Regency Personalities Series-Charles Pierrepont 1st Earl Manvers

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency (I include those who were born before 1811 and who died after 1795), today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Charles (Medows) Pierrepont 1st Earl Manvers
4 November 1737 – 17 June 1816

Charles Medows

Charles Pierrepont 1st Earl Manvers was the great great grandson of Daniel Meadows (d.1659) whose son was Sir Philip Meadows (d.1718), the successful parliamentarian. In 1710, Sir Philip’s fellow parliamentarian, Sir John Guise, 3rd Bart., was “informed by Queen Anne that Sir Philip had been promised the position as Envoy to Hanover, the role Guise had invisaged for himself. Sir Philip Meadows was knighted in 1658, made Knight Marshal of the King’s Palace and sent as an Ambassador to Sweden and Denmark.

In 1717, Sir Philip’s son – also named Sir Philip Meadows (d.1757) – was one of the twelve members of the Board of General Officers, working with Sir Robert Walpole, the First Commissioner (Lord) of the Treasury. Earlier, on 2 July 1700 he was appointed, as his father had been, knight-marshal of the King’s Household, and was formally knighted by King William on 23 December 1700 at Hampton Court. Sir Philip’s daughter, Mary (d.1743), was a Maid of honour to Queen Caroline and his first cousin was Philip Meadows (d.1752), who had been Mayor of Norwich in 1734. On the 29th of May of that year, Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole presented Mayor Meadows with his personal gift: the city’s new silver mace which bore Walpole’s own coat-of-arms. Like Prime Minister Walpole, Mayor Meadows had accumulated vast wealth owing to their success with the South Sea Company.

Another of Sir Philip’s sons, Sir Sidney Meadows, was also knight-marshal of the Kings Palace. Sidney died in Andover in 1792. Like his brother Philip, Sidney was Deputy Ranger of Richmond Park and worked under Prime Minister John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute who, by 1761, had been appointed Ranger by George III. At this time – shortly after he ascended the throne in 1760 – the King was sold the Rangership by his daughter Princess Amelia. King George, having appointed the third Lord Bute as Ranger, continued to keep up an interest in the park and instigated many repairs and improvements with Sir Sidney (and at times his brother Philip) as deputy. When Lord Bute died in 1792 the King took the Rangership back into his own keeping and for a short time areas were given over to farming. Sir Sydney died in 1792, aged 91, having worked alongside the King, managing the park’s agricultural and grazing branches.

Sarah Meadows Martineau was the daughter of Norwich Mayor Philip Meadows. Sarah was baptized at St George’s Church, Colegate, Norwich, Norfolk on 24 February 1725 and died in Norwich on 26 November 1800. Sarah was the subject of published poems by her friend, political writer Anna Letitia Barbauld, who had been “admired” by Horace Walpole, son of Prime Minister Walpole. Sarah Meadows Martineau is recorded as the matriarch of the Meadows of Norwich; “endowed with a strong mind and a well-cultivated understanding….her loss will be severely felt by a numerous family and by many whom her charity daily relieved and also by those who resorted to her judgement for advice”.

Educated at Oxford, Medows became a midshipman in the Royal Navy and was promoted to lieutenant on 7 August 1755. He became a commander on 5 April 1757 in Renown, a 20-gun sloop, but on 17 August the same year was promoted to post-captain in the frigate Shannon, and was ordered to join the Mediterranean Fleet. He commanded her until April 1761, when Vice-Admiral Saunders appointed him to the 50-gun frigate Isis, replacing Captain Edward Wheeler, who had been killed during the capture of the French ship Oriflamme. Medows continued on Isis, in the Mediterranean, until the end of the war in 1763, and in 1769 retired altogether from the Navy.

In 1773, Medows’s uncle, Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull, died and left his estates at Thoresby and elsewhere to his wife Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, the former wife of the Earl of Bristol. The duke’s nephews challenged the will on the grounds of bigamy, and the proceedings which followed established that the marriage of the Duchess had indeed been bigamous. However, this was found not to affect her inheritance, so she was able to retain the Pierrepont estates until her death, which took place in August 1788. Upon inheriting the estates, Medows adopted the surname of Pierrepont.

A watercolour sketch entitled In Captain Pierrepont’s Grounds was made by the Preston-born artist Anthony Devis (1729–1817).

His family’s political dynasty ensured that Medows was a well connected, if not terribly effective parliamentarian. As a Whig, Medows had been on good terms with Horace Walpole, the son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. Horace had voiced his concern about the impending death of Medows’ uncle, the 2nd Duke of Kingston. With the patronage of the prime minister’s protégé, Thomas Pelham Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, Medows was returned as one of the Members of Parliament for Nottinghamshire in December 1778. He continued to sit in the Commons as a knight of the shire until he was ennobled in 1796.

