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,
John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset John Michael Edward Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset, (born 30 December 1952), styled Lord Seymour between 1954 and 1984, is a British aristocratic landowner in Wiltshire and Devon, and a member of the House of Lords. Educated at Hawtreys and Eton College, he qualified as a chartered surveyor before succeeding to the dukedom in 1984 on the death of his father. Having lost his seat in the House of Lords under the House of Lords Act 1999, he was elected at the December 2014 House of Lords by-elections, to sit as a crossbencher in