Constituency Dates
Great Bedwyn 29 Apr. 1732 – 1734
Marlborough 1734 – 41
Family and Education
bap. 1 Oct. 1697,1Coll. Top. et Gen. v. 39. 2nd s. of Sir Edward Seymour, 5th Bt., M.P.; yr. bro. of Sir Edward Seymour, afterwards 8th Duke of Somerset. m. 30 July 1728, Elizabeth, da. of Alexander Popham, M.P., of Littlecote, Wilts., wid. of Edward Richard Montagu, Visct. Hinchingbrooke, mother of John, 4th Earl of Sandwich, and Hon. William Montagu, 2s. 1da. suc. to Sherborne House and the personal estate of his paternal gt.-uncle Henry Seymour Portman, M.P., of Orchard Portman, Som. 1728.
Address
Main residence: Sherborne House, Dorset.
biography text

Francis Seymour was returned as a Tory for Great Bedwyn and Marlborough on the Bruce interest. A petition against him and Edward Lisle in March 1735 was unsuccessful

notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Sir Robert Walpole, who stayed the hearing out ... [and] who had (as I have heard) declared before the Parliament met that no members of Lord Bruce’s recommending, if returned, should keep their seats.2HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 167.

In the same year, according to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, Seymour, when at the opera, was requested by the King to take off his hat but refused to do so on the grounds that

he was ill and could not do it for fear of catching cold ... he had paid for his place and he would not prejudice his health ... he should have thought it very wrong to have done anything of that sort in the King’s palaces, but there were no kings at operas or playhouses where everybody might sit as they pleased.3Letters of a Grandmother, ed. G. Scott Thomson, 151-2.

He voted against Walpole’s Administration in all recorded divisions, did not stand again, and died 23 Dec. 1761.

Author
R.S.L.
Volume
Commons 1715-1754
Notes
  • 1. Coll. Top. et Gen. v. 39.
  • 2. HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 167.
  • 3. Letters of a Grandmother, ed. G. Scott Thomson, 151-2.