Review: Ordeal By Ambition by William Seymour

I wrote this review about a year ago, and was reminded about it after a conversation I had on twitter last night and picking up the book to try and answer a question on the author. This book is written by a direct descendant of Edward Seymour, and an absolutely fantastic read! I definitely recommend it to any one interested in the Seymour family

When I first picked this book up, I almost put it down again in sheer frustration. The first chapter, or the Prologue, describes how the Seymour's came to power through Anne Boleyn's fall. However, William Seymour made so many mistakes in describing Anne Boleyn's fall that it was unreal, and I almost gave up. I will say only this, Seymour mentions that when Anne Boleyn was arrested and taken to the Tower of London she was taken through Traitor's Gate. She was not. But I can forgive that, as for the longest time that was believed to be what actually happened and since this book was written we know a lot more now than we did back then.

Anyway, moving on. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It read very easily and there were times where I forgot that I was reading a history text. The stories of the three Seymour children were told wonderfully and colourfully and I now have a more profound respect for all three of them, even Jane Seymour who has never been my favourite Tudor Queen. However, over the past few months this family has become of great interest to me and reading their stories in greater depth has proven incredibly enlightening.

The main reason I read this book was to gain a greater understanding of Edward Seymour and his wife, Anne Stanhope. Yet again though, there is very little mention of Anne but what I did read made me hop around with excitement. She is often talked about as a haughty woman and a woman who had little love for her husband. However, how can a woman who went to the Tower with her husband be one who did not love him? Not only that she bore him 9 children. They really seem to have been a force to be reckoned with, after all, Anne was the one who refused to give Katherine Parr her rightful jewels back. What a woman. Yet, the stories are abounded in sadness. Both brothers ended their careers thanks to the axeman's block, and it seems through Seymour's writings that these careers were ended through very little evidence. Edward in particular lost his life through a charge of treason and felony and all on trumped up charges and lies brought against him. Thomas however, went down in history as a notorious womaniser who tried to bring about his brothers downfall.

The chapters on Jane Seymour took up only a very small proportion of the book whereas the huge careers of both Thomas and Edward took up a huge majority. After all, Jane's career as Queen was very short lived whereas her brothers lived through two Tudor reigns. I found the stories evocative and thrilling and found out facts I never knew before. I read stories of the brothers participation in various wars (The Battle of Pinkie being one I had never known of before) and how through sheer hard work both climbed their way from humble beginnings at court to the heights they finally reached. For instance, Edward Seymour started out humbly as Master of the Horse to Henry VIII's bastard son Henry Fitzroy before being employed as an Esquire of the Body in Henry VIII's Privy Chamber and working his way up from there. Now that's working your way up the ladder!!

There is a line at the end of the book where Seymour describes how his ancestor was buried in the chapel of St Peter Ad Vicula next to Anne Boleyn, and how this woman with her wonderful sense of humour would not have lost the irony of the situation. There, one of the main players in her downfall, lost his life the same way she did. He met the same fate as her, and like her, on trumped up charges. Towards the end, I was almost in tears reading the account of Edwards execution.

William Seymour shows his ancestors as loved by the people, who only fell because of the work of factions in court. Edward Seymour was known as the Good Duke, and a man beloved by his people. He even had to calm the people down who were there to watch his execution. In the end, this man only wanted to run the country to the best of his ability and hand over a peaceful country when his nephew came of age. But unfortunately this was never destined to come through.

I found I could not put this book down, it read so easily and was written very, very well. This book will forever stay on my shelf as my bible of the Seymour family. And despite the lack of Anne Stanhope mentions, there is enough in there to keep me going and will help hugely in the years to come

Inspirations from History: Edward Seymour

Edward Seymour Earl of Hertford and Duke of Somerset is a man who has interested me now for a very long time, especially the events leading up to his fall from grace and execution. Of course you all know of my love for his wife Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset and I just have a huge fascination not only with her but of Edward's reign as Protector, and how he fell from Grace. I'm not going to lie, the Showtime TV series The Tudors inspired me to start reading more on Edward Seymour despite the fact I knew quite a lot about him anyway. It helped that I adored the on screen relationship (or lack thereof!) between Edward Seymour and his wife.

