The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  MS: plentiful family correspondence: WYCRO, Leeds, TA 11/4, 12/3, 18/5, 18/6, 22/1, 13/2. See also G. W. Foster and J. J. Green, History of the Wilmer Family (Leeds, 1888), pp. 128–34; Harrison, ‘Thorp Arch Hall, 1749–56’; Harrison, ‘Servants of William Gossip’; Harrison, ‘Gossip Family of Thorp Arch’ (MS span: 1731–1813).

  SELECTED CORRESPONDENTS FROM THE DAWSON–GREENE NETWORK, 1762–1821

  This collection is based on the letters sent to Mrs Elizabeth Greene of Slyne and Miss Margaret Greene, later Mrs Bradley of Slyne. Many of their female correspondents have remained socially anonymous despite exhaustive researches, including Sarah Tatham, of Southampton Street, and later Southall (MS span: 1812–21); Martha Simpson of Walton (MS span: 1770); Eliza Greenhow, Slyne (MS span: 1763); and Lydia Boynton, 55 Burton Crescent, London (MS span: 1820). Other correspondents included the wife of a bankrupt merchant, Mrs Ridsdale of Winsley (MS span: 1813), who also corresponded with the Miss Barcrofts, as well as Anne Wiglesworth of Leeds (MS span: 1790) and Elizabeth Wiglesworth of Townhead (MS span: 1813), both members of the gentry-clerical family discussed in the Barcroft network.

  Mrs Margaret Bradley (née Greene), Slyne, Lancashire

  Daughter of Thomas Greene I Esq. of Slyne and Elizabeth Barker of Rampside, Lancashire. She married Robert Bradley of Slyne and was known to her friends as Peggy.

  MS: letters she received from her brothers Thomas and Richard, her son Richard Greene Bradley and Lydia Boynton her daughter-in-law: LRO, DDGr C3 (MS span: 1762–c.1821).

  Mrs Elizabeth Greene (née Barker), Slyne, Lancashire (1708–81)

  Daughter of George Barker of Rampside, Lancashire, wife of Thomas Greene of Slyne (1681–1762). She had at least six children: Thomas the heir, Margaret, Mary who died in 1746 aged six, George who died in 1758 aged eighteen, William who died in 1762 aged sixteen, and Richard who died in the East Indies in 1776 aged thirty.

  MS: letters she received from her son Thomas Greene, LRO, DDGr C1 (MS span: 1765–76).

  Mrs Martha Greene (née Dawson), Gower Street, London (1754–1843)

  The Lancastrian widow of Thomas Greene II. Sister-in-law to Mrs Bradley of Slyne, to whom her letters are addressed. Her son Thomas Greene III married the baronet's daughter Henrietta Russell in 1820, and Martha Greene proved a very affectionate mother-in-law as well as grandmother.

  MS: LRO, DDGr Box C3 (MS span: 1820–21).

  Thomas Greene, London (1737–1810)

  A Lancastrian lawyer based in London, son and heir of Thomas Greene I of Slyne. He was in partnership with Mr Baynes who, at his death in September 1779, left a legacy of fifty pounds and five hundred pounds in a codicil. He wrote from Gray's Inn, Serjeant's Inn and the Inner Temple to his mother and sister in Slyne. In 1792, at a mature fifty-five, he married Martha, the second daughter and co-heir of Edmund Dawson Esq. of Warton, Lancashire.

  MS: letters to his mother, sister and brothers, LRO, DDGr C1 (MS span: 1762–79).

  PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE SIX CORRESPONDENCE NETWORKS

  Mary Chorley, of Lancaster (b. 1766)

  This motherless girl was raised by her aunts, the Miss Fords. Her father John Chorley of 54 Hanover Street, Liverpool, she saw only intermittently. He was a merchant named in the town's directory in 1774. The fact that the Chorleys and their aunts were on tea-drinking and visiting terms with Lord and Lady Fleming of Rydal and the Wilsons of Dalham Tower indicates that, although Quakers, they were nevertheless personae gratae in local polite society.

  MS: diaries LPL, MS 8752–5 (MS span: 1776–81).

  Mrs Dolly Clayton of Lostock Hall, Lancashire

  Although this gentlewoman lived for most of her married life four miles outside Preston, occasional remarks in her pocket diaries suggest she hailed from Derby-shire. She enjoyed a wide acquaintance and counted many titled gentry among her friends.

  MS: thirty-one pocket diaries within the time-frame of this book: LRO, DDX 510/1–30 (MS span: 1773–1833).

