View source for The Seymours of Wolf Hall: A Tudor Family Story by David Loades

{{infobox1
|title=The Seymours of Wolf Hall: A Tudor Family Story
|sort= Seymours of Wolf Hall: A Tudor Family Story
|author= David Loades
|reviewer= John Van der Kiste
|genre=History
|summary= A concise account of the Seymour family of Wolf Hall, Wiltshire, three of whose members briefly played such prominent roles in English affairs in the mid-Tudor period.
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=282
|publisher=Amberley
|date=June 2015
|isbn= 978-1445634951
|website= http://www.davidloades.co.uk
|cover=1445634953
|aznuk=1445634953
|aznus=1445634953
}}

In medieval times Wolf Hall or Wolfhall (or even Wulfhall), the long-since-demolished family seat in Wiltshire, was the home of the Seymour family.  Their greatest triumph, followed by a speedy decline and fall, was part of Tudor history, and is thus the focus of this book.

Tradition has it that the Seymours could trace their origins back to the village of St Maur-sur-Loire on the other side of the channel in the seventh century.  They came to England with the Normans at the time of the Conquest, though it was only in early Tudor years that they achieved prominence in England.  As is inevitable with lives of this era, much basic information is missing, such as dates of birth, and therefore a certain amount of conjecture about facts is involved.  The first major figure of the family is John Seymour, born around 1474 and knighted for his services to King Henry VII on the battlefield at Blackheath in which the royalist army vanquished a rebel force in 1497. 

Three of his children would come even closer to the crown during the next fifty years or so.  Little is known about the early years of his elder daughter Jane, apart from that she was born about 1509 and became a maid of honour to Henry VIII, who ascended the throne that same year.  When the King realised that his second wife Anne Boleyn was not going to give him the son and heir for whom he craved, he sought elsewhere.  Nobody knows when he first started to cast his eye on Jane as ‘the next one’, but after Anne Boleyn ‘miscarried’ of her saviour events moved speedily.  The author looks in some detail at the unravelling of King Henry’s first two marriages, but wisely emphasises that the issues were more multi-faceted and less clear-cut than we might have assumed.  For instance, the trumped-up charges against Anne Boleyn and her execution were only part of a complex political story as Loades, long since acknowledged as a leading authority on the Tudors, is well qualified to tell us. 

The sad death of Jane Seymour, the King’s ‘first true wife’ as he called her, in childbirth after the arrival of the long-awaited Prince Edward, did not signify the end of the Seymour ascendancy at court.  Six years later the prince succeeded his father on the throne as Edward VI, and two of her brothers would in turn become amongst the most powerful men in the land.  Edward, Duke of Somerset, had played a major role in King Henry’s campaigns in Scotland, and he was destined to become Lord Protector for his young nephew and namesake once he became King.  Falling on the wrong side of his fellow councillors in an age when it was every man for himself, he paid for his brief period of success with his life at the hands of the executioner. 

Thomas, Lord Seymour, similarly played for high stakes and lost.  He married King Henry’s sixth wife and widow, Catherine Parr, who like Jane Seymour was fated to die in childbirth.  After she had gone, he made plans to marry Princess Elizabeth, the future Elizabeth I, with whom he had been attempting to conduct an affair while she was in Catherine's care.  It all came to nothing, and his ‘reward’ was to end up on the scaffold for high treason.

The Duke of Somerset’s son, another Edward, was more fortunate.  Under Elizabeth I he was restored to the title of Lord Hertford, but after news leaked out of his secret marriage to Catherine, sister of the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, she was sent to the Tower and he was fined.  Yet unlike so many of his relatives he was to be a survivor, living well into the Stuart era and the reign of James I. 

Family histories of the great and good from the Tudor era can be convoluted affairs, especially with repeated use of the same forenames and the frequent lack of precise detail as mentioned above.  While the bulk of the book deals with the mid-16th century, we follow the immediately succeeding generations through the first phase of the Stuart era up to the time of Oliver Cromwell, and a succinct final chapter fills in the family chronicle up to the present. 

Until this landed on my desk, I was unaware of a Seymour family history.  Loades has therefore filled the gap very effectively, his chronicle being complemented by an eight section of well-chosen plates and a genealogical table at the front.  The only omission, which seems to be increasingly a sign of the times today, is the lack of an index – a little surprising, given the attention to detail shown in the bibliography and reference notes. 

For another comprehensive family history focusing on the same era, may we also recommend [[Tudor: The Family Story by Leanda de Lisle]]. 

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