Barclays Bank History Series VII

 A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART VII--THE SUTHERLANDS

CONTINUED from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III-A, Part III-B, Part IV, Part V, Part VI

 

See

The Trail from Gordon to Sutherland

 

The Gordon family in Scotland had numerous branches and titles, which are sometimes almost impossible to sort. Equally confusing are the numerical designations given to the Sutherland Earls. 

 

When we began our analysis in July our primary interest was Col. David Barclay, who married

Katherine Gordon in 1647. We dug deeper in time in order to fit Katherine into the context of her time in relationship to her Sutherland family.

 

She was the daughter of  Sir Robert Gordon, the fourth son of Alexander Gordon (12th Earl of Sutherland). Her grandmother was Jean Gordon, daughter of George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly. George was the son of John Gordon, Master of Huntly, whose wife was the illegitimate daughter of King James IV and his mistress (Margaret Drummond), who ruled Scotland at the time.

 

Robert was educated for six months at St. Andrews before completing his studies in Edinburgh. In January 1603 he went to France to study civil law, and remained there until October 1605. In the course of his life, Robert wrote a treatise called Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland from its origin to the year 1630. With a continuation to the year 1651 (1813). The original manuscript was not published until 1813. 

 

Katherine's mother, Louise (Lucy) Gordon, was the daughter of Dr. John Gordon, who came from a related but distinct branch of the Gordon clan and had spent many years as a student in France, where he married twice. Lucy's mother was Genevieve, the second wife, who became French tutor to Princess Elizabeth in 1603, as discussed in Part VI. When Elizabeth was married to Frederick V in 1613, her tutor's daughter, Lucy Gordon, married Robert Gordon, son of Alexander, the 12th Earl.

 

Alexander Gordon (1516–1575), Jean Gordon's uncle, was Lord Chancellor of Scotland, presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament and the Privy Council located at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh at that time. He was also the father of Dr. John Gordon, a noted religious scholar known as the Bishop of Galloway, succeeding Alexander his father as Bishop in the Scottish Church, which had broken its allegiance to the Catholic Church in 1560.

 

Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh

Before replacing his father at Galloway, John Gordon studied extensively in France and married his first wife there in 1576: Antoinette (widowed daughter of Rene de Marolles). From Antoinette, who died in 1591, Gordon acquired an estate which gave him the style of Sieur of Longorme.  [Source: Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae: the succession of ministers in the Church of Scotland from the reformation (1915, p. 344]. John had four children with Antoinette, all of whom died before reaching adulthood.  John married his second wife, Genevieve Petaw (daughter of "Gideon Petaw, Lord of Maulet" after returning to France. Another spelling of the name appears as Petau.

 

Earls of Sutherland to 1733

Alexander Gordon (the 12th Earl) had married his cousin Jean Gordon of the Huntly branch of Gordon around 1570, and their son, John Gordon (born 1576) was named 13th Earl of Sutherland in 1594. John's marriage to Agnes Elphinstone was an elaborate double wedding at what was then "fashionable and aristocratic quarter" of Edinburgh's Cowgate in 1600 with her sister Jean (whose bridegroom was Arthur, Master of Forbes). Their father was Lord Treasurer, Alexander Elphinstone. 

 

The wedding at  was attended by King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark and occurred three years before he became King James I of England. John and Agnes Gordon had five children, including John the 14th Earl who was appointed Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland in 1649. An arch defender of King Charles I, who was beheaded in January 1649 after his trial for treason, John, the 14th Earl watched as Oliver Cromwell ended "divine right of kings" in favor of the power of Parliament.  

 

Robert Gordon

John's younger brother, Robert, born in 1580, was sent off to France when he turned 18 in 1598 to study civil law, returning to England in October 1605, when he was appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber to James I in 1606. 

 

On 16 Feb. 1613, Robert married "Louise, or Lucie [Gordon], born 20 Dec. 1597, only child and sole heiress of John Gordon, D.D. (1544-1619), with whom he received the lordships of Glenluce in Scotland and of Longorme in France." We now know this couple became the parents of a baby girl named Katherine Gordon, who married David Barclay in 1647.

 

Sir Robert Gordon attended the coronation of Charles I in Scotland in 1633. Then acting as vice-chamberlain, along with four earls' sons, he carried the King's train from the castle to the abbey. 

 

John and Agnes' son, John Gordon, became 14th Earl in 1615 when he was only six. His uncle Robert became guardian, and John grew up alongside Robert's daughter, Katherine Gordon, once she was born in 1621. She was only ten years old when her cousin John Gordon married Jean Drummond in 1632 and was named the 14th Earl in 1633, the year Katherine's paternal uncle and grandfather both died. The first son of the 14th Earl was named George when he was born in 1633, still more than a decade before Katherine Gordon would marry David Barclay. 

