A fine and private place; Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset (1775-1855) Kensal Green Cemetery

The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace

Andrew Marvell – ‘To his coy mistress’

Andrew Marvell was wrong; the graffiti on the interior rear wall of the now bricked up mausoleum of the Duke of Somerset in Kensal Green quite definitely states that someone, possibly with the initials LL, “fucked here July 2000”.  A cold stone floor, in the blackened inhospitable interior of a drafty mausoleum, doesn’t strike me as a fine place to embrace but LL is clearly made of sterner stuff than I am. The late Duke and Duchess almost certainly never imagined that they would be sharing their final resting place with rutting teenagers. Luckily their coffins lie in a vault below the mausoleum, safe from prying eyes and sacrilegious fingers. Most of the recent Duke of Somerset (by recent I mean since the late 17th century) are buried in the parish church of Maiden Bradley in Wiltshire, close to the ancestral home. But Edward Adolphus, the 11th Duke chose to build this relatively modest mausoleum in Kensal Green Cemetery and to be buried away from his relatives. His descendants seem unconcerned with the poor state of repair of their ancestors grave. The door has long gone, the doorway bricked up, and the interior thoroughly vandalised.  The far wall once carried two shield-shaped marble slabs with the names and titles of the 11th Duke and his second wife surmounted by a ducal coronet and family crest; one of the marble slabs is now completely missing.  

Edward Adolphus Seymour was born on 24 February 1775 at Monckton Farley in Wiltshire; he was the third son of the tenth duke but both of his elder brothers predeceased him. He succeeded to the peerage on the death of his father in 1793. His mother was Anna Maria Bonnell, daughter and heir of John Bonnell of Stanton-Harcourt in Oxfordshire. His maternal grandfather had been a successful London merchant and no doubt the marriage between the 10th Duke and the commoner had brought a welcome injection of cash into the ducal family as well as freshening up the stale genetic lineage. Certainly Edward Adolphus developed an intellectual bent that was hitherto unknown in the Seymour family. He was educated at Eton and was created M.A. at Oxford on 2 July 1794. According to Edward Irving Carlyle in the 1927 D.N.B. “from an early age he devoted himself to science and mathematics, displaying genuine aptitude for both studies. He was equally well versed in historical and antiquarian knowledge.” He was a fellow of the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, the Linnean Society, and a member of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was vice-president of the Zoological Society and president of the Royal Institution, the Royal Literary Fund, and the Linnean Society. In 1820 he was elected president of the Astronomical Society but resigned the position after just a few days in post at the request of his friend Sir Joseph Banks who felt that astronomical phenomenon should be in the sole remit of the Royal Society. He was bearer of the orb at the coronation of William IV in 1831 and of Victoria in 1838 and was made a knight of the Garter in 1837. He was the author of two books on Mathematics, ‘The Elementary Properties of the Ellipse deduced from the Properties of the Circle,’ (1842) and ‘Alternate Circles and their Connexion with the Ellipse,’ (1850). 

According to Fisher and Jenkins in The History of Parliament Edward Adolphus was “credited with ‘great amiability of temper and gentleness of manners’, he was reputedly henpecked by his Scottish wife, who carried domestic penny-pinching to ‘a very extraordinary length’.” When he was 25 the Duke fell in love with Lady Susan Hamilton, the daughter of the 9th Duke of Hamilton but Lady Susan’s rather formidable older sister Lady Charlotte took a shine to the diffident Edward and somehow coaxed him into proposing to her instead. Charlotte was three years older than her husband and was perhaps, at the age of 28, starting to worry that she had been left of the shelf. On their marriage in 1800 Charlotte brought cartloads of heirlooms from the Hamilton estate (including several Rembrandts, Rubens and Van Dycks, and much more), not always it seems with the agreement of the family. Thomas Creevy called her “a false devil” who robbed her elder brother of his birthright. She had a reputation of being mean, the artist Joseph Farington records in his diary, her dinner table as being “nothing but a leg of mutton at the top and a dish of potatoes at the bottom”. Charlotte died on 10th June 1827, a fortnight before what would have been their 27th wedding anniversary.  Whatever tensions there were in the marriage did not stop the couple producing children – they had seven. Charlotte died just two weeks shy of what would have been their 27th wedding anniversary in 1827. Edward did eventually marry again, but not until 1836 when he was 61 and his bride, Margaret Shaw-Stewart, was 30 years his junior.  

