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.
Lord Edward Seymour (died 1593) Welsh, etc.) of Cathanger, Fivehead, Somerset, Justice of the Common Pleas in 1563, MP for Cricklade (1547), Bristol (twice in 1553, twice in 1554, 1555, 1559, 1563), Somerset (1558) by whom he had one son: After the male line of the Seymour Dukes of Somerset in descent from the 1st Duke and his second wife Anne Stanhope failed on the death of Algernon Seymour, 7th Duke of Somerset (1684–1750), of Petworth House in Sussex (5th cousin of the 5th Baronet), the Berry Pomeroy family inherited the Dukedom in accordance with the special remainder, in the person of Sir Edward Seymour,