SEYMOUR, Sir Francis (c.1590-1664), of Marlborough Castle, Wilts.

Seymour’s last few months of parliamentary service, between April 1640 and February 1641, marked his transition from critic of crown policy to establishment peer. It was a path trodden by others, but the termination of the career in the Commons of this eloquent defender of ‘country’ sentiment looks on the face of it relatively sudden. Yet while he was steadfast in his Calvinist faith, his political conversion seems complete and perhaps indeed the inevitable outcome of his quest for good counsel.

In the 1620s Seymour had been a staunch advocate of parliamentary privilege and the liberty of subjects. He had also been a consistently vocal expositor of grievances – in particular against monopolies and patents, burdensome subsidies, and laxity in proceeding against recusants – and a less consistent opponent of unpopular royal ministers and favourites. At the same time, he had opposed expensive foreign war, even in the Protestant cause, and while he had grave concerns about the increasing prominence and influence of Arminians, he focussed on the deleterious effects of evil counsellors, clerical and lay. It was they who threatened to undermine the monarchy.40HP Commons 1604-1629.

Seymour’s stance had led to his being deprived of local office in 1626, but while others suffered for their contribution to the 1628-9 Parliament, he was restored that year to the commission of the peace and (perhaps less comfortably) appointed a subsidy commissioner. A commissioner for oyer and terminer and for depopulation from 1631, within a short time he was also again a deputy lieutenant.41SP16/405, f. 71; C181/4, f. 78v; C181/5, ff. 1, 135v; C231/4, ff. 87v, 161; Coventry Docquets, 57 VCH Wilts. v. 89 Having consolidated his estates around Marlborough and built a substantial house there, he resided mostly in the county and, in addition to protecting his brother’s interests, continued to be engaged by local issues.42Wilts. RO, 9/2/285; 9/22/22; 1300/220; Clarendon, History, ii. 533; VCH Wilts. xii. 169; Waylen, Hist. Marlborough, 147. In February 1630 he wrote to secretary of state Sir John Coke complaining of the threatening and destructive behaviour of saltpetremen, digging at will on men’s property and impeding their livelihoods, and asked that they might be restrained from exceeding their commission.43CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 188. In May 1634 Seymour led resistance by Wiltshire magistrates to commissioner Anthony Wither’s attempt to reform the clothing trade, insisting that local justices knew what was best for local industry.44CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 3-4. By November Wither was compelled to offer Seymour an abject apology for offences against him.45CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 306.

By the later 1630s Seymour’s reputation as the pre-eminent defender of Wiltshire-men against unwarranted impositions by central government or its agents had, if anything, been strengthened. At the Salisbury assizes in July 1637 he was ordered to investigate an allegation that Ship Money rates had been increased by the former sheriff.46Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 126 It seems to have been with a presumption that Seymour would be sympathetic to a reluctant payer of the tax that some months later Edmund Hungerford allegedly resisted the bailiff who called on him by threatening him with charges of burglary and felony to be heard before Sir Francis the next day.47CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 232. On his own testimony when hauled before the privy council in May 1639, Seymour himself ‘upon the importunity of his friends paid the [Ship] Money twice’, but on the third occasion, ‘his conscience would suffer him no more to do a thing ... so contrary to law and to the liberty of a subject’. The complaint of the then sheriff that ‘his example discouraged others, which is the cause of the great arrears in that county’ was taken very seriously by both Sir Francis Windebanke* and the king, to whom the secretary of state reported. ‘Apprehending his boldness in the shipping business’ and expecting ‘a worse’ when it came to his response to demands for contributions for Charles’s military expedition in the north, the councillors, who were evidently nervous about his persuasive tongue, ‘would not harken to any verbal discourse’. Requesting instead a written explanation of his conduct, they admonished him ‘to be well advised’ how he spoke against Ship Money, ‘seeing it is settled by a judgement and confirmed by the judges’. At this Seymour ‘would have replied’, but was commanded to withdraw. The council then instructed the previous year’s sheriff, Sir Edward Bayntun*, to distrain Seymour’s goods, an action which he had ‘hitherto forborne in regard of [Seymour’s] birth and power in the country’ and a belief that ‘he will make resistance’. The king’s stern response was that ‘ye must needs make him an example’, both by distraint and, if possible, through the law courts.48Bodl. Clarendon 16, ff. 125v-126v.

