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 1748 and was buried in the Seymour Chapel of Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire, where survives the elaborate monument to his ancestor Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford (1539–1621), son of the 1st Duke of Somerset. Shortly before his death he foresaw that his own line of the Seymour family was about to die out in the male line and that as was said of the 9th Duke of Norfolk (d.1777) "the honours of his family were about to pass away from his own line to settle on that of a distant relative". His son and heir apparent Algernon Seymour, Earl