Catherine Fillol (c. 1507 - aft. 1535)[1] (or Catherine Filliol) was the daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Fillol, of Woodlands, Horton, Dorset, and of Fillol's Hall, Essex (1453 - 9 July 1527).
She became before 1519 the first wife of Sir Edward Seymour, who went on to become the first Duke of Somerset of a new creation, Lord Protector of England and the uncle of King Edward VI, after his sister Jane married King Henry VIII. There is no contemporary evidence to support the allegation that she was having an affair with her father-in-law, Sir John Seymour[2], or that her husband had their marriage annulled. However, the lack of record evidence is not surprising considering the political consequences of the persistently rumored affair. At about this same time, Henry VIII was courting Jane Seymour, Sir John's daughter, and Edward's sister. If this scandal had surfaced it would have negated the royal wedding which occurred in 1536. [3]. However by 1535, Sir Edward Seymour married his second wife Anne Stanhope.
Catherine Fillol had two sons, John Seymour (buried 19 December 1552), who died unmarried and without issue,[4] and Edward Seymour. It is unclear when she died, with some sources giving the date as 1535 or before, when she was only around twenty-eight years old[1]. Other sources suggest that she may have died in 1552, the same year that her former husband was executed for treason.[5]
Edward Seymour had ten more children by his second wife, including his eventual heir Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford. When he was later created Duke of Somerset, his children by his first marriage were still considered legitimate, but the patent of nobility provides that the dukedom is to descend first to his heirs by Anne, and only in the event of the failure of that line to his heirs by Catherine.[6] With the death of Algernon, the seventh earl of Somerset in 1750, the Seymour Baronets of Berry Pomeroy Castle, inherited the title of Duke of Somerset. Consequently, the present Duke of Somerset is descended from Catherine Filliol.
References
- ^ a b http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cyanda/2118.htm
- ^ "repudiata, quia pater ejus post nuptias eam congovit" (marginal note to copy of Vincent's Baronage at College of Heralds)
- ^ The rumour that Catherine may have gone to a local convent is based on the content of her father's will. The will was challenged by Sir Edward Seymour in 1530, on the basis that his father-in-law was not of sound mind
- ^ The Complete Peerage, vol.XII pI, p.65, note c, & p. 84
- ^ familytree.net
- ^ Alexander Burgess, Memoir of the life of the Right Reverend George Burgess, D. D., p. 243