Summary

Oil painting on canvas, Thomas Molyneux-Seel (d.1869) by Fernando Cavalleri (Turin 1794 - Rome 1865), signed and dated 1824. A half-length portrait, seated turned to the right, gazing to the right, wearing a dark green-brown jacket and a blue cape with a fur collar, white shirt with turned-up high-pointed collar and black stock, leaning with his right hand over the back of a chair. Against a red curtain, with a column in the background. Born Thomas Unsworth, the sitter took the name Molyneux Seel as the beneficiary of his maternal grandparents' estate. 'The Jerningham Letters' describe his courtship of Agnes Bedingfeld (1798-1870) of Oxburgh Hall, whom he married in Ghent in 1823. The portrait was painted in Rome during a prolonged honeymoon which was to last more than a year. The couple commissioned both oil portraits and marble busts during their time in Rome (see NT 1210896, 1210481, 1210517). The 1813 cat. number is missing.

Full description

The sitter, Thomas Molyneux-Seel, J.P. & D.L., of Huyton Hey, was a landowner from an old Catholic family. The family’s estates were in Lancashire including Huyton, today part of Liverpool. The Huyton property was inherited by a younger branch of Molyneux of Sefton from the Harringtons, an ancient Catholic family descended from a brother of the Sir William Harrington who had fought at the battle of Agincourt. Born Thomas Unsworth, the son of Thomas Unsworth of Maghull Hall and his wife Frances (eldest daughter of Thomas Seel of Liverpool), he took the name and arms of Molyneux-Seel in 1815 upon inheriting the estates of his maternal ancestors. From this time, he began to spend more time in London, being recorded in May 1818 as lodging at the Mount Hotel (‘Fashionable Arrivals’, The Morning Post, 22nd May 1818). In August of the same year he was one of around twenty local notables assigned to the Grand Jury at the Lancaster Assizes (Lancaster Gazetteer, 22nd August 1818), at which the cases heard included one in which two young men, William and Daniel Fitzpatrick, were found guilty of highway robbery for stealing a watch and 20 shillings (£1) from none other than Thomas Molyneux. He would subsequently serve as a Justice of Peace for the counties of Lancashire and Norfolk. By 1820 he was recorded as among numerous gentlemen presented to the new monarch, George IV, at the King’s Levée and, a few weeks later, attended a reception given at His Majesty’s Drawing Room to celebrate the King’s Birthday (The Morning Post, 19th May 1820; ‘Fashionable World’, The Morning Post, 17th June 1820). Molyneux-Seel also assumed an important role in Catholic social life, acting as a steward at the dinners of the Associated Catholic Charities (Morning Chronicle, 10th May 1820). By the summer of 1823, Thomas was courting Agnes Bedingfeld, daughter of Sir Richard Bedingfeld (5th Baronet) (1767-1829) and Charlotte, Lady Bedingfeld (née Jerningham) (1770-1854). At this time, Agnes’s parents were resident in Ghent in Belgium and Agnes lived for a time with her grandmother, Frances, Dowager Lady Jerningham, in Bolton Row, Mayfair, where she attended parties, soirees, concerts and plays as part of the London Season. The Molyneux-Seel courtship was detailed in the Jerningham Letters - an extensive collection of correspondence and journals collated by Charlotte, Lady Bedingfeld, which was published in two abridged volumes by Egerton Castle in 1896 (the originals are located in the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham). A series of letters to Charlotte, Lady Bedingfeld from her mother, Frances, Dowager Lady Jerningham chart the progress of the romance (Castle 1896, The Jerningham Letters, Vol II, pp. 263-67). On 12th June 1823, the Dowager wrote to tell her daughter about ‘your Little meek Lamb Agnes’, going on to explain that: 'Mr Seele Contrives to make Himself so acceptable in Society, that I hear of His being at all the Parties, and numerous balls that are given. Agnes has been at several Lately; and when I question her the next morning of who she danced with, five or six are named & Mr. Seele always one [….] I then perceived in the evening that He appeared to be attentive to Agnes and that her meek Little Spirits were raised by his notice […] Last Night the Ball was at the Dowr Lady Astleys, in Cavendish Square. Agnes has just enumerated five Partners, Mr. Seele one, now I should not be very much surprised if it finishes by His asking the serious Question.’ Lady Jerningham’s concerns were practical, rather than romantic: ‘A serious objection would be if there is any ground for the fear of Insanity, or that His fortune would not be equivalent to her Future Comfort’, but in a letter written to Charlotte on 24th June, she was able to report that ‘the Suitor has above £100,000 in Cash […] a pretty fund and He is said by every one to be a very respectable Character’ (Castle 1896, Vol II, pp.264-265). The couple’s engagement was swiftly confirmed, Lady Jerningham commenting to her daughter in a letter dated 8th August 1823 that Molyneux-Seel, 'has behaved with a degree of delicacy, worthy of Little Agnes’s retiring modest Character […] I really think there is reason to hope she will be happy with Him, tho’ the income but scantily Covers the want of Aristocracy. But her quietness & his good humour will, I trust, assimilate together' (Castle 1896, Vol II, p.266). It was later discovered that Molyneux-Seel’s fortune was rather smaller than initially anticipated and Lady Jerningham, wife of Charlotte’s brother George, wrote to her sister-in-law on 1st September 1823 that she was ‘…half angry with Mr Seel’s diminution of income,’ but felt that his personal qualities would make him an agreeable husband nonetheless. (Castle 1896, Vol II, pp.276-277). The wedding took place on 3rd October 1823 in Ghent, the couple setting off the same day for Italy, where they would spend the winter (‘The Mirror of Fashion’, Morning Chronicle, 7th October 1823). They were in Rome by early December 1823 and arrived back in England from Paris towards the end of 1824, bringing with them their first-born son Edmund Molyneux Seel (1824-1909). They subsequently had two more sons, Charles (1830-1880) and Henry Harrington Molyneux-Seel (1839-1882). Whilst on honeymoon in Rome, the couple commissioned oil portraits of themselves by the neo-classical painter Ferdinando Cavalleri (1794-1867) (NT 1210343 and NT 1210896). In addition, they commissioned a pair of marble portrait busts (see NT 1210481, NT 1210517). Following his marriage, Thomas Molyneux-Seel seems, from the evidence of occasional reports in newspapers, to have led the life of a moneyed gentleman, including a significant role in horse racing in the north of England and active membership of the Liverpool Agricultural Society. On 30th May 1825, he chaired an enormous dinner held in the Music Hall in Liverpool ‘In Honour of the Catholic Deputation, and in Celebration of the recent Struggle for Emancipation’ (Liverpool Mercury, 3rd June 1825). Unfortunately, the Irish Roman Catholic Deputation, led by Daniel O’Connell, failed to attend the lavish ceremony. It appears, however, that Thomas lived rather beyond his means and from the mid-1820s onwards gaps began to appear in his finances, with multiple creditors claiming their due (family research conducted by Dr Edmund Carr-Saunders). His extravagant ways are humorously recorded on a false book-spine on the jib door in Oxburgh’s library – Seel on Calculation. This might explain why, on 6th September 1831, Thomas’s fine collection of Old Master paintings was sold at auction, at Foster’s in Pall Mall, London (Morning Post, 22nd August 1831). Additionally, the diary of his sister-in-law, Margaret Paston-Bedingfeld (1808-1887), reveals that the Molyneux-Seels lived on the Oxburgh estate at various times during the early 1830s, overseeing extensive renovations of the Hall and wider estate during the absence of Margaret and her husband, Sir Henry Paston-Bedingfeld (1800-1862) [NT 1211847]. On 5 September 1836, Thomas wrote from Great Yarmouth offering his candidature for the post of Auditor to the Unions of King’s Lynn and several other north Norfolk towns, pointing out that he had occupied magistrates’ positions in both Norfolk and Lancashire ‘which has rendered me competent in parochial affairs’ (Bury and Norwich Post, 7th September 1836). In 1845, by now living in London at 18 Green Street, Grosvenor Square, Thomas was recorded as one of the chief investors in the Lincoln and Grantham Direct Railway (Derby Mercury, 29th October 1845) and in May 1846 he was promoted to Major in the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Militia (York Herald, 23rd May 1846), a rank he retained and used for the rest of his life. In 1848, a year of revolution across much of Europe, there seems to have been serious concern that disorder would break out among the large Irish population of Liverpool. Troops were brought in in readiness, with among several buildings requisitioned to house them ‘The warehouses of Mr Molyneux, Sefton-Street’ (Leeds Intelligencer, 29th July 1848, and other papers). Thomas Molyneux-Seel continued actively to support Catholic causes, in 1860 giving an acre of land at Huyton for the erection of ‘a church, presbytery and school’ (Freeman’s Journal, 21st December 1860). The Molyneux-Seels seem to have spent much of their latter years living in Leamington Spa, and in 1869 Thomas commissioned the services of the architect E.W. Pugin to build a Gothic villa, Harrington House (demolished in 1957). Agnes died on 7th September 1870 and Thomas built in her memory the Roman Catholic church of St. Agnes at Huyton, which was replaced by a modern building in around 1965. He died at Huyton Hey on 16th January 1881, at the age of 89. Jeremy WarrenIlana van Dort February 2026