John Seymour of Wulfhall

John Seymour was a Wiltshire gentleman whose daughter became queen and who died before he could see what it cost. He held Wulfhall in Savernake Forest, served as sheriff of Wiltshire, fought in the French campaign of 1513 and was knighted at Tournai, attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and was otherwise entirely typical of the class of substantial country gentry that the Tudor court drew on and discarded. Henry VIII is recorded as visiting Wulfhall in 1535 on progress, which is when the king is generally supposed to have noticed Jane. Within a year Anne Boleyn had been executed and Jane was queen; within eighteen months Jane was dead of childbed fever having produced the male heir Henry had destroyed two marriages to get, and her brothers Edward and Thomas were the most powerful men in the kingdom. John Seymour saw none of it. He died in December 1536, some months after the marriage and a year before his grandson Edward VI was born. His sons went on to govern England for the boy king and then to destroy each other: Thomas was executed in 1549 for attempting to control his nephew, and Edward, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector, was executed in 1552 by the faction that displaced him. There is an old and poorly evidenced story that John Seymour had an affair with his eldest son's wife, which historians treat with caution. He had ten children, of whom six survived to adulthood. Wulfhall itself was abandoned in the seventeenth century and nothing of the Tudor house survives above ground. His tomb is at Great Bedwyn.

• Lived: 1474 CE – 1536 CE
• Nationality: English
• Roles: politician