August, however, the countess was removed from the Tower to the custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, at Pirgo, Essex, in consequence of the plague; but all hopes of her complete restoration to liberty were dispelled by a revival of the discussion of her claims to the succession.
Her importance in this regard had been already illustrated in 1560 by a scheme formed by Philip of Spain for carrying off and marrying her, with the object of asserting her claim in preference to Elizabeth's, on the ground that the latter was a bastard (Cal. Hatfield MSS. i. 279; Wright, Elizabeth, i. 7, 8). In 1563 John Hales (d. 1571) [q. v.] wrote a pamphlet (extant in Harl. MS. 537) maintaining the validity of the countess's marriage against the decision of the commission; he also procured ‘sentences and councils of lawyers from beyond seas’ in support of the same opinion. These proceedings came to the knowledge of the government in April 1564, which believed that Hales had been instigated by Francis Newdigate, second husband to the Duchess of Somerset, in whose keeping Hertford then was. The discovery caused some commotion, which became known as the tempestas Halesiana (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser. ii. 285; Hatfield MSS. i. 294–6). On Grey's death, 21 Nov. 1564, the countess was transferred to the custody of Sir William Petre [q. v.] at Ingatestone, Essex. Afterwards she was handed over to the charge of Sir John Wentworth, and on his death to that of Sir Owen Hopton at Cockfield Hall. The fact that Hopton was afterwards lieutenant of the Tower has led to the assumption that the countess was confined there a second time. Her repeated and pathetic appeals to be allowed to join her husband met with no response, and she died at Cockfield on 27 Jan. 1567–8 (see an account of her death in Harl. MS. xxxix. f. 380, printed in Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd ser. vol. ii.). She was buried in Salisbury Cathedral, where there is an inscription to her memory (with a wrong date of death, Epitaphs in Salisbury Cathedral, 1825, p. 36; cf. Wilts Archæological Mag. xv. 153).
[Besides authorities quoted in the text, and under art. Seymour, Edward, Earl of Hertford, see Craik's Romance of the Peerage, ii. 260–300; Ellis's Original Letters, 2nd ser. vol. ii. passim; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vii. 121, 161, 283, 342, 422.]
SEYMOUR, CHARLES, sixth Duke of Somerset (1662–1748), born on 12 Aug. 1662, was youngest son of Charles, second baron Seymour of Trowbridge (d. 1665), and fourth son by his father's second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of William Alington, first baron Alington. The father was eldest son and heir of Francis, first baron Seymour of Trowbridge [q. v.], younger brother of William, second duke of Somerset [q. v.] Charles's elder brother Francis, who was born on 17 Jan. 1657, not only succeeded his father as third Baron Seymour of Trowbridge, but became fifth Duke of Somerset on the death, in 1675, of his cousin John, fourth duke; he was murdered at Lerici, near Genoa, on 20 April 1678. He was said to have offered an affront in the church of the Augustinians at Lerici to a lady of rank, whereupon the latter's husband, Horatio Botti, shot the duke at the door of his inn. The murdered man's uncle, Lord Alington, demanded satisfaction of the republic, but Botti escaped, and his effigy only was hung by the Genoese.
Charles, who had recently entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, thus succeeded to the dukedom; but it was to his marriage he owed all his wealth and at least half of his importance. His wife, Elizabeth Percy, born on 26 Jan. 1667, was the only surviving daughter and sole heiress of Josceline, eleventh and last earl of Northumberland. At the age of four she succeeded to the honours and estates of the house of Percy, holding in her own right six of the oldest baronies in the kingdom, namely Percy, Lucy, Poynings, Fitz-Payne, Bryan, and Latimer. She was brought up by her grandmother, the dowager countess [see under Percy, Algernon, tenth Earl], who in February 1679 refused her ward's hand to Charles II for his son, the Duke of Richmond [see Lennox, Charles, first Duke], and a few weeks later bestowed the heiress upon Henry Cavendish, earl of Ogle, a sickly boy of fifteen, heir of Henry, second duke of Newcastle. The victim's great-aunt, ‘Sacharissa,’ found the bridegroom the ugliest and ‘saddest creature.’ However, he took the name of Percy, and it was arranged that he should travel for two years. Before a year had elapsed he died, and the old countess lost no time in arranging a fresh match between her ward and (by way of contrast) a well-battered rake, Thomas Thynne [q. v.] of Longleat in Wiltshire, familiarly known as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand.’ Thynne was formally married to Lady Ogle in the summer of 1681, but immediately after the wedding the bride of fourteen fled for protection to Lady Temple at The Hague, and Thynne was murdered in Pall Mall by hired assassins on 12 Feb. 1681–2, at the instigation of Count Charles Konigsmark, who had been a rival suitor for the Countess of Ogle. Some three months after Thynne's death the countess, who was now fifteen, consented to regard the Duke
