Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/330

 [q. v.]) and Isabella, daughter of the Hon. and Rev. George Hamilton, was born at Harrow in 1797. He was educated at first for the navy, which he soon left, and went to Eton. Thence he proceeded to Merton College, Oxford, where he was a postmaster, and graduated B.A. in 1818 and M.A. in 1823. Previously, on 28 March 1813, he had been appointed gentleman usher in daily waiting at court, and in March 1817 attaché to the legation at The Hague. In December 1819 he returned to London as précis-writer to Lord Castlereagh at the foreign office, and on 29 Jan. 1822 became his private secretary. In October 1822 he was attached to the Duke of Wellington's special mission to Verona. On 18 Aug. 1823 he became secretary of legation at Frankfurt, and was transferred on 6 Sept. 1826 to Stuttgart, on 28 Dec. 1827 to Berlin, and on 30 July 1829 to Constantinople.

On 13 Nov. 1830 Seymour was appointed minister resident at Florence, and on 13 Nov. 1836 envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary to the Belgian court, where he took part in the negotiations by which the independence of Belgium was finally secured. On 10 Dec. 1846 he was removed to Lisbon in the same capacity, and represented the British government through the greater part of the period of insurrection when the British power supported the Portuguese crown. On 28 April 1851 he was appointed to St. Petersburg, where his diplomacy was put to a severe test in the strained relations which arose between Russia and the western powers on the eastern question. He was in frequent intercourse with the czar, and his attitude at this time received the approval of the government. In February 1854, on the outbreak of the Crimean war, he was recalled. On 11 Oct. 1854 he was pensioned; but on 23 Nov. 1855, having just been made privy councillor, he became envoy-extraordinary to Austria, and again took a prominent part in the conferences on the eastern question at Vienna. He finally retired on pension in April 1858. He had been made G.C.H. on 16 March 1836 and G.C.B. on 28 Jan. 1847. He died on 2 Feb. 1880 at his residence, 10 Grosvenor Crescent, and was buried at Kensal Green.

Seymour married, in 1831, Gertrude Brand, third daughter of Lord Dacre, by whom he had four sons and three daughters.

[Times, 4 Feb. 1880; Foreign Office List, 1880; Burke's Peerage, s.v. ‘Hertford;’ Hertslet's State Papers.]

 SEYMOUR, HENRY (1612–1686), groom of the bedchamber to Charles II, born in 1612, was second (not fifth) son of Sir Edward Seymour, second baronet of Berry Pomeroy Devonshire, by his wife Dorothy, daughter of Sir Henry Killigrew of Lothbury, Cornwall (pedigree in Harl. Soc. vi. 256; Extinct Baronetage). He was in youth page of honour to Charles I. On the outbreak of the civil war he joined the royalist forces under his kinsman William Seymour, marquis of Hertford [q. v.], and in August 1643 was the bearer of the challenge from him to the Earl of Bedford (, Rebellion, vii. 185). Attaching himself to Prince Charles, he carried the message from him to the earl of Warwick in August 1648 concerning the surrender of the fleet (ib. xi. 69), and the last message which the prince sent to his father Charles I before the latter's execution (, Memoirs, ed. Firth, ii. 286). He was sent by Charles II from Jersey to Ireland in September 1649 (, Commonwealth, i. 160, 207). He accompanied Charles to Scotland in 1650, was voted away from the king's person by the Scottish committee, and left at Aberdeen after the defeat at Dunbar (Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 69, 77, 87). In 1651 he is described as of Charles's bedchamber at Paris (, ubi supra, xiii. 108), and was frequently despatched by the king to his friends in England (Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 297). In January 1654 he collected 1,920l. for Charles in England, and received a pass on his return to France from Cromwell. He represented that he was solely engaged in his private affairs. He almost immediately returned to England, and would appear to have been arrested in June 1654. He was not released until the end of May 1657, and then upon hard terms (ib. iii. 303). At the Restoration he was elected M.P. for East Looe, which he represented until 1681 (Return of Members). He is described as of Berry Pomeroy in 1660 and of Westminster in 1661, and is said to have received 40,000l. in Duchy leases. He was appointed a groom of the bedchamber, comptroller of the customs, and clerk of the hanaper. In 1666 he resided at Langley, Buckinghamshire, and in 1669 bought that estate from the trustees of Sir William Parsons (, ubi supra). During the latter part of his life he lived in retirement there, and died on 9 March 1686. He married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Joseph Killigrew, widow of William Basset of Claverton; she died 1671; secondly, Ursula, daughter of Sir Robert Austen of Bexley, Kent, widow of George Stowel, esq., of Cotherston, Kent. By the second wife he had a daughter and a son Henry, who was created a baronet at seven years of age during the life of his father (4 July 1681).