Seymour was duly omitted from the commission of the peace that summer.49C231/4, p. 353. But he was not to be so easily removed from local influence. On 30 March 1640 Wiltshire gentleman John Nicholas reported that Seymour, together with Philip Herbert, Lord Herbert*, had been returned unopposed to Parliament as knights of the shire.50CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 604. There can have been little doubt about the representations he would proceed to make.

Looking back at the proceedings of the Short Parliament at least one commentator placed Seymour first in a list of five men who, from the outset, led the way in an unprecedented political ‘stirring’. Each day in their speeches they ‘moved strongly to take beginning where they had left the last Parliament’. ‘They ripped up the grievances both of church and commonwealth’, attacking ‘innovations and errors’ in religion and in the law courts, especially star chamber, which imposed ‘heavy and deep fines which were so insupportable that they tended to the utter ruin and destruction of men’s estates and fortunes’.51Procs. 1640, 212-13. Judging by the speeches recorded by others, the attacks of Seymour were the more deadly for their avowed loyalty to the king himself and for their appreciation of his genuine need for revenue.

On 16 April Seymour was the first Member nominated to confer with the Lords about a fast day as well as being among the many placed on the privileges committee.52CJ ii. 4a. Standing up to take the baton from Harbottle Grimston*, Seymour touched briefly on the readiness of loving subjects to supply subsidies before insisting at length that breach of privilege must be addressed as a priority. The greatest service counsellors could do their sovereign was to speak their minds: this was ‘the soul of the commonwealth’. Yet this freedom had been denied in recent years: there had been ‘judgements ... against Members of this House, for speaking nothing, but what concerned the good of the commonwealth’; inferior courts and their judges had presumed to question, to ‘trench upon’, the liberties of Parliament, and thus the liberties of the nation itself. This experience made even the expression of such observations risky, but Seymour affirmed that he ‘had rather suffer for speaking the truth, than the truth should suffer for want of my speaking’. In order to allow the full glory of the king, who ‘is the sun’, to appear, Members must needs ‘labour to clear those clouds’ which obscure it. It availed nothing to have a clear fountain if the streams issuing from it were polluted.53Aston’s Diary, 4; Procs. 1640, 140-1, 213-4, 251-2; Sir Francis Seymor his honorable and worthy speech (1641), 1-2 (E.199.35).

Turning to particulars, Seymour singled out first abuses in religion. Seminary priests had been allowed to go about ‘with too much countenance’. The church was undermined from within by greedy non-resident clergy, by ignorant clergy – ‘dumb dogs’ – with no spiritual food to offer the people, and above all by those who preached ‘that the king hath an unlimited power and the subject no propriety in their goods’. These were ‘bad divines, and worse, and more ignorant statesmen, who under the name of puritans condemn all who truly profess religion’. Godliness could certainly ‘cloak impiety, but to teach that a man can be too holy is the doctrine of devils’.54Sir Francis Seymor his honorable and worthy speech, 3-4; Aston’s Diary, 5; Procs.1640, 107, 141-2, 214-5, 233-4, 252-3. Secondly, there were parallel abuses in the secular sphere. There were men who had ‘betrayed the king unto himself, and so committed worse treason than those who betray him to others’ by telling ‘him his prerogative is above all laws and that his subjects are but slaves’, so that ‘the king is neither preserved in honour, nor the commonwealth in safety’.55Sir Francis Seymor his honorable and worthy speech, 4; Procs. 1640, 142-3, 215; Aston’s Diary, 5. Members present on the day heard him specifically inveigh against Ship Money – the ‘intolerable’ conduct of sheriffs; the ‘rogues’ sent to collect (‘as grievous a plague as the task masters of Egypt’, according to one account) – although this was omitted from the truncated published version.56Procs. 1640, 143, 215, 245.

