Jane Seymour

Who was Jane Seymour?

Lady Jane Seymour was an influential writer during the sixteenth century in England, along with her sisters, Lady Margaret Seymour and Anne Seymour, Countess of Warwick. 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, Lady Mary 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 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.