358 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
I may be allowed to express the hope that funds may readily be 
obtained to restore this fine old church, and to erect in it some 
memorial of John Prince, for forty-two years its vicar. 
It has been a subject for conjecture how it happens that in the 
Worthies there is no reference of consequence to the Seymour 
family. The absence of such reference struck me very forcibly in 
a perusal of that work, and knowing a little of what historians 
tell us of the proud and overbearing Edward Seymour, who in 
1688 succeeded to the baronetcy, and was therefore during the 
greater part of the time Prince was vicar of Berry lord of nearly 
all the parish, I could not help feeling that Prince and he had not 
worked well together. Mentioning this to a relative, I was con- 
firmed in my view by her statement that her father and uncle, for 
many years resident in Berry parish, had told her that there was a 
feud between Prince and the Seymours. Nor can I think it a 
matter for surprise that the straightforward and honest cleric could 
not agree with the man who, although on a level with the noblest 
subjects of Europe, of large fortune and extensive influence, one of 
the most skilful debaters and men of business in the kingdom, 
and almost the first member not a lawyer called to occupy the 
Speaker’s chair, was, according to Macaulay, of haughty and un- 
accommodating temper, licentious, profane, corrupt, too proud to 
behave with common politeness, yet not too proud to pocket illicit 
gain—a man who showed his characteristic pride when at his 
audience with the Prince of Orange at Exeter he conducted himself 
so as to surprise and amuse the prince. ‘I think, Sir Edward,” 
said William, meaning to be very civil, ‘‘that you are of the family 
of the Duke of Somerset?’ ‘‘ Pardon me, sir,” said Sir Edward, 
who never forgot that he was the head of the elder branch of the 
Seymours, ‘“‘the Duke of Somerset is of my family.” From his 
likenesses we see that he looked what he was, the chief of a disso- 
lute and high-spirited gentry, with the artificial ringlets clustering 
in fashionable profusion round his shoulders, and a mingled ex- 
pression of voluptuousness and disdain in his eye and lip. And 
yet he was a courageous man, and not afraid to stand up in the 
House and hold language for which any other man would have been 
sent to the Tower. This was hardly the man, I think, to get on 
well with honest John Prince, the sturdy Royalist and Episcopalian. 
Shortly after Prince’s settlement at Berry occurred Monmouth’s 
Rebellion, followed by the Bloody Assize. During this assize 
