Families Klein, Ree, de Breed en de Vries van Terschelling » George Hamilton Seymour (1797-1880)

Personal data George Hamilton Seymour 

• He was born on September 21, 1797 in Harrow, Middlesex, England.
• He died on February 2, 1880 in 10 Grosvenor Cres., London, England, he was 82 years old.
• He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
• A child of George Seymour and Isabella Hamilton

Household of George Hamilton Seymour

He is married to GERTRUDE BRAND TREVOR.

They got married in the year 1831, he was 33 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Augusta Emily Seymour  1835-1911 
2. Arthur Henry Seymour  1838-1910
3. Leopold Richard Seymour  1841-1904
4. Alfred Seymour  1843-1897
5. George Evelyn Seymour  1848-1884 
6. Isabella Seymour  ????-1925
7. Gertrude Frances Seymour  ????-1909

Notes about George Hamilton Seymour

He was intended at first for the navy but was then sent to Eton College and, in March 1813, appointed a Gentleman Usher Daily Waiter to George III. He became a postmaster (award holder) at Merton College, Oxford, and graduated BA in 1818, proceeding MA in 1823. He had already, in March 1817, been appointed an attaché to the British legation at The Hague. From then on his whole career was spent in diplomacy. In December 1819, he became assistant précis writer to the foreign secretary, Lord Castlereagh, précis writer in January 1821, and Castlereagh's private secretary in January 1822. He was with Castlereagh shortly before the latter's suicide in August 1822. In October 1822 he was attached to the Duke of Wellington's special mission to Verona. He became secretary of legation at Frankfurt am Main on 18 August 1823 and was transferred on 6 September 1826 to Stuttgart, on 28 December 1827 to Berlin, and on 30 July 1829 to Constantinople.

On 13 November 1830, Seymour was appointed minister-resident at Florence. In 1831 he was sent on an (unsuccessful) special mission to Rome, where Britain had no regular representation at this time, to try to persuade Pope Gregory XVI to take a conciliatory line towards the rebels of 1830–31 and guarantee certain civil rights. On 21 July 1831, he married Gertrude Brand (d. 1883), third daughter of Henry Trevor, 21st Baron Dacre; they had four sons and three daughters. On 27 November 1835, he was appointed envoy-extraordinary and minister-plenipotentiary to the Belgian court, where he took part in the negotiations by which the independence of Belgium was finally secured. On 10 December 1846, he was moved to Lisbon in the same capacity, and he represented the British government through the greater part of the period of insurrection, when the British power supported the Portuguese crown.

In 1850, Seymour gave evidence to the select committee on official salaries and gained some notoriety when he replied to a question, 'Certainly I consider that giving dinners is an essential part of diplomacy...I have no idea of a man being a good diplomat who does not give good dinners'. The same year Palmerston wished to send him to Berlin, but Queen Victoria wanted Berlin for Lord Bloomfield and in April 1851, Seymour went to St Petersburg instead. He is best known for the 'Seymour conversations' with Nicholas I of Russia in January–February 1853. The Tsar, encouraged by the formation of the Aberdeen coalition in Britain, reopened the question of contingency planning if the Ottoman Empire should collapse, which he had discussed with Lord Aberdeen and the then prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, when he visited London in 1844. The conversations were subsequently leaked in the St Petersburg Gazette and The Times and contributed to the British belief that the Tsar was actively plotting the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Seymour was recalled in February 1854, just before Britain's entry into the Crimean War. He was pensioned in October 1854 but was recalled to go as envoy-extraordinary to Vienna in November 1855 to participate in the international discussions which led eventually to the end of the Crimean War and the Treaty of Paris of 1856. He finally retired in April 1858.

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Timeline George Hamilton Seymour

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