 

Dr. John Gordon's father Alexander Gordon (1515-1575) was a protege of Mary Queen of Scots, and he had been named Bishop of Galloway in the Scottish Church, fleeing to France in 1560 to act as a veritable spy on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, and his son John was appointed to serve as "Gentleman-in-Waiting to Charles IX of France until 1568. While they were in France, they met Queen Mary's son, the exiled king of Scotland, James VI, who named Alexander to the position of Dean of Salisbury Cathedral  in Wiltshire, working there with John, who replaced him in 1572. 

 

Dr. Gordon, Dean of Salisbury

[As an interesting aside, it should be mentioned here that James VI's father was Henry Darnley, murdered by Lord Bothwell, who had briefly been married to our Lady Jean Gordon--and quickly divorced so Bothwell could marry Mary Queen of Scots. Jean Gordon thereafter became the wife of Alexander Gordon, the 12th Earl of Sutherland.]

 

After Dr. John Gordon's first wife died in France in 1591, John married Genevieve Pétau, who was the mother of only one child--a daughter, Lucy Gordon, born in 1597. Lucy was about six years old when her mother, Genevieve, became the French tutor of Princess Elizabeth, as discussed in the previous segment of this series. The two girls were very close in age and great companions. They also married the same year. Lucy married Robert Gordon, whose maternal grandfather George Gordon, 3rd Earl of Huntly, was the brother of  Dr. John Gordon's father, Alexander. This was the same Robert Gordon who was the older brother of the 13th Earl of Sutherland and guardian of his brother's son. Simply reiterating here for added clarification. Just in case you are confused, as I was. 

We began this series with Colonel David Barclay, who had returned to Scotland in 1636, having fought in the Thirty Years' War that began in 1618 in the Palatinate. King James had five years earlier given his eldest daughter Elizabeth in marriage to the son of Prince-Elector Frederick IV. In 1619 Frederick V was named King of Bohemia at about the same time Ferdinand II became Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Bohemia was a part. 

 

Execution of Charles I

That event triggered a long bloody war in which Col. David Barclay had fought under Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden on behalf of the Protestant cause. Now we are beginning to see how all the characters we have been following were linked to each other both familially and politically by their support for the royals.

Charles I had been born at Dunfermline Palace (which is north of the Firth of Forth and Edinburgh's Holyrood Palace) in 1600, three years before his father, James VI, became King of England and left Scotland for St. James Palace in London, northeast of Buckingham Palace (not built until the next century). 

 

Almost as soon as James was dead, his son Charles had married a French Catholic, who refused to be crowned alongside him in a Protestant ceremony. That did not, of course, bode well. 

Birth of The Rule of Law

The next years were taken up by the "Bishops' Wars," finally resolved in 1641. During those years Scotland had been under the control of a political faction known as the Covenanters, led by Oliver Cromwell, also known as the Protector, who opposed the king. Charles' great crime, which infuriated Parliament, was to barge into the House of Commons to arrest five members of that body. As a consequence,

Charles I, after bursting into Parliament to arrest 5 members

Charles was accused of treason against England by using his power to pursue his personal interest rather than the good of the country, The charge stated that he was devising "a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people." In carrying this out he had "traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented," and that the "wicked designs, wars, and evil practices of him, the said Charles Stuart, have been, and are carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation."

Charles claimed that no court had jurisdiction over a monarch. The king was above the law. But Parliament countered, saying 

"the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern 'by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise'."

The decision was that Charles be executed, and he was beheaded on January 30, 1649. Oliver Cromwell took control of the government from that point until Parliament was reinstated, and the monarchy was restored to Charles I's eldest son, Charles II, in 1660. 

 

Cromwell

In the meantime, many of the "regicides who had signed his [Charles II's] father’s warrant of execution–40 of whom were still alive–lay beyond the pale. Soon the trials and executions of the living regicides began, and the corpses of Cromwell and other deceased regicides were dug up, beheaded and put on display." 

 

Not surprisingly, historians have discovered several of the regicides ended up in Puritan-colonized Massachusetts, according to an enlightening 2019 book review in The Guardian.  

 

 

Rule by King, but Subservient to Parliament 

Sutherland castles

The Sutherland-owned castles lined up on the most northerly northeast coast of Scotland, as shown on the map. They had fallen into debt by 1621, which was paid off by David Barclay's father-in-law, Robert Gordon.

 

As stated previously, the 13th Earl of Sutherland died in 1615 at Dornoch Castle in the Highlands only six years after the 14th Earl was born at Dunrobin, and he lived until 1679. 

 

His eldest son, George Gordon, was born in 1633, the same year the previous two earls died. George had been named to the office of Lord Privy Seal 20 years before he succeeded his father as 15th Earl. 

