Anne Stanhope Seymour Newdigate, Dowager Duchess of Somerset, former wife of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, and once the most powerful woman in Britain, died in Hanworth, Middlesex, on 16 April 1587, the comparatively lowly widow of her first husband’s steward.
She was born Anne Stanhope, the daughter Sir Edward Stanhope, sometime in 1510. Through her mother, Elizabeth Bourchier, she was a cousin of future queens Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. Through her mother, Anne Stanhope was also a descendant of King Edward III through Thomas of Woodstock, 1st Duke of Gloucester. Although her blood had only miniscule drops of blue in it, Anne was a proud as any princess royal, and was obsessively touchy about her rank and status.
Anne Stanhope married Sir Edward Seymour, who was still just a country gentleman but one with a sister who was being courted by King Henry VIII, sometime in early 1535. Seymour’s first wife, Catherine Fillol, had passed away by then, but he had already annulled the marriage and disowned his sons with her. He was as ambitious and coldly determined to get ahead as Anne, and the Seymours seem to have been happy with one another – if with nothing else.
After King Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn and wed Jane Seymour, the new queen’s brother was raised to the peerage as Viscount Beauchamp, much to his wife’s pleasure. Seymour would rise again in October 1537, when his wife presented the king with a baby boy, the future King Edward VI. To reward Jane, her eldest brother was created Earl of Hertford, and his wife’s precedence was now nearly to her liking. When the king snuffed it in 1547, the Earl of Hertford just happened to notice that Henry’s will had a “unfulfilled gifts” clause that made Seymour a duke. As the Duchess of Somerset, Anne was one of the highest ranking ladies in the land. Moreover, when the duke made himself king in all but name, Anne made sure the rest of the court treated her as a de facto queen.
Not bad for country lass, no?
Anne wasn’t satisfied being the foremost woman in the kingdom after royalty, though. According to an anonymous Spanish chronicler, the duchess was “prouder” and “more presumptuous than Lucifer” and demanded precedence even when it wasn’t hers. Once Henry VIII’s final wife, Kateryn Parr, remarried Thomas Seymour and became Anne’s sister-in-law, the duchess decided (contrary to law) that the dowager queen was of lower status than Anne herself. She not only kept the dowager queen’s jewels for her own use, some historians even claim Anne would try to physically bully the former queen out of first place in line during entrances to mass. Katheryn was unamused, to say the least.
It must have chaffed the duchess to know that that King Edward, the source of all her husband’s power, was still firmly on the side of Dowager Queen Kateryn. The young king would still refer to his stepmother as “Mater Charissima” (dearest mother) even after she remarried Thomas Seymour. As long as she was alive, Kateryn Parr outranked Anne Seymour and was more important to the king.
Although it may just be another case of misogynistic scapegoating, supposedly one of the reasons Edward Seymour murdered his brother is because Anne goaded him into it as retaliation for Thomas Seymour marrying the dowager queen. One of the chroniclers who claimed Anne Seymour was behind the falling out between Thomas and Edward was Nicholas Sanders, a Catholic writer with no liking for the Seymours. Sanders reported that the fight between Kateryn and Anne was “passed on to their husbands” and that while Edward might rule the king, the duke “was yet ruled by his wife,” and it was Anne’s will that he “must put his brother to death”. John Foxe, a writer more favorable to the Protestant Seymours, also shifted the blame for Thomas Seymour’s execution away from Edward and onto Anne, claiming that many people had believed “that the duchess had wrought his death”.
Regardless of who had the most ambition, the unchecked greed of the Somersets were their undoing. In his attempt to keep power, the duke kidnapped the king, and even though the king forgave him once, the duke was stupid enough to plot another coup of the privy council to become regent again. This time Edward IV had had enough. Uncle or not, Somerset got the chop.
With her husband’s death, Anne’s fall from power and grace was swift and karmic. Her children lost their titles, and she lost her properties. Thoughougly humbled, Anne Seymour married her dead husband’s steward, Francis Newdigate, and retreated into the countryside to rusticate.
However, her friendship with Mary Tudor and her strong connections with the Protestants would help her recoup a little of her losses. Under Queen Mary I, Anne’s children were “restored in blood” to the peerage, even though her eldest son was not given back his title. During the reign of fellow Protestant Queen Elizabeth I, Anne’s eldest son was created the Earl of Hertford for a second time in 1559. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until more than 70 years after Anne’s death that her great-grandson, William Seymour, would be restored as the 2nd Duke of Somerset.
After her death, Anne Stanhope Seymour Newdigate was buried as befitted a former duchess and two queens’ sister-in-law within St Nicholas’ chapel of Westminster Abbey. The inscription, paid for by her oldest son “for the dutifull love he beareth her”, calls Anne the “deere spouse unto the renowned prince Edward Duke of Somerset” and a “princesse discended of noble lignage”. It also remarks on the many “children bare this lady unto her Lord, of either sort” and notes she died “with firme faith in Christ in most mylde maner.”
What the tomb doesn’t say is that she was also called ‘a mannish, or rather devilish, woman…for pride monstrous, exceeding subtle and violent’. For every loyal friend she cultivated she seemed to earn a dozen enemies due to her scheming and hubris, and her most lasting legacy was one of spite.
To give Anne her due, like most ‘bad’ historical figures she was interesting. She was also intelligent, keen, cunning, and when needs be – charming. Her faith seems to have been sincere, as does her love for her husband and children. Her real sin was not that she was as ruthless as any other early modern courtier, it was that she was not shy about it and didn’t sugarcoat her ambitions like a good girl should. I think her behavior was disgusting, as was her husbands, but her gender rather than her actions seem to have motivated the prejudice against her in her own time.
I am really looking forward to Susan Higginbotham’s forthcoming biography of the duchess next January.