Charlotte Elizabeth was the youngest child of George Worgan and his wife Mary (née Lawry), and many of the writers who have documented the life of George Worgan have been unaware of Charlotte’s existence. George Boucher Worgan, to give him his full name, was the son of the celebrated Dr Worgan, organist and composer at the Vauxhall Gardens, and brother to Joseph my great3-grandfather. But although musical like his father and siblings, George chose a career as a surgeon in the Royal Navy, most particularly serving on HMS Sirius, the flagship of the First Fleet taking convicts to Australia in 1788. On retiring from the navy he had settled in Cornwall and taken up farming. He married in 1793 and he and his wife set up home in Morval, a parish north-east of Looe, where George leased two farms, Bray and Hendra. They raised a family of two girls and three boys, though at least one of the girls and one of the boys died in infancy.
Draft Ordnance Survey drawing of the area between Looe and Morval in 1803 with Bray and Hendra farms top right
Ten years later, in 1804 the family moved to Cardinham, more than 15 miles away near Bodmin, to a farm George had rented attached to a large house called Glynn. It was there that their third daughter, Charlotte, was born two years later. She was probably named after her aunt, George’s sister, who was married to Sir Charles Parsons, the Master of the King’s Musick to George III. One of Charlotte’s brothers had been named John Parsons Worgan in his honour. The move to Glynn was not a success in financial terms. George failed to make the farm profitable and he vacated the lease after only two years.
Glynn, near Cardinham
Wadeland House, New Road, Liskeard, where Charlotte lived from 1836 to 1842
Charlotte thus would have spent most of her childhood in Liskeard whence the family moved after George gave up farming and struggled to find useful employment. Eventually he took up teaching. In 1813 he was appointed headmaster of the new National School opened in the town. Charlotte would have been seven years old. Did she attend her father’s school? In Pigot’s Directory of Cornwall in 1830 the Worgans were living in West Street. We know nothing of Charlotte’s life until three years later when, at the age of about 27 she gave birth to a boy – Charles Parsons Worgan. The fact that he bore his mother’s surname indicates that she concealed his father’s identity. How his birth went down with the censorious social mores of the 1830s we do not know, but in the 1841 census Charlotte and Charles were living with Charlotte’s widowed mother at Wadeland House, Liskeard, which George Worgan had built in 1836, two years before he died. By then both of Charlotte’s brothers, George and John, had emigrated to Australia but of her older sister Mary nothing is known save that she was not mentioned in the will of their aunt Ann Lawry in 1845. She may not even have survived childhood.
The marriage of William Murray and Charlotte Worgan, 25th October 1842
Having an illegitimate child, however, did not stand in the way of Charlotte getting married in 1842. Her husband was William Murray, a Liskeard auctioneer, and evidently William accepted Charles into his home. Ann Lawry had made Charlotte and her brothers the residuary legatees of her will, specifically leaving Charlotte’s portion “free from marital control, for her sole, separate and absolute use”. This may not have had anything to do with William and Charlotte’s relationship (they had only been married for three years), but is more likely to have been intended to give Charlotte some financial independence from the restrictions that married women had endured for centuries, that their husbands had sole control over their property. It was shortly after this time that campaigning began for the law to be changed, though it was not until 1870 that this came to pass. Ann Lawry also left £100 to Charlotte’s son Charles to inherit when he reached the age of 21.
Charlotte’s mother Mary died in 1846, aged 82. Two years later tragedy struck when Charles was drowned during a fishing trip with his step-father off Looe. He was 15 years old. He was buried with his grandmother in St Martin’s churchyard in the town. One can never guess at how tragedy affects people but it may well be that Charles’s untimely death set in train the circumstances which contributed to the breakdown in Charlotte’s and William’s marriage.
Royal Cornwall Gazette 14th July 1848
In the 1851 census William and Charlotte are recorded as living in Castle Street, Liskeard, together with William’s young brother George and an elderly domestic servant. From their ages given then, Charlotte was eleven years older than William, and after nine years of marriage they were childless. Sometime during the next four years William Murray employed a young housekeeper by the name of Jane Whitford. In 1856 Jane gave birth to a son, Lewis William Murrayton Murray Whitford, and in the next four years two daughters, Edith Jane Whitford and Emma Mary Whitford. There seems little doubt that William Murray was the father. Was Charlotte understandably unwilling to engage in a ménage-a trois, or did William make it impossible for her to remain? Either way, Charlotte left the marital home, an action unthinkable for a wife over whom her husband had total financial control. But through the deliberate action of her aunt, Charlotte was not in such a position. In the 1861 census all three Whitford children had dropped their surname and become Murray although Jane was still described as housekeeper and unmarried.
