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