Viscount Portman

Viscount Portman, in the County of Somerset, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

[3] His son, the second Viscount, represented Shaftesbury and Dorset in the House of Commons as a Liberal.

The family post-1728 is descended in the male line from a junior line of Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, one of whom married the daughter of Joan Portman, the great-granddaughter of Sir William Portman, Lord Chief Justice of England, between 1555 and 1557.

In its third generation, when Sir William Portman, 6th Baronet, died in 1690 without progeny, the bulk of the estates passed to a husband of the family: Henry Seymour (d.1728), MP, 5th son of Sir Edward Seymour, 3rd Baronet of Berry Pomeroy, Devon (by coverture applying to his wife Anne Portman, second daughter of Sir John Portman, 1st Baronet).

The property then devolved to another cousin, William Berkeley (d.1737) of Pylle, Somerset, who likewise took the surname Portman.