Barclays Bank History Series IV

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART IV -- THE BEVANS

Barclays Bank Transitions 

 

In 1865, ten years after Charles Barclay died, Barclay, Bevan, Tritton and Co. merged with Spooner, Attwood, and Twells, taking on the new name of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Twells, and Co. Partners of the firm were then:

·         Henry Tritton.

·         Joseph Gurney Barclay.

·         Joseph Tritton.

·         Francis Augustus Bevan.

·         Philip Twells.

·         Henry John Tritton.

·         Robert Barclay.

·         Joseph Herbert Tritton.

Another merger occurred a generation later, in 1888, according to the previously cited Handbook of London Bankers. The previous partners of the banking business at 54 Lombard amalgamated with Ransom Bouverie, and Co., of Pall Mall East, under the style of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., and business continued at 54 Lombard Street and at 56 Pall Mall East, the office of the newly merged partners. This newly acquired firm had a history described as follows:

Pleydell-Bouverie castle of Earl of Radnor

Ransom, Bouverie, and Co. This well-known West End banking firm was founded by Mr. Ransom, who took into partnership Sir F. B. Morland and Mr. Hammersley, under the style of Ransom, Morland, and Hammersley, who established themselves about 1786 at 57, Pall Mall. That continued to be the style of the firm until 1796, when Mr. Hammersley left them to start a new bank, which he set up at 76, Pall Mall.

From that date to 1814 the firm was known as Ransom, Morland, and Co., carrying on business at 56, Pall Mall. In 1819 Sir F. B. Morland left the firm to establish a bank of his own under the style of Morland and Co.

Debrett's Illustrated House of Commons etc.

In the following year the Directory shows that Ransom and Co. moved to No. 34, Pall and in 1823 to 1, Pall Mall East, at which house the bank is still located. At the death of Mr. Ransom, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird (fourth son of the seventh Lord Kinnaird, by Elizabeth, daughter of Gaffin Ransom, Esq.) became head partner. He was the uncle of the late head partner, the Honourable Arthur Kinnaird ; and it was he who built the premises Nos. 1 and 2, Pall Mall East, as a banking-house.

The style of the firm was Ransom and Co. until Messrs. Bouverie, Murdoch, Bouverie, and James, of 11, Haymarket, amalgamated with them in 1856; since which time the style of the firm has been Messrs. Ransom, Bouverie, and Co. In 1876 the firm consisted of the following partners:

The County Families of the United Kingdom

The Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, M.P. (afterwards Lord Kinnaird). James Gordon Murdoch. Philip  Pleydell Bouverie. Charles Townshend Murdoch. Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird. Henry Hales Pleydell Bouverie.

It was announced in the Times of June 25, 1888, that Messrs. Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, and Co. had entered into partnership with Messrs. Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., to take effect from July 2, under the style of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., and that the business would be conducted, as heretofore, in Lombard Street and Pall Mall East;
the partners being :

• Messrs. Robert C. L. Bevan,
• J. Gurney Barclay,
• Francis A. Bevan,
• Charles T. Murdoch, M.P.,
• Robert Barclay,
• J. Herbert Tritton,
• Lord Kinnaird,
• Henry H. P. Bouverie,
• Wilfrid Arthur Bevan, and 
• Edward H. Barclay.

Messrs. Seymour Pleydell Bouverie and Roland Yorke Bevan hold the signature of the firm. 

We can clearly see that in 1890 Barclays Bank was being run by three Barclays, three Bevans, one Tritton, from the original bank, to whom had been added, as a result of the merger, one Murdoch, one Bouverie and a Kinnaird. A lawsuit involving Bouverie which was being litigated at the time of the merger indicated, not only was his income mortgaged to the hilt, but his trustee was in the habit of lying to other potential lenders to Bouverie about the status of his trust--possibly the reason for the Barclays buyout of the Ransom Bouverie bankers.

With these changes in mind, we continue by detailing how marriages in the Bevan family changed the face of the bank.

Marriages between Barclay and Bevan 

Timothy Bevan

David Barclay and his first wife Anne Taylor, besides the two sons we mentioned in Part II, also had a daughter named Elizabeth, who married Timothy Bevan, a son of Sylvanus the Quaker apothecary.  To this marriage another Sylvanus Bevan was born. 

 

Export of drugs to America in 1758

Timothy and Sylvanus Bevan had worked with Timothy's brother-in-law, David Barclay, to put together the financing to buy the Southwark brewery. Meanwhile, the other Bevans' primary interest was in building up their pharmaceutical inventory and operating an export business for such goods.  

 

The Bevans remained silent partners in Barclay & Perkins while selling their own products abroad until Timothy's death in 1786. Thereafter, Sylvanus joined the pharmacy full time, while his brother, Joseph Gurney Bevan, worked as a partner in the bank.

 

Timothy Bevan's father-in-law David Barclay (1682-1769) had a second set of children after his marriage to Priscilla Freame, including two more sons--John and David. John Barclay married Susanna Willett and moved to Clapham, near Anchor Brewery, to help Robert with the business, which exported quite a lot of beer to American ports. 

In previous posts we indicated that the Anchor had been previously owned by a family named Child, then by one Edmund Halsey. Since publishing that, we did additional research, which indicates how the change in owners transpired:

Ralph Thrale born in 1672 was left an orphan at nine years old, and went to Offley to live with his mother, who had remarried. His uncle Edmund Halsey, who was to become proprietor of the Anchor Brewery in Southwark and M.P. for Southwark, befriended the boy. Ralph went to London and eventually succeeded Halsey as owner of the Brewery. Ralph was the father of Henry Thrale. 

At that same website, we also read:

In 1692 Halsey [Ralph Thrale's uncle] was receiving £1.00 a week - half the salary of his master [his father-in-law, James Child] and within 20 months had become a partner. There is no evidence that he purchased his partnership and, as the partnership deed was drawn up on the 6th November 1693, only ten days before his marriage to one of James Child’s daughters - Anne. It might well have been his wife’s dowry.

From the date of the partnership, Halsey ran the business efficiently, as the cash bulletin for the years 1693 to 1702 shows regular sums of up to £100 per week, large amounts in those days, were paid in excise duty; and in May, 1695, both he and Child drew £400 each in profits....

