Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/340

 maintenance of the existing state of affairs, while he himself sought to gain influence in various counties by acquiring stewardships and manors. He began to store ammunition in Holt Castle, and to boast of having ten thousand men at his command. To provide funds for the maintenance of this force he obtained, through Sir William Sharington or Sherington [q. v.], control of the mint at Bristol.

It was not Seymour, as Maclean states, but Clinton who was sent in command of the fleet against Scotland during the summer and autumn of 1548. Seymour remained at home busy with his intrigues against his brother's authority. In August he was back at Sudeley, where, on 5 Sept., Catherine Parr died in childbed. Seymour at once renewed his suit for the hand of Elizabeth, whom he had treated with indelicate familiarity during her residence in his house, and who had consequently been removed by Catherine. But his proceedings had become known to the council. Russell and others had repeatedly warned him, and at length the Earl of Rutland brought an accusation against him. After various conferences with the council the Protector summoned Seymour to an interview. He refused to come, and on 17 Jan. 1548–9 the council sent Sir Thomas Smith and Sir John Baker to arrest him at his house near Temple Bar. He was imprisoned in the Tower, whither he was followed on the 18th by his adherents, John Harington [see under ], Sir William Sharington, Sir Thomas Parry, John Fowler, and Mrs. Ashley, the governess of the Princess Elizabeth. On the 20th the lord privy seal, Southampton, and Petre were deputed to examine him and his confederates. As a result of these examinations (printed in, pp. 65–107) thirty-three articles of accusation were drawn up (printed in Acts P. C. 1547–50, pp. 248–56), and on 23 Feb. the whole council, except Somerset, Cranmer, and Baker, waited on Seymour in the Tower to receive his answer. He refused to reply unless confronted by his accusers in open trial, and on the following day the council reported the result to the king and Protector. A deputation of both houses of parliament failed to obtain from Seymour any answer to the charges other than the first three. The council then unanimously declared that his offences amounted to high treason, and on the 25th framed and introduced into the House of Lords a bill of attainder (printed in Statutes of the Realm, . i. 61–5). An act of 1547 had swept away all treasons created since the statute of 1352, and the council's decision has been generally regarded as illegal; but Seymour's dealings with pirates and measures for securing adherents might plausibly be construed as ‘levying war upon the king,’ and his connivance at Sharington's frauds as ‘counterfeiting the king's money,’ while his general conduct was undoubtedly a menace to the peace of the realm. The bill passed the House of Lords on 27 Feb. without a division, after the evidence against him had been heard, and the judges had agreed that he was guilty of treason. The commons appear to have made some objection, and the question was fully debated in a house of four hundred members; but the bill passed its third reading on 4 March, with ten or twelve dissentients (Lords' Journals, i. 345 et seq.) Seymour was executed on Tower Hill on the morning of 20 March, and, according to the doubtful authority of Latimer, his last act was to instruct his servant to convey two letters to the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, urging them to conspire against the Protector. He was buried within the Tower.

Lingard, Maclean, and others have maintained that Seymour's abilities were superior to those of his brother, but the evidence is not conclusive. He was undoubtedly a capable soldier, of great personal prowess and handsome features, and he won the affections of many of those with whom he was brought into contact (cf. Lady Jane Grey to Seymour, printed in, p. 71). But these qualities were marred by unscrupulous ambition, an overbearing disposition, and, according to Latimer, moral profligacy. He was accurately described by Elizabeth as ‘a man of much wit and very little judgement.’ A letter to him from Roger Ascham is extant in Addit. MS. 33271, f. 36.

His portrait, painted by Holbein, belongs to the Marquis of Bath; a miniature, by Holbein, is at Sudeley, in the possession of Mrs. Dent, who has reproduced it in her ‘Annals of Winchcombe and Sudeley;’ she also possesses an anonymous portrait of Seymour, and two others, also anonymous, are respectively in the Wallace collection and that of Sir G. D. Clerk, bart. (cf. Cat. Victorian Exhib. Nos. 185, 209, 443, 1077; Cat. First Loan Exhib. No. 181). Seymour's portrait, with some lines, entitled ‘The Hospitable Oake,’ written by Harington after Seymour's death, and printed in ‘Nugæ Antiquæ,’ p. 330, was presented by Harington to Elizabeth after she became queen.

Seymour's daughter Mary, born on 29 Aug. 1548, was committed to the care of the Duchess of Somerset, and restored in blood by an act passed on 22 Jan. 1549–50