THE SEYMOURS.
THE Seymours, now Dukes of Somerset, are really Tudor nobles, for it was with Henry VIII.'s marriage to Jane Seymour that they became great in the land ; but the family had long had a foot- ing on the soil, and may even possibly be descended from one of the Conqueror's followers. It is clear that a landed proprietor named William St. Maur, and of considerable rank and posses- sions, did in Henry I[I.'s reign bargain with Gilbert Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, for his aid in taking the manor of Undy near Penhow, in Monmouthshire, where stood a church dedicated to St. Maur, from Morgan, son of Huel. The manor was obtained, and the St. Maurs, who had a castle and park at Penhow, were in 1270 found to possess rights of housebote and heybOte as having appertained to Penhow since the Conquest. This William used the pair of wings still part of the coat of arms of the Seymours. Beyond this all is vague, and though the presumption is that the first St. Maur came from the place of that name in Normandy, there is no evidence whatever of the fact. Roger, in whose time the assize as to the right of housebote was held, died before 28th Edward I., and in. 8th Edward II. his son Roger de Seymour appears as Lord of Penhow and Undy, and probably married Joan, the heiress of Danarel of Devonshire.
He had two sons, one whose line died out, and another, Roger, who married the coheiress of John de Beauchamp, Baron of Hache; who in the 36th Edward III. had assigned for her share on the partition of the inheritance of the Beauchamps the manors of Hache, Shepton-Beauchamp, Murifield, and the third part of Shepton-Malet, in the county of Somerset, also certain lands in Sturminster-Marshel, in Dorset ; the manors of Boultbury anti Haberton, in Devonshire ; the manors of Dourton, in Bucks, and' Little Haw, in Suffolk, and two parts of the manor of Selling, in Kent. She survived her husband, and died in 1393. Roger Seymour- on obtaining these lands of his wife's removed into Som arsetsh ire, andi there and in Devonshire the family thenceforth became established.. He was succeeded by his son, Sir William, who in 36th Edward LIL accompanied that King into Gascony. He sometimes resided at• Undy, which had either been left to his father Roger as the younger son's portion, or had come to the younger branch of the Seymours on the extinction of the elder. According to a letter Of the Earl of Hertford's, it was not until a much later period, that of his grandfather, that Penhow, the Seymour castle in %%rates, was sold. Collins therefore seems mistaken in giving to Roger, the son of John Seymour of Penhow (elder brother of Roger of Hache), a daughter and heiress, and marrying her to a Bowlays. Sir William Seymour married Margaret, daughter and heiress of Simon de Brockburn, of Brockburn [Broxbourne], in Hertfordshire, by Joan, sister and heiress of Sir Peter de la Mare. Roger, her son and heir by Sir William Seymour, married the daughter and coheiress of Sir William Esturmi or Sturmy, of Chadham, in Wilts, and Lord of Wolfhall in that county, whose ancestors were bailiffs and guardians of the forest of Savern- ake by right of inheritance from the time of Henry II., and, according to Camden, Seymour Earl of Hertford in the time of Elizabeth still kept " their hunter's horn, of a mighty bigness and tipped with silver." His great grandson, John, left five sons, the eldest of whom, John, succeeded him in the 7th Henry VII. He distinguished himself at the defeat of Lord Audley and the Cornish insurgents at Blackheath in' 1497, and was knighted by the King on the field of battle, and in the 23rd of that reign was Sheriff of Wiltshire. He served in Henry VIII.'s wars iq France and Flanders, and was made a Knight-Banneret in 1513. In the 7th and 18th Henry VIII. he was Sheriff of Dorset and Somerset, and in the 10th and 16th of Wiltshire. In the 9th Henry VIII., being then one of the Knights of the Body to the King, he obtained a grant of the constableship of Bristol Castle to himself and Edward his son. In 1518 he was charged to provide ten men for the wars in respect of lands in Wiltshire. In 1520 he attended the King to the meeting of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, with a retinue of one chaplain, eleven servants, and eight led horses. He waited on the King at his second interview with Francis at Boulogne in 1532, as one of the Grooms of the Chamber, and died December 21, 1536, aged sixty. He it probably was who sold the old family estate in Monmouthshire. He married Margery, second daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth, of Nettlested, in Suffolk, Knight of the Bath, by whom he had six sons and four daughters. Of the latter, the eldest, Jane, Maid of Honour to Queen Anne Boleyn, on the 20th May, 1536, succeeded her as third wife of Henry VIII., and died October 14, 1537, two days after the birth of her son, afterwards Edward VI.