Sir Josiah Child, EIC

James Child died on 22 February 1696, at the age of 66. He was buried in St. Dunstan-in-the-East Church in London. By his will, directed that his estate be equally divided into three, one-third being left to his widow Anne Child née Minnie, and the remaining two-thirds to his daughters under the age of 21 years…His widow retained her husband’s interest in the brewhouse, Halsey paying her a weekly sum until her death in 1701.

When we match up the dates, what we learn is that Sir Josiah Child, the 1st Baronet, was born in 1630, and he was the brother of James, who owned the Anchor. Josiah at Portsmouth was appointed "victualler to the Navy," and accumulated a significant fortune which he invested in a joint stock company called The East India Company. Josiah became a director of the East India Company in 1677,  according to one website, and was

"elected governor of the East India Company in 1681, serving in that post for most of the decade. For a time he was virtually the sole decision maker for the company, directing policy as if it were his private business. He was often openly accused of using the company to aggrandize his social, economic, and political position. He received his baronetcy in 1678."

Sir Josiah Child died in 1699, leaving a son, Josiah II (c.1668-1704),  succeeding as "2nd Baronet, his father’s will left him no more than had been settled upon him at the time of his marriage in 1691. His sister Mary, who had married against their father’s wishes, was similarly treated, being left only £5. It was Josiah’s younger half-brother, Richard (1680-1750), who had been made their father’s principal heir, and it was he who came into possession of the Wanstead estate."

Josiah II was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke, one of his father’s East India Company associates, who also served as Member of Parliament for Wareham between 1702 and 1704. As Sir Josiah Child II had no children, Richard succeeded him as 3rd baronet. He also inherited the £4,000 per annum which had been settled upon Josiah for life, bringing his own annual income to some £10,000. 

He did not maintain his father’s active connection with the East India Company. Richard Child was a Member of Parliament and described as demonstrating “a certain political flexibility,” which enabled him to make a smooth transition between the Stuart and Hanoverian regimes. In 1715 he completed the family’s journey from its mercantile origins by purchasing his ennoblement via George I’s mistress the Duchess of Munster (afterwards Kendal). Richard Child later Tylney, 1st Earl Tylney, 1st Viscount Castlemaine and Baron Newtown of Newtown, 3rd Baronet (1680–1750) He and his sons took the name of Tylney in place of that of Child by Act of Parliament in 1734 when his wife inherited the estates of that family. We will continue researching this family alongside the bankers.

The Bevan Marriages

David Barclay Bevan

Sylvanus Bevan's first wife died in 1769, only a month or two after they were married. Four years later he married outside the Quaker community, and thereby lost his standing within it. There were no children from the Quaker marriage. All the children would be born to his second wife, Louisa Kendall. When he had assisted David and Robert Barclay in their purchase of the Thrale brewery in Southwark in 1781, Sylvanus's eldest son, David Barclay Bevan, was then a lad of seven years old. 

Sylvanus left his Quaker community after being ousted in 1773 and located to Winchmore Hill, north of London, where he and Louisa reared seven sons--including David and the youngest son, being named Richard Bevan--who eventually became partners in the bank. 

David turned 17 in 1791, and it was decided that he should be trained in the workings of the bank since his grandfather, Timothy Bevan, had died a few years earlier, leaving a gaping hole that needed to be filled. David Bevan went to work at the bank on Lombard Street, and, after six years of hard work, he met his future wife, 17-year-old Favell Bourke Lee, a recent orphan with an intriguing background. 

 

David Bevan's Marriage to Favell Bourke Lee 

Favell Bourke Lee

In 1798 David married Favell Bourke Lee, daughter of  Robert Cooper Lee and his wife, Jamaican-born Priscilla Kelly, an illegitimate daughter of Judge Denis Kelly. Lee had been Crown Solicitor-General of Jamaica and had four mixed-race children born out of wedlock there before he returned to live in England, where he married Priscilla before Favell was born in 1780. 

 

Favell's father, Robert Cooper Lee, was born in Ireland, but like many others besieged by Cromwell's anti-Catholic policies had fled to Jamaica in 1749 when he was only 13. At first he sold ribbons to support his family in Ireland, but rose to be Crown Solicitor in Jamaica, working under the Chief Justice, another Irishman, Denis Kelly. Kelly had married a former Jamaican slave, the mother of Priscilla Kelly, future wife of Robert Cooper Lee.

 

Lee left Jamaica for England and worked as a barrister in Bedford Square. There he filed a lawsuit to legitimize children born to him in Jamaica before his marriage to Priscilla. One source relates:

Robert Cooper Lee who had four mixed-race children born illegitimate in Jamaica, and was responsible as a trustee and guardian for his illegitimate mixed-race nephews, made such an application in December, 1776, in an Act “to authorize and enable Robert Cooper Lee, late of the Island of Jamaica, but now of the kingdom of Great Britain, esquire, to settle and dispose of his estates, both real and personal in this island, by deed or will as he shall think proper, notwithstanding an Act of the Governor, Council and Assembly of this island, instituted, an Act to prevent inconveniences arising from exorbitant grants and devises made by white persons and the issue of negroes and to restrain and limit such grants and devises.” [Source: Anne Powers (17 December 2011). "Blocking Legacies to Negroes and Mulattoes," A Parcel of Ribons: Eighteenth century Jamaica viewed through family stories and documents. 

Trent Park mansion of R.C.L. Bevan

David and Favell married in 1798 and soon had sons to help make up the next generation of the bank. Their second son was Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, named for Favell's late father, and was described as:

An excellent man of business, Robert [Cooper Lee] Bevan spent fifty years in the City, and with justifiable pride witnessed and assisted in the expansion of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton & Co. into one of the leading banking concerns in the kingdom. Little, however, did these shrewd bankers of a hundred years ago foresee the enormous proportions to which their business would attain, and great would be their surprise to-day if they could peruse the current balance sheets of Barclays Bank, Limited. In 1864 the cramped old premises at 54, Lombard Street were demolished, and a more modern building erected. [Source: Audrey Noble Gamble, A History of the Bevan Family (London: Headley Brothers, 1924] 

 

R.C.L. Bevan

Since Favell's father was a member of the Irish peerage, David Bevan's marriage took him into a whole new realm of non-Quaker acquaintances and set up his children, beginning with the eldest daughter, Louisa Priscilla Bevan, to marry into a somewhat "higher" social class. 

