First Statute of Repeal First Statute of Repeal The First Statute of Repeal was an Act of the Parliament of England (1 Mary, st. 2, c. 2), passed in 1553 in the first Parliament of Mary I of England's reign, nullified all religious legislation passed under the previous monarch, the boy-King Edward VI, and the "de facto" rulers of that time, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland. Elizabeth I's Act of Uniformity nullified this act, stating that "at the death of our late sovereign lord King Edward VI there remained one uniform order of common service and
Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset of Hertford (1684–1749) had produced a son of his own, Lord Beauchamp (d.1744), who had predeceased him without progeny, and thus he had only a daughter and sole heiress Lady Elizabeth Seymour, who in 1740 had married Sir Hugh Smithson, 4th Baronet. Before the death of the 6th duke in 1748, it had thus become apparent that the dukedom of Somerset would devolve by law onto an extremely distant cousin and heir male, the 6th duke's 6th cousin Sir Edward Seymour, 6th Baronet (1695–1757) of Berry Pomeroy in Devon and of Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire, who in fact represented the