The fortunes of the Seymours now cluster around Edward Sey- mour, eldest son and successor of Sir John, and brother of Queen Jane Seymour. We must here conline ourselves to the salient points of his life and character. He was educated first at Oxford and afterwards at Cambridge. Thence he proceeded to Court under the auspices of his father, and in 1523 served in the expedition of the Duke of Suffolk to France, and was knighted by the Duke for his gallantry. In the 16th Henry TILL, being an esquire of the King's household, he was one of the challengers in the tilt-yard at Green- wich. In 19th of the same reign he accompanied Cardinal Wolsey on his embassy to France. Five years afterwards—in 1532—he was at the Boulogne meeting of the Kings. But his sister's marriage of course brought him more rapid promotion. On the 5th of June following that event, 1536, he was created Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, Somerset, with twenty marks yearly payable out of the counties of Somerset and Dorset. In the same year, with Sir Richard Buckley (or Bulkeley), ancestor of a family still great in Anglesey, he had a grant of the office of Chancellor and Chamberlain of North Wales for life, and was made Captain of the Isle of Jersey. On October 18, 1537, four days after the death of his sister Queen Jane, he was created Earl of Hertford, with remainder to his issue male thereafter to be be- gotten. In 32nd Henry VIII. he was sent over to France to de- termine the English and French borders, and on his return made a Knight of the Garter, January 9, 1542. In the 33rd Henry VIII., as cousin and heir of Sir William Sturmy, of Wolfhall, he had livery of his lands, and in the same year accompanied the Duke of Norfolk in his Scotch expedition. In the 34th Henry VIII. he was made Grand Chamberlain of England for life, and in the same year (1544) was appointed to command another expedi- tion into Scotland, his orders being to proclaim the King of Eng- land guardian of the Queen and protector of the realm of Scot- land, and in every town and village to nail a placard on the church doors signifying that the Scots had to thank Cardinal Beatoun for the sufferings inflicted by the war. His fleet arrived in the Firth of Forth on the 3rd of May. H He landed the troops the next day, got possession of Leith, took Edinburgh by storm, wasted the country for seven miles round with fire and pillage, putting all who resisted to the sword,--such were his express orders,—sacked and destroyed Leith, and by the 15th of May was again in England with his spoils, having lost only forty persons in the whole expedition. On the King's expedition into France in the same year Lord Hertford was appointed one of the Council to assist the Queen in her Regency, and Captain-General of any forces which might have to be raised. He afterwards joined the King, and as- sisted in the taking of Boulogne. On the 26th January, 1545, the French, under M. de Biez, encamped before Boulogne to the number of 14,000, but on the 6th of February they were surprised in their camp before daybreak by Lord Hertford, were completely routed and chased as far as Hardelot, the English cavalry return- ing at their leisure to Boulogne with the spoils of the country. In the same month there were Border incursions and counter-incursions on the Scotch frontier. Lord Evers destroyed the tombs of the Douglases at Melrose, and the Earl of Angus retaliated by routing and killing Evers at Ancram Moor. Hertford was recalled from France to restore matters in that quarter. He destroyed all the towns upon the M iddle Marches, and made great spoil in the West Marches. In 1546 Hertford was elected Chancellor of the University of Cam- bridge, and in March of that year, the Earl of Surrey having been un- successful at Boulogne, Hertford was sent to take his place, with a force of thirtythousand men, but peace was concluded in June follow- ing. But the King's death was now to move Hertford from these scenes of his military glory to a post more arduous and, as it proved, less suited to his peculiar temperament. Henry spent the day before his death in conversation with him and Sir Wil- liam Paget on the condition of the country, seeming to imply thereby that he looked to them as the heads of the new Govern- ment. Hertford was the leader of the Protestant party in the Council for the young King named by his father in his will, Paget representing the more purely Henrician or balancing policy, the Catholics being also represented. Henry had appointed Hertford one of his executors with a legacy of 5001. The King had either intended to leave it to chance which of the parties should preponderate in the Council and the Government of his son, or he entertained the vain hope that he had so impressed his personal policy on the Government that it would survive him and be the rule of his successor. But Hertford at any rate saw clearly enough that the new reign