 

In 1825 Louisia married Augustus Henry Bosanquet of Marlebone, whose name would appear for many years as a director of the Imperial Fire Insurance Company, alongside the names of Louisa's brother, Robert Cooper Lee (R.C.L.) Bevan and a cousin, Thomas George Barclay, whose father, Charles Barclay, inherited the brewery from Robert, who had been installed there by David Barclay with help from Timothy and Sylvanus Bevan. Just in case you may have forgotten.

 

Admiral J.S. Yorke

R.C.L. set his marriage sights on Lady Agnetta Elizabeth Yorke, a daughter of the late Admiral Joseph Sydney Yorke and great granddaughter of Philip Yorke, the 1st Earl of Hardwicke. The Yorke men rose in Parliament during the period of the Hanoverian Kings and were rewarded as a result to their attachment to them.

 

According to Romney R. Sedgwick: "In 1740 he [Philip Yorke] entered the territorial aristocracy by buying the estate of Wimpole in Cambridgeshire from the 2nd Lord Oxford," and in the same year "married his eldest son to the grand-daughter and heiress of the Duke of Kent, on whose death shortly afterwards she succeeded to Wrest in Bedfordshire, becoming a Marchioness in her own right."

 

Titles were everything. With them came landed estates. 

 

Lady Agnetta Yorke's brother, Charles Philip Yorke, was Postmaster-general in Lord Derby's cabinet, and also installed as the 4th Earl of Hardwicke. The Yorkes were a powerful force within Britain's government of that time, but her father was also tied to naval duties and never quite grasped the art of political prowess. He "was drowned off a yacht struck by lightning in the Hamble, 5 May 1831." 

In 1836 Robert Cooper Lee Bevan replaced Robert Barclay as Auditor for Imperial Fire Insurance Co., and R.C.L. Bevan would continue rising in his career at the bank, eventually replacing David Barclay Bevan, his father, as chairman.

 

 

 

Timothy Bevan's descendants. Click to enlarge.

 

 Spouse Families Brought into Barclays, Bevan and Co.--Yorke and Earls of Hardwicke  

Earl of Harwicke

R.C.L. Bevan, as Robert was often known, had lived a lustful life by his own description, before being converted a generation or more after his Quaker ancestors were kicked out of the sect. He then became determined to meet Agneta Yorke, sister of the Earl of Hardwicke. He proposed to her in 1836, and, in seeking her brother's consent, Robert admitted their unbalanced social status, saying: "I am quite aware of the difference in our Stations in Society, but I have reason to hope that will not be considered by you as an insuperable objection." 

After four years of marriage, RCL and Agneta rejoiced over the birth of their son--Francis Augustus Bevan--who would be educated at Harrow before joining Barclays Bank at the age of 19. 

Robert Cooper Lee

 

Three years after he had gone to work for the bank Frank Bevan married Elizabeth Marianne Russell. Her father--Lord Charles James Fox Russell--was Sergeant at Arms of the House of Commons from 1848 until 1875. 

 

Lord C.J. Fox Russell 

Because of the photos we have seen, he appears to have been the man who carried the Black Rod in the ceremony in which the Commons are summoned to the Lords. The ceremony is thought to have begun in its present form in the year 1642 and was intended to:

...emphasise that both the House of Commons and the City of London are independent corporations, with franchises or liberties of their own, and a royal messenger engaged on formal business needs the special leave of the corporation to enter it. 

I backed up and took the research more slowly the second time. When I had added Francis Augustus "Frank" Bevan's wife to the family tree, and added in her ancestors, something had clicked. It was as though someone behind the scenes had been at work to manipulate the marriages and births for at least a hundred years or more prior to that wedding. 

 

Georgina Gordon

Frank Bevan's father-in-law, as it turned out, was the son of Sir John Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford. It was his wife, Georgiana Elizabeth Gordon, born in Scotland in 1781, who led us back to something that rang a familiar note. Her parents were named Alexander Gordon and Jane Maxwell. It certainly It was like deja vu, all over again, to quote Yogi Berra's well-hackneyed phrase. 

 

We traced our steps back to a prior Alexander Gordon. You may recall Alexander Gordon, the 12th Earl of Sutherland, who married Jean Gordon in 1573. It was their granddaughter, Katherine Gordon, the White Rose of Scotland, who married Col. David Barclay in 1647, leading up to numerous marriages we have already explored. This new Alexander, amazingly, appeared to be a descendant of the Barclays' Scottish family explored in Part One of this series. I say "appeared to be" because some have strongly contested that claim. 

 

See video.

But then I looked more closely at the name Sir John Russell as well and discovered his ancestor, William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, born in 1710 at Streatham, was found guilty of treason and was beheaded in 1683, at the end of the Hanoverian era, five years before the Act of Settlement ushered in William and Mary as the new monarchs from the House of Orange. 

 

Then I noticed that Streatham also sounded familiar. 

 

What had I overlooked? Had I misunderstood the importance of the Anchor Brewery? 

 

Ownership of Streatham Manor 

 

Floundering around the search engines, I discovered the Thrales did not appear to have owned Streatham House where they lived and entertained Dr. Johnson, as we discussed in Parts II and III-A. Only a few years earlier, the Manor House at Streatham had been the venue for the marriage of 11-year-old Elizabeth Child and 14-year-old John Howland, as depicted in a portrait painted by Holland Tringham, according to the following:

Holland Tringham painting

Elizabeth Howland was a daughter of Sir Josiah Child, Chairman of the East India Company. The Howlands had been Lords of the Manor of Tooting Bec since 1599. Elizabeth married John Howland, and their daughter, also Elizabeth, was heir to her parent’s fortune and also to a considerable portion of Sir Josiah’s.

On 23rd May 1695, Elizabeth married the Marquess of Tavistock, later the 2nd Duke of Bedford, at the Manor House in Streatham. The Marquess became, by marriage, immensely wealthy, and in the same year King William III created him Baron Howland of Streatham. Both the bride and groom were just 14 years old. [According to some accounts at Ancestry.com, she was three years younger.] Their children later became the third and fourth Dukes of Bedford. The Marquess and Elizabeth both died of smallpox, he in 1711 and she in 1724.

Elizabeth had a brother named James Child, who was mentioned in a website called Thrale History, where I discovered that, in 1693 the King recommended James Child, "merchant of London, who has done faithful service in supplying the navy with beer, and has bought a brewhouse in Southwark to brew for the household and navy, for admission as a free brother of the same company, for the same fee as the late Timothy Alsop the King’s brewer paid."