 

According to Peerage Records, "On 24 June 1681 he obtained a regrant of the Earldom, with special remainder to his son and in default to the heirs female of his son without division and their heirs male."

 

Dornoch Palace

At the time the regrant of the Earldom was signed in 1681, George Gordon, the 15th Earl, and his wife Jean Wemyss already had a son who had been born also at Dornoch. That son (later Lt.-Gen. John Sutherland) would eventually be named 16th Earl of Sutherland. 

 

But in 1681, the year of the alleged Regrant, the future military general was only 20 years of age, and his marriage to Helen Cochrane had so far resulted in one child, a baby girl. Possibly fearing no son would be born, the titles were regranted to allow passage to a daughter as a last resort. 

 

Two years after the deeds were modified, ironically, Gen John Sutherland's wife began having sons; three died before reaching adulthood. 

 

A fourth son, William Sutherland, was born in 1708 and succeeded his father as MP for Sutherland as a Whig for five years beginning in 1727, but in 1733 both his father, the military General John, and his grandfather George the 16th Earl, died. William succeeded as the 17th Earl of Sutherland, whose biography, written by Eveline Cruikshanks for The History of Parliament was less than omplimentary:

Lord Strathnaver's gout

Lord Strathnaver was the grandson and heir of the 16th Earl of Sutherland, who advised him, while he was on the Grand Tour in 1727, to go to Hanover to pay his court to Frederick, the new Prince of Wales, in the hope of becoming a gentleman of his bedchamber.1 Though he was only 18, his grandfather put him up for Sutherland at the general election that year, expressing the hope to the Duke of Argyll that the resolution that the eldest sons of peers of Scotland should not sit in the House of Commons would not be invoked, as Strathnaver was a grandson, not a son.2 Taking his seat without difficulty, he voted with the Administration on the Hessians in 1730 and on the excise bill in 1733. In 1730 he claimed repayment for arms surrendered to the Government, under the Act for disarming the Highlands, but his claim was deferred on the ground that ‘some of the receipts for arms produced for the Lord Strathnaver are attended with very suspicious circumstances’.3

William, Lord Strathnaver

On succeeding his grandfather as Earl of Sutherland in 1733, he was said to have made a bargain with Walpole and Ilay under which, in return for voting for the court list of representative peers, he was made one of them himself, appointed a lord of police in Scotland at £800 p.a., and granted a pension of £1,200 p.a.4 Promoted to be first lord of police in 1744, during the Forty-five he raised two independent companies on behalf of the Government, and was present at the battle of Culloden.5 Having apparently connected himself with Frederick, Prince of Wales, he lost his post in 1747...

The "Ilay" referred to above was  Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Ilay (later 3rd Duke of Argyll), who, according to Britannica, was "treasurer of Scotland in 1705 and the following year was one of the commissioners for negotiating the union of the two kingdoms, Scotland and England. Raised to the peerage of Scotland as Earl of Ilay, he was among the 16 Scottish peers chosen to sit in the first Parliament of Great Britain. He became a privy councillor in 1711, keeper of the privy seal of Scotland in 1721, and keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland in 1733. He played an important part in the movement led by Duncan Forbes of Culloden to promote Scottish loyalty to the Hanoverians by raising Highland regiments from among the Whig clans."

 

Another brief biography, this one written by D. W. Hayton, is as condescending as the previous one, castigating him as follows:

Lord Strathnayer seems to have sacrificed his bright prospects to a love of the bottle, which even before he reached his majority had given his face ‘as many colours as the rainbow’. Already a colonelcy of foot had been secured for him, and soon afterwards a lucrative match was arranged with the daughter of an influential political associate, William Morison of Prestongrange. Once the marriage had taken place [1632] his father handed over to him responsibility for the great Sutherland estate....

... The part played by the Sutherland family in securing the Hanoverian succession in the north of Scotland resulted in Strathnaver’s appointment in September 1715 to the vacant chamberlainry of Ross. In resisting the subsequent Jacobite invasion he surmounted another bout of ill-health to take command of a regiment of Sutherland clansmen the Earl had raised. Although in private Sutherland was disappointed at the leniency Strathnaver had shown to individual rebels, in public no praise was too high for his son’s efforts, and, arguing that the family estates had contributed heavily to the raising and equipping of local volunteers, Sutherland also obtained for him a warrant for a pension of £500 p.a. to be added to the place of chamberlain of Ross, ‘in consideration of the eminent services performed by him to his Majesty and the royal family’.

 

Spoils of War 

I never fully realized before that what was being fought for during the Jacobite Risings was whether or not the United Kingdom would be ruled by the Stuart "Pretender," son of the feared Catholic, James II, exiled in France, who landed with a "tiny force of about a dozen men on the west coast of Scotland in July 1745 and raised the Highlands in revolt."