Seymour pursued these themes on subsequent days. Placed on the committees to peruse the Journals and other records of the House (17 Apr.) and to investigate the alleged violation of privilege on the last day of the last Parliament (18 Apr.), he affirmed (17 Apr.) that liberty of property and liberty of speech were equally important.57CJ ii. 4b, 6b; Aston’s Diary, 14. It was not a question of contradicting the authority of the king but of upholding the ‘constant practice’ of the House (20 Apr.).58Aston’s Diary, 20. Nominated to further committees to prepare material defending privileges and to marshal evidence against Ship Money (21, 23, 24, 27 Apr.), Seymour admitted on the 23rd to a dilemma.59CJ ii. 8b, 9a, 10a, 12a, 14a. Time was ‘precious’, yet while ‘duty’ and affection to the king drew him towards prioritising supply, the ‘trust’ reposed in him by ‘the country’ required redress of grievances. Trust might be placed in the king, but not necessarily in those about him, who might put ‘false glosses’ on any petition of right presented by Parliament. This much was agreed among those who recorded his remarks, but whether his conclusion at this point was that grievances should come before supply, or that Members should limit themselves to voicing a handful of the most important, or ‘that a supply and redress should go hand in hand’, differed according to the hearer.60Procs. 1640, 170, 200; Aston’s Diary, 38. As he revealed on the 27th, his involvement in several conferences with the Lords merely increased his discomfort. While the Commons were ‘every day rendered more incapable ... to despatch his Majesty’s business’, peers seemed to expect that MPs would do their bidding instead, the upper House taking all the credit and none of the blame for neglect of duty. Was not this in itself ‘an infringement of the liberties of the House’?61Procs. 1640, 180; Aston’s Diary, 72. However, further reflection on the practicalities of taxation appeared by 2 May to have stiffened his resolve. The ‘strait’ being ‘great’, ‘a mutual trust was best’ between king and subject: if Ship Money were abolished, the people would give.62Procs. 1640, 189, 207; Aston’s Diary, 108, 122. Although still troubled by the fact that a majority in the Lords had already voted subsidies, by the 4th he had settled further that, in order to satisfy the country, there was no alternative but to present a remonstrance of grievances to the king.63Procs. 1640, 195, 208; Aston’s Diary, 130.

In the meantime, on other subjects Seymour was less vocal – or his auditors less attentive – but he was not inactive. Nominated to the relatively uncontroversial committee considering a bill on apparel (21 Apr.) and to examine petitions about second elections (2 May), he was twice named to view the elusive commission granted to Convocation to promulgate (it seemed) what innovation it might (21, 22 Apr.).64CJ ii. 8a, 9b, 18b. On 1 May he made a fleetingly-recorded contribution to debate on whether to summon Dr William Beale, head of St John’s College, Cambridge, and a leading Arminian, to explain an allegedly inflammatory sermon.65Aston’s Diary, 114; ‘William Beale (d. 1651)’, Oxford DNB. Quite apart from the views expressed in his speech of 16 April, some idea of Seymour’s likely stance may be gleaned from the fact that it was he who was deputed on 23 April to invite Beale’s erstwhile St John’s rival, the moderate Calvinist Richard Holdsworth, to preach a fast sermon on the 30th. Now head of Emmanuel College, the seminary of puritanism, and a popular preacher from his London pulpit at St Peter le Poer, Holdsworth was to be highly critical of this Convocation; his advocacy, as the months went on, of ‘reduced episcopacy’ in the face of calls to abolish it altogether, may be a pointer to Seymour’s own thinking on the matter.66CJ ii. 9b; ‘Richard Holdsworth’, Oxford DNB.

