Sir John Seymour, Knight banneret (c. 1474 – 21 December 1536) was an English soldier and a courtier who served both Henry VII and Henry VIII. Born into a prominent gentry family, he is best known as the father of Henry VIII's third wife, Jane Seymour, and hence the maternal grandfather of king Edward VI of England.
The Seymours were descendants of an Anglo-Norman family that took its name from St. Maur-sur-Loire in Touraine. William de St. Maur in 1240 held the manors of Penhow and Woundy (now called Undy) in Monmouthshire. William's great-grandson, Sir Roger de St. Maur, had two sons: John, whose granddaughter conveyed these manors by marriage into the family of Bowlay of Penhow, who bore the Seymour arms; and Sir Roger (c. 1308 – before 1366), who married Cicely, eldest sister and heir of John de Beauchamp, 3rd Baron Beauchamp. Cicely brought to the Seymours the manor of Hache, Somerset, and her grandson, Roger Seymour, by his marriage with Maud, daughter and heir of Sir William Esturmy, acquired Wulfhall (or Wolf Hall) in the parish of Great Bedwyn in the Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. Sir John Seymour was a great-great-grandson of this Roger Seymour.
Sir John Seymour was born around 1474, the eldest son of John Seymour of Wulfhall, by his marriage to Elizabeth Darell (or Darrell). He married Margery, the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk, and his wife Anne Say. Anne was the daughter of Sir John Say and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Lawrence Cheney (or Cheyne) and Elizabeth Cokayne. Margery Wentworth's grandfather, Sir Philip Wentworth, had married Mary, daughter of John Clifford, 7th Baron de Clifford, whose mother Elizabeth was daughter of Henry Percy (Hotspur) and great-great-granddaughter of Edward III. Margery was renowned for her beauty as well as her quiet and gentle demeanour, and she came to the attention of the poet John Skelton.
Seymour succeeded his father in 1492 and was knighted in the field by Henry VII for his services against the Cornish rebels at Blackheath on 17 June 1497. He was made Knight banneret in 1513. He was present at the sieges of Thérouanne and Tournay in 1513 as well as the two meetings between Henry VIII and Francis I: the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and again in 1532.
Warden, Savernake Forest, Wiltshire October 1491
Sheriff, Wiltshire 1498–1499, 1507–1508, 1518–19, 1524 – January 1526
Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset 1515–1516, 1526–1527
Justice of the peace Wiltshire 1499–1536
Steward, Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham's lands, Wiltshire by 1503
Constable and door-ward, Bristol Castle, Gloucestershire August 1509, jointly. (with son Edward) July 1517
Under captain, Dragon of Greenwich 1512
Commissioner subsidy, Wiltshire 1512, 1514, 1515, Wiltshire and Salisbury 1523
Commissioner musters, Wiltshire 1513
Steward, manor of Kingston Lisle, Berkshire before 1513
Forester, Grovely, Wiltshire February 1526
Sir John Seymour married Margery Wentworth on 22 October 1494. The couple had ten children:
John Seymour (died 15 July 1510), eldest son and heir apparent who predeceased his father without progeny. His monumental brass survives set into the floor of Great Bedwyn church, inscribed as follows:
"Here lyeth the body of John Seymour sonne and here of Sr John Seymour, Knight, & of Margery oon of the daughters of Sr Henry Wentworth, Knight, which decessed ye xv day of July the yer of or Lord MVCX on whos soule Jh(es)u have m(er)cy & of yor charitie say a Pater Nost(er) & a Ave (Maria)"