Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/331

  [Authorities as in text; Hoskins's Charles II in the Channel Islands; Ormonde Letters, passim; Calendars of Clarendon MSS. Bodleian, passim; Andrew Marvell's Seasonable Argument.]

 SEYMOUR, HENRY (1729–1805), lover of Madame Du Barry, was the son of Francis Seymour, M.P., of Sherborne, Dorset, brother of the eighth Duke of Somerset, by Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander Popham, and widow of Viscount Hinchinbrook. Born in London in 1729, he married in 1753 Lady Caroline Cowper, only daughter of the second Earl Cowper. Besides his father's estate at Sherborne, he inherited an uncle's property at Knoyle, and also owned Northbrook Lodge, Devonshire, and Redland Court, near Bristol. He became a groom of the bedchamber, was returned for Totnes at a by-election in 1763, and sat for Huntingdon 1768–74, and Evesham 1774–80. He spoke on 29 Feb. 1776 in support of Fox's motion for an inquiry into the miscarriages of the American war. A widower in 1773, he married in 1775 Louise Thérèse, widow of Comte Guillaume de Panthou. In 1778 he settled in Paris, obtained letters of domicile to protect his property from forfeiture to the crown as aubaine, in the event of death, and purchased a country house at Prunay, between Versailles and St. Germain. He thus became the neighbour, and may have already been the lover, of Madame Du Barry. He preserved about forty of her letters to him, together with a lock of her hair. The letters are undated, but were probably written in 1780, shortly before his separation from his wife. They show that his jealous temper led to a rupture. These relics, apparently left behind him on his hasty departure from France in August 1792, came into the possession of Barrière, an autograph collector, and, after passing through other hands, were sold in Paris in 1892. All Seymour's property was confiscated, and bundles of his tradesmen's bills and other papers are now in the Archives Nationales, Paris. He remained in England till his death in 1805, and after Waterloo his heirs obtained compensation for his losses out of the fund for indemnifying British subjects. He published anonymously in 1788 a French prose translation of the ‘English Garden,’ by William Mason [q. v.], with views of Prunay.

By his first wife he had two daughters: Caroline, who married William Danby [q. v.], the bibliophile and mineralogist; and Georgina, who married Comte Louis de Durfort. By his second wife he had a son Henry (1776–1849), high sheriff of Dorset in 1835. He had also an illegitimate daughter, who, born in France, became the mother of the Sir Roger Tichborne personated by Arthur Orton in the famous litigation of 1871.

[Manuscripts in the Archives Nationales, Paris; Goncourt's Madame Du Barry; Vatel's Madame du Barry; Douglas's Life and Times of Madame du Barry, pp. 312 et seq.; Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution.]

 SEYMOUR, HENRY (1805–1859), founder of the Jockey Club at Paris, was the younger son of Francis Charles Seymour Conway, third marquis of Hertford, by Maria Fagniani, adopted daughter of George Augustus Selwyn (1719–1791) [q. v.] His grandfather was Francis (Ingram) Seymour, second marquis of Hertford [q. v.] Lord Henry was born in Paris on 18 Jan. 1805, his father, then Lord Yarmouth, having been detained in France on landing there just after the rupture of the treaty of Amiens. Lord Yarmouth was released in 1806 through Fox's intercession with Talleyrand, but his wife remained in France, and Lord Henry is said, though this is a manifest exaggeration, never to have set foot in England. In 1856 he inherited his mother's large fortune. In 1833 he was one of the eighteen founders of a society for the encouragement of horse-breeding in France, to which was attached the Jockey Club, and his horses repeatedly won prizes at the Bois de Boulogne and Chantilly races. A prominent member of the aristocratic society of Paris, he was noted for his eccentricities, and in the carnivals of 1834 and 1835 he attempted to introduce the Italian custom of throwing comfits and coins among the crowd. He died in Paris, unmarried, on 16 Aug. 1859, and was buried in his mother's vault at Père-Lachaise. He bequeathed money for the support of four favourite horses, which were never again to be saddled, and left the residue of his property, about 36,000l. a year, to the Paris hospitals.

[Moniteur, 29 Jan. 1834; Times, 25 Aug. 1859; Ann. Reg. 1859; Gent. Mag. 1859, ii. 432; Revue Britannique, August 1878; Alger's Englishmen in the French Revolution.]

 SEYMOUR, HUGH (1759–1801), vice-admiral, fifth son of Francis Seymour Conway, first marquis of Hertford [q. v.] of that creation, was born on 29 April 1759. He entered the navy in 1770 under the care of Captain John Leveson-Gower [q. v.], on board the Pearl on the Newfoundland station. Afterwards he served in the West Indies and in the Mediterranean, and was promoted to be lieutenant on 10 Aug. 1776. He was made commander on 18 June 1778, and captain on 8 Feb. 1779. In 1780 he commanded the Ambuscade in the Channel;