On 5 June, a month after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, Seymour was once again named as a commissioner for oyer and terminer.67C181/5, f. 189. If this was a sign of royal favour designed to disarm criticism, it failed in its effect. Over the summer Seymour was associated with his brother Hertford and Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in the formulation by 12 dissenting peers of a petition representing grievances and seeking a treaty with the Scots and another Parliament; in September he accompanied them to the council called by the king at York.68CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 46, 69. There is no evidence that by the time he was returned on 23 October to sit again for Marlborough his opinions had altered.69C219/43/3, no. 13.

Named to the committee for privileges at the opening of the new Parliament, and doubtless jealous of its integrity, he was keen to ensure that none whose elections were questionable should be included (6 Nov.).70CJ ii. 20b; Procs. LP i. 21. Losing no time, the next day he launched into a recitation of some of the ‘great burdens’ under which the country was ‘groaning’. To ignore these would be ‘to betray our duty to the king, and our faith in the country and to impoverish the crown’. As before, he exonerated the ‘provident’ monarch, instead blaming his servants for allowing invasion by a foreign army, laxity in execution of laws against papists, ‘pride, covetousness and sloth’ in the church, and infringement of liberties. Parliament was ‘the great physician of the commonwealth’ and ‘seldom Parliaments and dissolution of them ... the cause of all mischief’. He thus endorsed a motion by John Hampden* that the Commons should send for privy councillors to account for their actions, while in his keenness to steer business he was noticed for whispering a nomination for a subcommittee on Ireland into the clerk’s ear.71Procs. LP i. 34, 38, 42, 43, 44. Placed (9 Nov.) on committees to discuss a fast day with the Lords and to prevent both the profanation of the sacrament and the sitting of papists in the House, he also moved to similarly disable projectors and monopolists.72CJ ii. 23b, 24a; Procs. LP i. 65, 68, 72. Among those deputed on 10 November to draft a declaration on the state of the kingdom and to confer with the Lords about a breach of its privilege, he meanwhile moved for a protestation against government ministers who had laid before the king false information about the last Parliament; if these included current Members (as he hoped it did not), they should be ordered to clear themselves.73CJ. ii. 25a, 25b; Procs. LP i. 80, 81, 84.

After these busy opening days, Seymour disappears from the Journal for nearly a fortnight, but he was still audible in the House. When on 11 November discussion turned to a popish plot, Seymour, probably appreciating the delicacy of investigating treachery at the heart of the court, advised caution: what security could the king have when a secretary of state [i.e. Sir Francis Windebanke] neglects advice?74Procs. LP i. 110. He was still exercised by the intractable problem of supply, where ‘we run upon a rock’ (13 Nov.), while he later proposed security for loans (21 Nov.).75Procs. LP i. 141, 228, 231, 235. He was reportedly among those who rejected the opinion (19 Nov.) that ‘poor commons’ should have a voice in the contested Great Marlow election.76Procs. LP i. 188.

Another clutch of nominations related to investigating grievances followed: the constables’ and earl marshal’s courts and of heralds’ fees (23 Nov.); exchequer proceedings related to illegal taxation (27 Nov.); longstanding mercantile complaints (2 Dec.); misdemeanours of county officeholders in collecting coat and conduct money and other levies (14 Dec.).77CJ ii. 34b, 38a, 43a, 50b. Placed (30 Nov.) like several other Wiltshire Members on the committee dealing with charges against Robert Hyde* and John George*, Seymour reported on the Salisbury petition against their MP Serjeant Hyde on 3 December, although lengthy debate proved inconclusive.78CJ ii. 39b, 44a; Procs. LP i. 435, 438, 443. The verdict he delivered on George two weeks later was immediately damning: he was ‘very guilty’ on many counts of ‘unjust oppressions’ related to his commission for Thames navigation.79Procs. LP i. 621. Appointed on 7 December to the committee to question the judges as to what lay behind their opinions on the legality of Ship Money, Seymour appeared to want proofs to be established before rushing to prosecution or presenting proposals to the Lords.80CJ ii. 46b; Northcote Note Bk. 38. According to an account the next day of his interview with Sir Richard Weston, this judge affirmed the king’s right to extend the writ for collection of the tax independently of Parliament of his own volition, although with the assistance of records supplied by the then lord chief justice and now lord keeper, John Finch†, Baron Finch.81Northcote Note Bk. 42; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 628. Later the diarist heard Seymour assert that Finch had said (playing with fire) that Ship Money ‘was binding till act of Parliament took it away’.82Northcote Note Bk. 43. It is unsurprising to find Seymour on his feet when Finch’s impeachment was discussed on the 15th, although his recorded remarks are opaque.83Northcote Note Bk. 85. Meanwhile he had his own scores to settle. On 11 December he complained of Sir Edward Bayntun’s part in his brush with the council over Ship Money in the summer of 1639, ‘pretending’ a warrant to distrain his property.84Procs. LP i. 569.

