bail taken, no crime or accusation
produced, makes me sigh when I remember the liberty due to a freeborn
subject in England'; and the thrust is followed by a threat: 'If this
request be denied, I have found a way to be even with them; for, if not
granted, I intend to send up my wife.... And I pray advise the Council
of State from me, in relation to their own quiet, let them grant my
request rather than be punished with her importunity.'

The Council were evidently impressed by Colonel Seymour's wisdom, for
two months later they granted him a pass to return home. His liberty
was, however, very much clipped, and rather more than two years later
the following 'parole' was exacted of him: 'Undertaking to remain at the
dwelling-house of Mr Holt in Exeter, and when required to deliver
himself a prisoner to Captain Unton Crooke.' _Signed._

Sir Edward Seymour died in 1659, and Colonel Seymour, now Sir Edward,
became a member of Parliament a year or so later. His letters to Lady
Seymour from London are amusing from their variety of news and gossip.
Sir Edward's style was terse, not to say jerky. One letter he begins by
bitter complaints of their 'most undutiful son,' his 'obstinacy' and
'untowardness,' and then passes on to speak of his own imminent return.
Then: 'I was this day sennight, which was the last Saturday, upon the
scaffold, where I saw Sir Henry Vane's head severed from his
shoulders.... The Queen perfectly recovered. Cherries are cried here in
the streets for a penny a pound.'

Sir Edward received scanty reward for all his sacrifices, but he was
reappointed Governor of Dartmouth, and in 1679 his son writes to tell
him that he had been 'pricked Sheriff for the County of Devon ... by the
King with all the kindness imaginable,' and an assurance that if Sir
Edward felt the work too much for him, a subordinate should be found and
the 'chargeable part' made easy. The Earl of Bath wrote by the same
post: 'His Majesty declared in Council that he made choice of you, not
only because you were the best man of your county, but also a person on
whom he could by long experience place his greatest confidence.'

Sir Edward died in the winter of 1688, and his son became the fifth Sir
Edward Seymour of Berry Pomeroy in succession.

The new Sir Edward was a very distinguished man, who in 1672 had been
unanimously chosen Speaker of the House of Commons. He was the Seymour
whose influence Lord Macaulay rated so highly, and whose su