SEYS, Evan (c.1604-85), of Boverton, Llantwit Major, Glam.

The Seys family were settled at Boverton, near Llantwit Major by the 1570s, when this Member’s grandfather, Roger Seys (d. 1599), attorney-general to the council in Wales and the marches under Elizabeth I, married into the family of Voss, descended from the Welsh prince, Hywel Fawr.29Limbus Patrum, 218, 219, 224, 469. Roger Seys was responsible for the building of Boverton Place, an impressive mansion. His heir Richard, a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, also married into a prominent Glamorgan family and an assault on his pregnant wife outside Llantwit Major church in 1597 instigated by Edmund Van, esquire, of Llantwit was a signal to the world at large that local dominance was changing hands.30Arch. Cambr. 5th ser. vii. 100-3; RCAHMW, Glam. IV pt. 1, The Greater Houses (Cardiff, 1981), 126. Richard Seys acquired legal office himself, as attorney-general of Glamorgan, but by the time he came to make his will, in 1638, aged 82, he had come to prefer a house at Swansea over Boverton.31PROB11/180, f. 164. It was for physical violence to his mother that Richard Seys disinherited his heir Roger, who went abroad, returned as a Jesuit priest, and apparently became an itinerant puritan preacher, and schoolmaster at St Fagans, before being eventually transfigured as vicar of Llangyfelach.32Jenkins, The Making of a Ruling Class: The Glam. Gentry 1640-1790 (Cambridge, 1983), 261.

Evan, the heir substitute, was already established in the legal profession when he succeeded to Boverton. After Cowbridge grammar school (where he had delivered himself of an outstanding Latin oration) and Christ Church, Oxford, he had followed his father to Lincoln’s Inn, and two years after being called to the bar, was tasked with surveying the library collection there.33Arch. Cambr. new ser. v, 182; LI Black Bks. ii. 309. In January 1635, he succeeded his father as attorney-general for Glamorgan, the third generation of his family to hold legal office under the crown. A significant portion of the Seys estate was held of the Herbert earls of Pembroke, and Evan Seys’s father acknowledged his fealty to his ‘noble lord and master’, Philip Herbert*, the 4th earl. These loyalties ran deep, and would later prove significant in Seys’s political orientation. In July 1638, Evan Seys married Dorothy Bridges of Woodchester, near Stroud, Gloucestershire, at the same time as his father drew up his will, a document which confirmed Evan as ‘assured and trusted’ to administer its exacting provisions. 34PROB11/180, f. 164. Seys was heir to lands in 19 Glamorgan parishes, from the east of the county to the west.35Glam. Archives, D/DF D/690.

It is clear that much of Seys’s time before the civil war was spent at Lincoln’s Inn as a practising lawyer, so that his sole local government appointment was in connection with the Thames. It was from Lincoln’s Inn that he wrote newsletters in 1642 to his father-in-law in Gloucestershire about parliamentary matters, including a report in February of how a Warwickshire petition had displaced in the Commons timetable a Gloucestershire one in favour of bishops.36Glam. Archives, D/DF F/241. In late April and early May he was at Gloucester, reporting on the expected arrival of William Morton* and on events in Ireland and Hull.37D/DF F/242, 244. Seys’s political views at this point are impossible to judge; neither he nor his father-in-law was active on either side in the civil war. Although he was named as a tax commissioner for Parliament in Gloucestershire in August 1643, he was required by the king in April 1644 to hold an inquest on John Carne of Ewenni, Glamorgan, and he obeyed without demur.38A. and O.; NLW, Penrice and Margam 1866, 3151. What seems to have shifted him from a cautious compliance to authority into more open support for Parliament in Glamorgan was the active management of activists such as Pembroke’s agent, Michael Oldisworth*, and Philip Jones*, whose strategy was at least in part to call upon the loyalties of families long associated with the Herbert interest. From November 1645 Seys was one of Parliament’s dependables in Glamorgan, serving on the significant commissions for the militia and the assessment. He was in Cardiff in January 1646, writing with Philip Jones and the newly won-over Bussy Mansell* to Rowland Laugharne† on political developments in south-east Wales, but he quickly faded into the background.39Bodl. Nalson V, f. 231.