The landed gentry were each fighting for ancestral lands claimed by their respective families. One faction would have benefited by removing the German protestants from the British throne, the downside being the possibility of more religious wars, while another faction  would retain the lands acquired by their families by virtue of the 1688 Act of Settlement, which had placed William of Orange and Queen Mary in power. As we wrote in Part V, the family which gained the most from the Act in 1688 was the Russell/Bedford family. Nevertheless, the 1st Duke of Bedford had assistance from other groups in the shadows, most notable of which was the East India Company's officers and directors. Symbolic of that important connection was the 1695 wedding that took place at Streatham, also shown in Part V.

What I also never considered before was how quickly a generation becomes ignorant of what happened in the previous generation. The American colonies had by then been the home of the colonists for no more than 150 years--roughly five generations. During that time of peace in the colony, Britain had been constantly engaged in one war or another--in Europe (30 Years' War), Spain, France, Portugal, several wars in India, wars against the Dutch, and most recently in Scotland and Ireland. Each side had its own limited perception. 

 

Frederick, the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King George II, was the heir apparent Strathnaver had been advised to cozy up to, but he died in 1751, and it was his son who became King George III, the same king our American founders railed against when signing the Declaration of Independence in 1776, setting up yet another very expensive foreign war for Great Britain to find funding for.

 

It was during the years after 1695 that Scotland's importance became ever more important to what had become the United Kingdom and why those in the British Parliament turned its eyes to the Earls of Sutherland to finance the war against the invading heirs of a prior regime. Scotland had figured out how to launder money at a time when a washing machine was only a dream of the future. But that is a subject for the next chapter. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 *********************

[Note: There seems to be no agreement about the numbering of the Earls of Sutherland. Sir Robert Gordon's book used two numbers for each, but William Fraser in his genealogy used the lower numeral, while The Peerage uses the higher number. In this series, I have used the numbers used by The Peerage and by Parliament's History.]

 

*****************

Barclays Bank History Series VI

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART VI--THE RUSSELL FAMILY

 

CONTINUED from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III-A, Part III-B, Part IV, Part V

 

The Tudor Connection

 

1st Earl of Bedford

Sir John Russell, born in the West Dorset District of England in 1485, was the first of the the Russell family to become attached to the Tudor King Henry VII, in an era of change in the European continent.  

What we now know as Spain was then fragmented into numerous nation-states, two of which had recently been united by a marriage between King Ferdinand II and Isabella I--of Castile and Aragon, respectively. This was the same Queen Isabella Americans recall from childhood geography lessons as the queen who sent Christopher Columbus on a mission of exploration in 1492, seven years after our Sir John Russell was born.

Four years after "Columbus discovered America," two children of Ferdinand and Isabella--a son and a daughter--had a double wedding in which they were married to offspring of Maximilian I, the Habsburg king of the fragmented territory we now call Germany. 

Joanna, the daughter traveled to Flanders--then part of the empire comprised of part of France, Belgium and Luxembourg--where she was wed to Philip of Flanders, son of the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

Ferdinand and Isabella also arranged for a future marriage for their daughter Catharine of Aragon to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, in 1501. This marriage many years later becomes an important start of our story.

Catharine traveled to England and lived with Arthur, who unfortunately died six months later. After his death, Catharine became betrothed to Arthur's younger brother Henry, who in 1509 became King Henry VIII. It was the era of Shakespeare, many of the characters involved are familiar because of the plays he wrote about them.

Philip and Joanna 

In 1504 Queen Isabella died, and Joanna, all her older siblings having died, became Queen of Spain. It was necessary for her and her husband, then Archduke Philip of Austria, to return from Flanders to Spain to be crowned as King and Queen. 

 

However, en route to Spain in January 1506, the ship in which Philip and Joanna sailed was caught in a storm and shipwrecked off the Dorset coast near Weymouth. Who should appear on the scene to assist the new King Philip I in traveling by land to London to see Joanna's sister, Catharine, except the subject of this tale, John Russell?

Philip sang the praises of John Russell to the first Tudor King, Henry VII, who immediately placed him in service to the House of Tudor. Sir John was named a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1507 and continued once Henry VIII was king. Sir John Russell was knighted after participating in a number of battles in France in 1513 attempting to save Calais for England. In 1526 he married the twice-widowed Anne Sapcote, who gave birth a year later to Francis Russell. His rise to higher positions among the court was fast and swift, becoming High Sheriff, Baron Russell, Lord High Admiral, Knight of the Garter and High Steward by 1539. Ten years later "Russell was rewarded with the Earldom of Bedford and more lands in the south-west and the east midlands, including a reversionary grant of Woburn abbey."