could not merely follow in the wake of the last, and that one party or another would give its decided tone to the administration. He resolved that this should be the Protestant, and as its representative he determined to obtain a larger share of authority than that awarded by the will, so as to be able to mould the policy of the new reign according to his views. He wisely ap- plied to Paget for his aid, and Paget agreed to assist him. He then hurried off to his Royal nephew, who was in Hertfordshire, and three days afterwards he escorted Edward up to the Tower. The public had only then been told officially of the King's death, and Pa- get was already proposing to the Council a Protectorate, and despite the opposition of the Chancellor Wriothesley carried his point, and on the 1st of February, 1547, Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was declared governor of the King's person and Lord Protector of the realm. Henry himself, according to Paget, had meditated several elevations to the peerage, and had in two separate lists named Hertford for a dukedom. This on the 16th of February, 1547, the Council ordered should be granted to him, and accordingly on that day he was created Duke of Somerset. He had been created Baron Seymour the previous day.
On the 17th February the new Duke of Somerset was made Earl Marshal of England for life, in place of the Duke of Norfolk ; and on March 12 he had a patent for his offices of Protector and Governor ; and on July 9 a grant of 9,000 marks per annum for his Protectorate. On the same day that Seymour himself was made a Duke his brother Thomas was created Baron Seymour of Sudley, Gloucestershire. The ambitious designs and cabals of Lord Seymour against his brother's Government are matters of history ; they failed, being too evidently mere aspirations of per- sonal ambition, and the ill-feeling against the Protector not yet being sufficiently matured. He married Queen Catherine Parr, and aspired to the hand of the Princess Elizabeth. He was executed in March, 1549. Somerset can hardly be reproached for his brother's death; he had endeavoured repeatedly to disarm his jealous ambition by kindness, and at the laat,when the Commons, in a House of almost four hundred members, had passed the Bill of Attainder with not more than ten or twelve nays, and had sent it up to the King with a special request " that justice might have place," it was found neces- sary by the Council to prevent an interview between the brothers, for had it taken place, as Somerset himself assured the Princess Elizabeth, the Lord Admiral would not have suffered. He was evidently, in the words of Latimer, " a wicked man, and the realm was well rid of him." The war with Scotland, entailing the great defeat of the Scots at Pinkie, is subject no doubt to animadversion, as disastrous to English and most favourable to French interests in Scotland ; yet the same may be said of Henry VIII.'s policy, of which it was a palpable copy. Somerset exhi- bited again in this campaign his genius as a commander. His French policy was less successful, in a military point of view, but it remains to be seen how far the Protector was himself answerable for this. The faults of his administration are at any rate almost always those of a man of great ideas and generous instincts. This is virtually admitted even by those who blame him most. It is his, merit that with everything in his early training
and associations and his positive interests to lead in the other direc- tion, he had the courage to strike a blow—too hasty a one, no doubt—at the selfish, coldblooded policy of Henry, of which ex- pediency and the King's will seemed to be the only ruling princi- ples. He believed thoroughly in the importance of Protestantism to the real advancement of England, and resolved to proceed vigor. ()wily to work to set its machinery in full operation, and to remove the deteriorating influences of Romanism. He wished to have the new system as soon as possible established in its entirety, which he considered essential to its efficiency, and he therefore proceeded at a speed which took away the breath of his cautious counsellor Paget. " Alas! Sir, take pity of the King and of the conservation and state of the realm," he writes to Somerset. " Put no more so many irons in the fire at once, as you have had within this twelve- mmth,—war with Scotland, with France, though it be not so termed, commissions out for that matter, new laws for this, proclamations for another." And to Sir William Petre he observes at a later period, "To alter the state of a realm would ask ten years' deliberation." Somerset, however, might have carried out his Protestant policy successfully if he had been willing to keep on terms with the great peers and gentlemen who had made fortunes out of the spoils of the Catholic Church, and were many of them abusing their ne w positions by neglect and oppres- sion of the commonalty. But