♂Thomas Seymour

Thomas Seymour (died before 1422) was a Somerset gentleman of the early fifteenth century, the son and heir apparent of Sir Edmund Seymour of Chelvey, Migill and Tickenham. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Seymour (born about 1406).

Family background

His mother was Sir Edmund’s first wife, Joan, the daughter and heiress of Andrew Basset of Tickenham. Even his first name is uncertain: two Furneaux family pedigrees call him John, and the modern compiler of the line gives “Thomas (or John, Edmund).”

Marriage and death

Thomas is said to have married Margaret Farway, the elder daughter of John Farway of Penhallam^W (in Jacobstow, Cornwall) and his wife, Agnes Longland. Their one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born about 1406. Margaret’s brother, John Farway, was living in September 1419 but died before 1421, and Margaret, or her daughter, became one of his co-heirs with Margaret’s younger sister, Joan, the wife of Walter Stawell. Margaret died before 1421 and Thomas before 1422. By then Elizabeth, about sixteen, was already the wife of Thomas Berkeley, who held her lands in her right.

Notes

Sources

Thomas’s parents, marriage, daughter and death are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 175, a compiled genealogy. Richardson cites the Gentleman’s Magazine, new series, vol. 3 (1835), pp. 588–594; the Benolte visitation of Somerset (printed 1885), p. 108; Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, vol. 16 (1920), pp. 281–285; the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 23 (2004), p. 57; and Foundations 2(6) (2008), pp. 390–422. The Farway family is on p. 174.

His name

Richardson calls him “Thomas (or John, Edmund) Seymour.” The Furneaux pedigree in the Benolte visitation names Margaret’s husband “John, sonn and heire of Sr. Henery Semore,” and a Furneaux pedigree dated 1423/44 calls him “Johanni Seymour, filio et heredi Edmundi Seymour militis” (John Seymour, son and heir of Sir Edmund Seymour, knight).

His mother

Foundations (2008) makes Thomas the son of Sir Edmund’s second wife, also named Joan. Richardson states that this is an error and gives his mother as the first wife, Joan Basset.

The co-heirship

Richardson gives the co-heir to John Farway as “his wife, Margaret, or their daughter, Elizabeth,” in the period 1419 to 1421; which of the two inherited depends on whether Margaret was still living when her brother died.