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,
Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset have again used the familiar "Seymour". Somerset was also the author of "Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism" (1872), and "Monarchy and Democracy" (1880). Between 1861 and 1885 he served as Lord Lieutenant of Devon. Somerset married in Grosvenor Square, London, on 10 June 1830, Jane Georgiana Sheridan. The Somersets had two sons and three daughters: The Duchess of Somerset died in December 1884. Somerset survived her by less than a year and died in November 1885, aged 80, and was buried with her in St James's Churchyard in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire. As his two sons had both died in his