In Parliament, Medows (Pierrepont) supported the Duke of Portland, whose influence helped him to be raised to the peerage as Baron Pierrepont, of Holme Pierrepont in the County of Nottingham, and Viscount Newark, of Newark on Trent in the County of Nottingham, on 23 July 1796, and on 1 April 1806 he was promoted to an earldom as Earl Manvers. In the Lords, Manvers supported agricultural reform and was vice-president of the Board of Agriculture in 1803. He died in 1816 and was buried at Holme Pierrepont.

He married Anne Orton, daughter of William Mills of Richmond, in 1774. They had five children:

• Hon. Evelyn Henry Frederick Pierrepont (1775–1801).
• Charles Herbert Pierrepont, 2nd Earl Manvers (1778–1860).
• Hon. Henry Manvers Pierrepont (1780–1858).
• Hon. Philip Sydney Pierrepont (13 June 1786 – 15 February 1864), of Evenley Hall, Northamptonshire, married on 19 August 1810 Georgiana Browne, died without issue.
• Lady Frances Augusta Pierrepont (d. 1847), married on 20 October 1802 Admiral William Bentinck (1746–1813), married on 30 July 1821 Henry William Stephens.

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Regency Personalities Series-Charles Paulet 13th Marquess of Winchester

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency (I include those who were born before 1811 and who died after 1795), today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Charles Ingoldsby Burroughs-Paulet 13th Marquess of Winchester
27 January 1764 – 29 November 1843

Charles Ingoldsby Burroughs-Paulet 13th Marquess of Winchester was the eldest son of the 12th Marquess of Winchester and was educated at Eton and Clare College, Cambridge. After graduating, he served with the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards as an ensign from 1784–86, then sat in the Commons as Member of Parliament (MP) for Truro from 1792–96. He returned to the military in 1796 as a Lt.-Col. in the North Hampshire Militia and became Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire in 1798. He also married Anne Andrews (daughter of John Andrews of Shotley Hall, near Shotley Bridge) on 31 July 1800 and they had seven children:

• John Paulet, 14th Marquess of Winchester (1801–1887)
• Lord Charles Paulet (1802–1870), a religious minister, married Caroline Ramsden firstly; remarried to Joan Granville
• Lord George Paulet (1803–1879), an admiral, married Georgina Wood
• Lord William Paulet (1804–1893), a field marshal, died unmarried
• Lord Frederick Paulet (1810–1871), a soldier and equerry to the Duchess of Cambridge, died unmarried
• Lady Annabella (d. 1855), married Rear-Admiral William Ramsden
• Lady Cecilia (d. 1890), married Sir Charles des Voeux, 2nd Baronet

In 1812, Lord Winchester became Groom of the Stole to George III and continued as such under George IV and up until the death of William IV in 1837. When Queen Victoria came to the throne that year, the office was abolished. He was thus the last Groom of the Stole to the Sovereign — Prince Albert continued to have a Groom of the Stole, as did the Prince of Wales until the complete abolition of the office in 1901. On 8 August 1839, he added the name of Burroughs to his own, when he inherited the property of Dame Sarah Salusbury (née Burroughs), under the terms of her will. Lord Winchester died in 1843 and his titles passed to his eldest son, John.

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Regency Personalities Series-Leonard McNally

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency (I include those who were born before 1811 and who died after 1795), today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Leonard McNally
1752–13 February 1820

Leonard McNally was born in Dublin in 1752, the son of William McNally, a grocer. McNally was born into a Roman Catholic family, but at some point in the 1760s he converted to the Church of Ireland. He was entirely self-educated, and he initially became a grocer like his father.

However, in 1774 he went to London to study law at the Middle Temple but returned to Dublin to be called to the Irish bar in 1776. After returning to London in the late 1770s he qualified as a barrister in England, as well, in 1783. He practised for a short time in London, and, while there, supplemented his income by writing plays and editing The Public Ledger.

Returning to Ireland, he developed a successful career as a barrister in Dublin. He soon became involved in radical politics, having already in 1782 published a pamphlet in support of the Irish cause. He became Dublin’s leading radical lawyer of the day. In 1792, he represented Napper Tandy, a radical member of the Irish Parliament, in a legal dispute over parliamentary privilege.

In the early 1790s, McNally became a founder member of the United Irishmen, a clandestine society which soon developed into a revolutionary Irish republican organisation. He ranked high in its leadership and acted as the organisation’s chief lawyer, representing many United Irishmen in court. This included defending Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, the leaders of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions respectively, at their trials for treason. In 1793, McNally was wounded in a duel with Sir Jonah Barrington, who had insulted the United Irishmen. Barrington subsequently described McNally as “a good-natured, hospitable, talented and dirty fellow”.

