Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/326

 his cause; parliament accordingly declared him a delinquent. In the following autumn he accompanied his brother, the Marquis of Hertford, into the west to organise the royalist forces and suppress the parliamentary militia, and in September he crossed from Minehead to Glamorganshire on a similar errand. In December 1643 he signed the letter of the peers to the council in Scotland, protesting against the invitation sent by parliament to the Scots to invade England. Early in 1645 he was on the commission for the defence and government of Oxford and the adjacent counties; in February he was one of the commissioners appointed to treat at Uxbridge, and in May he was made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. He was at Oxford when it surrendered on 22 June. He was admitted to composition, and his fine was fixed at 3,725l. He attended a council at Hampton Court on 7 Oct. 1647, but took no part in politics during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. At the Restoration he was reappointed chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. He died on 12 July 1664, and was buried in the chancel of Bedwyn Magna church (, Top. Coll. Wilts, p. 378). His house at Marlborough, where Aubrey visited him at Christmas 1648 (cf., Diary, ed. Bray, i. 289), was used as an inn until 1842, when it became Marlborough College.

Seymour married, first, Frances, eldest daughter and coheir of Sir Gilbert Prynne (d. 1628) of Chippenham; by her he had issue Charles, second Baron Seymour of Trowbridge (d. 1665), whose son Francis in 1675 succeeded his cousin as fifth duke of Somerset [see, sixth ]. He married, secondly, Catherine, daughter of Sir Robert Lee, by whom he had no issue.



SEYMOUR, FRANCIS (INGRAM), second (1743–1822), born in London on 12 Feb. 1743, was eldest son of, first marquis of Hertford [q. v.] by Isabella, youngest daughter of Charles Fitzroy, second duke of Grafton. After being educated at Eton he matriculated from Christ Church, Oxford, 2 Feb. 1760, and was created M.A. 15 June 1762. As Viscount Beauchamp he represented Lisburne in the Irish House of Commons, 1761–8. In 1765 he was made a privy councillor for Ireland, and for one year, 1765–6, was chief secretary to the lord-lieutenant of Ireland; on resigning that post he was appointed constable of Dublin Castle (Grenville Papers, iii. 325).

In 1766 he entered the English House of Commons, sitting from 1766 to 1768 as member for Lostwithiel, and for Oxford from 1768 to 1794. He was a lord of the treasury in Lord North's administration from 11 March 1774 to 31 Jan. 1780, and was appointed cofferer of the household 1 Feb. 1780, and a privy councillor for Great Britain, 2 Feb. 1780. From 1774 to 1788 he was a frequent speaker in the House of Commons, speaking whenever he addressed the House, ‘if not with eloquence, at least with knowledge of the subject’ (, Memoirs, iv. 137). He opposed in April 1774 the motion for the repeal of the American tea duty, declaring himself by no means prepared to cede the mother country's right of taxing colonies (Parl. Hist. xviii. 1271), and in December 1777 he moved the previous question on Wilkes's motion to repeal the American Declaratory Act. But although a member of Lord North's administrations, his political sympathies were largely with Fox. In May 1778 he declared himself strongly in favour of the repeal of the penal acts affecting Roman catholics in Ireland (ib. xix. 1141), and throughout his parliamentary career showed himself in favour of religious toleration (ib. xxvi. 823). He introduced an act for the relief of debtors with respect to the imprisonment of their persons in February 1780, when he was highly complimented by Burke, who supported the bill (ib. xx. 1399). On Fox's motion for the repeal of the Irish Declaratory Act (6 Geo. I), on 16 April 1782, he declared that the simple repeal would not satisfy Ireland unless a counter declaratory clause of Irish parliamentary independence was inserted in the repealing act (Parl. Hist. xxiii. 31; Life of the Rt. Hon. Henry Flood, p. 165;, Hist. Eighteenth Cent. vi. 105). These views he emphasised in a pamphlet, ‘A Letter to the First Company of Belfast Volunteers,’ published in Dublin, 1782. On 4 Feb. 1784 the House of Lords resolved ‘that an attempt in any one branch of the legislature to suspend the execution of law by assuming to itself the direction of discretionary power is unconstitutional.’ Beauchamp proposed, a few days later, six counter resolutions, which he carried against the ministers by a majority