Seymour was also vigorous in pursuit of religious grievances. In debate on the newly-issued ecclesiastical Canons on 13 and 14 December he showed his unequivocal opposition to ‘a hollow-hearted synod’ which had endeavoured to thrust religion and all godly ministers out of the church’ and to the innovations of the Laudian establishment which, ‘in their professing to suppress popery ... have brought in crucifixes, images and themselves worshipped them’. His arguments, however, were more Erastian than Presbyterian. The king, who was ‘certainly the supreme head of the church’, had been ‘left out of [the] Canons, notwithstanding what [had] been said by Dr [John] Cosin to the contrary’. Undecided whether the Canons or their authors were ‘more grievous’ to the people, he proposed that the former ‘may be burnt by [the] hangman’, but was heard to desire rather the ‘reformation than ruin of [its] makers’.85Procs. LP i. 591, 598; Northcote Note Bk. 62, 72. Having been among those who moved that the Canons be declared void, on 16 December he was listed third, after John Pym* and Denzil Holles*, on the committee to prepare the resulting vote for transmission to the Lords and the related charges against Archbishop William Laud and others.86CJ ii. 52a.

Over the next few weeks Seymour was nominated to several other committees concerned with religious issues: the alleged violation of the statutes of Emmanuel College by the Arminian visitor (17 Dec.); the promotion of a preaching ministry (added, 19 Dec.); the execution of laws against priests and Jesuits (26 Jan. 1641); and the examination of Sir Kenelm Digby and others over their encouragement of recusant contributions to the military expedition against the Scots (28 Jan.).87CJ ii. 52a, 54b, 73a, 74b. In contrast, he had previously (23 Dec.) seemed keen that the clergy of the English church should not be excused subsidies towards the army.88Northcote Note Bk. 107. On 29 January he was added to the committee dealing with the case of William Piers, bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been impeached and imprisoned in the Tower for ecclesiastical and civil misdemeanours including his administration of Ship Money when sheriff of Somerset in 1637.89CJ ii. 75a. Seymour’s position on this may be surmised from his record but also from the fact that he was named on 5 February, with three others, to persuade the lord keeper and the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster to omit all clergy when the commissions of the peace were next renewed.90CJ ii. 79a. There is, on the other hand, no evidence of Seymour’s having principled objections to the episcopal order: his interventions on 8 and 9 February in debates on the root and branch and other petitions suggest that he was in favour of measured discussion of change.91Procs. LP ii. 391, 399. That his position dissatisfied some of his constituents was indicated on 15 February when John Glynne* accused Charles Gore, a Wiltshire magistrate, of disparaging one of Seymour’s speeches in the previous Parliament as ‘spoken to little purpose against the clergy’ and even ‘penned’ by ‘the parson of the parish’. But the criticism was pronounced ‘scandalous’ by Seymour’s colleagues in the House, and Gore was sent for to be disciplined as a delinquent.92Procs. LP ii. 452, 454; CJ ii. 86b.