The burial plot and the mausoleum were acquired and built before the death of the Duke. It was sitting empty when the Duke offered it to the heirs of Lord Raglan, the commander of the British army in the ill-fated Crimean War, in 1855 when the general unexpectedly died of dysentery at Sevastopol. On 21 July 1855 the Longford Journal was confidently reporting;  

THE LATE LORD RAGLAN. Arrangements have been made for the reception of the late Lord Raglan, whose remains are expected to arrive in this country about the 24th instant, from the Crimea. They will be sent from Southampton on a special train of the South Western Railway, to his residence, No 5. Great Stanhope-street, London, and will be finally deposited in the mausoleum of his Grace the Duke of Somerset, All Souls’ Cemetery, Kensal-green, Harrow-road. The funeral will be as private as circumstances will permit.

Edward Adolphus Seymour, 11th Duke of Somerset

Lord Raglan was not buried at Kensal Green but close to the family home at Badminton in Gloucestershire. The Duke himself died at his home. Somerset House in Park Lane on the 15th August 1855 at the age of 80. The Morning Post reported on his funeral on the 24th:

FUNERAL OF THE DUKE OF SOMERSET Yesterday the mortal remains of the Duke of Somerset were consigned to the tomb. The funeral procession left Park-lane at 11 o'clock for the cemetery at Kensal- green, the mournful cortege, preceded by the customary attendants, consisting of a hearse and six horses and six mourning coaches, escorted by pages. The mourners were Lord Seymour, grandson of the late duke, Lord Archibald St. Maur, Lord Algernon St. Maur, and the Rev. Mr. Howarth (rector of St. George's, Hanover-square), be- ing in the first coach; Mr. Blount and Mr. Tollemache, sons-in-law of the deceased; Mr. J. Osborne, Lord Glenelg, Hon. Colonel Bruce, Mr. Stewart Nicholson, Mr. Currie, Mr. J. Festings, &c. The remaining coaches were occupied by the chief members of the late duke's household. In compliance with the wishes of the duke, the funeral was conducted on a very unostentatious scale — the armorial bearings on the hearse and the bearer of the ducal coronet being dispensed with on the occasion. The funeral procession reached the cemetery shortly before 12 o'clock, and the body was borne to the chapel, when the solemn service was commenced by the Rev. Mr. Howarth. After the ordinary prayers, the body was conveyed to the mausoleum, situate at the north- western corner of the grounds, where the burial service was concluded at about half-past 12 o'clock. It may be as well to add that the present duke is on a cruise with Mr. Bentinck, M.P., on board the Dream yacht, in the North Sea, and, it is feared, is still uninformed of his father's death, which will account for his absence at the funeral. His grace's eldest son was consequently the chief mourner.

His widow died at the age of 75 in 1880. This account of her funeral is from the London Daily Chronicle of 23 July 1880;

The remains of the Duchess (Margaret) of Somerset were laid to rest yesterday side by side with these of her husband, the late Duke of Somerset, in Kensal-green Cemetery. The mausoleum, which is situate in that portion of the grounds known as the General Cemetery, was yesterday opened for the first time since the interment of the late duke, now a quarter of a century ago. Facing the iron-grated entrance to the vault there are let into the wall two shield-shaped marble slabs, one of which bears the name and titles of Edward Adolphus St Maur, Duke of ‘Somerset, who died August 15, 1855; and the other the name of Margaret, Duchess of Somerset, his wife with a space left for the date of her death. At the foot of the latter shield is the passage from the Book of Ruth, “Where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.” The whole is surmounted by the ducal coronet and family crest. At half-past twelve the funeral cortege which consisted of the hearse, drawn by four horses, five mourning carriages, followed by the family coach and several private carriages, moved away from the residence of the deceased duchess, Somerset House, Park-lane, and took its way along Bayswater-road and Westbourne terrace to Kensal Green, which was reached at the appointed time. Here the coffin, the outer casing of which was of polished oak with brass handles and coronets, and having on its breast a plate bearing the plain inscription, “Margaret, widow of Edward Adolphus, 11th Duke of Somerset, died July 18, 1880," was borne into the chapel, where, as at the grave, the funeral service was read by the chaplain, the Rev. H. C. Johnstone, M.A. From the chapel to the mausoleum a procession was formed, in which the chief mourners were Lord Algernon St Maur, the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, Admiral Sir William Houston Stuart, Mr. Tollemache, Mr, Percy St. Maur, Mr. Ernest St. Maur, Sir Herbert Maxwell, Sir John Heron Maxwell, Colonel Alexander, Mr. J. A. Shaw Stewart, Mr. Collyer Bristow, and Mr. Edward Ross. Some flowers were placed upon the coffin as it was lowered into the vault.