 

Earls of Bedford

The 1st Earl of Bedford was one of 26 peers who signed the decision to crown Lady Jane Grey as the successor of Edward VI in July 1553, but most of Lady Jane Grey's support came from her husband, Guilford Dudley, the brother of Ambrose Dudley, husband of Anne Russell. 

Jane Grey was queen an entire nine days before her execution brought Henry VIII's next child, Mary, to the throne. Sir John Russell's son, Francis would succeed his father as 2nd Earl of Bedford in 1555. He was named Privy Councillor for Queen Elizabeth and entertained her at Chenies in 1570, and at Woburn Abbey two years later. 

 

In 1563 Ambrose Dudley was made a Knight of the Garter, and Baron de L'Isle and Earl of Warwick 1564. In 1569 he was nominated the queen's lieutenant in the north for the purpose of crushing the rebellion there. In May 1571 he was made chief butler of England and was admitted to the privy council in September 1573. 

 

Significance of 1st Earl of Bedford, 1549

Ambrose married three times, but had only one son who died in infancy. In February 1590 he died at his wife's family home, Bedford House in London. Each of the Earls of Bedford was loyal to the succession of Tudor monarchs who ruled England for 118 years, or so it seemed, even though their in-laws, the Dudleys sometimes were less than loyal.

Anne Russell Dudley (Contess of Warwick) was following the wishes of her brother, Francis Thomas Russell, who requested that she look after his only son, Edward Russell. In 1585 both Francis Thomas and their father, the 2nd Earl of Bedford, died, leaving Edward to be named the 3rd Earl at a young age for his aunt to educate and find a wife for. 

 

Anne found him a wife among the most loyal supporters of Queen Elizabeth--the daughter of John Harington of Rutland--Lucy Harington. 

 

By the time Elizabeth I died, England had enjoyed great stability for almost half a century, but because she left no descendants, squabbles among the most likely replacements for her were common in the final years of her reign. 

 

The Russell family were among the most important peers involved in deciding that Elizabeth's successor would be James I, who was known in Scotland as King James VI. He descended from two royal families--the English Tudor King Henry VII and his Scottish bride, Elizabeth of York, a Stuart. James was married to a member of the House of Orange--Anne of Denmark.

 

The choice of a new king with roots in Scotland had the effect of empowering brutally ambitious Scottish peers to enter the fray of competition for court favors, not to imply the Scots had ever been less than aggressive in their fight for power. Among those peers were members of the Gordon family, who had a history of supporting Stuart kings and queens for centuries. 

 

 

Uniting Behind King James I (VI)  

Elizabeth, age 7

As King James returned from exile in France to make his way to London to be crowned, he stopped off briefly at Rutland (in the East Midlands) to speak to his friend and long supporter, John Harington, whose wife had inherited another property at Coventry, as we will soon see. 

 

From the time of the coronation of James I (VI) in 1604 until his death in 1625, the king foiled one plot after another to get rid of him. Such plots had begun even earlier in 1583 with a coup planned by Catholics to replace Queen Elizabeth I with her half-sister Mary. The plots never seemed to diminish. In 1602, shortly before Elizabeth's death, before it was even decided for certain who would succeed her, conspiracy was rampant. That seems to be the nature of greed. 

James' marriage to Anne of Denmark had produced three children, whom he sought to protect and educate with the help of "loyal protectors" of the royal Stuart family. James chose the Haringtons because of their past loyalties. As we will see, loyalty is not always easy to predict.

 

The eldest child, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, grew up alongside John Harington (junior), at Coombe Abbey, a former Catholic monastery about five miles east of Coventry in Warwickshire, northwest of London. Mrs. Harington inherited the abbey from her father, Robert Keilway. Nine years earlier (in 1594) the Haringtons' daughter Louisa (Lucy) Harington had married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, the arrangement having been made by Edward's aunt, Anne Russell Dudley, Countess of Warwick, as mentioned earlier. 

 

Coombe Abbey

Lucy Harringon thus became the Countess of Bedford--the subject of a a well-researched book called Out of the Shadows, written by Lesley Lawson (2007), which delves into every detail of Lucy's life in the context of that time. 

 

Dr. John Gordon, a Protestant Bishop, and his French wife, Geneviève Petau, were invited to Coombe Abbey, the home of John Harington as tutors to Princess Elizabeth. Genevieve, his second wife, was, according to A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland from Its Origin to the Year 1630 by Sir Robert Gordon:

...placed with their majestie's daughter. Lady Elizabeth, afterward Queen of Boheme (who still favored her dearly), to attend her grace in her bed-chamber, together with the Lady Harington, and to instruct her grace in the French toung, which she taught her to write and to speak perfectly.