Castle Villa, Liskeard, home of William Murray
In the same census Charlotte was recorded living, probably in one or two rooms, in a house in Compton Street in Plymouth occupied by eight other families. She was 55 and had no recorded occupation, although the money left to her by her aunt Ann would have given her some financial independence. Sometime after 1852 or 3 Charlotte had also benefited from a legacy of £100, plus a further £100 intended for her late son Charles, bequeathed to her by Ann Rowe, also of Liskeard, a neighbour of Ann Lawry. Miss Rowe’s connection with the Worgans is not known but Charlotte’s brothers were also beneficiaries.
Although still resident in Plymouth Charlotte returned to Liskeard in 1864. She made her will nine days before she died, aged 58, on the 13th September at the home of Frances Tregellis in Church Street. The value of her estate was less than £450 (equivalent to about £47,000 today), from which she gave legacies to friends and, in particular, to the sons of Christopher Childs, her solicitor. She also left £20 to the Devon and Cornwall Blind Asylum which was on Coburg Street, Plymouth, close to her home in Compton Street.
Charlotte was evidently not reconciled with her husband, William Murray, who married Jane Whitford just over a month later. And was the cause of her death – disease of the liver – an indication that her life had spiralled downwards through an increasing dependence on ‘the demon drink’?
John Hartland was one of my great4-grandfathers (there were 31 others). He was born at Newent in Gloucestershire in 1723, the oldest child of Sarah (née Astman) and Thomas Hartland. John had five brothers and two sisters: Thomas, Henry, Miles, Edward, William, Sarah and Nancy. John’s father, who died in 1777, was evidently a devout and serious-minded man, bequeathing to each of his surviving children (Henry and William had predeceased him) a small number of religious and philosophical books. To John he left two volumes of James Hervey’s Meditations and Contemplations (1748), A Christian Directory by Robert Parsons (first published in 1584) and “Judge Hale”, which may have been Mathew Hale’s History and Analysis of the Common Laws of England (1696).
What John Hartland did for the first 36 years of his life is not recorded but it may not have gone down well with his great aunt Anne Hartland who, when she made her will in 1740, did not mention him although she left fifty pounds to each of his siblings. When we do hear of John again is in the pages of the London Evening Post of 3rd May 1759 where it was announced that he was to be an Ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot, under its Colonel, Lieutenant-General William Browne. The 73rd were serving in Ireland and had only been in existence for a year having previously been the 2nd Battalion of the 34th Regiment. However, John very soon transferred to the 84th Regiment which was being sent out to India in support of the East India Company, and whether the chance to see India offered a greater appeal we shall never know. John Hartland did not purchase his commission. His father’s will indicates that they were not a wealthy family and therefore unlikely to have been able to afford such an expense, but John could evidently read and write and he was described as a gentleman, so he may have previously volunteered to serve in the ranks as a means to being accepted for promotion as an officer through diligence and experience. It might also explain why John remained a Lieutenant for the remaining 38 years of his service.
London Evening Post, 3rd May 1759
Eyre Coote
The 84th Regiment were also infantry and had been raised in 1759 by Lieutenant-General Eyre Coote, who would subsequently be appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British army in India. On their arrival in the sub-continent five companies were retained as marines for service on the naval vessels under Vice-Admiral Pocock, which cruised in the Bay of Bengal in support of the land forces. The rest of the regiment were engaged in the Third Carnatic War against the French, part of the wider Seven Years’ War. Their first battle took place at Vandavasi in Tamil Nadu in SE India. Known to the British as Wandiwash, it resulted in the British troops and their Indian allies capturing a large part of the French possessions. The 84th Regiment played a significant part in the decisive action and were later involved in the sieges at Arcot and Pondicherry. Whether John Hartland, who had been promoted to Lieutenant, was in one of the companies at sea or on land is not known, his name not featuring in any of the reports that were published in the English newspapers several months after the events they were describing had taken place.