Although his father was, to judge from his will, strongly Calvinist in religion, it is impossible to determine Evan Seys’s own religious persuasions, and he was not named to the commission for propagating the gospel in Wales or any other government dispensation for the church. He is often said to have become a serjeant-at-law in 1649, but this is an error.40Williams, Hist. Gt Sessions in Wales, 100. He was certainly by this time a prominent lawyer who became a bencher of his inn in 1648, and in the 1650s became the curator of Lincoln’s Inn’s records, working with William Prynne* on the collection of evidences.41LI Black Bks. ii. 379, 409, 410, 412. He retained his legal office of attorney-general in Glamorgan throughout the 1640s and 50s. He was also an active legal counsellor to individuals in the service of the state, such as his relative by marriage, John Byrd, the customs collector in the port of Cardiff.42Letter-Bk. of John Byrd ed. S. K. Roberts (S. Wales Rec. Soc. xiv), 13. When he did find himself admitted to the order of serjeant, in November 1656, his sponsors were Philip Jones and John Disbrowe*, high-ranking protectorians who were also prominent in the two counties in which Seys enjoyed an interest, Glamorgan and Gloucestershire.43Baker, Serjeants at Law, 442. His inclusion among the commissioners for the safety of the protector in the same month as his appointment as serjeant is further proof of his closeness to government at that point. On the other hand, his copying out the Tudor ordinances of the town of Neath in 1658, which has been taken to suggest that he may have been exploring a remodelling of charters in the interest of the Cromwellians, remains open to interpretation, as no further corroborative evidence on the matter has been found.44NLW, Penlle’rgaer B, parcel 16/1; Jenkins, Making of a Ruling Class, 111. By May 1656 he owned the manor of Cadoxton-juxta-Neath, with the ruins of Neath abbey, and may simply have taken an antiquarian interest in his possessions.45NLW, Dynevor A36, Penrice and Margam 3756. In 1658, he became a judge in north Wales, in which capacity he walked in the funeral procession of Oliver Cromwell*.46Williams, Hist. Gt Sessions in Wales, 100; Burton’s Diary, ii. 525. On 19 November 1658, the corporation of Gloucester chose Seys to deliver its loyal address to Richard Cromwell*.47Glos. RO, GBR B3/3, p. 86. He had been a retained counsel there since at least 1649, and in 1656 had joined a city committee on how best to conserve the cathedral fabric.48Glos. RO, GBR B3/2, p. 878.

Seys was returned for Glamorgan to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, probably on his own interest and with the approval of the government. On 28 January 1659 he was named to the committee for elections, and on 5 February to the committee on supplying godly ministers in Wales. This was a veiled attempt to rake over the coals of the propagation commission of the early 1650s, and Seys was named as co-chairman with Edward Freeman, a Presbyterian and a fierce critic of Philip Jones.49CJ vii. 594b, 600b. Seys took the chair on at least four occasions (8 Feb., 19 Mar., 1 and 15 Apr.), thus probably helping weaken the assault on Jones, though he was also under pressure from the commonwealthsmen led by Sir Arthur Hesilrige.50Burton’s Diary, iii. 152, iv. 202, 327, 439. Seys was also named to committees on Scottish and Irish affairs (1 Apr.).51CJ vii. 623a,b. His legal skills were doubtless what recommended him for inclusion in the committees on the case of Sir William Dick (13 Apr.) and on the same day the committee to draw up a declaration after the long debates on the petitions of the excise farmers.52CJ vii. 637b, 639a. He was evidently a realist and a supporter of the government on the need to continue the tax by whatever means.53Burton’s Diary, iv. 435. On An early intervention of his in this Parliament was on the disputed election case of Henry Neville* (1 Feb.), in which Seys spoke to clarify the position of the judges, though he was counsel for the sheriff being sued by Neville.54Burton’s Diary, iii. 20, 52, 53n. In the debate on the budget for the armed forces (3 Feb.), he took the government line in cautioning against making the estimates and military preparations public.55Burton’s Diary, iii. 63. He showed impatience on 10 February with the endless wrangles over recognition of the lord protector, to the point of earning the disapproval of Thomas Burton* for his use of improper terms such as ‘folly’, but argued for a tolerant line in the case of Edmund Jones*, an appointee of Philip Jones to the position of attorney-general for south Wales. Seys supported John Whalley in calling for Edmund Jones, who had replaced Edward Freeman in his in legal post, to be given a chance to clear himself of allegations of royalist delinquency. Seys may have been moved by his own rivalry with Freeman at the committee on the Welsh church, but even so could not resist a sneer at Jones’s modest estate: ‘He rides into six counties, and has not twenty nobles per annum’.56Burton’s Diary, iii. 197, 240-1.