Four years after Princess Elizabeth was married off to Frederick V in 1613, Genevieve Gordon, her former tutor, gave birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth in her honor. Lucy Harrngton Russell (known as the Countess of Bedford) became the young Elizabeth Gordon's godmother. The Gordons, Russells and Harrngtons were united in their support for the new Stuart king with connections to the vestiges of Tudor royalty. 

 

Plots and Subplots 

 

Ambrose Dudley of Warwick

Anne Russell, born in 1548, was married, as mentioned earlier, to Ambrose Dudley, who in 1553 "alongside three of his other brothers, was thrown into the Tower, accused, tried and convicted of High Treason following the failed coup led by his father, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, the aim of which had been to place the Protestant Lady Jane Grey[--wife of Guilford Dudley--] on the throne of England following the death of Edward VI," according to the Tudor Travel Guide. Ambrose and two of his brothers were not executed, and Ambrose lived to fight against France with Spanish forces. 

 

Anne Russell Dudley

Mary was queen by then and gratefully rewarded Ambrose, who in 1562 "received a large portion of the lands previously confiscated from his father, the Duke of Northumberland. Warwick Castle became the new Earl’s principal residence." 

 

As it happens, Warwick Castle was a mere 15 miles or so from Coombe Abbey, where James' children were being protected in the early 1600s.

 

While Ambrose had been away fighting the Spanish Armada, his second wife died around 1564, and he returned to grieve briefly, but then he quickly was married again to Anne Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, with the ceremony taking place on 11 November 1565 in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. Much older than Anne, he had no children from his previous marriages, and the Earl of Warwick died in 1590 at a Russell-owned property, Bedford House in the Strand, London. 

 

Anne Russell Dudley's Extended Family

Francis Russell, the 2nd Earl of Bedford (1527-1585), had married the former Margaret St. John, who had died in 1562 leaving him with seven children:

1. Anne was the third wife of Ambrose Dudley, the 3rd Earl of Warwick, who was a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth. One of his three brothers married Lady Jane Grey and was beheaded with her in 1554. He died in 1589 without a surviving child.
2. Elizabeth, married William Bourchier and was styled "Countess of Bath."  
3. Edward died at the age of 21 unmarried.
4. Margaret, married George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. 

5. 

   Francis Russell, 2nd Earl Bedford

   Francis married Eleanor "Juliana" Forster, who gave birth in 1572 to Edward Russell, named 3rd Earl of Bedford in 1585 when he was 13. Francis, about to leave for battles along the Scottish border in 1585, was concerned about who would succeed him should he be killed. He sought help from his sister, Anne to find a wife for his young son, Edward, in that event. He was killed in battle, and his father also died a few days later. Edward's marriage to Luce (Lucy) Harington  at Saint Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney, Middlesex will be discussed below. 
   
6. John married a much older widow, Elizabeth Cooke at Bisham, Berkshire on 23 Dec 1574, who already had several children by Thomas Hoby, who died in Paris in 1566. It is said she and John Russell had several children of their own, even though she would have been 47 years old when they married. According to Findagrave, "John was summoned to Parliament Jan 1581, during his father's lifetime, as Lord Russell. John was buried at Westminster, his wife was buried at Bisham, Berkshire". 
7. William was born in 1553, the same year as John, and he married Elizabeth Long. Named 1st Baron Russell of Thornhaugh, as the fourth son of the 2nd Earl of Bedford. He was raised to become 4th Earl of Bedford in May 1627 upon the death of his nephew Edward at Moor Park in Hertfordshire. 

 

Edward's Fellow Plotters

 

Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford

Edward Russell (1551-1572) became the 3rd Earl in 1585 and was married on 12 Dec 1594 at Saint Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney, Middlesex to 13-year-old Lucy Harington. Stepney in far east London was the ancestral home of both Mrs. Harington as well as her husband's uncle, Sir John Harington of Stepney, who "spent part of James’s reign in prison as surety for the debts of his cousin Sir Griffith Markham, who was attainted for his involvement in the Bye Plot of 1603."

 

Edward was 22 years old at the time of his marriage, and up until 1603 was kept busy with his friend, Robert Devereux, whose stepfather, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, was plotting with Lucy's father (Edward's father-in-law) in a confusing series of circular plots designed to place on the throne the royal member deemed mostly likely to reward them with power. 

 

Robert Dudley had long been Queen Elizabeth's favorite and, as rumors have it, her secret lover. But she refused to marry him years after his first wife died in a suspicious fall down a set of stairs. In 1578, however, he secretly married Lettice, the widow of Sir Walter Devereux. That made Lettice's son Robert Devereux the Earl of Essex, Robert Dudley's stepson. When the Queen learned of the marriage, she was furious both at Dudley and his wife, who was her cousin and former lady-in-waiting.