King William III's reign encompassed the years 1689 until his death in 1702, and Timothy Alsop had been referred to several times in Samuel Pepys' Diary as "Brewer to the Royal Household." The Child family also popped up in the family tree I was making on the families who owned Barclays Bank--all of whom were intermarried. Only one genealogy covered all of them. 

Our interest in Anchor Brewery originally stemmed from the fact that it became the property of the Barclay family in 1780. Learning that its origins coincided with its connection to the British East India Company (BEIC) caused us to wonder whether the Barclay family's ultimate success in banking stemmed from the same connection as "victualers for the King."

King Charles II had created that position as early as "1660 and succeeded the earlier position of Clerk of the Navy" and Keeper of the King's Ports and Galleys. Sam Pepys himself held down the position until about 1690. As for the Child family:

We emphasize at this point in our research that Josiah Child's policies fell under the category called mercantilism. According to the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Updated: June 27, 2025):

Mercantilism contained many interlocking principles. Precious metals, such as gold and silver, were deemed indispensable to a nation’s wealth. If a nation did not possess mines or have access to them, precious metals should be obtained by trade. It was believed that trade balances must be “favourable,” meaning an excess of exports over imports. 

Reading that definition in 2025, I was struck with how similar the idea was to what's happening today in Trump World, thanks to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Forcing a trading partner to buy our goods is exactly the same belief about trade that led to the Opium Wars with China. Who planted that belief in the little educated, irrational mind of Donald Trump and Howard Lutnick? We can only wonder at this point.

 

Nevertheless, I was intrigued about how Josiah Child, famous mercantilist head of the East India Company, found his way into our Barclay banking families' genealogy, so I kept digging for any sort of information I could find. I learned that Child had been the author of a treatise with a long title some 18 years before his death: 

"A treatise wherein is demonstrated, I. That the East-India trade is the most national of all foreign trades, II. That the clamors, aspersions, and objections made against the present East-India company, are sinister, selfish, or groundless, III. That since the discovery of the East-Indies, the dominion of the sea depends much upon the wane or increase of that trade, and consequently the security of the liberty, property, and protestant religion of this kingdom, IV. That the trade of the East-Indies cannot be carried on to national advantage, in any other way than by a general joynt stock, V. That the East-India trade is more profitable and necessary to the kingdom of England, than to any other kingdom or nation in Europe by Philopatris." [London: Printed by T.F. for Robert Boulter,]

 

M. Kienholz had called John Howland of Streatham the "Earl of Berkeley," before stating that William Russell (Baron Howland) married a daughter of John Massingberd, the East India Co.'s treasurer. Elizabeth Massingberd, Countess of Berkeley, was born in 1627, so that was one place to start. 

 

 

 

Barclays Bank History Series III-A

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank  

 

Addendum to Part III - Financing the Brewery

 

From Welsh Nobility to Scottish Quakers

Robust Recount in 1642

One thing we discovered during research was that many have told the Thrale story without much accountability to accuracy. If you can imagine yourself going to see Henry VIII, playing at the Globe in 1613, you may hear the crackling of flames as the thatched roof catches fire and destroys the theater, putting it out of commission until the next year. 

 

 Henry Thrale, who had been rejected in his proposed return to his Parliamentary seat in 1780 which he and his father, Ralph Thrale, had long held in Southwark, died in April 1781. It was his death that forced the Anchor Brewery to be sold. 

 

In the preceding years, Henry had confessed to his wife and their friend, Dr. Samuel Johnston, that his brewing experiments had disastrously almost ruined the beer. His wife then took control, and in a few years had reversed that trend, paying off all his debts, but also earning enough to buy the brewery outright from Edmund Halsey. 

 

She took title in a manner she devised, in an estate planning instrument known as an entailment. At the time she had two sons, who would unpredictably die in the decade to come, so her best-laid plans did, alas, go badly awry.

Phoenix and the Turtle

Hester's Welsh Ancestors - Cotton and Salusbury

 

By having married Hester Lynch Salusbury in 1763, Henry had thus considerably advanced his station in life, since Hester's ancestry connected her to Henry VII's Welsh family who once lived in Penmynydd, North Wales, possibly in the same house in which her mother grew up. The context comes straight out of Shakespeare, who even wrote a poem about Hester's family called The Phoenix and the Turtle, which has been interpreted by so many literary experts, I don't pretend to understand what it's even about.

 

Shakespeare's poem first appeared in an anthology of work published in 1601, two years after the Globe opened at Bankside, by Robert Chester, and was dedicated to Welsh statesman Sir John Salusbury and his wife Ursula Stanley. We leave it for those more steeped in Shakespearean intrigues to settle the question for themselves. Our only point here is in recognizing that the brewery bought by Robert Barclay and his cousins in 1781 was awash in the history of warring royal families long before Barclay took title.

 

Henry VII

Brief Context of Events:  When Henry VI died in 1471, Edward IV became King. Henry (son of Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond), who had been brought up in Wales, fled to Brittany in northern France, for safety. Twelve years later, the King died, setting up a contest between two factions claiming the right to the Crown. That contest, of course, led to war, and this one played out in Leicestershire, England--at the Battle of Bosworth Field--where Richard III was killed. The outcome "not only ushered in the Tudor dynasty but also ended the Plantagenet dynasty."

 

 

 

End of the Plantagenets

 Henry then made his way to London, where he was crowned, pledging to his naysayers that he would legitimize his accession by a marriage to Edward's daughter, a deed he accomplished in 1486. 

 

Beaumaris Castle

Before that marriage, however, while Henry had been in Brittany, he was rumored to have fathered at least one child. That's where Hester comes in--as a descendant of that child, Tudur ap Robert Vychan, "a natural son of Henry VII, whom Henry made constable of Beaumaris castle." This illegitimate son is further identified as "the father of Jane, wife of Robert Vychan of Berain in Denbighshire. 

 

Katheryn of Berain - Mother of Wales 

 

Hester's grandfather, John Salusbury, at the age of 14, was admitted to Jesus College, Oxford, in 1581, making him only 19 when he married Ursula Stanley, one of many illegitimate children of Henry, 6th Earl of Derby. John and Ursula had a daughter known as Katheryn of Berain, often called "Mam Cymru, The Mother of Wales." 

 

She reminds me of Katherine Gordon born in Scotland in 1621, whom we met in Part One of this series. I think of them as the two Kates--one in Scotland, the other in Wales--who had similar roles in helping bring their respective countries into a United Kingdom.

