Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset appeared to back the common people against a rapacious landowning class. In the early 20th century this line was taken by the influential A. F. Pollard, to be echoed by Edward VI's 1960s biographer W. K. Jordan. A more critical approach was initiated by M. L. Bush and Dale Hoak in the mid-1970s. Since then, Somerset has often been portrayed as an arrogant ruler, devoid of the political and administrative skills necessary for governing the Tudor state. Edward Seymour married twice: The male line of Edward Seymour and Anne Stanhope died out with the seventh Duke of Somerset in 1750,
Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset 1748 and was buried in the Seymour Chapel of Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire, where survives the elaborate monument to his ancestor Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (1539–1621), son of the 1st Duke of Somerset. Shortly before his death he foresaw that his own line of the Seymour family was about to die out in the male line and that as was said of the 9th Duke of Norfolk (d.1777) "the honours of his family were about to pass away from his own line to settle on that of a distant relative". His son and heir apparent Algernon Seymour, Earl