After his death in 1820, it emerged that he had for many years been an informant for the government, and one of the most successful British spies in Irish republican circles that there has ever been. When, in 1794, a United Irishmen plot to seek aid from Revolutionary France was uncovered by the British government, McNally turned informer to save himself, although, subsequently, he also received payment for his services. McNally was paid an annual pension in respect of his work as an informer of £300 a year, from 1794 until his death in 1820.

From 1794, McNally systematically informed on his United Irishmen colleagues, who often gathered at his house for meetings. It was McNally that betrayed Lord Edward FitzGerald, one of the leaders of the 1798 rebellion, as well as Robert Emmet in 1803. A significant factor in the failure of the 1798 rebellion was the excellent intelligence provided to the government by its agents. McNally was considered to be one of the most damaging informers.

The United Irishmen represented by McNally at their trials were invariably convicted and McNally was paid by the crown for passing the secrets of their defence to the prosecution. During the trial of Emmet, McNally provided details of the defence’s strategy to the crown and conducted his client’s case in a way that would assist the prosecution. For example, three days before the trial he assured the authorities that Emmet “does not intend to call a single witness, nor to trouble any witness for the Crown with a cross-examination, unless they misrepresent facts… He will not controvert the charge by calling a single witness”. For his assistance to the prosecution in Emmet’s case, he was paid a bonus of £200, on top of his pension, half of which was paid five days before the trial.

After McNally’s death, his activities as a government agent became generally known when his heir attempted to continue to collect his pension of £300 per year. He is still remembered with opprobrium by Irish nationalists. In 1997, the Sinn Féin newspaper, An Phoblacht in an article on McNally, described him as “undoubtely one of the most treacherous informers of Irish history”.

McNally was a successful dramatist and wrote a number of well-constructed but derivative comedies, as well as comic operas. His first dramatic work was The Ruling Passion, a comic opera written in 1771, and he is known to have authored at least twelve plays between 1779 and 1796 as well as other comic operas. His works include The Apotheosis of Punch (1779) a satire on the Irish playwright Sheridan, Tristram Shandy (1783), which was an adaptation of Lawrence Sterne’s novel, Robin Hood (1784), Fashionable Levities (1785), Richard Cœur de Lion (1786), and Critic Upon Critic (1788).

He also wrote a number of songs and operettas for Covent Garden. One of his songs, Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill, became very well-known and popular following its first public performance at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1789. It was said to be a favourite of George III and popularised the romantic metaphor “a rose without a thorn”, a phrase which McNally had used in the song.

In 1802, McNally published what became a much-used book on the law of evidence, The Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown. The text played a crucial role in defining and publicising the beyond reasonable doubt standard for criminal trials.

McNally married Frances I’Anson, the daughter of William I’Anson (also spelt Janson) a solicitor, in 1787 in London, having eloped because William I’Anson disapproved of McNally. The I’Anson family owned a property, Hill House, in Richmond, Yorkshire and Frances was the subject of McNally’s song, Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill. Frances died aged 29 in childbirth in Dublin in 1795 and McNally remarried in 1800 Louisa Edgeworth, the daughter of a Clergyman from County Longford.

McNally is widely reported to have died on 13 February 1820; however a son, with whom he shared the same name and profession, was actually the one who died on that date. His son was buried at Donneybrook, Co. Dublin on 17 February 1820. McNally sent a letter on 6 March 1820 from 20 Cuffe St, Dublin to the Proprietor of ‘Saunder’s Newsletter’ seeking damages for the severe injury caused by the circulation of his death. McNally died in June 1820 and was buried in Donneybrook, Co. Dublin on 8 June 1820. Although he had been a Protestant all his life, he sought absolution from a [Roman Catholic] priest on his deathbed. McNally left one daughter.

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Regency Personalities Series-Amelia Matilda Murray

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency (I include those who were born before 1811 and who died after 1795), today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Amelia Matilda Murray
30 April 1795 – 7 June 1884

Amelia Matilda Murray was born in Kenton to Lord George Murray and Anne Charlotte. Her eldest brother was George Murray who became the Bishop of Rochester. She and her mother became known to George III and as a consequence her mother became a maid in waiting to the Princesses Elizabeth and Augusta. Murray herself met George III.

She came to notice when she was chosen to be a Maid of Honour to the young Queen Victoria. She was one of the eldest of the young Victoria’s servants and she became known as the “Maid of Honour”.

