Wedlock
Page 8
Further letters followed in rapid succession, as the regiment prepared to march and Stoney grew increasingly fraught. By May George Stoney had relented and was drawing up title deeds for his son, although Hannah’s guardians still needed to be satisfied that the promised property would provide the requisite £50 annual income. As he celebrated his twenty-first birthday in June, being now able to marry as he wished, Stoney secured three months’ leave to stay behind in Newcastle and clinch the deal. Urging his father to hurry with the necessary legal requirements, he pointedly reminded him that ‘a woman a man loves with a fortune of at least Twenty Thousand Pounds should not be trifled with’. If any doubt remained, the capital letters made plain his true interest. On tenterhooks, Stoney continued the expensive business of wooing Hannah and was livid in July when his father’s bankers in Edinburgh refused to honour a bill he had submitted. Protesting to his father, he insisted that his expenses were ‘absolutely necessary for a young man paying his addresses to a Lady with Twenty Thousand Pounds fortune’. Itemising costs which must have horrified the penny-pinching farmer, Stoney explained: ‘I have attended with this lady at all Publick divertions within fifty miles of Newcastle, I have had two Horses, it has cost about Fifty Pounds for different presents, besides at first Fees to servants, & many other expenses attending such a scheme.’ With an agent now despatched to Ireland by Hannah’s guardians to check out her suitor’s supposed means, Stoney was more anxious than ever to secure his father’s compliance, assuring him that once married his only wish was ‘to be settled near my parents’.
By now Stoney’s mask was beginning to fall. Having written what even he admitted was an ‘extremely rude’ letter to the bank, he was forced to eat humble pie and write them an apology in September. The pain this afforded him says much about his uncompromising self-belief. ‘I do assure you it hurts my spirit not a little,’ he told his father, ‘as I believe it to be the first acknowledgement I ever made in my life, except to a Parent; which, perhaps, you will say I am nothing the better for.’ But he could not contain his fury at such indignity since, as he complained to his father, if news that he had had a bill refused had become known in Newcastle ‘many people here would have been happy at the account’ which would have lent credence to their ‘unjust Reports’. Evidently Stoney’s high-handed conduct and transparent aims had generated unsavoury rumours and spawned enemies in the city which had so recently welcomed him. He dealt with them in the manner which would become customary to him: brutally. ‘I think they are now at an end,’ he informed his father, ‘though I believe it to be more owing to fear than regard to me, as I have brought every person that I could find out that mentioned my name to a severe account, & obliged them to beg my Pardon in the most penitent manner.’
Hints were emerging that even Hannah herself now harboured doubts about her impetuous beau for she had expressed a desire to settle near Greyfort after the marriage, Stoney wrote, ‘in order to have my Father to govern me’. There was little danger that George Stoney would ever govern his eldest son, but then neither did Stoney have any intention of moving back to Ireland. However, as Hannah’s guardians had finally declared themselves satisfied with the young ensign’s credentials, there was no going back. Indeed, as Stoney had skilfully made certain, the young lovers had been so much in each other’s company that - according to Georgian society’s strict codes of conduct - their marriage was ‘looked upon as impossible to be avoided with propriety on either side’. Ordered to rejoin his regiment by mid-October, Stoney begged his obliging uncle, Colonel Robinson, to secure him a few more crucial weeks’ leave, ‘for it is impossible I can think of going before I
am marry’d’. With his paralysed prey just within his grasp, Stoney was even prepared to resign from the regiment rather than leave Newcastle a bachelor.
