DUKEDOM OF SOMERSET

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 July 1931, Page 2

DUKEDOM OF SOMERSET

LONG BATTLE FOR RIGHTS. In the history of the British peerage there are few pages which contain more romance and tragedy than those which relate to the Duke of Somerset, who died last month at his home at Maiden Bradley, aged 70 years. The late Duke only established his claim to the title after a long-drawn-out battle before the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords. There were three claimants to the title —the late Duke, Brigadier-General Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour, of Lymington, Hampshire—the Marquis of Hertford, and Mr Henry Sydney Seymour of Hayne, Devonshire. The whole point of contention revolved round the marriage in 1787 of Colonel Francis Compton Seymour and Leonora Hudson, formerly the wife of a sailor named John Hudson. When Colonel Seymour was returning home one night through Lincoln’s Inn Fields he saw a young woman struggling with two men, and went to her assistance. The ruffians attacked him with knives, but he was able to beat them off with his loaded stick and rescue the girl from their clutches. A year later Colonel Seymour met the girl again and learned that one of the ruffians was really her husband. But since her first meeting with the colonel, she added, her husband was presumed to have died at sea. John Hudson was the husband’s name. Later that year—in 1787—the colonel married her. They were very happy until one day his wife told him she had just seen, near the house, the husband she believed to be dead. But no trace of the man Hudson could be found.

Opponents of Sir Edward Symour’s claim to the title contended that this romantic marriage was really illegal, because, they said,' Leonora’s first husband was alive when the wedding took place. They also alleged that Hudson, who was reported to have died in Calcutta in 1786, did not in fact, die until 1791, four years after the wedding ceremony of Leonora and Colonel Seymour. During the hearing of the case records in the British Museum were searched for evidence. The books of the East India Company and the log of Manship, the vessel in which John Hudson sailed to Calcutta in 1786, were also examined. Though there was a record of John Hudson’s death at Calcutta in the ledgei* of the ship, there was no such record in the log. Lord Sumner, in announcing the decision of the Committee of Privi--1 leges, said that Sir Edward Hamilton Seymour had established his claim to the title and dignity of the Duke of Somerset. He dealt exhaustively with the eighteenth-century marriage story. Round the prosaic scenario of a sailor with a common name dying in India, and of a widow who on hearing of her bereavement claimed his wages, and consoled herself with a soldier, three or four plausible romances could be built up, all with contradictory conclusions, but they would still all be works of imagination. Nothing, in his opinion, shook the evidence of John Hudson’s death in 1786. The Dukedom of Somerset is the second earliest creation in the British peerage, precedence being taken by the' Duke of Norfolk alone. The first holder of the title was Lord Treasurer and Earl Marshal and the Brother of the Jane Seymour who became the third wife of King Henry VIII.