Somerset, Edward Seymour, 1st duke

Somerset, Edward Seymour, 1st duke of

(born c. 1500/06—died Jan. 22, 1552, London, Eng.) English politician. After his sister, Jane Seymour, married King Henry VIII in 1536, Somerset rose rapidly in royal favour. He commanded the English forces that invaded Scotland and sacked Edinburgh in 1544, and he decisively defeated the French at Boulogne in 1545. After Henry's death (1547), he was named Protector of England during the minority of Edward VI and acted as king in all but name. When the Scots rejected his appeal for a voluntary union with England, he invaded Scotland and won the Battle of Pinkie (1547). He introduced moderate Protestant reforms, but these provoked Catholic uprisings in western England. His land reforms were opposed by landowners and the duke of Northumberland, who had Somerset deposed from the protectorate in 1549. He was imprisoned in 1551 on a flimsy charge of treason and executed the next year.