In 1854 she set out on a tour of North America and Cuba where she indulged her interest in botany as she investigated the institution of slavery. She published a book in defence of slavery that was based around letters to her friend Lady Byron. Murray had even prepared sketches to illustrate her book but these were not used. Lady Byron had been an active abolitionist and she had attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention. Murray wrote “Slavery does for the negro what European schemers in vain attempt to do for the hireling. It secures work and subsistence for all. It secures more order and subordination also.” The reaction to Murray’s book caused her to resign her position as woman of the bedchamber. She later published two further works.

Murray died at her home in Glenberrow, Castlemorton in 1884.

• Remarks on Education in 1847, 1847.
• Letters from the United States, Cuba, and Canada 1856.
• Recollections from 1803 to 1837, with a Conclusion in 1868 1868.
• Pictorial and Descriptive Sketches of the Odenwald 1869

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Regency Personalities Series-John Stewart 7th Earl of Galloway

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

John Stewart 7th Earl of Galloway
13 March 1736 – 13 November 1806

John Stewart

John Stewart 7th Earl of Galloway was a Scottish peer, styled Viscount Garlies from 1747 until 1773. He succeeded his father Alexander in 1773. He was elected one of the representative peers, representing the Peerage of Scotland in the House of Lords, in 1774 and sat there until the 1790s. From 1783 until his death he was a Lord of the Bedchamber to King George III.

The Earl, a Tory, was the target of two hostile poems by Robert Burns, John Bushby’s Lamentation and On the Earl of Galloway.
Galloway, a frequent opera-goer, was caricatured by James Gillray in An Old Encore at the Opera! of 1803. In 1762 James Boswell wrote of him that he had “a petulant forwardness that cannot fail to disgust people of sense and delicacy”.
On 14 August 1762, he married Lady Charlotte Greville (died 1763), the daughter of Francis Greville, 1st Earl of Warwick. They had two sons, both of whom died in infancy. After Charlotte’s death, he married Anne Dashwood, daughter of Sir James Dashwood, 2nd Baronet, on 13 June 1764. They had sixteen children:

• Lady Catherine Stewart (18 March 1765 – 20 September 1836), married Sir James Graham, 1st Baronet in 1781
• Hon. Alexander Stewart (18 February 1766 – 29 March 1766)
• Lady Susan Stewart (10 April 1767 – 2 April 1841), married George Spencer-Churchill, 5th Duke of Marlborough in 1791
• Adm. George Stewart, 8th Earl of Galloway (1768–1834)
• Lady Anne Harriet Stewart (2 November 1769 – 30 January 1850), married Lord Spencer Chichester in 1795
• Lady Elizabeth Euphemia Stewart (6 October 1771 – 12 November 1855), married William Philips Inge in 1798
• Hon. Leveson Keith Stewart (4 October 1772 – 12 September 1780)
• Lady Georgiana Frances Stewart (15 May 1776 – 12 April 1804)
• Lt.-Gen. Hon. Sir William Stewart (1774–1827)
• Rt. Rev. Hon. Charles James Stewart (15 April 1775 – 13 July 1837), Bishop of Quebec
• Lady Charlotte Stewart (7 August 1777 – May 1842), married Sir Edward Crofton, 3rd Baronet in 1801
• Lady Caroline Stewart (23 October 1778 – 1818), married Rev. Hon. George Rushout-Bowles in 1803; mother of George Rushout, 3rd Baron Northwick
• Hon. Montgomery Granville John Stewart (1780–1860)
• Hon. Edward Richard Stewart (1782–1851)
• Lt.-Col. James Henry Keith Stewart (1783–1836)
• Lady Georgiana Charlotte Sophia Stewart (1 February 1785 – 25 July 1809), married Col. Hon. William Bligh {1775-6 August 1845} in 1806; {Bligh was the a son of John Bligh, 3rd Earl of Darnley}; had issue of one daughter Sophia married to Henry William Parnell {1809-1896} in 1835 {His father Henry Parnell, 1st Baron Congleton was a Great uncle of Charles Stewart Parnell. A sister Emma Jane Parnell was married to Edward Bligh, 5th Earl of Darnley}. Sophia and Henry marriage had issue of four sons and one daughter.

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Regency Personalities Series-Gardens at Kew Park

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Gardens at Kew Park
1299-

Gardens at Kew Park. While the actual Kew Gardens became a national site in 1840, its origins are from much earlier.

