Chapter 2: SEVIOUR, ORIGINS OF THE NAME

‘Huguenots was the name given to the Protestants of France from about 1560 to 1629. Protestantism was introduced into France between 1520 and 1523. The rise in the number of French Protestants excited the alarm and hatred of the French Roman Catholics. Catherine de Médicis, widow of Henry II, who governed in the name of her son, King Charles IX, at times allied herself with the Huguenots for political reasons, but generally sided against them. The Huguenots were persecuted severely in Charles's reign, and they in turn made reprisals upon the Roman Catholics. Finally, open civil war broke out. Between 1562 and 1598 eight bitter wars were fought between French Roman Catholics and Protestants.

The eighth civil war took place during the reign of Henry III, successor to Charles IX. The Huguenots, now led by Henry of Navarre, inflicted (1587) a crushing defeat upon the Roman Catholics at Coutras. Strife among the Catholics themselves, which resulted in the assassinations of the duc de Guise in 1588 and Henry III in 1589, helped the Huguenot cause. With the death of Henry III the house of Valois became extinct, and Henry of Navarre, the first of the Bourbon line, became king of France as Henry IV. To avoid further civil strife, he conciliated the Roman Catholics by converting to Catholicism in 1593. In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, by which the Huguenots received almost complete religious freedom.

Under Henry IV the Huguenots became a strong power in France. To break this power, which stood in the way of the absolutist type of government that the next two kings of France, Louis XIII and, particularly, Louis XIV, wished to impose on the country, both monarchs instigated new persecutions of the Huguenots, and new civil wars took place. The French statesman and cardinal Richelieu caused the political downfall of the Huguenots with the capture (1628), after a long siege, of their principal stronghold, La Rochelle. Thereafter he sought to conciliate the Protestants. Louis XIV, however, persecuted them mercilessly, and on October 18, 1685, he revoked the Edict of Nantes. Finding life in France intolerable under the ensuing persecutions and evaporation of religious liberty, hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled to England, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the English colonies in North America, including Massachusetts, New York, and South Carolina. The total emigration is believed to have been from 400,000 to 1 million, with about 1 million Protestants remaining in France. Thousands of Protestants settled in the Cévennes mountain region of France and became known as Camisards; the attempt of the government to extirpate them resulted in the Camisard War (1702-05).’

The name Sevier occurs in France, hence a Huguenot origin is possible. According however to ‘A Dictionary of English Surnames’ by Reaney and Wilson (1995) the name Seviour, and the related names Sevier, Sevior, Sevyer, Seeviour, Siveyer, Sivier and Sivyer, is derived from the Old English sife ‘sieve’, a sieve maker. A version of the name was in use in England as early as 1274 when Edith Siuiere was recorded in Essex. Five years later Ralph le Siviere was present in Cambridgeshire.

It is very unlikely that in the years before universal education many, if any, members of the family had any idea of the ‘correct’ way to spell their surname. Hence in addition to several of the spellings presented by Reaney and Wilson, this family has been recorded as Sievier, Siovier, Sioviour, Sieviour, Seiviour and Sovier. Variations of the name are preserved in other family names.

In the United Kingdom, in 1999, there were only approximately 350 adults bearing the name Seviour. The majority of these were in the south west of England, in the Frome and Midsomer Norton areas particularly (see Seviour occurrence map). At the same time there were approximately 150 Seviers, 150 Siviers and 25 Seviors, all largely confined to the south coast and Kent. The geographical bias in the occurrence of the name may give some weight to the suggestion that the Seviour family, or at least some families bearing a similar name, do indeed have Huguenot connections. It should be noted however that the first wave of Huguenot emigration occurred immediately after 1572, followed by a larger wave in 1685. The Seviours under consideration here were certainly established in Somerset before this latter date.