  Miss Sarah Ford, Lancaster, Lancashire

  Probably the daughter of the Quaker Mary Chorley and her cousin John Ford. In the 1790s the family were still in contact with the Wilsons of Dalham Tower and the Listers. Like her mother before her, Sarah was educated at home and kept a pocket diary in her girlhood.

  MS: four pocket diaries LPL, MS 8756–9 (MS span: 1792–7).

  Mrs Abigail Gawthern (née Frost), Nottingham (1757–1822) The daughter of a Nottingham grocer and tallow-chandler, who in 1783 married a white-lead manufacturer, her cousin Francis Gawthern. They had four children, the two youngest of whom died before the age of three. After her husband's death in 1792, Mrs Gawthern managed the business until her son's majority in 1807. She was registered as a white-lead manufacturer in a Nottingham directory for c.1793. She also managed considerable properties in Nottingham and the surrounding countryside, inheriting yet more from her parents in 1801. Mrs Gawthern's circle incorporated both Nottingham manufacturers and Nottinghamshire gentry. Her only surviving daughter Anna married Captain William Sleight of the 100th Regiment of Foot in 1812 in London. Abigail's son Francis abandoned the lead works a year after his majority. In 1812 he married his cousin Mary Frances Marriott of Askham, Yorkshire.

  Source: A. Henstock (ed.), ‘The Diary of Abigail Gawthern of Nottingham, 1751–1810’, Thornton Society Record Series, 33 (MS span: 1751–1810).

  Mrs Anna Larpent (née Porter), London (1758–?1829)

  This woman is far and away the most cosmopolitan figure in this study. The daughter of Sir James Porter, a British diplomat, and a minor European aristocrat, she was born in Pera, Turkey. In 1782 she married the widower John Larpent, who was seventeen years her senior. He was a successful civil servant, and throughout the marriage was the Inspector of Plays in the Office of the Lord Chamberlain. It is clear that Anna Larpent collaborated with her husband on the collection, indexing and censoring of submitted plays. She had sole responsibility for the censorship of Italian opera since she was fluent in the language (as well as French) while her husband was not. Mrs Larpent brought up two children of her own and one stepson. She was a pious, serious-minded Anglican, who was active in good works from soup kitchens to Sunday schools in the early nineteenth century.

  MS: HL, HM 31201, XVII, 1773–87, Anna Margaretta Larpent's Methodized Journal; HM 31201, Mrs Larpent's Diary, I, 1790–95, III, 1799–1800, VIII, 1810–13, XI, 1820–21. See also G. Larpent, Turkey its History and Progress from the journals and Correspondence of Sir James Porter … (1851), I, pp. 3–14; L. W. Conolly, The Censorship of English Drama (San Marino, Ca., 1976), pp. 4–7, 34–5, 42–5, 81, 109–13, 154–9; Conolly, ‘Censor's Wife at the Theatre’; Brewer, ‘Reconstructing the Reader’ (MS span: 1773–1821).

  Beatrix Lister of Marshfield, Settle, Yorkshire (b. 1749)

  Only surviving daughter of Thomas Lister of Gisburn Park (1723–61), MP for Clitheroe, and Beatrix Hulton (1723–74). Sister to Thomas Lister (1752–1826), the future Baron Ribblesdale, MP for Clitheroe 1773–90, and High Sheriff for Yorkshire in 1795. She had a reputation for accomplished elegance, which reached the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine, 65 (1795), p. 82. In 1777 she married John Parker of Browsholme (1749–97), and thereby became niece by marriage to Elizabeth Shackleton. John Parker was MP for Clitheroe 1780–82 (he resigned his seat to settle a dispute between the Lister and Curzon factions) and bow bearer of Bowland Forest in the Duchy of Lancaster 1794–7. His obituary of 1797 drew attention to his rententive memory and ‘the hereditary characteristick of Browsholm – a boundless hospitality’, see Gentleman's Magazine, 67 (1797), p. 612. They set up married life at Beatrix's elegant villa, Marshfield House in Settle, where she remained until 1811. She bore eight children between 1779 and 1790, six of whom survived infancy. The Parker and Lister families had long been close social and political allies, they reputedly shared Jacobite sympathies and together dominated the borough of Clitheroe. Elizabeth Shackleton was a regular visitor to Gisburn Park throughout her lifetime; the Listers were regular consu
mers of the famous Alkincoats rabies medicine; Beatrix's uncle Nathaniel Lister (MP for Clitheroe 1761–73) kept Elizabeth supplied with franks (a form of free postage enjoyed by MPs) for years; and her diary records that she maintained a correspondence with Beatrix Lister and her mother, although none of these letters has survived. However, the strong links between Browsholme and Gisburn Park were jeopardized in 1789. In that year, the families quarrelled over Thomas Lister's marriage to an Irish heiress, Rebecca Fielding. Beatrix reputedly slighted her sister-in-law and thereby precipitated ‘the Parker Scandal’. Like Elizabeth Shackleton, the Parkers of Marshfield and the Listers of Gisburn were customers of Gillows of Lancaster.