Kew, the area in which Kew Gardens are situated, consists mainly of the gardens themselves and a small surrounding community. Royal residences in the area which would later influence the layout and construction of the gardens began in 1299 when Edward I moved his court to a manor house in neighbouring Richmond (then called Sheen). That manor house was later abandoned; however, Henry VII built Sheen Palace in 1501, which, under the name Richmond Palace, became a permanent royal residence for Henry VII. Around the start of the 16th century courtiers attending Richmond Palace settled in Kew and built large houses. Early royal residences at Kew included Mary Tudor’s house, which was in existence by 1522 when a driveway was built to connect it to the palace at Richmond. Around 1600, the land that would become the gardens was known as Kew Field, a large field strip farmed by one of the new private estates.

The exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Lord Capel John of Tewkesbury, was enlarged and extended by Augusta, Dowager Princess of Wales, the widow of Frederick, Prince of Wales. The origins of Kew Gardens can be traced to the merging of the royal estates of Richmond and Kew in 1772. William Chambers built several garden structures, including the lofty Chinese pagoda built in 1761 which still remains. George III enriched the gardens, aided by William Aiton and Sir Joseph Banks. The old Kew Park (by then renamed the White House), was demolished in 1802. The “Dutch House” adjoining was purchased by George III in 1781 as a nursery for the royal children. It is a plain brick structure now known as Kew Palace.

Some early plants came from the walled garden established by William Coys at Stubbers in North Ockendon. The collections grew somewhat haphazardly until the appointment of the first collector, Francis Masson, in 1771. Capability Brown, who became England’s most renowned landscape architect, applied for the position of master gardener at Kew, and was rejected.

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Regency Personalities Series-Joseph Nollekens

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Joseph Nollekens
11 August 1737 – 23 April 1823

Joseph Nollekens

Joseph Nollekens was born on 11 August 1737 at 28 Dean Street, Soho, London, the son of the Flemish painter Josef Frans Nollekens (1702–1748) who had moved from Antwerp to London in 1733. He studied first under another Flemish immigrant in London, the sculptor Peter Scheemakers, before studying and working as an antiques dealer, restorer and copier in Rome from 1760 or 1762. The sculptures he made in Rome included a marble of Timocles Before Alexander, for which he was awarded fifty guineas by the Society of Arts, and busts of Laurence Sterne and David Garrick, who were visiting the city.

On his return to London in 1770 he set up as a maker of busts and monuments at 9, Mortimer Street, where he built up a large practice. Although he preferred working on mythological subjects, it was through his portrait busts that he became famous and one of the most fashionable portrait sculptors in Britain.

He enjoyed the patronage of king George III and went on to sculpt a number of British political figures, including George III himself, William Pitt the Younger, Charles James Fox, the Duke of Bedford and Charles Watson-Wentworth. He also made busts of figures from the arts such as Benjamin West. Most of his subjects were represented in classical costume.

‘Faith’, a sculpture commissioned by Henry Howard, following the death of his wife Maria in 1788 in childbirth at Corby Castle, is said to be Nollekens finest work. The sculpture can be seen in the Howard Chapel at the Parish Church of Wetheral, Cumbria.

Although he took great care over the modelling of the details of his sculptures, the marble versions were normally made by assistants, such as Sebastian Gahagan who carved Nollekens’ statue of William Pitt for the Senate House at Cambridge, and L. Alexander Goblet. Some subjects were produced in large numbers: more than 70 replicas of Nollekens’ bust of Pitt are known.

Nollekens became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1771 and a full academician the following year.

He died in London in 1823, having made a considerable fortune from his work; he left around £200,000 in his will. He is buried in Paddington Parish Church with a monument by William Behnes.

A biography Nollekens and his Times by his executor John Thomas Smith was published in 1828, portraying him as a grotesque miser. It has been described as “perhaps the most candid biography ever published in the English language”.

No. 44 Mortimer Street in Fitzrovia stands on the site of the house where Nollekens died and has a blue plaque commemorating him.

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Regency Personalities Series-George Ashburnham 3rd Earl of Ashburnham

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

George Ashburnham 3rd Earl of Ashburnham
25 December 1760 – 27 October 1830

George Ashburnham 3rd Earl of Ashburnham

George Ashburnham 3rd Earl of Ashburnham was the son of the 2nd Earl of Ashburnham and the former Elizabeth Crowley, being styled Viscount St Asaph from birth, and was baptised on 29 January 1761 at St George’s, Hanover Square, London, with King George III, the Duke of Newcastle and the Dowager Princess of Wales as his godparents.

In 1780, Lord St Asaph graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, with a Master of Arts degree.

