Seymour

Seymour, an historic family, originally settled in Normandy at St Maur—whence the name. Coming over to England, they obtained lands in Monmouthshire as early as the 13th century, and in the 14th at Hatch Beauchamp, Somersetshire, by marriage with an heiress of the Beauchamps. In 1497 Sir John Seymour helped to suppress the insurrection of Lord Andley and the Cornish rebels, and subsequently he accompanied Henry VIII. to his wars in France, and to the Field of the Cloth of Gold. His daughter, Jane Seymour (c. 1509–37), became the wife of Henry VIII. and mother of Edward VI.; and his second son, Thomas, created Lord Seymour of Sudeley, became Lord High Admiral of England and the second husband of Henry's widow (Catharine Parr), but ended his life on the scaffold (1549). Sir John's eldest son, Edward, was successively created Viscount Beauchamp, Earl of Hertford, and Duke of Somerset, and as Protector played the leading part in the first half of the reign of Edward VI. (q.v.). The Protector's eldest son by his second marriage, being created by Elizabeth Earl of Hertford, married the Lady Catharine Grey, a grand-niece of Henry VIII., and sister of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey—a marriage which entailed on him a nine years' imprisonment and a fine of £15,000. His grandson, who in 1621 succeeded him in the earldom of Hertford, also fell into disgrace for attempting to marry the Lady Arabella Stuart, cousin of James I.; but subsequently, playing a conspicuous part in the royalist cause in the Great Rebellion, obtained a reversal of the Protector's attainder, and in 1660 took his seat in the House of Peers as third Duke of Somerset, although the descendants of the first duke, by his first marriage, were then in existence. He died unmarried in 1671, and the ducal title ultimately passed to a cousin, on whose death it was inherited by Charles Seymour (1661–1748), known in history as the 'Proud Duke of Somerset,' a nobleman whose style of living was ostentatious and haughty in the extreme, and who filled several high posts in the courts of Charles II., William III., and Anne. He married the heiress of the Percies, by whom he had a son, Algernon, seventh duke, who in 1749 was created Earl of Northumberland, with remainder to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh Smithson, the ancestor of the present Percy line. On the death of this duke in 1750 a curious peerage case arose, the title being claimed by the descendants of the first duke by his first marriage; and the attorney-general having reported in favour of the claim, Sir Edward Seymour took his seat in the House of Peers as eighth duke. The earldom of Hertford, which became extinct in 1750, was in that same year conferred on this eighth duke's first cousin, Francis, who in 1793 was advanced to the dignity of Marquis, and one of whose great-grandsons, Sir Frederick Beauchamp Paget Seymour, admiral R.N., was in 1882 created Baron Alcester for his services at the bombardment of Alexandria.