Seymour Fleming

Seymour Dorothy Fleming (5 October 1758 – 9 September 1818), styled Lady Worsley from 1775 to 1805, was a member of the British gentry, notable for her involvement in a high-profile criminal conversation trial.

Early life and family Fleming was the younger daughter and coheir of the Irish-born Sir John Fleming, 1st Baronet (d. 1763), of Brompton Park (aka Hale House, Cromwell House), Middlesex, and his wife, Jane Coleman (d. 1811). She was probably named after her maternal grandmother, Jane Seymour, elder sister of Edward Seymour, 8th Duke of Somerset. They were younger children of Sir Edward Seymour, 5th Baronet, who was a direct descendant of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset (c.1500–1552), the eldest brother of Jane Seymour, the third wife of King Henry VIII.

Her father and two of her sisters died when she was five, and she and her surviving sister were then brought up by their mother, who married in 1770 Edwin Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, Her elder sister, Jane Stanhope, Countess of Harrington, was noted for being an "epitome of virtue".

Marriage to Worsley

On 20 September 1775, at the age of 17, Seymour Fleming married Sir Richard Worsley, 7th Baronet of Appuldurcombe House, Isle of Wight, and was styled Lady Worsley until his death. She was rumoured to have been worth £70,000 upon her marriage, but in truth brought £52,000 to the union .

The couple were badly suited to each other, and the marriage began to fall apart shortly after it began. In 1776, they had one child, a son named Robert Edwin who died young. In August 1781 Seymour bore a second child, Jane Seymour Worsley, fathered by Maurice George Bisset but claimed by Worsley as his own to avoid scandal. Bisset, a captain in the South Hampshire militia, had been Worsley's close friend and neighbour at Knighton Gorges on the Isle of Wight. Cartoon by James Gillray: "Sir Richard Worse-than-sly, exposing his wife's bottom; – o fye!"

Lady Worsley was rumoured to have had 27 lovers. newfound lover John Lewis Cuchet (d. 1836) at Farnham. Also that month, by royal licence, she officially resumed her maiden name of Fleming, and her new husband also took it. After the armistice of 1814 ended the War of the Sixth Coalition, the couple moved to a villa at Passy, Paris where she died in 1818, aged 59. She is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

In popular culture In the 2015 BBC2 television film, The Scandalous Lady W, based upon Hallie Rubenhold's book Lady Worsley's Whim, she was played by Natalie Dormer.