Somerset had a keen sympathy with the masses, and determined to enforce the law against their oppressors. He sent down a commission to inquire into the illegal enclosures made by the great proprietors, and when the lower orders, anticipating his judgment, rose and riotously attacked the properties of their encroaching neighbours,. and removed forcibly the palings of the new parks, driving and killing the deer, Somerset openly said that "he liked well the doings of the people," " the covetousness of the gentlemen gave occasion to them to rise ; it was better they should die than perish for lack of living," and issued a proclamation that illegal enclosures should be levelled on a day which he specified ; and a second, that no one should be vexed or sued for any part which he had taken in the riots. Paget vainly exhorted him to put down the rioters first and punish the enclosers afterwards, for when the risings of the populace took place in the West and Norfolk the Protector sent down another Enclosure Commission, with circu- lars insisting that every gentleman of his own estate should reform himself before proceeding to the redress of others, and throw down his hedges and embankments, and he was accused of lending ear to an unwise extent to Latimer's recommendations of mercy and narclon after the suppression of the rising. " What saith your ;race," wrote Paget, " many of the King's subjects all out of
liscipline, out of obedience, caring neither for Protector nor. King ?
What is the matter ? Marry, Sir, that which I said to your Grace in the gallery. Liberty ! Liberty ! And your Grace's too much gentleness, your softness, your opinion to be good to the poor, the opinion of such as saith to your Grace, Oh Sir there was never man had the hearts of the poor as you have." That there was some personal vanity and self-esteem mixed up with this tender compassion for the poor is evident, but it occupies unhappily so exceptional a place in the history of our rulers in former times that we may well excuse the personal weakness with which it was mixed up. But such a policy towards the great men ought to have been accompanied by a rigid care in the Protector and his counsellors of their own personal demeanour and conduct. But Somerset is accused by Paget of allowing himself to be flattered by a set of men unworthy of his confidence, and who abused it by their own venality. Among these he especially names Sir. John Thynne. Misled by the flattery of these men, according to Paget in straightforward letters to Somerset himself, the Duke over-rode the opinion of the Council by his own, without giving them any chance of influencing the decision, and when opposed in anything exhibited an irritation and passion which had been formerly quite alien tohim. We must remember in all these statements that Paget though personally friendly to Somerset thoroughly disapproved of his leaning towards the poorer classes in opposition to the rich lords. But Somerset also added to the odium against him, and greatly
increased the number of his ill-wishers by his great accumulation of wealth, the large grants of lands which he obtained from the Crown, and the scale and magnificence of his household establish- ment and expenditure. This was contrasted by his enemies with the impoverished state of the Exchequer, the debased coinage, and the great distress prevailing in the country. Somerset was not indifferent to this distress, and did his best to remedy it, but his ostentatious display of his own wealth under these circum- stances was urged against him as a standing impilt to the people. It is not possible to estimate the exact extent of his accumulations
of property. After his Scotch victory on October 18, 1547, the King was made to settle on the Duke and his heirs for ever lands to the value of 5001. a year, and at his fall he was fined at 2,0001. a year of land. " He began to build a palace for himself where the modern Somerset House now stands, and retains his name. He pulled down a parish church to make room for it, and to provide materials he blew up with gunpowder a new and ex- ceedingly beautiful chapel, lately built by the last Prior of the Knights of St. John." In 1549 the discontent between him and the Council came to a crisis, the malcontents being headed by John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, and Earl of Warwick, who had next to Somerset himself been the most distinguished of the commanders of that age. Somerset charged the Council with treason, carried off the King to Windsor, and endeavoured to raise the country. But the great lords who had forces in the field having. been engaged in suppressing the Western insurrection, declared against him, and finding himself deserted by nearly everybody, Somerset gave up the contest, he and his few remaining friends were placed under restraint, and on October 14 (J549) he was sent to the Tower, where he continued four months, being