He married, firstly, the Hon. Sophia Thynne (19 December 1763 – 9 April 1791), daughter of the 3rd Viscount Weymouth (later the 1st Marquess of Bath), on 28 August 1784. They had four children:

• George Ashburnham, Viscount St Asaph (8 October 1785 – 7 June 1813)
• Lady Elizabeth Sophia Ashburnham (16 September 1786 – 13 March 1879)
• The Hon. Sophia Ashburnham (29 January 1788 – 17 June 1807)
• Ensign The Hon. John Ashburnham (3 June 1789 – 1810) (served in the Coldstream Guards in the Napoleonic Wars; drowned whilst returning from Portugal)

He married, secondly, Lady Charlotte Percy (3 June 1776 – 26 November 1862) on 25 July 1795. She was a daughter of the 1st Earl of Beverley, and a sister of George Percy, 5th Duke of Northumberland. They had 13 children:

• The Hon. William Ashburnham (19 January 1797 – 1797) (died an infant)
• Bertram Ashburnham, 4th Earl of Ashburnham (23 November 1797 – 22 June 1878)
• The Hon. Percy Ashburnham (22 November 1799 – 25 January 1881)
• Lady Charlotte Susan Ashburnham (23 February 1801 – 26 April 1865)
• Lady Theodosia Julia Ashburnham (27 March 1802 – 22 August 1887)
• The Hon. Charles Ashburnham (23 March 1803 – 22 December 1848)
• Lady Georgiana Jemima Ashburnham (11 May 1805 – May 1882) (mother of Algernon Mitford)
• Lady Jane Henrietta Ashburnham (19 July 1809 – 26 November 1896) (mother of the poet Swinburne)
• Lady Katherine Frances Ashburnham (31 March 1812 – 6 April 1839)
• Lady Eleanor Isabel Bridget Ashburnham (28 July 1814 – 6 March 1895)
• General The Hon. Thomas Ashburnham, CB (1816 – 2 March 1872)
• Lady Mary Agnes Blanche Ashburnham (23 January 1816 – 22 April 1899)
• The Hon. Reginald Ashburnham (1819 – 5 March 1830)

Lord St Asaph was summoned to the House of Lords by writ in acceleration as 5th Baron Ashburnham in 1804. He held the office of Trustee of the British Museum between 1810 and 1830. In 1812 he succeeded his father as 3rd Earl of Ashburnham. On his death he was survived by his fourth (but eldest surviving) son, Bertram, Viscount St. Asaph.

His main family home was at Ashburnham Place in Sussex, which belonged to the family from the late 11th century until 1953. The Ashburnham archive is held by the East Sussex Record Office.

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Regency Personalities Series-Paul Storr

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Paul Storr
28 October 1770 – 18 March 1844

Paul Storr was England’s most celebrated silversmith during the first half of the nineteenth century and his legacy lives on today. His pieces historically and currently adorn royal palaces and the finest stately homes throughout Europe and the world. Storr’s reputation rests on his mastery of the grandiose neo-Classical style developed in the Regency period. He quickly became the most prominent silversmith of the nineteenth century, producing much of the silver purchased by King George III and King George IV. Storr entered his first mark in the first part of 1792, which reflects his short-lived partnership with William Frisbee. Soon after, he began to use his PS mark, which he maintained throughout his career with only minor changes. His first major work was a gold font commissioned by the Duke of Portland in 1797 and in 1799 he created the “Battle of the Nile Cup” for presentation to Lord Nelson.

Much of Storr’s success was due to the influence of Philip Rundell, of the popular silver retailing firm, Rundell, Bridge and Rundell. Rundell’s firm nearly monopolized the early nineteenth-century market for superior silver and obtained the Royal Warrant in 1806. This shrewd businessman realised the talent of Paul Storr and began pursuing him in 1803, however it was not until 1807 that Storr finally joined the firm. After many years of working for Rundell, Storr realised he had lost much of his artistic freedom and by 1819 he left the firm to open his own shop, turning his attentions towards more naturalistic designs and soon began enjoying the patronage he desired. After only a few years of independence, Storr realised he needed a centralised retail location and partnered with John Mortimer, founding Storr and Mortimer in 1822 on New Bond Street.

Son of Thomas Storr of Westminster, first silver-chaser later innkeeper. Apprenticed c. 1785. Before his first partnership with William Frisbee in 1792 he worked in Church Street, Soho, which was the address of Andrew Fogelberg at which Storr’s first separate mark is also entered.

• First mark entered as plateworker, in partnership with William Frisbee, 2 May 1792. Address: 5 Cock Lane, Snow Hill.
• Second mark alone, 12 January 1793. Address: 30 Church Street, Soho.
• Third mark, 27 April 1793.
• Fourth 8 August 1794. Moved to 20 Air Street, 8 October 1796, (where Thomas Pitts had worked till 1793).
• Fifth mark, 29 November 1799.
• Sixth, 21 August 1807. Address 53 Dean Street, Soho.
• Seventh, 10 February 1808.
• Eighth ?
• Ninth, 21 October 1813.
• Tenth, 12 September 1817. Moved to Harrison Street, Gray’s Inn Road, 4 March 1819, after severing his connection with Rundell, Bridge and Rundell.
• Eleventh mark, 2 September 1883. Address: 17 Harrison Street.
• Twelfth and last mark, 2 September 1833.

