Lady Jane Seymour

Lady Jane Seymour
Father	Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Mother	Anne Stanhope
Born	c.1541
Died	c.1561

Lady Jane Seymour (c.1541 – 19 March 1561)^[1] was an influential writer during the sixteenth century in England, along with her sisters, Lady Margaret Seymour and Anne Seymour, Countess of Warwick.^[2] Their brother was Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford. They were the children of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, who from 1547 was the Lord Protector of England after the death of King Henry VIII and during the minority of Jane's first cousin, King Edward VI. She was baptised 22 February 1541, and her godparents were Thomas Cromwell (the King's chief minister), Lady Mary (the King's daughter, at the time declared illegitimate but later to become queen) and Katherine Howard, the fifth wife of Henry VIII, and queen at the time. Jane was thus the niece of Henry VIII's third wife, Queen Jane, whom she was probably named after. She was the sole witness to the secret marriage of her brother Edward to Lady Catherine Grey (a potential heir to Queen Elizabeth I) in 1560. She died a year later, aged 20, probably of tuberculosis.

The Seymour sisters tended to work together, with their most famous work being a collection of 103 Latin distichs, Hecatodistichon, for the tomb of Margaret of Valois, queen of Navarre and also an author, which was published in 1550.

Ancestry

Ancestors of Lady Jane Seymour

16. John Seymour               8. John Seymour                       17. Elizabeth Coker               4. Sir John Seymour                             18. Sir George Darrell               9. Elizabeth Darell                       19. Margaret Stourton               2. Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset                                   20. Sir Philip Wentworth               10. Sir Henry Wentworth                       21. Mary Clifford               5. Margery Wentworth                             22. Sir John Say               11. Anne Say                       23. Elizabeth Cheney               1. Lady Jane Seymour                                         24. John Stanhope               12. Thomas Stanhope                       25. Elizabeth Talbot               6. Sir Edward Stanhope                             26. Sir John Jerningham               13. Margaret Jerningham                       27. Isabel Clifton               3. Anne Stanhope                                   28. William Bourchier, 9th Baron FitzWarin               14. Fulk Bourchier, 10th Baron FitzWarin                       29. Thomasina Hankeford, 9th Baroness FitzWarin               7. Elizabeth Bourchier                             30. John Dinham, 6th Baron Dinham               15. Elizabeth Dinham                       31. Joan Arches

References

1. Alison Plowden, Lady Jane Grey (History Press, 2004), p 173
2. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Seymour, Lady Jane (1541–1561), writer, by Jane Stevenson