Francis Somerset
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Francis Somerset (died 22 July 1563), was an English soldier, briefly a member of the House of Commons of England in the last Parliament of Queen Mary I (1558).
Somerset joined the English expedition to France and died of the Plague while taking part in the defence of Le Havre.[1]
Probably born about 1534, Somerset was the fourth son of Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester, and his second wife Elizabeth Browne, a daughter of Anthony Browne,[2][3] Lieutenant of Calais.[4] His mother was the leading witness against Anne Boleyn, and there were rumours that she had been a mistress of Henry VIII.[5] He was descended in the male line from John of Gaunt.
Somerset was mistakenly reported to have died at the battle of Pinkie in 1547,[6] but he was one of the two Members of Parliament for Monmouthshire in 1558[7] and fought at the siege of Leith in 1560.[1][8]
During the French wars of religion, on 8 May 1562 Huguenot forces took the town of Le Havre and expelled Roman Catholics. Fearing a counter-attack by the royal armies, by the Treaty of Hampton Court the Huguenot leader Louis I, Prince of Condé, handed the town over to the English, who sent a garrison of some 6,000 men led by Ambrose Dudley, 3rd Earl of Warwick. The English built fortifications.[9]
In 1563, the year of his death, Somerset was leader of a "band" of men. A warrant of Queen Elizabeth's authorized her Comptroller of the Household, Sir Edward Rogers, to send Sir Morice Denys, Treasurer of Newhaven, £300 (equivalent to £121,463 in 2023) to be paid to Somerset "for the wages of himself and his band, serving at Newhaven, due the 25th January last".[10] John Stow's The Annales of England calls him Captain Francis Somerset.[11]
In the summer of 1563 Charles IX sent a force, commanded by the Duke of Montmorency, which attacked Le Havre and expelled the English on 29 July 1563.[9] Somerset was then at Le Havre and died there of Plague,[12] a few days before the French had regained control of the town.[1] He died unmarried, but in his Will proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury he refers to two illegitimate children, whom he consigned to the care of his mother.[2][13]