Heal records him in partnership with Frisbee and alone at Cock Lane in 1792, and at the other addresses and dates above, except Harrison Street.

Storr married in 1801, Elizabeth Susanna Beyer of the Saxon family of piano and organ builders of Compton Street, by whom he had ten children. He retired in 1838, to live in Hill House in Tooting. He died 18 March 1844 and is buried in the churchyard of St Nicholas, Tooting. His will, proved 3 April 1844, shows an estate of £3,000.

There is a memorial to him at the church of St Mary, Otley, Suffolk put up in 1845 by his son the Rev. Francis Storr, the incumbent.

An example of his work is the cup made for presentation to the British admiral Lord Nelson to mark his victory at the Battle of the Nile.

Items from Storr’s workshops may be seen at Windsor Castle and during the summer opening season at Buckingham Palace. There are significant holdings of items in the National Silver Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum as well as in the Wellington Collection at Apsley House. Outside London there are important works at Brighton Pavilion, at the Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle and at Woburn Abbey. In the United States there are holdings of Paul Storr at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, among others. The Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama has two significant pieces, one of which is illustrated here. In Canada, there are significant pieces in the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba. Australia has holdings at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. In Portugal there is a fascinating group of silver made by Storr at the Casa Museu Medeiros e Almeida, Lisbon, whereas in Russia, at the State Hermitage Museum, there is silver supplied to Tsar Nicholas I and members of the aristocracy by Hunt & Roskell, successors to Storr & Mortimer.

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Regency Personalities Series-Viscount Sir Samuel Hood

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Viscount Samuel Hood
12 December 1724 – 27 January 1816

Samuel Hood

Viscount Sir Samuel Hood son of Samuel Hood, vicar of Butleigh in Somerset, and prebendary of Wells and Mary Hoskins, daughter of Richard Hoskins, Esquire, of Beaminster, Dorset. In 1740 Captain (later Admiral) Thomas Smith was stranded in Butleigh when his carriage broke down on the way to Plymouth. The Rev Samuel Hood rescued him and gave him hospitality for the night. Samuel and Alexander were inspired by his stories of the sea and he offered to help them in the Navy. The Rev Samuel Hood and his wife would not allow any more sons to join the Navy as “they might be drowned”. Their third son, Arthur William became Vicar of Butleigh but died of fever in his 30’s. Another son was drowned in the local river Brue as a boy.

Samuel, older brother of Alexander Hood, 1st Viscount Bridport, entered the Royal Navy in 1741. He served part of his time as midshipman with George Brydges Rodney on the Ludlow and became a lieutenant in 1746. He had opportunities to see service in the North Sea during the War of the Austrian Succession.

In 1754, he was made commander of the sloop Jamaica and served on her at the North American station. In July 1756, while still on the North American station, he took command of the sloop HMS Lively.

At the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, the navy was rapidly expanded which benefited Hood. Later that year Hood was promoted to Post Captain and given command of HMS Grafton. In 1757, while in temporary command of Antelope (50 guns), he drove a French ship ashore in Audierne Bay, and captured two privateers. His zeal attracted the favourable notice of the Admiralty and he was appointed to a ship of his own, Bideford.

In 1759, when captain of the Vestal (32), he captured the French Bellone (32) after a sharp action. During the war, his services were wholly in the Channel, and he was engaged under Rodney in 1759 in the Raid on Le Havre, destroying the vessels collected by the French to serve as transports in the proposed invasion of Britain.

He was appointed in Commander-in-Chief, North American Station in July 1767. He returned to England in October 1770. In 1778, he accepted a command which in the ordinary course would have terminated his active career, becoming Commissioner of the dockyard at Portsmouth and governor of the Naval Academy.

In 1778, on the occasion of the King’s visit to Portsmouth, Hood was made a baronet.

The war was deeply unpopular with much of the British public and navy. Many admirals had declined to serve under Lord Sandwich, the First Lord of the Admiralty. Admiral Rodney, who then commanded in the West Indies, had complained of a lack of proper support from his subordinates, whom he accused of disaffection. The Admiralty, anxious to secure the services of trustworthy flag officers, promoted Hood to rear-admiral on 26 September 1780, and sent him to the West Indies to act as second in command under Rodney, who knew him personally. He joined Rodney in January 1781 in his flagship Barfleur, and remained in the West Indies or on the coast of North America until the close of the American Revolutionary War.