It seems that many in the Commons still had confidence in Seymour. He had continued to collect committee nominations on weighty matters: investigation of breaches of privilege in 1620s Parliaments and proceedings against leading Members (18 Dec.); preparation of an act for annual Parliaments (30 Dec.); prioritisation of the business of the House (8 Jan.).93CJ ii. 53b, 60a, 65b. On 11 February he was chosen as a reporter of a conference with the Lords about a treaty with the Scots.94CJ ii. 83a. Four days later (as Gore’s accusation surfaced) he was one of the delegation chosen to attend the king to obtain royal assent to the act for the relief of the army and the northern counties and was also despatched to announce this to the Lords, as well as to encourage them to expedite an act for triennial Parliaments.95CJ ii. 85b, 86a.

But behind the scenes there must have been covert manoeuvring. On 30 November Seymour had been placed on the large committee of Members of differing viewpoints chosen to meet with the Lords to discuss the examination of witnesses with accusations against Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford.96CJ ii. 39b. Since in the summer of 1634 Seymour had written fulsomely to the lord deputy not only praising his ‘justice, noble and wise carriage in Ireland’, but also assuring him that ‘neither time, nor distance of place can ever make forget the noble favours I have formerly received from you’, by early 1641 he was conceivably feeling at least uncomfortable and more probably, if a close association had endured, alarmed at the likely outcome of Strafford’s impeachment.97Strafforde Letters, ii. 264. What followed may represent a reaction to the tragedy of a friend, or to popular unrest in London, or to the extremism of root and branch petitioners, or it may be the logical extension of his own rhetoric that the king needed only good counsel. On the king’s side, favour to Seymour was doubtless part of his wider strategy of neutralising his critics by bringing them into government.

On 17 February Seymour received his last nomination to a Commons committee – appropriately to work on the act for confirmation of grants made by the king to the queen.98CJ ii. 87b. On the 19th a patent was issued for his creation as Baron Seymour of Trowbridge and on the 20th he was summoned to the Lords.99C231/4, p, 428-9. He took his seat on the 22nd and four days later was restored to the Wiltshire commission of the peace.100HMC House of Lords n.s. xi. 253; C231/4, p, 431. Fellow Wiltshire Member Sir Edward Hungerford*, of a more Presbyterian piety, replaced him on the committee drawing up the Remonstrance (25 Feb.) and Charles Gore, having apologised to the House for any offensive words against Seymour, was discharged (27 Feb.).101CJ ii. 92b, 94a.

Made a privy councillor in August 1641, Seymour was not at first among its more regular attenders, but from 1642 he appears consistently loyal.102PC Reg. xii. 176, 177, 195, 196, 203, 207, 209. He signed the declaration issued from York on 13 June that the king had no intention of going to war upon Parliament, but having been made commissioners of array, by 18 July he and his brother Hertford were ‘every day’ expected in Marlborough to execute their commission.103Clarendon, History, ii. 186; Waylen, Hist. Marlborough, 156 Active in the royalist administration of Wiltshire during the wars, he was also one of the king’s commissioners at the Uxbridge peace negotiations and a key councillor at Oxford, where he was eventually made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.104Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 67-8, 101-3, 106, 109, 112, 152, 190, 243, 267, 387; Eg. 2978, ff. 143, 146, 156; PC Reg. xii. 215, 217, 219, 223-7, 229, 231-2; A. and O. Thereafter, once he had suffered sequestration, he appears to have lived a comfortable country life, adhering to his Calvinist faith and with only a brief detainment on suspicion of subversion, until 1660, when he was restored to his offices.105Waylen, Hist. Marlborough, 234-42; Aubrey, Wilts. Top. Collections ed. Jackson, 314; Wilts. RO, A160/1/2, pp. 181, 217, 263; HP Lords 1660-1715. His only son Charles Seymour*, who had sat for Great Bedwyn in the Short Parliament, was elected to the Cavalier Parliament for Wiltshire.106HP Commons 1660-1690. Lord Seymour died in July 1664 and was buried with his brother Hertford at Great Bedwyn.107Aubrey, Wilts. Top. Collections ed. Jackson, 378.