The success of the British army in India in defeating the French in part resulted in the Treaty of Paris in 1763 which brought the Seven Years’ War and the French control of parts of India to an end. No longer required, the 84th Regiment sailed back to England in 1765 and was disbanded, its officers being put on half-pay. John Hartland came back to begin a new phase in his life at the age of 42. Half-pay for a Lieutenant would not have been much but it might have provided a small cushion upon which other income could be built. What John did in the first years after his return is not known but on 6th November 1766, at Fyfield, west of Abingdon in Berkshire, he married Pleasant, the daughter of Thomas and Ann Boycott. Pleasant, who was 20 years younger than her husband, went with her new husnband to live in Bensington (now called Benson), about 20 miles away, where Pleasant’s family came from, and raised a family of three girls and a boy: Jemima (my great3-grandmother), Anne (known as Nancy), Sally and John.
A soldier in the Invalids
The youngest, John, whose full name was John Christopher Capel Astman Hartland, was only about 18 months old when in February 1775 his father was posted to one of the garrison companies of the 41st Regiment of Foot at Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland. Whether this was by choice or by command is not known, soldiers on half-pay being liable to be called up, but equally John Hartland may have been finding the expense of a young family on half-pay difficult and had been looking for an additional means of income. Nomination for an officer’s appointment was made by the commissioners of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. John was 52 years old and the £85 a year that full pay offered would make a considerable difference. So the family will have decamped to Berwick; the oldest, Jemima being seven, Nancy five and Sally three. The 41st were officially titled the Royal Invalids and their role was to man garrisons in various locations around the British Isles from the Channel Islands to Fort George, near Inverness, and from Hull to the Isles of Scilly. The regiment was called the Royal Invalids because the soldiers who carried out garrison duties, in places where there was little threat from an enemy, were rather older than those in ‘front-line’ regiments, or had been injured and were no longer fit enough for more active roles. The other ranks were selected from the out-pensioners of the Royal Hospital. In his 1899 History of the Services of the 41st (Welch) Regiment (which the Royal Invalids became), D. Lomax wrote:
Their existence seems to have been a very quiet one, but probably well suited to the deserving class of soldiers of which the regiment was composed. A great many of the men were married, and the officers were generally so aged as to be unfit for the most trivial exertion.
The barracks at Berwick had been built in the early 18th century to a design by Sir Nicholas Hawksmoor. There were three main blocks arranged around a square, with the officers’ quarters at the ends of the long, three-storey, double-range buildings that faced each other across it. There were nine officers of the 41st resident at Berwick, a Captain, Lieutenant and Ensign for each of the three companies, and it may well have been that the Captains and Lieutenants, at least, were married and had families. John Hartland’s family of two adults and four young children might have been difficult to accommodate, the 41st not being the only regiment stationed there, and it is possible that Jemima and Nancy were ‘farmed out’ to relatives, a practice not uncommon at the time.
The barracks at Berwick-upon-Tweed
The Army List of 1781
For the next ten years the record is silent save for John’s appearance in the annual Army List. In March 1785 the Whitehall Evening Post announced that he had been appointed Town Adjutant, which increased his annual salary by nearly £70. However, the boost which that would have undoubtedly given to his and Pleasant’s social standing in Berwick would have been tempered by the death, in July of that year, of their youngest daughter at the age of 14. Christened Pleasy Sally Hartland, at her burial her name was recorded as Sarah. The additional post of Adjutant probably meant that John and Pleasant moved out of the barracks into a rented house in the town.
Public Advertiser 28th March 1785
In the next decade all three of John and Pleasant’s surviving children were married: in 1792 Jemima married Joseph Worgan, a curate at Highworth in Wiltshire (seeThe Worgans); the following year Nancy also married a clergyman, William Mairis, who became vicar of Mudford in Somerset; and in 1795 John, who was a lawyer, married Elizabeth Richards in London. Their details can be seen on the Family Tree.
Public Advertiser, 9th January 1798 – the press had promoted John Hartland!