The expectation that he would work harmoniously with Rodney was not entirely justified. Their correspondence shows that they were not on friendly terms; but Hood always did his duty, and he was so able that no question of removing him from the station ever arose. The unfortunate turn for the British taken by the campaign of 1781 was largely due to Rodney’s neglect of Hood’s advice.

When Rodney decided to return to Britain for the sake of his health in the autumn of 1781, Hood was ordered to take the bulk of the fleet to the North American coast during the hurricane months. Hood joined Admiral Thomas Graves in the unsuccessful effort to relieve the army at Yorktown, when the British fleet was driven off by the French Admiral, the Comte de Grasse, at the Battle of the Chesapeake.

When he returned to the West Indies, he was for a time in independent command owing to Rodney’s absence in England. De Grasse attacked the British islands of St Kitts and Nevis with a force much superior to Hood’s squadron. Hood made an unsuccessful attempt in January 1782 to save them from capture, with 22 ships to 29, and the series of bold movements by which he first turned the French out of their anchorage at Basseterre of St Kitts and then beat off their attacks, were one of the best accomplishments of any British admiral during the war.

On 12 April 1782 Hood took part in a British fleet under Rodney which defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet which was planning an invasion of Jamaica. The French commander De Grasse, who had been responsible for the victory at Chesapeake was captured and taken back to Britain as a prisoner.

Eventually Hood was ordered to chase and with his division of 12 ships he captured 4 ships at the Mona Passage on 19 April 1782 thus completing the defeat. While serving in the Caribbean Hood became acquainted with, and later became a mentor to Horatio Nelson who was a young frigate commander. Hood had been a friend of Nelson’s uncle Maurice Suckling. In 1782 Hood introduced Nelson to the Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV who was then a serving naval officer in New York.

Hood was made an Irish peer as Baron Hood of Catherington in September 1782. During the peace, he entered the British Parliament as Member for Westminster in the election of 1784 where he was a supporter of the government of William Pitt the Younger. In 1786 he became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth holding that post until 1789. Promoted to vice-admiral in 1787, he was appointed to the Board of Admiralty under John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, brother of the Prime Minister, in July 1788. He became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth again in June 1792.

Following the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War, Hood became Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Fleet in February 1793. In August 1793 French royalists and other opponents of the revolution took over the town and invited Hood, whose fleet was blockading the city, to occupy the town. Hood, without time to request for instructions from the Admiralty in London, moved swiftly to take command of the port.

There were two main reasons for the British move. It was hoped that Toulon could be a centre of French resistance to Paris, and also to take possession of the French Mediterranean fleet of fifty eight warships, which lay in the harbour. It was hoped that depriving the French revolutionaries of their maritime resources would cripple the revolution. He occupied Toulon on the invitation of the French royalists, in co-operation with the Spaniards and Sardinians. In December of the same year, the allies, who did not work harmoniously together, were driven out, mainly by the generalship of Napoleon. Hood ordered the French fleet burned to prevent them falling back into the hands of the revolutionaries.

Hood then turned to the occupation of Corsica, which he had been invited to take in the name of the King of Britain by Pasquale Paoli, who had been leader of the Corsican Republic before it was subjugated by the French a quarter of a century previously. The island was for a short time added to the dominions of George III, chiefly by the exertions of the fleet and the co-operation of Paoli. While the occupation of Corsica was being effected, the French at Toulon had so far recovered that they were able to send a fleet to sea. Nelson was recorded as saying that Hood was “the best Officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of”.)

In October, he was recalled to England in consequence of some misunderstanding with the admiralty or the ministry, which has never been explained. Richard Freeman, in his book, The Great Edwardian Naval Feud, explains his relief from command in a quote from Lord Esher’s journal. According to this journal, “… [Hood] wrote ‘a very temperate letter’ to the Admiralty in which he complained that he did not have enough ships to defend the Mediterranean.” As a result Hood was then recalled from the Mediterranean.

Samuel Hood was created Viscount Hood of Whitley, Warwickshire in 1796 with a pension of £2000 per year for life (about £300,000 a year in present (2010) terms). In 1796, he was also appointed Governor of the Greenwich Hospital, a position which he held until his death in 1816. He served as Tory Member of Parliament for Westminster from 1784 to 1788 and from 1790 to 1796, and was Member for Reigate between 1789 and 1790.

He died in Greenwich on 27 January 1816 and is buried in Greenwich Hospital Cemetery. A peerage of Great Britain was conferred on his wife, Susannah, as Baroness Hood of Catherington in 1795. Samuel Hood’s titles descended to his youngest son, Henry (1753–1836).

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