Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "SEYMOUR, Anne (nee PORTMAN) (d.1695) Two autograph letters [Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devon. Circa 1671]. Two Autograph Letters signed to Sir Robert Clayton, banker and politician, together 2½ pages and address panels, folio, folds, slightly browned. ¶ The three main characters involved in this pair of imploring letters are their author, Anne Seymour; their recipient, Sir Robert Clayton; and Anne’s alleged (and allegedly delinquent) debtor, Sir William Wale – parties in a dispute complicated by its family connections. In 1630, Anne Portman, daughter of Sir John Portman, first baronet, of Orchard Portman, Somerset, and his wife Anne Gifford, married Sir Edward Seymour, third baronet, cavalier and politician, of Berry Pomeroy Castle, Devon. Their eldest son, Sir Edward Seymour (1633–1708), fourth baronet and Speaker of the House of Commons, is mentioned prominently in his mother’s dispatches. Sir Edward married Margaret Wale, daughter of Sir William Wale (d. 1676) of North Lappenham in Rutland, an alderman of London and a Master of the Vintners’ Company – and the subject of Anne Seymour’s protestations to Sir Robert Clayton (1629-1707), a banker and politician who evidently has ties of some kind to Sir William. The first letter, dated “Beripomeroy this 9th of July 1671”, begins in media res, with Anne’s opening “I have lived in hope to have receaved err this some Answare confirming the business I wrote to you which relates to Sir William Wale” – that is, her son Edward’s father-in-law. She reminds him that “above eaight years gonn” there was a “portion” of money presided over by Sir William that included “a Hundered and fifti pounds”, earmarked “to mee” by her son. She argues that “Sir Edward hath failed in nothing to Sir William Wale of his parformanceses, but hath rather exseeded” – implying an employment or service-rendering relationship not uncommon between son- and father-in-law. Anne’s second letter, dated “this 8th of Agust 1671”, makes clear that Sir Robert’s reply has left her distressed “to have my demaunds now: to bee out of remembrance”. Undeterred, she writes: “I have sent you the true coppi of the originall account given in by my sonn”. Whatever the outcome of Anne’s apparent debt-chasing was (and one fears the worst, given the patriarchal odds stacked against her), her exasperation rings familiarly down the centuries to our own era. " Ordered from Dean Cooke, D9747, 2024-05-04, Cat. The Hidden Art of the Book, item #12, Ref. 8185
