It was created on 19 February 1641 for Francis Seymour, a younger son of Edward Seymour, Lord Beauchamp, for his support of Charles I in Parliament.
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Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, announced that with the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke and Lord Hertford, he was to visit Cock Lane on 30 January.
Lord Hertford was the prototype for the characters of the Marquess of Monmouth in Benjamin Disraeli's 1844 novel, Coningsby and the Marquess of Steyne in William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel, Vanity Fair.
Seymour's house at Marlborough was used as an inn until the 19th century, when it became Marlborough College.
He was the grandson of Lord Hugh Seymour and a great-grandson of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, and the elder brother of Henry Seymour and Lady Laura Seymour.
Founded in 1774 on the basis of a bequest from John Handcock, a Quaker linen trader, when twenty acres were purchased at Prospect Hill from the Earl of Hertford.
Lord Grandison married Lady Gertrude, daughter of Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford, in 1772.
Later the Georgian villa was known as St Dunstan's, because of the distinctive clock that hung in front of it, purchased by art collector Francis Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford when material from St Dunstan-in-the-West was auctioned off in 1829-30 prior to the church's demolition.