 

The Dudleys were no strangers to being in powerful roles at court. Robert's father, John Dudley, had been Duke of Northumberland before his death in 1553--"an English politician and soldier who was the virtual ruler of England from 1549 to 1553, during the minority of King Edward VI." Without power, they were willing to commit  treason to gain it. In fact, the most common cause of death for the Dudleys seems to have been execution for treason. John's father, Edmund, met his death that way in 1510. Then John died similarly in 1553, followed shortly by his son Guildford Dudley, who had married the nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey. 

 

Yet, here was Northumberland's son Robert Dudley, the "virgin queen's lover," engaging in acts with his stepson in 1601, which seemed guaranteed to get them all executed. Would they never learn? 

 

Robert Devereux executed

In 1601 Edward Russell joined with Robert Devereux in what was called the "Essex Coup" or the "Bye Coup," which a part of the "Main Coup"  in an attempt to replace Queen Elizabeth with James VI of Scotland. Little did they know all they would have had to do was wait two years for Elizabeth's death. But they took hasty action, unsuccessfully. As a result, Robert Devereux literally "lost his head." 

 

When the Haringtons had received King James VI of Scotland at their home in Rutland both before and after James' exile in France, the latter visit as James made his way to London to be crowned as James I of England in 1603, it should be noted that daughter Lucy had by then been the Countess of Bedford for ten years and also had an 11-year-old brother at the time named John Harington, born in 1592, about whom Simon Healy in the History of Parliament wrote:

Harington’s father, negotiating for the release of another of Essex’s accomplices, his son-in-law the 3rd earl of Bedford, assured Sir Robert Cecil† that unlike Bedford, he and his son were ‘obsequious of the love of you’. Harington’s parents made a further effort to insinuate their son into Cecil’s favour in October 1602, when they asked that he ‘might wholly remain under your protection’ in the event of his father’s demise, ‘which they will hold a very special happiness to them and their son’.

The younger John Harington, who grew up alongside Prince Henry, was very close to the Prince, who died of typhoid in 1612. He would also have known the children of Dr. John Gordon, whose wife Genevieve was French tutor for Henry's sister, Elizabeth. Lucy Harington Russell (Countess of Bedford) would be named godmother of Genevieve's daughter, Lucy Gordon. All these families also seemed united in their support for King James and, later, for his successor--King Charles I, whose beheading gave rise to Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the subsequent Restoration of Stuart rule under King Charles II.

 

The Bedford loyalties to the royal succession were so assured that in 1694 William Russell, the 5th Earl was created as the 1st Duke of Bedford by Charles I, and the following year the Duke married off his grandson, Wriosthesley Russell, to the daughter of John Howland at Streatham, as we wrote about at length earlier.

 

We will pick up again in Part VIII with the Dukes of Bedford. 

 

But first, however, Part VII will describe what had been happening in Scotland that led to the union of England, Scotland and Wales under a single Crown. At that point also--just as James VI of Scotland was being crowned in England as James I, the ancient Scottish family of Gordon will re-enter our saga as we go back to the Kings of Scotland, in particular James IV, who ruled Scotland from 1488 until his death in 1513. 

 

 

Barclays Bank History Series III-B

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank  

Part III-B -- JOSIAH CHILD AND HIS FAMILY

CONTINUED from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III-A 

 

The Anchor Brewery's Other Owners

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, possibly the brother of Sir Josiah Child, operated the brewery after "two generations of the Monger family" ran it from 1616-1670. James Child died on 22 February 1696, at the age of 66, and he was buried in St. Dunstan-in-the-East Church in London. He served as President of the East India Company from 1686 to 1690, according to same website. King Charles granted two brewing licenses to the Anchor Brewery in 1690, although in April 1666 the king had recommended "James Child, merchant of London," to the Brewer’s Company. His widow retained her husband’s interest in the brewhouse, Halsey paying her a weekly sum until her death in 1701.

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."

Josiah Child was married first to Hannah Boate, the mother of Elizabeth Child, born before her mother's death in 1662. He quickly remarried Mary Atwood, with whom he had a daughter and son, Josiah Child, Jr., born 1668. His third wife, Emma Barnard, was the daughter of Sir Henry Barnard, "one of the leading Turkey merchants in London." Emma gave birth to  Josiah's second son, Richard Child, in 1680. 

The Josiah Child Heritage 

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."

 

The 2nd Baronet died young and childless in 1704, having briefly represented Wareham in the House of Commons from 1702, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Sir Richard Child, 3rd Baronet, whose name was suddenly changed in 1731, when he became Viscount Castlemaine, a title purchased in Ireland from the estate of his mother-in-law, Dorothy Tylney Glynne. 

