Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (1699-1754)

Frances Seymour, Duchess of Somerset (10 May, 1699–7 July, 1754) was a British peeress, poet and letter writer, known as the "Countess of Hertford" from 1715 to 1748.Cokayne et al, "The Complete Peerage", volume XII/2, p.585]

Family

Born Frances Thynne, probably at Longleat, she was the eldest child and coheir of Hon. Henry Thynne, himself the youngest son of Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth. Her early upbringing was at Longleat, where she became friendly with the poets, Elizabeth Singer (later Rowe) and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, her great-aunt. After her father's death in 1708, Frances and her mother moved to Leweston, the home of the latter's father, Sir George Strode.

On 5 July, 1715, Frances married the soldier and courtier, Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the eldest son and heir of Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset and his wife, Elizabeth, who hated Frances.Cokayne et al, "The Complete Peerage", volume II, p.174] The couple had two children:

*Lady Elizabeth, later 2nd Baroness Percy (1716-1776), married Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland.Cokayne et al, "The Complete Peerage", volume II, p.174]
*George, styled Viscount Beauchamp (1725-1744)Cokayne et al, "The Complete Peerage", volume II, p.174]

Lord and Lady Hertford then made their home at a house in Marlborough, constructed by the duke, which the earl completed and the countess improved the landscape. They also had a country retreat at St Leonard's Hill, near Windsor, which was given up in 1739 when they acquired Richings, near Colnbrook and renamed it Percy Lodge, adorning it with a hexagon, a hermitage, and a bungalow in the Indian style. They also had a town house in Dover Street, Mayfair until 1721 and Grosvenor Street thereafter. In 1723, Lady Hertford was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber to Caroline, Princess Wales (later Queen Caroline).

Literary works and patronage

In 1725, two short poems by Lady Hertford, based on the story of Inkle and Yarico, were published anonymously in "A New Miscellany...Written Chiefly by Persons of Quality" and Isaac Watts published four short poems by her in 1734, in his "Reliquiae juveniles", under the pen name "Eusebia". ["Memoirs of the Rev. Isaac Watts, D.D.", ed. T. Gibbons (1780), 364–402] She also wrote many lively letters to Watts, Rowe, her family and other friends, including Henrietta Knight, Baroness Luxborough and Henrietta Fermor, Countess of Pomfret. ["Correspondence between Frances, countess of Hartford (afterwards duchess of Somerset) and Henrietta Louisa, countess of Pomfret, between the years 1738 and 1741", ed. W. Bingley, 3 vols. (1805)] The letters contain such topics as literature, religion, court gossip, family and rural life, a few of which appeared in Rowe's "Miscellaneous Works" in 1739.

Lady Hertford was also patron of poets, including Watts, Rowe, Laurence Eusden, John Dyer, Stephen Duck, William Shenstone and James Thomson. Samuel Johnson asserted that Thomson, on his first visit to Marlborough, 'took more delight in carousing with lord Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship's poetical operations, and therefore never received another summons' [S. Johnson, "Lives of the English poets", ed. G. B. Hill, new edition, 3 vols. (1905), vol. 2, p. 352; vol. 3, p. 287] , but the countess did in fact invite Thomson to Marlborough again and also secured a Royal Pardon, via Queen Caroline, for the poet Richard Savage, a friend of Thomson's who had been convicted of murder. [Samuel Johnson, [http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/savage.html "The Life of Savage", 1744] ]

Death and legacy

A lifelong Evangelical Christian, Rowe's posthumous "Devout Exercises of the Heart" (with a preface by Watts) was dedicated to Lady Hertford. According to Walpole, the countess interested herself in spiritualism (influenced by Rowe's "Friendship in Death") after the death of her only son, of smallpox on his Grand Tour in Bologna, in 1744. [The Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence, ed. W. S.Lewis and others, 48 vols.(1937–83), 17.345–6; 18.522; 20.183; 32.283; 35.179] Other religious friends included Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon and Catherine Talbot.

Upon her father-in-law's death in 1748 and her husband's subsequent accession to the dukedom of Somerset, Lady Hertford became Duchess of Somerset. After her husband's death in 1750, she lived her last years at Percy Lodge and died there on 7 July, 1754 and was buried with her son and husband in Westminster Abbey on 20 July. [J. L. Chester, ed., "The marriage, baptismal, and burial registers of the collegiate church or abbey of St Peter, Westminster", Harleian Society, 10 (1876), 368, 377, 387]

Notes and references

*James Sambrook, "Seymour , Frances, duchess of Somerset (1699–1754)", [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/53787 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography] , accessed 26 October, 2007