meanwhile deprived of his whole estate, offices, and profits. lie then made his submis- sion and implored the King's clemency, on which he was released on February 16, 1550. An attempt was made to effect a recon- ciliation between him and Dudley, the latter's eldest son being on June 3rd married to Somerset's eldest daughter in the King's presence. The next day the King gave him back some lands which were part of the inheritance of his ancestors, viz., the castle of Marlborough and all his lordships and manors of Barton, Ludgershall, Alborn, and Old Wotton, and his parks of Ludgershall, Great Vastern, Little Vastern, Alborn Chase, and Alborn Warren, and the forests and liberties of the forests of Bradon and Savernake in the county of Wilts, and divers other lordships, manors, lands, and tenements in the counties of Wilts, Hants, Dorset, Somerset, Middlesex, Berks, and Bucks. On the next day the King granted him licence to retain 200 persons resident in his domains besides his household servants, stewards, &c., and to give them badges or livery ; and on the 14th, in con- sideration of his right to the castle and lordship of Sleaford and other lands and manors in Lincolnshire, the King by patent gave him all the messuages, lands, tenements, and hereditaments in the town of Glastonbury, Somerset, and other lands and tenements in Kingston-upon-Hull. On July 19 he had a general pardon. The Duke now performed a lasting service to England by establish- ing on the site of the Abbey of Glastonbury, of which he had obtained a grant, a company of foreign woollen manufacturers, headed by their pastor and a person of the name of Cornish. He was soon restored to the Privy Council, and began sensibly to recover ground and receive many marks of the King's favour. His son, the Earl of Hertford, was equipped at the King's expense when he went to France as one of the English hostages, and Somerset himself had the command given him of a troop of newly raised horseguards, 100 in number ; and in April, 1551, he was made Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Bucks and Berks. Dudley's Government had by this time become so unpopular that in the spring of this year (1551) Somerset began to entertain hopes of upsetting him and getting restored to the Protectorate. He had opposed Dudley's treatment of Gardiner and the Princess Mary, he now began to intrigue busily against him, among others with the Catholics, to whom he held out the hope of a general toleration. The Earl of Arundel entered warmly into the con- spiracy, which included the seizure of Warwick, Northampton, and Herbert ; and it would appear that the wary Paget was induced to lend an ear to the plot. On the 7th of October, however, Sir Thomas Palmer, one of the conspirators, betrayed them to Warwick, exaggerating the alleged purposes of his friends into an attempt at a banquet on Warwick's life. The Catholic element in Somerset'splot was used with effect to alienate from him that zealous Protestant the boy King Edward. Parliament, which was to have sat on the 13th, and in which Somerset intended to have moved against Warwick, was prorogued to the January following. Dudley, Herbert, and others were raised to higher titles in the peerage, and on 16th October Somerset was arrested. He con- fessed his real intentions ; but on the let of December he was arraigned in Westminster Hall, the, place being thronged with enthusiastic admirers, notwithstanding the order of the Council that every one should stay at home. Somerset was accused of treason and felony, and after a trial in the fashion of those days, was acquitted of the first count—treason, but found guilty of felony, sentenced to death, and on the 22nd of January, 1552, exe- cuted on Tower Hill, addressing the assembled people in a speech which elicited their warmest sympathy, and which showed the
necessity of the great precautions which the Government had taken to prevent a rescue. He was regarded by the common people as their martyr. Many dipped handkerchiefs in his blood and kept them as relics ; and Dudley, now Duke of Northumberland, never surmounted the popular hitred which he that day incurred. , On his subsequeut fall after his abortive attempt to substitute Lady Jape Grey as Queen for the Princess Mary, as he was led captive through the streets of London. a woman shook one of these blood- stained handkerchiefs in his face, exclaiming," Behold, the blood of that worthy man, that good uncle of that excellent King, which was shed by thy treacherous machinations, now at this moment begins to revenge itself upon thee !" Thus perished Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, reaping the twofold harvest he had sown,—death as the punishment of his mismanagement and unjus- tifiable ostentation, and the enduring love of the people as the reward Of his generous intentions and sympathies in their cause.
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