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.
Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset to the dukedom created for and forfeited by his own great-grandfather, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (executed 1552). Three years later, in 1678, Charles's brother, the 5th duke, was murdered in Italy, aged 20, unmarried and without progeny, having been shot at the door of his inn at Lerice. The 16-year-old Charles Seymour became the 6th duke and the 4th Baron Seymour of Trowbridge. In 1682, at the age of 20 he married a great heiress, the 15-year-old Lady Elizabeth Percy (1667–1722), daughter and sole heiress of Joceline Percy, 11th Earl of Northumberland (1644–1670), who brought him immense estates,