Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford, KG, GCH, PC (11 March 1777 – 1 March 1842), styled Viscount Beauchamp between 1793 and 1794 and Earl of Yarmouth between 1794 and 1822, of Ragley Hall in Warwickshire and of Sudbourne Hall in Suffolk, was a British Tory politician and art collector.
Assisted by his wife's great fortune,[9] Lord Hertford was a notable art collector, as were his son and illegitimate grandson. Much of his collection survives as the Wallace Collection in Hertford House, London, named after Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess.[10]
Maria Emilia Fagnani, miniature portrait by Richard Cosway, painted in 1791, at the age of twenty, and eight years before her wedding.[13]Wallace Collection.
On 18 May 1798 he married Maria Emilia Fagnani (1771-1856), known as "Mie-Mie",[14] reputedly the illegitimate daughter of William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensberry, by his mistress Costanza Brusati ("the Marchesa Fagnani"), the wife of Giacomo II Fagnani, IV marchese di Gerenzano (1740-1785), an Italian nobleman descended from the jurist Raffaele Fagnani (1552-1623), a resident of the Duchy of Milan.[15][circular reference] Queensbury was the eighth richest man in Britain and having never married, left much of his fortune to Maria,[16] his only offspring. This wealth enabled Hertford to establish his famous art collection, now represented by the Wallace Collection,[17]
named after his grandson Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet, the illegitimate son of the 4th Marquess. Sir Richard Wallace had a special fondness for his grandmother Mie-Mie, possibly as both suffered the stigma of illegitimacy,[18] and in his will the 4th Marquess mentions Sir Richard's kindness to his mother. Sir Richard Wallace erected a monument to his grandmother Maria Fagnani in Sudbourne Church, in the form of the stained glass east window, depicting Mary Magdalene, "the prostitute who washed Jesus’s feet with oil but was also the first person to witness the resurrection", seemingly "an intentional reference to Mie-Mie’s circumstances".[19] By Maria Fagnani he had three children:
Lord Henry Seymour-Conway (1805–1859), founder of the Jockey Club in Paris. He inherited much of his mother's wealth, and died unmarried in Paris, having bequeathed the residue of his income, about £36,000 per annum, to Paris hospitals. He was buried in his mother's vault in the Cemetery of Père-Lachaise,[20] also the burial place of his nephew Sir Richard Wallace.
Funeral hatchment of Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford, Sudbourne Church, Suffolk, showing his arms, circumscribed by the Garter, in alliance with and impaling Fagnani: Argent, an eagle displayed with two heads sable[21]
Death and succession
In Hertford's last years the mental instability which had afflicted several members of his family became noticeable[22] and he is said to have lived with a retinue of prostitutes. The diarist Charles Greville stated of him "there has been, so far as I know, no such example of undisguised debauchery" and described him as broken with infirmities and unable to speak due to paralysis of the tongue.[23] He died in March 1842, aged 64, and was succeeded by his eldest son Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford. The Marchioness of Hertford died in March 1856, aged 84.
Legacy
Lord Hertford was the prototype for the characters of the Marquess of Monmouth in Benjamin Disraeli's 1844 novel Coningsby and Lord Steyne in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1847–8 serialVanity Fair. Thackeray's illustration of the Marquis for issue 11 was considered to bear such a resemblance to Hertford that threat of prosecution for libel effectively suppressed its publication.[24]
^"Together with the Hertford family fortune, her money assured the family enormous wealth, a consideration which might have helped to smooth over the difficulties of her turbulent and socially unequal marriage to the future 3rd Marquess" (Wallace Collection website, catalogue entry re her miniature portrait by Cosway [1])
^François-René de Chateaubriand, Béatrix d' Andlau, Pierre Riberette, Correspondance générale: Volume 5 (Gallimard, 1986), page 540
^"The 3rd Marquess became the first great collector of the family. He acquired outstanding Dutch paintings, French furniture and Sèvres porcelain. His ambitious collecting was partly made possible by the enormous fortune that his wife brought into the family. Both George Augustus Selwyn and the 4th Duke of Queensbury left Maria Fagnani, known as Mie-Mie, their considerable fortunes because each man regarded her as his daughter. Together with the Hertford family fortune, her money assured the family enormous wealth, a consideration which might have helped to smooth over the difficulties of her turbulent and socially unequal marriage to the future 3rd Marquess." (Wallace Collection website, catalogue entry re her miniature portrait by Cosway [4])
^Fairweather; "Although Sudbourne was a Hertford domain for 120 years she is the only member of the Hertford family commemorated in Sudbourne Church – the rest are in the chapel of the family’s principal residence at Ragley Hall"
^Peter G. Summers, Hatchments in Britain, Vol.2, Norfolk and Suffolk, 1976, p.130; the correct arms of Fagnani are Azure, an eagle displayed argent (see [5])
^Hyde, Montgomery The Strange Death of Lord Castlereagh William Heinemann 1959 p.157
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