 

2nd Earl Tylney (John Child)

Created as Earl Tylney, of Castlemaine in the County of Kerry, also in the Peerage of Ireland, Richard Child demonstrated “a certain political flexibility,” which enabled him to make a smooth transition between the Stuart and Hanoverian regimes, according to "The Owners of Wanstead Park Part 8: 1699-1750." The writer of the website adds, somewhat intriguingly:

 Richard Child’s elevation prompted some grumbling, on the ground that it “was making a man that’s no gentleman a lord”. Robert Harley described him as “a jobber” who had “made a prey of the poor”.

Interestingly, the Castlemaine title was regarded by some as tainted by its association with the notorious Barbara Villiers, mistress to Charles II, and her cuckolded husband Roger Palmer. In 1731 Child was promoted in the Irish Peerage as Earl Tylney of Castlemaine. In 1733, he assumed the surname Tylney by Act of Parliament, to comply with the terms of an inheritance from his wife’s uncle, Frederick Tylney of Rotherwick. Tylney had died in 1725, his property passing to Dorothy Child after the death of his daughter, Anne, Baroness Craven.

Amusingly, when Richard purchased an Irish peerage (Viscount Castlemaine) that had previously been awarded to Roger Palmer, Barbara Villiers' cuckolded husband, some members of Parliament became concerned. Their concern was not one of morals, but of politics.They feared Richard Child, a Tory, might replace his Whig father-in-law, Frederick Tylney, and that might upset the political balance. Once in Parliament Richard Tylney quickly learned on which side his bread was buttered and began voting with the government in power.  

After the Death of Oliver Cromwell 

When Oliver Cromwell died, England was left to face a predicament that had never occurred before. Suddenly, the country had no way to raise military armaments and had no funds to attract warriors.They were without a king. The reign of Charles I ended with his defeat in battle in Scotland, as we described earlier when David Barclay avoided being tainted by following orders of his commanding officer, John Middleton, who in 1554 was defeated by Cromwell's General Monck.

 

Part of Braganza's Dowry given to Charles II

Charles II had gone into exile in Holland, under protection of John Granville, later to receive the title as 1st Earl of Bath, who was, coincidentally, a cousin of George Monck, who had been appointed commander of all Parliamentary military forces in Britain. After Cromwell's death, George Monck, later raised as the 1st Duke of Albermarle, led his troops from Scotland to London, then suggested to Parliament through Granville in May 1660 that Charles II should be restored as King. Some might call that behind-the-back planning a conspiracy.

 

Enough time had passed since the bloody beheading of Charles I, however, that Britons were happy to accept a new, if somewhat tarnished king, to, hopefully, straighten out the chaos that was already beginning. Charles II was restored to the throne and, following previously laid plans of his now dead dad, it was decided he should marry a foreign princess. Bids were accepted. The winner was the one whose father could offer the greatest bounty.

 

Barbara Villiers, though married to Palmer, had five children with King Charles II both before and after he was married to Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of Portugal's king, in 1661. During the Anglo-Dutch Wars, England contracted the marriage of Charles with Portugal and received as her dowry "Seven Islands of Bombay," soon leased to the British East India Company, as well as the Port of Tangier and a great deal of gold. 

 

The Restoration period during Charles' reign appears in retrospect as though those in power were simply making things up as they went along. 

As for the Child family, the remnants of them kept their original name, not hidden behind Richard's titles. Parliament agreed to pass an Act changing Child's surname to Tylney in 1733, and the title was passed to his son, the 2nd Earl, an overweight man easily caricatured, who died single in Italy without children. It was rumored he had connections to the scandalous homosexual Captain Robert Jones, who was sentenced to death for sodomizing young boys in 1772.

Josiah Child II had married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke, one of his father’s East India Company associates, who earned his knighthood in 1692 for his work in the Royal African Company, noted for shipping more slaves to America than any other company. Cooke was infamously notorious for paying prolific bribes, albeit without penal consequence, and was actually named as the replacement for Josiah Child as East India Company governor after his death in 1699.

Sir Josiah Child II also had no children, and Richard succeeded him as 3rd baronet, inheriting £4,000 per annum which had been settled upon Josiah for life, bringing his own annual income to some £10,000. Richard also served as Member of Parliament for Wareham between 1702 and 1704, but he did not maintain his father’s active connection with the East India Company. 

Nevertheless, it was by the act of restoring Charles II to the throne and marrying him to Britain's then ally Portugal that the British East India Company not only received a foreign base of operations for its trade, but a new headquarters building in Bombay, India, as well

King Charles II died in 1685 with no legitimate children, so it was determined he would be succeeded by his brother, James II (James VII of Scotland), known as Duke of York since 1644 and Duke of Albany after 1660. That same year he married Anne, daughter of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon--a member of the privy council and chancellor of the Exchequer until 1667, whose grandchildren would later become Queen Mary II and Queen Anne. He was dismissed as Chancellor in 1667 and forced to flee to France in exile.