  MS: YAS, MD 335/95 (1768–75), letters from Mrs Beatrix Lister and Miss Beatrix Lister, Marshfield, to Thomas Lister, Brasenose College, Oxford, and London; YAS, MD 335/80, letters concerning ‘the Parker Scandal’; LRO, DDB/74/6 (n.d.), ‘Poem given me by Mrs Parker of Marshfield’. Consider also the letters Beatrix wrote to her cousin by marriage, Thomas Parker of Alkincoats, LRO, DDB/72/ 859, 916, 930, 937, 951. For furniture accounts, see YAS, MD 335/11 (17) (MS span: 1786–9).

  Betty Parker (née Parker) of Newton (1757–1808)

  Betty was the only daughter of Edward Parker of Newton Hall, Co. York, and Elizabeth Goulbourne of Manchester. Betty was the heiress of John Goulbourne of Manchester. She married Thomas Parker of Alkincoats in Manchester in June 1779 and bore him at least seven children, of whom five survived childhood. She suffered at least one miscarriage.

  MS: two of her letters survive, one in the Whitaker collection, the other in the Parker collection among her husband's papers, see respectively LRO, DDWh/4/18, and LRO, DDB/72/839 (MS span: c.1790–93).

  Eliza Parker of Alkincoats, Colne, Lancashire (1781–1842)

  Only surviving daughter of Thomas and Betty Parker of Alkincoats and Newton. Sister of Edward Parker of Selby. She married Captain John Atherton of the 6th Foot Regiment. In her twenties, in Preston, she knew and discussed many of the individuals in the Whitaker network, e.g. the Horrockses, Addisons and St Clares. MS: ten letters LRO, DDB/72/683–92 (MS span: 1796–1813).

  Jane Pedder (née Bowes) of Lancaster, Lancashire (d. 1790)

  Jane Bowes was born into a Lancaster mercantile family. In June 1757 she married James Pedder, vicar of Churchtown, Garstang, Lancashire, the younger son of Richard Pedder, a substantial Preston merchant. Her brothers-in-law Edward and Thomas Pedder were also Preston merchants and were named in Elizabeth Parker Shackleton's manuscripts. Her husband Revd James Pedder died in 1772, where-upon Jane and her daughter Margaret removed to Bridge Lane, Lancaster. By the 1780s her son John Pedder was living in the household of Revd Starkie of Blackburn. By all appearances he was undergoing a legal apprenticeship; his mother certainly was relieved that his studies were ‘both instructive and pleasant without any danger attending’, unlike some of the young overseas merchants of her acquaintance. Members of the extended Pedder family also bought Gillows mahogany.

  MS: fourteen letters: LRO, DDPd/17/1 (1786), Jane Pedder, London and Lancaster, to John Pedder, Blackburn. Journals: LRO, DDPd/25/16 (c.1786), Miss Margaret Pedder's ‘views of a journey to London and back’. See also LRO, DDPd/ 16/3 (1795), Furniture accounts of Revd John Pedder of Lancaster (MS span: 1786).

