Seymour, Edward, 1st Duke of Somerset, known as Protector Somerset c.1506-1552
English soldier and statesman

The eldest son of Sir John Seymour and brother of Jane Seymour, he was successively created Viscount Beauchamp and 1st Earl of Hertford, and enjoyed high office under his brother-in-law, Henry VIII. As warden of the Scottish marches, he led the invading English army that devastated southern Scotland and Edinburgh in the 'Rough Wooing' of 1543-44, after the Scots rejected a proposed marriage between Prince Edward (the future Edward VI) and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots. At Henry's death in 1547 he was named Protector of England during the minority of Edward VI and was king in all but name. He defeated a Scottish army at Pinkie (1547), and furthered the Reformation with the first Book of Common Prayer (1549). Also in 1549 his younger brother Thomas Seymour was executed for attempting to marry Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I), and soon he himself was indicted for 'over-ambition' and deposed by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick (1549), and eventually executed.