Harold St Maur
British politician (1869–1927)
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Harold St Maur JP DL (pronounced "Seemer"; 6 June 1869 – 5 April 1927) was an unsuccessful claimant to the Dukedom of Somerset and briefly a Liberal Member of Parliament for Exeter, being unseated on an election petition by a single vote.
Early life
St Maur was born in Brighton in 1869, the illegitimate son of Edward Seymour, Earl St Maur, and grandson of Edward Seymour, 12th Duke of Somerset. He had a sister, Ruth Cavendish Bentinck, who was a noted suffragist. His mother was a 19-year-old half-gipsy maid named Rosina Elizabeth Swan of Higham, near Bury St. Edmunds; St Maur's father died within months of his birth.
He was educated at Wellington College and Sandhurst, and served with the 14th Hussars and later with the Royal 1st Devon Yeomanry. He was appointed a second lieutenant in the Reserve on 21 February 1900. He fought in the Boer War at Natal with the 7th Remounts and the Royal 1st Devon Imperial Yeomanry. St Maur wrote a book which he titled "Notebook for Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of the Yeomanry".
In 1891 he married Elizabeth, a daughter of Captain W. H. Palmer, of the 14th Hussars, and there were three sons from the marriage.
“Harold St Maur” enters the record as british politician (1869–1927). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Harold, Maur and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Harold St Maur” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Harold, Maur and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5662440. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1927, 1900 and 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harold St Maur” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.