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.
William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset his grandson William Seymour, 3rd Duke of Somerset. William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset, (1588 – 24 October 1660) was an English nobleman and Royalist commander in the English Civil War. Seymour was the son of Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp of Hache (who predeceased his own father) by his wife Honora Rogers. He was the grandson of Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford by his wife Lady Catherine Grey, a sister of Lady Jane Grey, "The Nine Days Queen", which thus gave him a distant claim to the throne through Catherine's descent from Mary