So who was Edward Seymour?

• He was born in around 1506 to Sir John Seymour and Margery Wentworth
• In around 1527 he had his first marriage to Catherine Filliol annulled on the grounds of adultery.
• He married Anne Stanhope before March 1534
• 5th June 1536, he was made Viscount Beauchamp
• 15th October 1537 he was made Earl of Hertford.
• Edward became Lord Protector upon the death of Henry VIII and the ascension of the boy king Edward VI. Henry's will did not include provision for a Protector, rather for the government to be looked after by a Regency Council however a few days after Henry's death the council decided to give Seymour almost regal power and 13 of the 16 council members agreed for him to take the post of Protector.
• Edward's brother Thomas wanted a share of the power, and Edward tried buying him off but Thomas was hell bent on getting power, he began smuggling pocket money to the King. In 1549 after Thomas kept vying for power, and scheming to marry the Princess Elizabeth, the council had Thomas arrested. He was condemned by act of attainder due there being a lack of evidence for treason, and he was beheaded on 20th arch 1549.
• Edward Seymour was an exceptionally skilled soldier, with a special interest in the war with Scotland. Due to his skill the English won a decisive victory at the Battle of Pinkie in 1547.
• After April 1549 England was subject to social unrest, the best known of which being Kett's rebellion, caused by encroachment of landlords on common grazing lands. Government placed the blame at Seymour's door and was the start of Seymour's downfall.
• By 1st October 1549, Seymour knew he was in danger and withdrew to Windsor with the young King. On 11th October the Council had him arrested due to his failures in war, his vanity, his refusal to listen to any one other than his own mind and doing things his own way. By Feb 1550, John Dudley Earl of Warwick emerged as the next Protector.
• Somerset had previously been released from the Tower but by 1551/2 he was back there, and executed for felony in January 1552, for conspiring to overthrow Warwick's regime.
• He is buried in the Chapel of St Peter Ad Vicula at the Tower of London.

Despite his downfall, Seymour was known as The Good Duke and in all the books I have read about him seems to have been very popular with the people. In my opinion he wasn't vain or power hungry at all, he was trying to keep England running well until Edward VI came of age. However as often happened at the court, factions struggled for power and often overthrew each other, as is what happened here in quite possibly one of the most famous coup d'etat's of the late Tudor period.

If anyone is interested in reading more about Edward Seymour I recommend the following books:

Ordeal By Ambition: An English Family In The Shadow Of The Tudors - William Seymour (here at Amazon)

Edward VI The Young King: The Protectorship of the Duke of Somerset - W.K. Jordan (here at Amazon, but beware of prices as this is a pretty rare book nowadays, but very very good!)

Anne Stanhope: Duchess of Somerset

There is one woman in Tudor history that inspires me beyond anything. She is not a Queen, far from it, although in some ways she often acted as if she was. But no, this woman was a duchess, the wife of a duke who eventually became Lord Protector of England and a woman who was so strong and so brave. The woman I am talking about is Anne Stanhope, wife of Edward Seymour and Duchess of Somerset.

I first became interested in Anne after watching Emma Hamilton’s portrayal of her in The Tudors. I began to try and find out some more information on the woman who held off the Earl of Surrey. Unfortunately my reading did not get me very far as there seems to be very little even written about her with the only the odd name drop here and there in books that seem to concentrate on either the male history or the history of Henry VIII’s queens. I was sorely disappointed with this, and tried my hardest to find some more information. During my travels across the Internet looking up information I came across an article on Susan Higginbotham’s blog on the last will of Anne Stanhope and so I sent an email across to this wonderful lady who promptly emailed me back with some great sources.

The first and most important of which was Anne Stanhope’s actual will, printed in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1845 which made for hugely fascinating reading. The image we have of Anne today (thanked somewhat by Emma’s portrayal of her in The Tudors) is that she was one hard lady, who took no rubbish from anyone. And there were some lines in her will that really showed these colours come through. Although if I am honest, Anne’s will deserves a whole blog post all of its own.