  Ellen Stock (née Weeton), of Upholland, Lancashire (1776–?1844) Ellen Weeton's social position was an ambiguous one, as she felt most sorely. Her mother was the daughter of a Preston butcher who had served as a lady's maid to the Houghtons of Walton Hall marrying eventually the captain of merchantman in the West Africa slave trade. (Her sisters married a Preston silk mercer and a Wigan solicitor.) Ellen's parents established themselves at Church Street, Lancaster, where Mrs Weeton took in lodgers to supplement her income while her husband was at sea. She bore four children, of whom only Nelly and her brother Tom survived. When Mr Weeton was killed at sea in 1782 the family was allegedly defrauded of his prize-money and forced to remove to Upholland, where they set up a school. Tom was educated at Mr Braithwaite's school nearby and was later apprenticed to the attorney Nicholas Grimshaw of Preston. Just qualified, he married the daughter of a Wigan factory owner. After the death of Mrs Weeton in 1797 Ellen ran the school singlehanded without a servant. Once the school was given up, she boarded with her brother and in mean lodgings in Liverpool. In 1809 she was employed as a governess by Edward Pedder of Doves Nest, Ambleside (another member of the mercantile family of Preston), and later by the Armitage family at Milnsbridge, near Huddersfield. In 1814 she married the near-bankrupt manufacturer Aaron Stock of Wigan. Despite the birth of a beloved child, Mary, the marriage was an utter disaster, ending in a deed of separation in 1822. Thereafter, Ellen eked out an existence in lodgings, spending her time writing memoirs, taking modest walking holidays and struggling to maintain contact with her daughter.

  Sources: E. Hall (ed.), Mrs Weeton's Journal of Governess, 1807–1825 (1925), 2 vols, based on WRO, EHC 165, History of the Life of Nelly Stock/Occasional Reflections E. Stock (MS span: 1807–25).

  Appendix 3

  Members of the Parker Family Mentioned in the Text

  See genealogical tree on following page.

  Appendix 4

  The Social Networks Database

  THE MATERIAL USED IN CHAPTER TWO on Elizabeth Shackleton's social interactions is derived from the information provided in her five diaries, for the two years 1773 and 1780 (LRO, DDB/81/18–20 and DDB/81/36–7). The phrase ‘social interaction’ is used to denote the whole range of possible contacts with people resident outside her household, extending from the indirect, such as letters, messages or gifts, to the direct, like calls, meals or extended visits. The two chosen years are ones for which the density of information in the diaries is particularly high, but they are not in any strict sense representative. They fall, however, within two markedly different phases in Elizabeth Shackleton's later life: 1773, in the period before Thomas Parker's majority, and 1780, in the period after Elizabeth Shackleton had completed her move from Alkincoats to Pasture House.

  All diary entries for these years which record interactions with individuals other than resident servants and resident kin were analysed. (Of the total 1,131 diary entries, 1,010 record Elizabeth Shackleton's personal involvement. The residual 121 entries describe those social encounters from which she was excluded, i.e. those involving only her sons and husband.) The interactions were entered into a computer database. Supplementary information on the people involved was then compiled from a range of local primary and secondary sources. The information was entered into ten fields as follows: (1) the date of the interaction, (2) the quarter during which the interaction took place, (3) the name/s of the people involved, (4) whether or not they were related to Elizabeth Shackleton, (5) their gender, (6) their occupational status, (7) their residence, (8) the type of activity, (9) the location of the interaction (if appropriate), (10) any miscellaneous information.

  The most difficult problems of categorization arose with occupational status. The categories employed were landed gentry, professional, upper trade, lesser trade, tenant, farmer, servant, labourer and unknown. Not only is it difficult to track down occupational information on late eighteenth-century individuals, but it is also difficult to achieve clear distinctions, given the existence of multiple occupations and the imprecision with which terms like ‘gentleman’ and ‘yeoman’ were used. The main losers here were probably the categories upper and lesser trades, because information on business activity was particularly difficult to secure. The chief beneficiary was probably the farming category: included in this category were all non-tenants for whom there is evidence of landholding, but no indication of involvement in trade or claim to gentility. Women were classified according to the status of their nearest male relative, usually that of her father before marriage and her husband after. Spinsters and widows often had to be labelled as status unknown, because although obviously wealthy and socially acceptable, they did not inhabit a recognized gentry seat and the
source of their income is unknown.

  The total number of interactions in the two years was 1,011, but it should be borne in mind that each recorded interaction could involve more than one type of activity and more than one individual. A letter might accompany a gift; several guests from a variety of occupational backgrounds might be invited to a dinner. Nevertheless, in most cases the results of analysis of the database are expressed as percentages of a figure for the number of interactions. This is because the question which has been asked of the database is what proportion of interactions involved certain categories of people, or certain categories of activity.

  Basic genealogical data has been gleaned from Spencer, Parochial Chapelry of Colne; Marriages from 1654–1754, and Spencer, Parochial Chapelry of Colne; Register of Baptisms and Burials, 1774–89. Occupational data is recorded in Spencer, Parochial Chapelry of Colne; Baptism Register, 1790–1812. Additional information is in PRO, 11/wills and BIHR, wills.