At last, on 5 November 1768, Stoney hurried Hannah down the aisle of St Andrew’s Church in Newcastle to sign the marriage register and seal her destiny. Just eighteen months after he had breached the city walls, the young soldier had captured one of the town’s richest heiresses and claimed his fortune - for under Georgian law, as Stoney well knew, every last item of Hannah’s property now belonged entirely to him, at least during her lifetime. The local newspapers reported the match, with full details of the prize, almost with incredulity. ‘Saturday was married in this town, Mr And. Robison [sic] Stoney, an ensign in the fourth regiment of foot, to Miss Newton, daughter of the late Mr Will. Newton; a young lady possessed of a very large fortune,’ announced the Newcastle Journal, while the Newcastle Chronicle referred to the bridegroom as ‘Capt. Stoney’, a title which the ensign found he rather liked.22 Writing to his father on his wedding day, Stoney announced: ‘I have the pleasure to inform my dear Father that my long-wished-for Happiness was this morning compleated by adding to our Family a woman whom I have reason to think will in every particular be agreeable.’23 Obsequiously respectful for the most part - for he was still drawing bills on his father’s account - Stoney let his guard drop momentarily in declaring that the estate his father had dutifully bought for the newly weds was ‘not worth sixpence’. Confident that his father would ‘find some more advantageous Purchase for us’, Stoney enclosed a promissory note for £500, to cover the large amounts he owed his father, which he hoped to be in a position to honour shortly. It was never drawn.
There was scarcely time to move his few belongings into his new family seat at Cole Pike Hill in County Durham, and survey the surrounding farms and valuable woodland he now owned, before Stoney had to kiss his bride goodbye and dash north to rejoin his regiment in Scotland.24 At just twenty-one, the ensign had become a wealthy landowner and a member of the gentry with farms and mines guaranteed to provide a handsome quarterly income. By Christmas he was celebrating his newfound riches and status with his army fellows in Edinburgh.
Money opened many doors. Marching across the Scottish lowlands, quartered in taverns during the harsh winter, under canvas in summer, Stoney could afford to employ a valet, one John Smith, to assume the laborious tasks of looking after his uniform and tending to his horses. But riches did nothing to smooth his temper. Setting out from Perth to Stirling at one point in 1769, Stoney horsewhipped Smith because - Stoney claimed - he was too drunk to continue the march. When the valet threatened to bring the law on him, Stoney was so incensed that he gave him a ‘few more lashes with his whip’ for insolence. Smith’s complaint - it is not clear to which court or what the outcome was - did nothing to hinder his master’s advancement. At the end of the year, Stoney was promoted to lieutenant and shortly afterwards transferred to the 30th Regiment of Foot.25
For all his preferment, Stoney saw little of military life during his army career. By dint of his fortune and his influence with his high-ranking military relatives, he was frequently granted leave from his regiment to tend to his business matters in England and Ireland. So while the regiment built roads and aided civil forces in Scotland in 1769 and 1770, Stoney visited Ireland, presumably to introduce his ‘agreeable’ wife to the Stoney clan, although needless to say, the newly weds did not settle near Greyfort.26 Dividing the remainder of his time between Newcastle and Bath - where Hannah frequently repaired for her health - he left his Durham estates in the hands of agents. The first agent, who managed the farms and mines from the manor hall at Cole Pike Hill - commonly described as Cold Pig Hill - happened to be Rowland Stephenson, whose two brothers both worked at Gibside only eight miles away.
Squandering the income collected from his farms and mines, Stoney dealt meanly with his agents and dodged demands from his creditors. While Stoney enjoyed elegant lodgings and fine food in Bath, Rowland Stephenson grumbled into his accounts over the £5 - a huge sum to a poor family - his master had refused to pay him for accommodation.27 Stephenson did not live to grumble much longer; he died in 1770 and was succeeded by another unfortunate agent, Robert Morrow. When storms prevented the coal-carrying ships from leaving the Tyne for longer than normal one bleak winter - spreading destitu
tion throughout the region - Stoney pressed his agent to harass the starving tenants for their rents. Morrow, who was faring little better than the desperate tenants, pledged to try his best but warned that ‘a general poverty reigns amongst us’.28 And while Stoney ran up hefty bills for new items of uniform and other luxuries he led his creditors a merry chase for payment. One poor trader pursued him for a bill of £100 over several years.29 While running up large amounts of credit was commonplace and widely accepted in the eighteenth century, especially among the land-rich, cash-poor aristocracy, Stoney saw it as a matter of principle never to settle a debt until creditors either gave up or threatened him with imprisonment. Often, it was later said, he would jingle loose change in his pockets when making a purchase to hoodwink traders into believing he was flush with cash.30 But if Stoney’s tenants, servants and creditors suffered under his severe regime, they would count themselves lucky compared to his wife.
