A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Seymour, (Lady Anne, Margaret, and Jane)
SEYMOUR (LADY ANNE, MARGARET, and JANE), three Sisters, illustrious for their Learning, in the 16the Century.
They wrote four hundred Latin distichs on the death of the Queen of Navarre, Margaret de Valois, which were soon after translated into Greek, French, and Italian, and printed at Paris in 1551, under the title of Tombeau de Marguerite de Valois, Reyne de Navarre. Nicholas Denisot, who had been preceptor to these three learned ladies, made a collection, containing a translation of their distichs, and some other verses, as well in honour of them, as upon the death of the Queen of Navarre, and dedicated it to Margaret de Valois, Duchess of Berri, sister of Henry II.
"I have asked," says M. Bayle, "some Englishmen of great learning, and well versed in the knowledge of books and authors, who those three illustrious English ladies were, and have told them the little I knew of them; they answered me, that they knew nothing at all of them. I have received the same answer from Paris, though I consulted persons who, in that kind of learning, have scarce any equal. These three famous ladies must be inevitably sunk into oblivion, since Mr. Juncker has not said one word of them in the Catalogue of Learned Women, which he published some time ago. He sometimes quotes Pits: since, therefore, he says nothing of these ladies, it is a good proof that Pits himself says nothing of them. A friend of mine had before assured me, that neither Bale nor Pits, who have treated so amply of the writers of that learned nation, have said any thing of these three sisters."
That Leland, Bale, nor Pits took any notice of these ladies, may be easily accounted for, when it is considered that Bale brought his work no lower than 1548; Leland was deprived of his reason, and died distracted soon after; and Pits was so extremely averse to protestantism, that he purposely omitted all the writers who were of that opinion. And as these ladies did not make their appearance in the learned world till the year 1551, it is no wonder that no notice is taken of them. However, by the authority of Mr. Fulman, in his fifteenth volume of MS. collections, in the archives of Corpus Christi college, we find that they were the daughters of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, and uncle to King Edward VI. by Anne, his second wife, daughter of Sir Edward Stanhope, Knt. by whom he had six daughters, all learned; the eldest of whom was Anne, the second Margaret, and the third Jane. Anne was married, first, to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and afterwards to Sir Edward Unton, Knight of the Bath. It appears, by a letter under her own hand, that she was living towards the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Margaret died unmarried, though courted by the Lord Strange, 1551. Probably, the Duke's disgrace and misfortunes, which soon after befel him, prevented this match. And Jane also died single, notwithstanding her father's endeavour to have married her to King Edward. She was maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, and in great favour. She died 1560, in the twentieth year of her age, and was buried in St. Edmond's chapel, in Westminster, with great solemnity.