Enoch Seeman c.1694-1745

both full length, standing, the former wearing a blue dress with embroidered cuffs and holding a book of designs for fountains, the latter wearing a floral embroidered dress, a landscape beyond

The sitters were two children of Thomas Byde of Ware Park and his wife, Catherine Plumer.  Thomas was educated at Westminster and Pembroke College, Cambridge, and was admitted to Gray's Inn in 1747.  He was M.P. for Hertfordshire from 1761-1768.  His younger brother John became a City merchant and director of the South Sea Company.  They were brought up at Ware Park in Hertfordshire, which Sir Thomas Byde had bought from Sir Thomas Fanshawe in 1668 for £26,000.  Ware Park had belonged to the Fanshawe family since the sixteenth century.  Under the care of Sir Henry Fanshawe (1569-1616), its garden was considered to be unsurpassed in England for its herb and flowers - "a delicate and diligent curiosity without parallel among foreign nations".