How soon Hannah Newton discovered the true nature of the adoring officer she believed she was marrying is unknown. None of her correspondence has survived; her voice is unheard. But certainly she was unwell within three years of her marriage and when not accompanying her husband to Ireland or sharing lodgings in Newcastle, she spent much of her time at Bath, presumably to take the health-giving waters. The nature of her illness, mentioned in letters between Stoney and his family, was never revealed. Young as she was, there were any number of lingering infectious diseases or chronic conditions to which she may have fallen victim, tuberculosis being among the most common, although equally she may have suffered complications from pregnancy and miscarriage. Without a doubt her husband exacerbated, if not physically caused, her long-running sickness.
Rumours about Stoney’s mistreatment of his wife abounded. One anonymous pamphlet entitled The Stoniad, which would be published in Newcastle in 1777, accused him of ruthlessly beating and abusing Hannah while squandering her fortune. Having hoodwinked her into marriage by feigned declarations of love and false claims to wealth and ancestry, Stoney had made Hannah’s life wretched, the poem declared. Rhetorically, it enquired: ‘What had she done such violence to cause?/Was she not faithful as REBECCA was?/Did she not give thee all that mortal cou’d,/Bear thee to bruise her head and shed her blood.’ While The Stoniad was doubtless motivated by political ends - published as it was when Stoney was seeking electoral support - Jessé Foot, writing some years later, cited two letters from correspondents living in Newcastle in the 1770s who testified to Stoney’s brutality towards Hannah.31 One of them recorded that he ‘treated her in a most cruel manner’ to the extent that he ‘shortened her days’. ‘She bore the character of being a very good woman,’ said Foot’s informant, ‘which in all probability increased her sensibility, upon feeling her melancholy lot from the choice she had made.’ Foot’s second letter writer remembered that Stoney ‘behaved like a brute and a savage to his wife, and in a short time, broke her heart’. On one occasion he locked Hannah in a cupboard in just her underwear and kept her there for three days, allowing her only an egg a day for sustenance. Another time, attending a public meeting together in Newcastle, he threw Hannah down a flight of stairs ‘in a violent fit of rage’. Generally more discreet in company, Stoney usually made a show of treating his wife with studied kindness but ‘knew secret ways of provoking her’ so that when she complained he would appeal to his guests as if to say she was impossible to please. His second wife would become well accustomed to such tricks. ‘He made a very bad husband,’ said Foot’s informant, ‘and she was a most wretched wife, and brought no children alive into the world; which he much desired for his own sake.’
Providing Stoney with an heir was of crucial importance. During Hannah’s lifetime, the law gave him complete control over his wife and all her belongings but should she die, all her property would pass to her nearest male heir - currently her Uncle Samuel or his descendants. Since the terms of her father’s will gave Hannah only a life interest in the estate, supervised by trustees, Stoney was unable to sell any of the property and realise his capital in that way. The only route by which Stoney could be certain of retaining future control over the Newton fortune was by fathering an heir to inherit the estate; this would entitle him to maintain his right to the property throughout his own lifetime. So for all his apparent distaste for his sensitive young wife, Stoney made sure to exact his conjugal rights.
It seems Hannah became pregnant at least once, and possibly several times, during their marriage but no child was born alive. On one occasion, according to the second of Foot’s correspondents, Stoney paid the bellringers of St Nicholas’s Church in Newcastle in an effort to proclaim that a stillborn baby had initially survived. Quite possibly Hannah’s frequent visits to Bath were to seek treatment for her failed pregnancies or even to boost her fertility; Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, would stay there in 1782 in the hope that the waters would help her to fall pregnant.32 Quite probably Stoney’s brutality contributed to Hannah’s difficulties; it is common for abusive men to mistreat their partners more severely than usual during pregnancy.
