Margery Wentworth, also known as Margaret Wentworth, and as both Lady Seymour[1] and Dame Margery Seymour[2] (c. 1478[3] – 18 October 1550[4]). She was the wife of Sir John Seymour and the mother of Queen Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII of England. She was the grandmother of King Edward VI of England.
. . . Margery Wentworth . . .
Margery was born in about 1478, the daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth and Anne Say, daughter of Sir John Say and Elizabeth Cheney.[3][5]
Margery’s first cousins, courtiers Elizabeth and Edmund Howard, were parents to an earlier and later royal wife than her daughter: Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, respectively.[6][7]
Elizabeth Cheney’s first husband was Frederick Tilney, father of Elizabeth Tilney, Countess of Surrey.[5] This made Anne Say although not of peerage-level nobility herself, the half-sister of a countess.[8] Wentworth was also a descendant of King Edward III, this remote royal ancestry is partly why Henry VIII found Jane Seymour (her daughter) marriageable.[9]
Margery’s father, Henry Wentworth, rose to be a critical component of Yorkshire and Suffolk politics: in 1489, during the Yorkshire uprising against Henry VII who had married the female main claimant heir of the former Plantagenet dynasty in order to bolster his own shaky claim to the throne, he left his home and was named the steward of Knaresborough, earning him the privilege to keep the peace in the name of the first Earl of Surrey. After this, he was awarded the title of the Sheriff of Yorkshire.[8]
. . . Margery Wentworth . . .