 

Lleweni Hall, Wales

The irony is not missed by us, however, as we see direct descendants of each woman coming together in Southwark in the year 1781. Hester Thrale, an heir of the Welsh protector of the Queen, sells off her hard-earned brewery to David Barclay, a lineal descendant of the Scottish White Rose, whose father also protected the Stuart royalty. Possibly I've been too influenced by conspiracy theories, but it strikes me as more than a touch ironic. It is, in fact, a symbol of the amalgamation itself--the Scottish and Welsh mothers which united the new kingdom.

 

Could that powerful symbol--Barclay & Perkins Brewery--be more than a symbol? Could it have been acquired by hidden owners, represented by nominee bankers? The question is not only rhetorical, but an honest inquiry posed because of how later events would reveal how vast the wealth was that stemmed from this enterprise.  

 

Barclay Wedding in 1647 

 

To put the players and their timelines in context, recall that Col. David Barclay married Katherine Gordon in Scotland in 1647. This was three generations after his wife's grandfather, Alexander Gordon Sutherland, was kidnapped and forced to marry Barbara Sinclair before his ultimate marriage to Lady Jean, followed by his death in 1594. Jean herself outlived Sutherland, marrying Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne in 1599.

 

War was the only unchanging constant in Scotland as it was in Wales during the same times. Hester Thrale's mother, Hester Maria Cotton, grew up as the daughter of Sir Thomas Cotton, bart., of Combermere and Lleweni and married John Salusbury, who came from "a family of powerful oligarchs in Wales which at the time controlled most of Denbighshire along with their cousins, the Cotton baronets."  

 

The Cottons and Salusburys thus were the pro-Royalist forces in the area of northeastern Wales and England to the south of Liverpool and Manchester. It was this same territory that Hester Thrale made a tour in 1774 with Dr. Samuel Johnson not long after she learned she had inherited Bachegraig House from an uncle. 

 

One of her ancestors, Thomas Salusbury, a traitor to the royal family, was executed as an accomplice to the Jacobites' Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I. Hester Thrale's father had been educated in Rugby and Westminster Schools, followed by collegiate training in Mathematics at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He then was sent by the Queen to Nova Scotia and returned home by way of Ireland, dying in 1762, almost a year before Hester married Henry Thrale, a brewer in Southwark, in compliance with her mother's advice.

 

Hester--Descendant of Katheryn of Berain 

Each of Hester's parents--not surprisingly, since so many British marriages were between first cousins--was a descendant of Katheryn of Berain, the Welsh counterpart of the White Rose of Scotland. Katheryn, who died in 1591, was the daughter of one of Queen Elizabeth's Welsh protectors, and at one time she became a ward of the Queen. Hester Lynch Salusbury (aka Hester Thrale) was born a century and a half after Katheryn's death. With her father often missing while on missions for the Queen, it has been said that, when told his daughter was to marry Thrale, "a wealthy brewer whose father had the misfortune of being born in a dog kennel on one of Salusbury's estates," he had a heart attack, delaying the marriage until 1763. 

 

Dr. Samuel Johnson

Dr. Johnson, who lived in Lichfield, not far from Birmingham, had lost his wife ten years earlier and had only met James Boswell in 1763, the same year Hester married. Two years later he met the Thrales, who gave him his own nest at Streatham Park about seven miles from the Anchor, and made it his home for the next 17 years or so, several years after Henry Thrale died. 

 

Despite rumors that Hester would marry Dr. Johnson--rumors mostly spread by literary friend James Boswell--she shocked everyone by marrying the piano teacher to her eldest daughter (Johnson dubbed her "Queenie"). Thus did her decades-long friendship with Johnson and Boswell suddenly end.

The Anchor Brewery was, as was common in those days, "entailed" by a deed Hester had herself set up when she paid off the brewery's debt to the previous owner. She received advice about what to do with the brewery when her husband died in 1781 from her close friends--Samuel Johnson and James Boswell. 

 

Since there was no surviving son, the terms of the ownership of the business mandated it be sold. According to Peter Mathias, "Johnson presided over the sale as an executor ...and the brewery was bought for £135,000 by John Perkins and the rich Quaker relatives of his wife—Robert Barclay, David Barclay, and Sylvanus Bevan." 

 

Admiral Elphinstone

This David Barclay is the one we met in Part III, who had been acquainted with Dr. Johnson when he visited Birmingham on one occasion. Barclay also had a relationship with John Perkins, who may have approached him or one of the Bevans about financing the purchase. 

Twenty-five years after the brewery changed from Hester Thrale's hands to David Barclay's, Hester Maria "Queenie" Thrale in 1806 became the second wife of Admiral William George Keith Elphinstone, otherwise known as 1st Viscount Keith Elphinstone, who had fought in the American revolutionary war on the side of Britain--the losing side. Elphinstone remained a soldier and did better in England's war against Napoleon a few years later. Still later, "as the Prince Regent's representative, he received Napoleon's final surrender and supervised the deposed French Emperor's removal to his last exile on St. Helena in 1815. He was elevated to Viscount in 1814."  

 

If war was an unchanging constant during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries in Scotland and Wales,  a close second was the bloody brutality that occurred among the rival clans. You can read a broader synopsis of the rivalry at the "Sutherland Clan History," excerpted below:

During the 1715 Jacobite Rising normal service was resumed and the 16th Earl took arms on the side of the King George I and defended Inverness castle against the Jacobites. Sutherland men were again in the fray on the Government side at the battle of Glenshiel in 1719 which all but ended this chapter of the Jacobite rising. At this time John Gordon, the 16th Earl officially changed his name to Sutherland and was recognised officially as chief in the name and arms of Sutherland by the Lord Lyon.

By John Pettie

When Charles Edward Stuart [aka "Bonnie Prince Charlie] arrived in Scotland to begin the 1745 Jacobite rising the Sutherlands once again came out on the Government side. The Jacobites led by George MacKenzie the Earl of Cromartie took Dunrobin Castle, Sutherland’s clan seat at Golspie – the chief narrowly escaped them by leaving via a back door and making it to the sea where he sailed for Aberdeen. ...

In 1766 William Sutherland the 18th Earl died leaving an only daughter, Elizabeth. ... Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstoun also threw his hat in and a three way dispute ensued. The case was taken to the House of Lords in 1771 and settled in favour of Elizabeth.

