Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (née Stanhope) (c.1510 – 16 April 1587) was the second wife of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (c.1500–1552), who held the office of Lord Protector during the first part of the reign of his nephew King Edward VI, through whom Anne was briefly the most powerful woman in England. During her husband's time as Lord Protector she claimed precedence over the dowager queen Catherine. Anne Stanhope was likely born in 1510, the only child of Sir Edward Stanhope (1462 – 6 June 1511) by his wife Elizabeth Bourchier (b.
Sir Edward Seymour, 4th Baronet Carre, by whom he had seven children: Sir Edward Seymour, 4th Baronet Sir Edward Seymour, of Berry Pomeroy, 4th Baronet, MP (1632/1633 – 17 February 1708) was a British nobleman, and a Royalist and Tory politician. Born at Berry Pomeroy Castle of a family greatly influential in the Western counties, he was a son of Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet, and his wife Anne Portman, and a descendant of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, in the senior line. (Because of the alleged adultery of the Duke's first wife, the Dukedom had been entailed with preference to his sons by