Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/802

788 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