The Dukes (18 page)
Harold St Maur came of age and began to wonder about
his parents. Could they have been married? He spent much of his
fortune and a good deal of time trying to track down a marriage
certificate. Years passed without success, until one day a man turned
up who said, yes, the Earl St Maur and Rosa Swann had been married, and he had moreover been a witness. Henry Thynne was
alarmed. It would not serve his interest that Harold St Maur should
be proved the rightful Duke of Somerset. The mysterious gentleman
was hustled away, and later that year opened a shop in Torquay
with money he did not have; it was all very suspect. Word got
about that Thynne had seen to it the marriage certificate should be
destroyed.
Many years later there was another tantalising clue. As he lay
dying in Algeria, Francois Tournier sent word to Harold that he had
something of huge importance to tell him before it was too late.
Harold did not go. Tournier, as Rosa's husband, no doubt knew
everything there was to know about her. She herself had died at the
age of twenty-three of tuberculosis in a French sanatorium (paid for
by the Somersets). She had been allowed to wave goodbye to her
children, but not to touch them. She would surely have confided in him,
and may even have explained the mystery of her first "marriage".
Harold St Maur lived handsomely at Stover while the then Duke
and Duchess of Somerset scrambled around at Maiden Bradley for
a knife and fork to eat with, sitting in a house stripped bare but for
straw on the floor. Augustus Hare visited them there in 1897. "You
know it is almost the only remnant the title possesses from the once
vast Somerset estates. The 12th Duke left everything he possibly
could away, and when the present Ehike and Duchess succeeded, they
*Relations now think it more likely that Thynne was protecting Harold's interests. Harold squandered most of his money.
were pictureless, bookless, almost spoonless. Still they were determined
to make the best of it . . . 'Algie and Susie', as they always speak of
each other, have had a most delightful life, enjoying and giving
enjoyment. No one ever looked more ducal than this genial, hearty,
handsome Duke: no one brighter or pleasanter than his Duchess."
76
Harold St Maur, who wrote the family history,
Annals of the Seymours,
tactfully avoiding all mention of his parents' drama, had three sons.
Stover was sold and is now a girls' school. Harold moved to Kenya and
died there. He has one surviving grandson, Edward St Maur, a photographer in Chepstow, Gwent, who is the last person able to bear that
surname; he has three daughters. Were circumstances slightly
different, as his grandfather was never declared illegitimate by the
lords, he could, in theory, apply for a writ of summons to Parliament
as Earl St Maur. But the implication would be that he was also
the rightful Duke of Somerset, which is a nest better left undisturbed.
As it is, he has the sword with which Lord Edward killed the bear,
and the Stover inventory. Ruth St Maur has a son and nephew
living in London.
[3]
and in 1891 to Algernon, 14th Duke, both brothers of the 12th. He
then died in 1894 and was succeeded by his son, whom Hare called
"Algie"; there had been four Dukes of Somerset in nine years.
When Algie, the 15th Duke, died in 1923, yet another crisis threatened the family. All that was left of the legitimate family were his
three nieces, Helen, Lettys, and Lucy, known collectively as "Hell let
loose". There was no direct heir, and the mantle was assumed by a
distant relation, Brigadier-General Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour,
k.b.e.,
who could claim descent from only two of the previous
fifteen Dukes of Somerset, the 8th and of course the 1st; but he was
the senior
heir male of the body
of the Lord Protector, even if it
required considerable genealogical dexterity to see how. At least that
was his firm belief, until the Marquess of Hertford, also a Seymour,
challenged his right to the dukedom and claimed it for himself. It
was 1750 all over again. The matter had to be referred to the House
of Lords, and it was not until two years later that a final decision
was made.
Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour was the great-grandson of Colonel
Francis Compton Seymour, a son of the 8th Duke of Somerset. This
Francis Compton in 1787 made a most unusual marriage, choosing
as his bride the daughter of an East End publican. Her name was
Leonora Perkins, widow of a sailor called John Hudson, and the marriage took place at St Michael's, Crooked Lane, Woolwich. Their son,
born 2 1st September 1788, leads directly to the new Duke. Hertford's case was that this boy was a bastard, as Leonora's first marriage to John Hudson was still valid. Why ? Because Hudson was not
dead at all.
