The youngest son, according to his father’s will. [BMI]749 calls him minister of Bredgate, but that seems to have been an error.

Simon must have been an unusually intelligent man; although his father and his brothers were blacksmiths, he was lucky and clever enough to receive a proper education, and was raised to the dizzy heights of a vicarage, well above the rest of his family in income and social status. In 1588, when he was 20, he was awarded one of two scholarships for Kent, founded by the Deacon of Nottingham, and rotated around the counties in turn, and on this scholarship went to St. John's, Cambridge. At that time, of course, very few of the colleges had been founded; St. John's was one of the early ones, founded in 1510.

Simon got his B.A. from 1591-92 and his M.A. in 1595 (According to the official list of Cambridge University Alumni, 1261--1900), and was then appointed as Vicar of Bredgar, his home town, where he remained for the rest of his life, from 1595--1622. His father was presumably proud of him. We know almost nothing about his activities as vicar, except that one thing he did (in addition to his usual duties, one assumes) is to transcribe into the parish ledger many of the old records before he became vicar. They can still be seen (well, I've only seen photocopies, to be honest, but that's still pretty cool), with a little notation “Simon Seaman, Vicar" at the bottom of each page.

In 1596, Simon married Susanna Wythers in London, at St. Michael Bassishaw, a church that was demolished in 1899. It's a reasonable assumption that this was Susanna's home parish. It's possible that she brought quite a lot of money to the marriage, as in his will Simon left his daughter Mary various items, including ``my little bible ... the brasse vessle my wife used to fry fritters in ... and £100 to be invested for her. The most likely place where Simon could have got this kind of wealth is from his wife; it was a large sum for the time.

He was buried at Bredgar 14. 6. 1622.