Maybe if the decision had gone differently the fate of the highlands might have been better, Elizabeth married George Leveson Gower, Marquess of Stafford who became the first Duke of Sutherland in 1833. Sutherland knew nothing of the responsibilities of being a clan chief and cared even less. He ruthlessly and aggressively cleared the Sutherland lands aided by his notorious henchman Patrick Sellar. together they cast a black shadow on the landscape that is there to this day.

FROM THE PEERAGE: 

Alexander Gordon, 12th Earl of Sutherland and Lady Jean Gordon had a son--John Gordon, 13th Earl of Sutherland, born on 20 July 1576, and married Agnes Elphinstone, daughter of Alexander Elphinstone, 4th Lord Elphinstone and Jean Livingstone, on 1 February 1600.2 He died on 11 September 1615 at age 39. He succeeded as the 13th Earl of Sutherland on 6 December 1594 (the year Alexander died) and surrendered the Hereditary Shrievalty and Earldom of Sutherland. On 29 April 1601 he was regranted the Hereditary Shrievalty and Earldom of Sutherland with special remainder to his brothers Robert and Alexander, and then to Adam, third son of the 1st Marquess of Huntly.

 

We decided to do a simple google search of some of the names above. The result was:

Lady Mary Frances Elphinstone (née Bowes-Lyon) (1883-1961), Wife of 16th Baron Elphinstone; daughter of 14th Earl of Strathmore

That took us to a photograph of the Christening of Queen Elizabeth II by Vandyk     

Portrait of Lady Mary Frances Elphinstone (née Bowes-Lyon)

 

 

 

 Sitters:

    Prince Arthur, 1st Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850-1942), Field Marshal, Governor General of Canada; son of Queen Victoria. Sitter associated with 167 portraits. Identify
    Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022), Reigned 1952-2022. Sitter associated with 976 portraits. Identify
    Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1900-2002), Queen of George VI. Sitter associated with 587 portraits, Artist or producer of 1 portrait. Identify
    Lady Mary Frances Elphinstone (née Bowes-Lyon) (1883-1961), Wife of 16th Baron Elphinstone; daughter of 14th Earl of Strathmore. Sitter in 1 portrait. Identify
    King George V (1865-1936), Reigned 1910-36. Sitter in 503 portraits. Identify
    King George VI (1895-1952), Reigned 1936-52. Sitter associated with 569 portraits. Identify
    Queen Mary (1867-1953), Queen consort of King George V. Sitter associated with 411 portraits. Identify
    Princess Mary, Countess of Harewood (1897-1965), Princess Royal. Sitter in 298 portraits. Identify
    (Cecilia) Nina Bowes-Lyon (née Cavendish-Bentinck), Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1862-1938), Mother of Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother and grandmother of Elizabeth II. Sitter in 5 portraits. Identify
    Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne (1855-1944), Landowner; grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II. Sitter in 14 portraits. Identify

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barclays Bank History Series III

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank

Part Three--Barclays Buy a Brewery

Southwark--All the World's a Stage 

 

Anchor Brewery next to Globe

In the last year of the 16th Century, William Shakespeare opened his new play, Henry V, in a new theater at Southwark at the south bank of the River Thames. Some say the first play performed was Julius Caesar, though others argue the first was Henry V.

 

"Legend has it that the Globe’s motto was totus mundus agit histrionem, paraphrased in As You Like It (first performed in 1599) as 'all the world’s a stage.'" Shakespeare was a genius, unexcelled to this day. The Anchor Brewery started life immediately next door to the Globe Theatre on Bankside in 1616, two years after the rebuilt Globe reopened.

 

The brewery's owner was Edmund Halsey, who entrusted operation of the brewery to Ralph Thrale and his son Henry, who with their heirs controlled the site during most of the following century, long after the theater was abandoned in 1642. 

 

Victor Keegan, author of "Vic Keegan’s Lost London 1666: The world-leading Anchor Brewery," at On London webpage, explains what makes this brewery relevant to our story:

Barclay & Perkins Brewery 1781

The brewery’s expansion continued when purchased by David Barclay (of the Barclay Quaker banking family) who brought in his nephew Robert Barclay from America who, in the 1780s, teamed up with a senior employee, John Perkins, under the trading name Barclay & Perkins. By 1809 they were producing a world-leading 260,000 barrels a year. In 1955, Barclay Perkins merged with a rival London brewer, Courage. Brewing continued there until the early 1970s. The buildings were demolished in 1981.

The back story about the Anchor Brewery will appear in Part Four, and will put into context the people in whose orbit Robert Barclay was living amongst in the 1780s. It gave him a contact both with members of the ancient Welsh nobility and with members of England's literati of that day, such as Dr. Samuel Johnson and his friend James Boswoth. Once David Barclay (1729-1809) put the brewery into the hands of his nephews, Robert Barclay and, Sylvanus Bevan, it continued to grow until it controlled a large percentage of all beer produced in England. Stay tuned for the story of Barclay & Perkins, in Part Four. 

 

David Barclay's Wife--Daughter of Lloyds Bank Founder

Logo for Lloyds Bank

According to a genealogy of the Lloyd's banking family, David Barclay's second wife was Rachel Lloyd, daughter of Sampson and Rachel Champion Lloyd of Birmingham, who were married in 1767 at the Friends Meeting of Birmingham. 

David Barclay

Two years later they moved into a house he purchased in Hertfordshire, north of London, called Youngsbury, which they had upgraded.He spent his time working on the linen export business, mostly in America, by working with his father's old friend William Penn in Philadelphia. 

Once he saw the revolution and war were inevitable, however, he: 

managed the firm's gradual withdrawal from the export trade. The firm ceased trading altogether in 1783, but by then he had taken up a partnership with the bank. 

He inherited a plantation in Jamaica and its slave population, and in line with his Quaker principles he freed the slaves, paid for them to be taught a trade or handicraft skills, and resettled them on his property in Pennsylvania. He was also one of the close family members who put up the capital to enable his nephew Robert Barclay (1751-1830) to buy the Anchor brewery and establish his highly successful business there. In 1768 he became the first member of the family to own a country house (Youngsbury (Herts)), although it was just a small villa in an unfinished landscaped garden when he acquired it, and he enlarged it considerably and improved the setting. 

Barclay plantation in Jamaica

According to another Quaker website, David and his brother John Barclay inherited property in the West Indies from their mother, Priscilla nee Freame, who died in 1769. 