When Stoney finally retired from the army in 1771, gaining himself half-pay for life while ensuring he would miss out on the next military conflict - the American War of Independence - the violence at home continued unabated. That summer his decadent lifestyle and unbridled temper caused even his normally indulgent relatives some alarm. Writing from his regimental quarters in Scotland, Captain Robert Johnston, his mother’s brother, meekly encouraged Stoney: ‘If you should alter your way of life, it will require all your resolution, as nothing is so difficult as to get the better of any habit.’33 Good-naturedly confessing to his own less than spotless past, Uncle Robert added: ‘I have gone through many scenes of debauchery and yet I always had the greatest faith and trust in the Almighty God at intervals.’ Evidently, Hannah was at that point recovering either from another bout of illness or a failed pregnancy, for Uncle Robert was ‘very happy to hear Mrs Stoney is better’. Chillingly, he added, ‘be assured its your interest she should continue to get so’. But Uncle Robert was equally conscious of the desire for an heir, pointing out that if Stoney decided to live alone at Cole Pike Hill - as he had seemingly suggested - he would need to bear the expense of ‘going backwards and forwards continually at Bath until that event happens’. The following spring, in March 1772, Stoney was with Hannah in Bath - perhaps on one of his conjugal visits - for Uncle Robert had heard that his expenses there were ‘great’. A year later, in May 1773, Uncle Robert tentatively enquired: ‘Let me know how you and Mrs Stoney are, and particularly what state of health the worthy little woman is in’. Stoney was only too well aware of his wife’s worth. Having now settled at Cole Pike Hill, as debts mounted and the Newton fortune drained away, Stoney was casting around for a new way to raise funds. He did not need to look far for inspiration.
Only a few months earlier, in December 1772, Hannah had made a will which bequeathed land worth £5,000 to her husband if no children were born of their marriage before her death. Evidently Stoney had thought it prudent to make contingency measures in case Hannah died without providing the requisite heir.34 But with the sickly Hannah confounding fate by lingering on in the spring of 1773, Stoney desperately needed an alternative source of income. Striding about his estate at Cole Pike Hill his eyes fell on the surrounding ancient wood-lands. Sold for timber, the splendid oak trees could fetch a handsome sum. Stoney lost no time in advertising this prize asset, placing a notice on the front page of the Newcastle Chronicle seeking offers for ‘about fifteen Hundred Old OAK TREES, now standing and growing at Coldpighill’. There was just one problem: Uncle Sam. Furious at the interloper who had not only seduced his niece but now planned to lay waste the lands which he still hoped might descend to his son, Samuel Newton leapt into action. The following week - and for the week after that - Stoney’s advertisement appeared again but this time with a notice underneath it in which Newton warned that he would prosecute any bidder. Determined to safeguard the cher
ished property of his ancestors, Newton sought an injunction from the Court of Chancery in London to prevent Stoney selling any timber.35 The bill of complaint affords a revealing insight into Stoney’s bag of tricks, for Newton complained that both Stoney and Hannah had by turns claimed that her father had died without leaving a will or had owned his property ‘in fee simple’, meaning without restriction, allowing it be sold. The outcome of the case went unrecorded - as did many Chancery suits - although the fact that Samuel and Matthew Newton were declared bankrupt later that year doubtless invalidated their claim. It was the first, but by no means the last, of Stoney’s brushes with the lumbering Chancery system.
In debt once more and increasingly desperate for both immediate money and long-term security, in 1775 Stoney demanded his father buy back the Irish land George Stoney had been inveigled to give the couple before their marriage. In a demonically abusive letter, which may well have been written when drunk, Stoney thanked his father for his ‘flattering epistle’ which ‘contained more Blasphemy under the cloak of enthusiastick Religion than I ever before observe in the compass of one sheet of paper’ and which Stoney could only attribute to the ‘Idea that Reason and you are for ever parted’.36 Rambling incoherently in places, he speculated that his father might live ten more years then added: ‘I had like to forget that I myself am mortal. Apropros, pray how old am I?’ Branding his father ‘an Object of Pity’ and one of his uncles ‘the Lordling’, he urged that the desired purchase be quickly concluded as he was never ‘happy when in Debt’. Writing from Bath, he concluded with the ominous news that Hannah had been sent to Bristol - presumably on doctors’ orders to try the Hotwell waters there - ‘and is now there - I fear for ever.’