When the issue of the extent of the protector’s veto over legislation was raised, Seys linked it with the question of the validity of the Other House (18 Feb.), a recipe for further obfuscation. Three days later, he was among the last of the speakers in the debate over what to do with the imprisoned 2nd duke of Buckingham, and suggested that to discover the cause of his detention might enable Members to determine his future treatment.57Burton’s Diary, iii. 342, 375. In the context of possible English military involvement in the Baltic, Seys spoke in favour of the lord protector enjoying authority over the armed forces with the consent of Parliament, with no right to declare war without parliamentary consent, a dispensation more favourable to the executive than that proposed by the republicans.58Burton’s Diary, iii. 497. He doubted the validity of prosecuting a Fifth Monarchist on the basis of breaking the code of a cipher taken with him, although he was willing to concede that the executive had sufficient grounds for detaining him (26 Feb.).59Burton’s Diary, iii. 497. Seys supported his fellow members of the privileges committee in their judgment on the New Maldon election (7 Mar.) and the right of the Scots MPs to continue to sit (11 Mar.), recalling philosophically how ‘the divine, on the fast-day, told us, if we were always planting a tree, it would never grow’. In taking the side of the Scots MPs, he clashed with his fellow serjeant and judge John Wylde; and he went on to call for a decisive vote on the similar case of Irish Members (22 Mar.).60Burton’s Diary, iv. 43, 131-2, 225. He was impatient with the debate on the ceremonies and procedures to be adopted in corresponding with the Other House.61Burton’s Diary, iv. 358. None of his speeches was anything more than a short intervention, almost always in support of the Cromwellian government.

When the Rump was restored, Seys was promoted to be chief justice in north Wales (14 Mar. 1660), suggesting that he was seen as enjoying some independence from Philip Jones’s group of associates, whose political stock had fallen with the demise of the protectorate.62CJ vii. 876a. With the restoration of the king, he lost that office, but he was able to pass on his long-held patent on the office of attorney-general in Glamorgan to his son, and his serjeantcy was confirmed on 21 June 1660.63Williams, Hist. Gt Sessions in Wales, 154. He was made a burgess at Gloucester in order to facilitate his election to the Cavalier Parliament for the city, but chose to resign from the recordership there, which he had held since November 1660, ahead of the visit of the commissioners for corporations. The city declared itself reluctant to accept his resignation, and he was returned as Member there for two later Parliaments.64Glos. RO, GBR B3/4, p. 218. In the Cavalier Parliament he largely followed the same path he had adopted in 1659, speaking mainly on legal points, but in 1673 spoke out strongly against the Declaration of Indulgence as an encroachment on parliamentary privilege. By the mid-1670s he was evidently an associate of the opposition to the crown.65HP Commons 1660-90. He continued to expand his land holdings in Glamorgan, benefiting from the decision of Philip Herbert*, 5th earl of Pembroke to divest himself of estates there.66Jenkins, Making of a Ruling Class, 123-4. He retained his local standing until 1680 when he was a victim of the duke of Beaufort’s purge, which also cost him his seat in the following year. His granddaughter married a lord chancellor, Peter King†, but within a century Boverton passed by marriage to the descendants of Philip Jones. Seys died at Lincoln’s Inn on 19 Feb. 1685. A contemporary opined that he ‘left this world with great reputation and honour’.67Morrice, Entring Bk. ii. 513.