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.
Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet (10 September 1610 – 4 December 1688) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1640 and 1688. He fought for the Royalist cause in the English Civil War. Seymour was the son of Sir Edward Seymour, 2nd Baronet, of Berry Pomeroy Castle, and his wife Dorothy Killegrew and a descendant of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, in the senior line. Because of the adultery of the Duke's first wife, the Dukedom had been entailed with preference to the sons of his