Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of SomersetKGFRS (né Seymour; 24 February 1775 – 15 August 1855), styled Lord Seymour until 1793, of
Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire and
Stover House,
Teigngrace, Devon, was a British peer, landowner, astrologer and mathematician.
Biography
Seymour was born at
Monkton Farleigh in
Wiltshire, the son and heir of
Webb Seymour, 10th Duke of Somerset (1718–1793), by his wife Mary Bonnell, daughter of John Bonnell, of
Stanton Harcourt,
Oxfordshire. He was baptised on 4 April 1775 at Monkton Farleigh,[2] with the name of Edward Seymour, but later changed it to Edward St Maur (between 28 August 1850[3] and 23 October 1851)[4] in the belief it was the original ancient form of the name.
In 1793 he succeeded his father in the dukedom. In 1795, in the company of Reverend John Henry Michell, he undertook a tour through England, Wales and Scotland, which he recorded in a journal, published in 1845. The tour took him as far as the Isles of
Staffa and
Iona in the Hebrides.[5]
In 1808 he purchased a London
townhouse on
Park Lane which he named
Somerset House, and where he spent much of his time.[9] In addition, in 1829 he purchased from
George Templer (1781–1843) the Devonshire estate of
Stover in the parish of
Teigngrace, near
Newton Abbot, and made Stover House his principal residence, where he displayed the valuable "Hamilton" art collection brought as her marriage portion by his wife Lady Charlotte Hamilton, a daughter of the 9th Duke of Hamilton. This included paintings by Rubens, Lawrence and Reynolds.[10] The principal seat of the Seymour family had been
Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire, but for one more generation it remained Stover.[11] The Stover purchase included the
Stover Canal and the Haytor quarries and
Haytor Granite Tramway.[12] He added a large
porte cochere with Doric columns to Stover House and built a matching entrance lodge.
Somerset married twice, firstly on 24 June 1800 to Lady Charlotte Douglas-Hamilton (6 April 1772 – Somerset House, Park Lane, London, 10 June 1827), daughter of
Archibald Hamilton, 9th Duke of Hamilton, by whom he had seven children:
Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset (20 December 1804 – 28 December 1885), eldest son and heir, of Stover House. He married beneath his social station, in his relatives' opinion, whose two sons pre-deceased him. Upon his death, despite leaving three married daughters, the dukedom passed by law to his heir male, his younger brother, with whom he had developed an enmity after the latter called his wife
Georgiana Sheridan a "low-bred greedy beggar woman, whose sole object was to get her hands on the property and leave it away from the direct heirs".[13] The 12th Duke bequeathed Stover and its priceless contents, including the Hamilton treasures, in trust for his illegitimate grandson
Harold St. Maur, which caused uproar on the part of his younger brother the 13th Duke, who considered the treasures to be family heirlooms which should have passed to him. He inherited Maiden Bradley House, presumably under an
entail, but almost entirely stripped of its contents.[14]
Lady Charlotte Jane Seymour (1803 – 7 October 1889), who on 31 March 1839 married William Blount (d. 27 July 1885), of
Orelton,
Herefordshire
Lady Jane Wilhelmina Seymour
Lady Anna Maria Jane Seymour (d. 23 September 1873), who on 13 September 1838 married William Tollemache (7 November 1810 – 17 March 1886), son of Hon. Charles Manners Tollemache of the Earls of Dysart by his wife Gertrude Florinda Gardiner.
Somerset died at
Somerset House in London, in August 1855, aged 80, and was buried at
Kensal Green Cemetery, London.[16] Margaret, his second wife, died at Somerset House on 18 July 1880, and was deposited in the mausoleum with her husband.
Ancestry
Ancestors of Edward St Maur, 11th Duke of Somerset
^Michell, John Henry, Rev. The Tour of the Duke of Somerset, and the Rev. J. H. Michell, Through Parts of England, Wales, and Scotland in the Year 1795, R. Clay, London 1845
^Col N.C.E. Kenrick, The Story of the Wiltshire Regiment (Duke of Edinburgh's): The 62nd and 99th Foot (1756–1959), the Militia and the Territorials, the Service Battalions and all those others who have served or been affiliated with the Moonrakers, Aldershot: Gale & Polden, 1963, p. 296.