Seven years later, the year he and wife Rachel Lloyd moved to Youngsbury, he became an active partner in the bank which was then renamed Barclay, Bevan and Bening, which then began developing into a network of "country banks" connected with Norwich and with Birmingham, where it would finance the building of bridges, canals and other trading enterprises, in addition to its old standby of textiles.

David Barclay's youngest sister, Lucy, born in Cheapside in 1737, returned to the Barclays' roots in Scotland by marrying her cousin Robert, born in Scotland in 1732, described by one Blogger as follows:

Robert Barclay (1732) was MP for Kincardineshire from 1788 until his death in 1797, being re-elected in 1790 and 1796 and was a friend of William Pitt the Younger (1759 – 1806), the United Kingdom’s youngest-ever prime minister.  Robert was also involved in local affairs in Kincardineshire as a Commissioner of Supply and as a member of the Board of Agriculture.  He was married twice, firstly to his cousin, Lucy Barclay, the daughter of David Barclay of Cheapside ... in 1756.  He was a great grandson and she was a granddaughter of Robert Barclay (1648), the Apologist.  Lucy died in childbirth the following year, though her daughter, also Lucy, survived. 

Eugenics of Francis Galton

Lucy junior married Samuel John Galton (1753).  One of their sons, Samuel Tertius Galton (1783) married Francis Ann Violetta Darwin, the cousin of Charles Darwin of “Origin of Species” fame.  In turn, one of their children was Francis Galton (1822) an outstanding 19th century polymath, responsible for major contributions in many fields of study, such as the identification of individuals by their fingerprints and the inheritance of human genius.

The second Lucy's marriage thus returned this branch of the family back to England, into the domain of the Lloyd family and the Quaker Meeting at Birmingham. The Galtons were of a scientific bent, involved in the anti-slavery movement, but also made their fortune manufacturing guns. In addition, Sir Francis Galton developed the concept of eugenics which would be used to justify autocratic actions even to the present day.

Though Barclay's banking partners had previously been Quakers, after a generation or two they had become separated from the sect because of marrying outside their faith, and they failed to retain the doctrine of anti-slavery that the Barclays continued to practice.  As a member of the Meeting for Sufferings Committee on the Slave Trade which met from 1783 to 1792, David Barclay no doubt objected when his non-Quaker banking partners--less concerned about owning slaves than he was--nevertheless financed plantation mortgages in the West Indies Trade. As a result:

The brothers [David and John] were mortgagees of an estate called Vaucluse and the enslaved people attached to it on Barbados c. 1780. Sometime around 1785 John and David Barclay took possession in lieu of debts of a 2000 acre cattle pen named Unity Valley in St Ann, Jamaica. 

His book, An Account of the Emancipation of the Slaves of Unity Valley Pen, in Jamaica, published in Dorking in 1825, can be read online. Other research shows that John died in 1787, after the end of the revolutionary war, and "David Barclay took full possession of the estate and determined to emancipate the remaining 32 enslaved people still on Unity Valley. In 1795 he dispatched his agent William Holden to Jamaica with instructions to enact the manumission and then remove all freed persons to Philadelphia, where they would be delivered into the care of the Society for Improving the Condition of Free Blacks, run by Quaker acquaintances."

We saw in Part Two how the Freames had lost a big investment in the South Sea Corporation, so perhaps David Barclay felt justified in rejecting their manner of conducting business. His marriage to his second wife brought him in contact with a Quaker banking family headed by Sampson Lloyd of Birmingham, who provided credit to small manufacturers in the West Midlands. Rachel Lloyd Barclay's younger brother, Charles Lloyd of Bingley House, born in 1748, had received his banking training at the Barclays' counting house in London, but later went to work for the family bank, Hanbury, Taylor, Lloyd, and Bowman--only a couple of doors away from his brother-in-law at 54 Lombard. [Source: Samuel Lloyd, The Lloyds of Birmingham (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1908), p. 32].

 

Other Barclay Relatives

 

The next generation of Barclays came to fruition in 1781 when the David Barclay mentioned above bought the Southwark brewery and put his nephew Robert in place there. The previous year Robert and Rachel Gurney Barclay, became the parents of a son to whom they gave an unusual name--Charles--one of a very few of that name in the Barclay family, and they began a new life in Clapham, not far from Southwark. Eventually, the brewery enabled them to move up to a mansion at Bury Hill, 75 miles west of Clapham.

Bury Hill in Dorking

 

Before she married Robert Barclay, Rachel Gurney had spent an idyllic childhood at her family's rented mansion in Norfolk called Earlham, where five generations of Gurneys lived as happy Quakers while their respective Gurney fathers worked at their profitable woolen and worsted mills in Norwich, located within the orange highlighted territory called East Anglia, show to the right. 

 

Her mother was Elizabeth Kett, whose ancestors had been somewhat notorious in Wymondham, Norfolk a century or two earlier because of the protest they led. Robert Kett had a rebellion named for him, and both he and his brother William Kett were hanged in Wymond-ham in Norfolk in 1549--the same village where Elizabeth Kett, the youngest daughter of Richard Kett of Norwich, grew up many years later.  

 

Kett Ancestor

Robert Kett was an upper middle-class tanner who got caught up in a protest begun by poor villagers in Edwardian days. Sympathizing with his neighbors, who were distraught because common areas they had used for centuries had suddenly been enclosed by fences--Kett saw the enclosure orders were made to benefit wealthy landowners engaged in the woolen trade and were issued by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the uncle of 11-year-old King Edward VI (heir of Henry VIII). 

 

Both Robert and his brother were hanged from local public buildings in a most distasteful manner.  There was a lesson in that, I suppose, for that day. Many generations later, in 1736, Elizabeth Kett married John Gurney of Earlham, a scion of the "principal Quaker family of Norwich." 

 

Norfolk, heart of textile trade

Their son, John Gurney II, later became master of Earlham Hall, where he raised his children, including daughter, Anna Maria Kett, who married her cousin Charles Barclay in 1804.

 

Charles' first cousin Agatha (daughter of David Barclay--1729-1809) had already united the Barclays and Gurneys. Agatha's marriage to Rachel Gurney's older brother, Richard Gurney, was one of numerous weddings between the two Norfolk Quaker families--Gurneys and Ketts--over the centuries, according to The Ketts of Norfolk, a yeoman family, 1836-1914, by Louisa Marion Kett and George Kett (1921).  

