A family that traces its lineage to the third wife of Henry VIII is entangled in a court battle over the eldest son’s claims that he was denied their £85 million ancestral estate.
William Seymour, the Earl of Yarmouth, has told the High Court that his parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford, have been sniping at him ever since he married a former Goldman Sachs banker.
The earl, 32, said that he had expected to inherit Ragley Hall in Warwickshire, the 17th-century family seat, several years ago. The family is descended from Edward Seymour, the brother of Jane Seymour, Henry VIII’s third wife.
The estate includes a Palladian mansion, working farms and several outlying properties, as well as hundreds of acres of woods and parkland.
But the marquess, Harry Seymour, told the High Court that his relationship with his son deteriorated “very sharply” before the earl’s marriage to Kelsey Wells.
At the heart of the dispute was his son’s demand that Ragley Hall should be handed over to him when he turned 30.
The earl has also been accused of firing off “hostile and inflammatory” emails to his mother, Beatriz, in which he questioned his father’s “mental capacity”. Those messages were said to have caused the marquess and marchioness “enormous upset and anger”.
The court was also told that the earl and his wife clashed with the estate’s trustees over claims that they refused to release funds for their two children’s private school fees.
The couple also claimed to have been kicked out of their cottage home on the 6,000-acre estate with just a few days’ notice.
After seven years of rows, the dispute has ended up in court. On one side is the earl and his wife, who run an elderflower liquor distillery on the estate. On the other is the earl’s parents and his three siblings.
The earl has told the court that having his expectations dashed when he thought he would “take over the estate” at 30 had “upended” his life. As a result, he said that he required “professional help and counselling to deal with trauma as a consequence”. He is seeking to dismantle the structure controlling the trusts and replace the trustees, who he claims have sided with his parents.
But lawyers for his father, 66, and mother, 64, and three siblings have disputed those claims.
They told the court that the earl had behaved in an “unreasonable and vindictive” manner. Those running the family trusts — the Ragley Trust Company and Seymour Trust Company — deny bias.
Richard Dew, representing the parents and siblings, told the court that by the time the earl was 21, he had been given more than £4 million in estate land and property. He was said to have shown “little interest in the estate or the trusts” until 2017.
But after starting a relationship with his eventual wife, he was said to have “started to assert himself”. The couple asked to be given financial information about the estate and to attend management meetings, the court was told.
Relations between the earl and his family deteriorated, with Dew saying that the son sent an “extraordinary email” to his mother that suggested that his father was “incapable”, which was a “tipping point in their falling out”.
The lawyer added that the family was “disappointed with William’s lack of achievements”.
Paul Burton, representing the earl, said the trustees had misdirected the estate. He told the court: “I can’t say that the trustees did this or that and so caused the family breakdown — I can say that the trustees are a problem and have exacerbated it and fuelled it.”
Dew said that since 2018, the earl had done “many things which on any basis would make the trustees cautious in their dealings with him”.
Those included “surreptitiously recorded meetings and calls, both with the trustees and with staff members”, Dew said.
It emerged in court that the earl attended Cirencester Agricultural College but dropped out after a year and had not subsequently obtained any professional or other qualifications.
But the earl told the court that problems arose between him and his parents after they appeared to stage a “volte-face” by scuppering his expectation of inheriting the estate while still a young man.
Judge James Brightwell will give a judgment at a later date.
An earlier version of this article was headlined “Earl of Yarmouth sues parents over ‘trauma’ of not being gifted £85m estate”. It was amended on February 19 2025. As the article itself makes clear, the earl’s legal action in fact seeks to remove trustees controlling part of the family estate.