Anne Stanhope herself was the second wife of Edward Seymour, his first marriage to Katherine Filliol having being dissolved on the grounds of adultery. I could find very little about Anne’s early life during my search and I certainly would not want to cite Wikipedia as a source so I really must do some more research on this, but the general consensus is that she was born at some stage in 1510. She was married to Edward Seymour by 1535 and throughout their marriage Anne bore him ten children. She was most certainly not an adulteress as the Tudors makes her out to be, indeed it seems as if Michael Hirst mashed parts of Katherine Filliol and Anne and made Anne’s character into a horrible adulterous monster! After the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and Edward VI became King, Anne ended up being one of the most important women in the land, second only to the Dowager Queen Katherine Parr.

There is a wonderful story of the intense rivalry between Katherine and Anne, a story that always gets mentioned from the time of Edward Seymour’s protectorship. Indeed it seems as though when Katherine Parr ended up marrying Edward’s younger brother Thomas that Anne believed that she had precedence over Katherine. The story goes that Anne tried to keep the Queen’s jewels away from Katherine, and that Anne refused to bear Katherine’s train. According to Fraser (1993, 403) Katherine had named Anne “That Hell!” and ended up invoking the Third Succession Act to prove that she was the first lady in the land and Anne came after her, the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth. There are many reports of contemporary peoples calling Anne names, for instance William Paget made the remark that Edward Seymour had “a bad wife” and Chapuys apparently believed her to be a “stirrer of heresy”. She certainly stirred up a lot of feelings! Yet she was loyal too, staying true to her husband and even helping out her friends. As a protestant and reformer Anne even sent aid to Anne Askew while she was imprisoned in the Tower, prior to being burnt at the stake for heresy.

When Edward Seymour was arrested in 1549 and taken to the Tower of London, Anne went with him. She was released in 1550 and her husband shortly after and thanks to Anne interceding with the new Protector Warwick, Edward was soon allowed back on the council. It was not to be however, and Edward was arrested again on a charge of felony in December 1551. Anne found herself once more in the Tower and stayed there whilst her husband was executed upon Tower Hill in 1552. Anne was released in 1553, the Dowager Duchess of Somerset, by Mary I and allowed to chose from the claimed lands of Northumberland who had previously been attained.

Ironically, Anne’s own son Edward, earl of Hertford, ended up in the Tower like his father and mother before him for marrying the sister of Lady Jane Grey – Katherine Grey. The couple both ended up in the Tower having conceived once before they were placed in the tower and even once during!

Anne Stanhope died on 16^th April 1587 at a very old age (having been born in about 1510) and was buried at Westminster Abbey where her tomb can still be seen. Following the execution of Edward and her own release from the Tower she had remarried, taking Francis Newdigate as her husband whom she spent the remainder of her life with.

This is just a brief overview of the life of one of my all time favourite woman in Tudor England. There is so much left unwritten about Anne Stanhope, so much left to learn that is not really known. We know that she once was one of the most powerful women in England, we know also that Gardiner tried to have Anne Askew implicate Anne as a heretic and we know that Anne turned down the Earl of Surrey which culminated in a well known poem titled “A Lady Who Refused To Dance With Him”. I find it a huge shame that there is so little written about this remarkable woman who lived through so much, lived through two imprisonments in the Tower and saw her husband go to his death, and yet lived to such an old age. She may be one of those women that are vilified, after all she was apparently a very violent woman who held the hatred of Katherine Parr, yet she lead a remarkable life that deserves to be documented a little more than it is. She may have been strong willed, but her strong will mixed in with the strong will and remarkable mind of her husband Edward made them a force to be reckoned with. I have a huge amount of respect for this woman who seemed to be well before her time, a woman who knew what she wanted and who would not let anyone get in the way of it.

It is one of my biggest dreams to get to Westminster Abbey and see where this wonderful woman is buried. I’ll be making the trip to Westminster at some point in October which I am thoroughly looking forward to, and whilst I am looking forward to seeing the resting places of many other wonderful monarchs (Elizabeth I and Charles II included) I honestly do not think any of them will outshine that of Anne, a woman who I have a huge amount of respect for.