1539; (2) Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford [q. v.]; (3) Henry, born in 1540, who was appointed in 1588 admiral of the squadron of the narrow seas, and kept close watch on the Duke of Parma off the coast of the Netherlands; on 27 July he took an important share in the battle off Gravelines, and subsequently kept guard in the narrow seas; he married Joan, daughter of Thomas Percy, seventh earl of Northumberland [q. v.], but died without issue (Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, ed. Laughton, passim); (4) Edward (1548–1574), so named probably because Edward VI stood godfather (Lit. Rem. p. 61), died 1574 (Collins; cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547–1581, p. 238). By his second wife, Somerset also had six daughters: (1) Anne, who married first, on 3 June 1551, John Dudley, commonly called Earl of Warwick, eldest son of the Duke of Northumberland, and, secondly, Sir Edward Unton, and died in February 1587–8 (cf. A Sermon preached at Farington in Barkeshire the Seventeene Daye of Februarie 1587 at the buriall of Anne, Countess of Warwicke, widow of Sir Edward Vmpton, London, 1591, 8vo); (2) Margaret, died unmarried; (3) Jane (1541–1561), whom Somerset was accused of plotting to marry to Edward VI, became maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, died unmarried, and was buried on 26 March 1561 (Machyn, pp. 254, 384; Ellis, Orig. Letters, 2nd ser. ii. 272). These three ladies won some literary repute by composing, on the death of Margaret of Valois, some verses published as ‘Annæ, Margaritæ, Janæ, Sororum Virginum, heroidum Anglarum in mortem Margaritæ Valesiæ Navarrorum Reginæ Hecadistichon,’ Paris, 1550, 8vo; a French translation appeared in the following year; (4) Mary, married first Andrew Rogers of Bryanstone, Dorset, and secondly, Sir Henry Peyton; (5) Catherine, died unmarried; (6) Elizabeth, who married Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley, Northamptonshire.

By an act of parliament passed in 1540, Somerset's estates were entailed upon his issue by his second wife in preference to his issue by his first, and similar clauses were introduced into the patents for his subsequent dignities and grants of land. By act of parliament 5 Edw. VI the duke's dignities were declared forfeited, but his son was created Earl of Hertford in 1559, and his great-grandson William [q. v.] was ‘restored’ to the dukedom of Somerset in 1660 by the repeal of the said act. The younger line died out with Algernon, the seventh duke [see under Seymour, Charles, sixth Duke of Somerset], in 1750, and the dukedom then reverted, according to the original patent, to the Seymours of Berry Pomeroy, Devonshire, the elder line, in which it still remains. According to ‘Third Report of the Lords' Committee on the Dignity of a Peer’ (p. 49), the representative of the elder line would have become Duke of Somerset on the failure of the younger, without the ‘restoration’ of the second duke in 1660, on the ground that the attainder could not touch the right vested in the elder line by the patent (cf. Nicolas, Peerage, ed. Courthope, pref. p. lxvii).

[There is no biography of Somerset except a worthless brochure published in 1713 comparing him with the Duke of Marlborough. The present writer's England under the Protector Somerset, 1900, narrates his political achievements. The materials for his biography are extensive. Most of Somerset's public correspondence is in the Record Office, but a portion on Scottish affairs is among the Addit. MSS. in the British Museum, especially Nos. 5758, 6237, 25114, 32091, 32647, 32648, 32654, 32657 (these papers, originally deposited among the archives of the council of the north, were subsequently moved to Hamilton Palace, Scotland; in 1883 they were acquired by the German government, but repurchased by the British Museum six years later; they have been calendared as the Hamilton Papers, 2 vols. 1890–1892). Many papers, relating principally to his genealogy and family history, are among the Harleian and Cottonian MSS. in the same library. Much information respecting his private affairs is to be found among the Lisle Papers in the Record Office, and the manuscripts preserved at Longleat, their presence there being due to the fact that Sir John Thynne, ancestor of the marquises of Bath, managed Somerset's estates during his protectorate. Many of his letters have been printed at length in the State Papers of Henry VIII (11 vols. 1830–52), and these, with others down to 1540, have been calendared in Brewer and Gairdner's Letters and Papers of Henry VIII (15 vols.); the manuscripts at Longleat were used by Canon Jackson in his paper on the Seymours of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire Archæol. Mag. vol. xv. Other scattered letters have been printed in Ellis's Original Letters. See also Sadleir's State Papers, Haynes's Burghley Papers, and the Calendars of Domestic, Foreign, Venetian, and Spanish State Papers (in the index to the last of which he is consistently confused with his brother the admiral); Hist. MSS. Comm. 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 7th Rep. passim. Other contemporary authorities are the Lords' Journals; Acts of the Privy Council (ed. Nicolas vol. vii. and ed. Dasent vols. i.–iv.); Rymer's Fœdera; Wriothesley's Chron., Machyn's Diary, Grey-