In 1786, a year before the marriage with Seymour, there was a
John Hudson who died in Calcutta and was buried there. He and
Leonora had lived together at 9 Paddington Street since 1780. Lord
Hertford, whose agents had resorted to a minute examination of local
rate-books and other municipal records in order to get him the
dukedom, pointed out that there was a John Hudson on the ratebook in 1790, and a John Hudson who died in Middlesex Hospital
in 1791. Surely, he said, this is the man; he had deserted, returned
to England, found his wife Leonora living with another man at 9
Paddington Street (our Seymour), and moved out. His name subsequently appears on the rate-book as residing at 28 Marylebone High
Street. As for the John Hudson buried in Calcutta, that must be
another man. Someone called Francis Seamore [tt'c] does not appear
on the rate-book for 9 Paddington Street until 1791, the same year
that a John Hudson died in Middlesex Hospital.
It was a pretty strong case. Hertford was, of course, the next
legitimate heir if the then Duke of Somerset's descent could be successfully impugned, and there was something attractive about the idea
of the two titles of Somerset and Hertford being joined again as they
were in the sixteenth century. The Duke's reply was that all Hertford's "evidence" rested on conjecture, petty scandal, and supposition; he further claimed that the public baptism of Seymour's children
by Leonora was inconceivable if Hudson were still alive; they lived
openly as man and wife.
Before the House of Lords could make their decision, two more
would-be dukes entered the fray. A man called Henry Seymour, descended from Leonora's third son by Francis Compton Seymour, said
that their marriage did not take place until after the first two sons
were born. As there was not a shred of documentary evidence to
support the claim, he withdrew pretty quickly. The other claimant
was Harold St Maur, who may well have been justified, but who
could produce no marriage certificate to back him up.
The Committee of Privileges met to declare on 25th March 1925.
They said that Lord Hertford asked them to believe that Hudson
would accept that his wife should live in
his
house with another man,
and move to another house round the corner, while still meeting the
bills. That would require, said their lordships, a degree of self-
sacrifice beyond credence. It is more likely that he would have turfed
them both on to the street. More precisely, they had examined the
hospital register and found that the John Hudson who died there
was forty-four, whereas Leonora's husband would by then have been
fifty-three had he lived. They therefore found that Hudson was dead,
the marriage valid, and Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour rightfully
16th Duke of Somerset."
So life at Maiden Bradley resumed. The Duke's son followed an
almost identical military career, won the D.S.O., and the O.B.E., was
mentioned in despatches, and bore the sceptre at the coronation of
George VI. It was the first time any Duke of Somerset had been
involved in a public occasion for over half a century. Apart from this
one show of publicity, and his sporadic duties at Lord Lieutenant of
Wiltshire, he led a quiet life. He was the only duke to have been adept
at tapestry, knitting and conjuring, in which he was so accomplished
that he was for many years President of the Magic Circle.
He married Miss Edith Parker, and their first two sons died in
infancy. The late duke was their third son. Percy Hamilton
Seymour, 18th Duke of Somerset, born in 1910, was educated at
Clare College, Cambridge, then went into the army where he rose
to the rank of major. He married the daughter of another major,
and they had three children, two boys and a girl. So quietly did they
live at Maiden Bradley, the only constant heirloom in this troubled
descent, that few people seemed to know there
was
a Duke of
Somerset. He rarely took his seat in the House of Lords, didn't like
politicians ("no military man likes politicians") and visited London
only when he had to. Not much is left of the house at Maiden
Bradley, following successive demolishings in the nineteenth century.
What is left, however, makes a comfortable country house, with
six bedrooms, a kitchen garden, and dogs eddying around wherever
you step. It is much more easy to manage than a Chatsworth or
a Woburn. From the illustrations past there is only a mirror
belonging to Mary Queen of Scots, which the vandals must have
missed when the 12th Duke died, and a dusty ceremonial coach,
which was spruced up and used when his daughter married. The
village around the house used to belong to them, but that went
in 1953. The present Duke still has about 5000 acres, and some of
Totnes in Devon, which he has to nibble at occasionally by selling
a house or two when necessity demands.
The dangerous days when Lord Protector Somerset and the Duke
of Norfolk were dire enemies is a dim and distant echo of little consequence now in this peaceful Wiltshire house. The Duke of Somerset
has not even met the Duke of Norfolk. John Seymour, 19th Duke of Somerset, was born in 1952 and
succeeded to the dukedom in 1984. He is markedly more interested
in his ancestry than was his late father, has a house in Fulham and
took his seat in the Lords in 1985. He made his maiden speech in
1987, and welcomes any debate on agriculture or forestry, as he
feels passionately about the disastrous destruction of the rain
forests over the globe. As this is a subject which will dominate attention in the closing years of the twentieth century, and moreover is
arguably more important to the future of mankind in peacetime
than the nuclear bomb, it is encouraging to think that the House of
Lords, that great
bouillabaisse
of surprisingly democratic opinion,
may produce a spokesman on the subject.
