Coronation of the British monarch on Christmas Day, possibly in imitation of the Byzantine emperors, and John's was on Ascension Day. Elizabeth I consulted her astrologer, John Dee, before deciding on an auspicious date. The coronations of Charles II in 1661 and Anne in 1702 were on St George's Day, the feast of the patron saint of England. Under the Hanoverian monarchs in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was deemed appropriate to extend the waiting period to several months, following a period of mourning for the previous monarch and to allow time for preparation of the ceremony. In the case of every monarch
Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (1500-1552). He grew up at Wulfhall, the Seymour family home, in Wiltshire, a county in southwest England. The Seymours were a family of country gentry, who, like most holders of manorial rights, traced their ancestry to a Norman origin. To his contemporaries, he was forceful and reckless, and also, very attractive to women. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a boyhood friend of King Edward, described Thomas Seymour as "hardy, wise and liberal ... fierce in courage, courtly in fashion, in personage stately, in voice magnificent, but somewhat empty of matter." And though ambitious, his brother, Edward Seymour,