 

Barclays, Tritton & Bevan

Barclays, Tritton, and Bevan in 1803

 

At about the same time as his marriage, Charles' name began to appear in newspapers showing his name as a director of one company or another, notable for the fact that the companies whose boards he sat on had  securities being underwritten by Barclays, Tritton and Bevan at 54 Lombard Street. As one example, we show a clip to the right of one such company formed in June 1803, called the Croydon, Merstham and Godstone Railway, which, despite the name, appears to have been only a track bed which charged a toll for those wishing to transport products by horse-pulled wagons over it. 

 

The financing was handled by George Tritton of Wandsworth (1761-1831), one-time High Sheriff of Surrey, assisted by Robert and Charles Barclay, and their banking partners. [Source: Hampshire Telegraph and Naval Chronicle, (Portsmouth, Hampshire, England,13 June 1803), Page 2].

 

George Tritton, like Robert Barclay, at that time, was a brewer and wanted the "railway" built to distribute beer from Wandsworth to Croydon, about 9 miles south of his home at Clapham. This distribution line probably helped the Trittons get a better price for their Ram Brewery, along with its 80 pubs, when they sold in 1831. Ram Brewery produced a different type of beer from that the Anchor Brewery (Barclay & Perkins) made in Southwark.

 

For a decade or two the common interest in brewing beer and being Quakers would unite the Barclay, Bevan and Tritton families as they also became banking partners. 

 

 Charles, on the Barclay side of the brewery, entered the business at a young age, according to Charles Wright Barclay, A history of the Barclay family, with full pedigree from 1066 to 1933 (London, The St. Catherine Press, 1924-34). Soon after 1812, his father, Robert, retired, throwing the main responsibility for management of Barclay & Perkins on Charles' shoulders--or more likely on those of John Perkins.  

Charles found time to "take up political work." He was elected to the traditional seat the Thrales had held in 1815, as the Member of Parliament for Southwark in the Conservative Party. He supported Sir Robert Peel, but was not re-elected in 1818, remaining out of Parliament for some years. 

He and Anna Maria had a country house in Suffolk (Henstead), where the family spent summers until 1823, when they moved to London--43 Grosvenor Place--directly across the street from Buckingham Palace. From there he stood again for Paliament and returned to the House of Commons as  the Member for Dundalk, Ireland, "having purchased the seat, as was the custom before the Reform Bill." [C.W. Barclay, above]

 

They also rented Betchworth Castle, near Dorking, but only until 1830 when he inherited the estates at Bury Hill left by his father Robert. It was just in the nick of time perhaps, as Bletchworth Castle now stands in ruins. That village gets its claim to fame in modern days from the fact that its church appeared in many scenes from the 1994 romantic comedy, "Four Weddings and a Funeral, " with Hugh Grant. 

 

Charles succeeded Robert Barclay Allardice as head of the family of Barclay of Urie and Mathers (also related to Lucy Barclay Galton) in 1854--receiving the "Arms as borne by Colonel David anno 1666." He and Anna Maria Kett Barclay had four sons and three daughters. These children's marriages clearly indicate the family's close relationships with other notable Quaker bankers:

• Daughter Caroline Barclay (1814-78) was married in 1837 at Dorking to John Gurney Hoare (1810-75) of Hampstead--the eldest son of Samuel and Louisa Gurney Hoare. Their son, Samuel Barclay Hoare born in 1841 would become Sir Samuel Hoare, P.C., C.M.G., C.S.I., eventually Secretary of State for India.
• Rachel Juliana Barclay (1816-86) became the second wife of  her brother-in-law, Joseph Hoare, giving birth to John Gurney Hoare in 1847, a few years after their marriage.  

Inbreeding common for royals

The Hoare brothers--John Gurney and Joseph--were not the first Hoare men intermarried with famous Quaker banking families. Marriages between Gurney women and Hoare men, for example, had been going on for generations by then. Their mother and grandmother had been Gurneys, and their Barclay wives shared a grandmother who had also been a Gurney. Marriages between first cousins, although frowned upon by Quaker doctrine, was often easily ignored. 

 

John Gurney and Caroline Barclay Hoare's marriage did result in at least two powerful male descendants: 

1. Samuel John Gurney Hoare, named First Baronet on 7 August 1899, and 
2. His son of the same name, created Viscount Templewood at  Whitehall, July 14, 1944. Both titles, however, became extinct when Viscount Templewood, allegedly a homosexual, though he married Maud Lygon. He died in 1959.

Charles Barclay's eldest son, Arthur Kett Barclay, named for his maternal grandfather, was schooled at Harrow for several years and in 1824 went to work in the brewery in Dorking and became a partner in it in 1828, shortly before romance entered the tale:

 

Prestigious public school

Robert met Rachel Hanbury and fell deeply in love with her. Their mutual attachment was declared and there was no obstacle to their union except Robert’s youth, and his father decreed that he must see a little more of the world before thinking of marriage, so sent the brothers abroad.

They visited Norway, Sweden, Finland, St. Petersburg, and then, “placing their carriage on a sledge, set out for Moscow,” eventually returning home by Smolensk, Warsaw, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Brussels, Lille and Calais. Arthur’s journal records that during the latter part of the journey they travelled day and night “in order to try to keep pace with Robert’s anxious wish to return, and on the 25th day of January, 1830, we drove up to the door at Betchworth in the same little carriage which we had taken from England, wrapped in the furs and Russian dresses which had enabled us to bear the cold of one of the most severe winters known for years.”

Shortly after their return, Robert was admitted into partnership with his uncle David Barclay (of Eastwick, Bury Hill) and Robert Foster Reynolds, constituting the house of business of Barclay Brothers, Merchants. His wedding took place in the following February. [Source: Charles Wright Barclay, op cit.]

Master of Brewers Co.

Arthur Kett Barclay had received the title of Ury and Mather when Charles Barclay died in 1855, two weeks after suffering a serious riding accident, when “in consequence of meeting the hounds, he lost command of his horse, and fell to the ground, sustaining so much injury as to result in his death.”  After Arthur's death in 1869, his son Robert succeeded to the Scottish titles.

Arthur's youngest brother, Thomas George Barclay, lived in Dorking and became Master of the Brewers Company in 1863. During his career he was elected as a director of the Imperial Insurance Company, located at 16 Pall Mall and Old Broad Street, along with other members of the family we will meet in a subsequent segment--Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, Augustus Henry Bosanquet, and James Gordon Mudoch, among others. David Bevan's daughter, Louisa Priscilla Bevan, married Bosanquet in 1825. He died in 1894, leaving no children.