The Reverend William Mairis(1767-1828)
Susanna Elizabeth Knight, later Lady Delaval
Ten letters written by Pleasant Hartland have survived from this period. She had formed an acquaintance with a Miss Susanna Knight, a lady some 20 years younger than herself, who was a friend of Lord Delaval the owner of Ford Castle, a few miles to the south of Berwick, and also Seaton Delaval Hall near Newcastle. Pleasant used this aristocratic connection to try to further the career of Nancy’s husband, William Mairis, by asking Miss Knight to persuade Lord Delaval to appoint William as his domestic chaplain. She also solicited Miss Knight’s influence to obtain a stewardship for her son John, who was working in London and not enjoying the experience. Although Lord Delaval was apparently willing to recommend John history does not relate whether the recommendation bore fruit. As to William Mairis, an appointment as Lord Delaval’s chaplain did not materialise, but a few years later he became chaplain to HRH The Duke of Kent, whose daughter Victoria, born in 1819, would become queen.
Ford Castle, one of the seats of Lord Delaval
Colonel Robert Brownrigg
You can read the full text of Pleasant’s letters HERE. They reveal the social distance between the two women; Susanna was a close confidante of Lord Delaval, indeed probably his mistress, but there was an evident friendship between her and Pleasant as gifts were exchanged. Pleasant was always in hope of a visit from Susanna and it is unfortunate that the latter’s replies, which might have given an insight into how much the feelings Pleasant expressed were reciprocated, have not survived. In a letter dated December 1798 Pleasant wrote to Susanna from Bishops Lydiard in Somerset, where she and John were staying with William and Nancy Mairis and their family, bemoaning the fact that John Hartland had been compelled to give up his post at the garrison, and as Town Adjutant, at short notice because of his ill health. She wrote that they had hoped to appeal to the Duke of York, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Army that year, but instead had been seen by Colonel Brownrigg, the duke’s military secretary, and their hopes for John’s reinstatement, aged 75, were dashed. He had, nevertheless, been retired on his full Lieutenant’s pay. Pleasant’s final letter to Susanna was to congratulate her on her marriage to 74-year-old Lord Delaval, complimenting her new husband on having “the good sense to discriminate your Ladyships worth, and to set a proper value on it”. That letter, written in January 1803, was addressed from Newent, John Hartland’s birthplace, whence she and John had retired and where, four months later, aged 79, John died.
In his will he left everything to Pleasant for her lifetime, and then to Jemima and Nancy. His son John, who by this time was also living in Newent, had received a settlement in 1794 prior to his marriage. In the event, Pleasant, who was the sole executor, failed to complete the administration of the will and, following her death in 1825 in her son-in-law, Joseph Worgan’s parish of Pebworth in Worcestershire, and leaving no will herself, Jemima took over responsibility and was granted administration. This had to be revoked when she died in 1830 and it was Nancy who brought matters to a conclusion. You can read John Hartland’s will HERE.
My great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Coles, who married Henry Spencer in Wells in 1832 (see The Spencers), came from a family who had been involved in paper manufacture since the 1750s. They worked a succession of mills along the River Axe that emerged from beneath the Mendip Hills at Wookey Hole and flowed south and then west towards the Somerset Levels. Water was essential to papermaking, using its power to pulp rags with hammers, and then as a medium to soak the pulped ‘stuff’ which was then spread evenly on wire webs to drain before being removed and pressed before drying. The wire web would often incorporate a watermark which became impressed into the paper as it dried. In the early days all this was a manual process but during the 19th century mechanisation began to take over.
The Coles family paper mills on the River Axe (Ordnance Survey map 1884)
The earliest of this family that I have been able to trace was James Coles, who was born in 1732. He made paper at Glencot Mill, south of Wookey Hole, from 1758. He had a son, who was known as James the younger, born in 1753, who in time succeeded his father and carried on the business at Glencot until 1803. Described as of Wookey Hole, in 1772 he had married Elizabeth Keeke at Axbridge, near Cheddar a few miles to the west along the foot of the Mendips. They had three sons and a daughter, all christened at St Cuthbert’s church in Wells, Glencot being in the ‘Out’ parish. The oldest, James Keeke Coles, was to carry on working at Glencot until a fire there in 1829 caused him to move his family and the business to the village of Henley and to the mill he built there.
Henley Mill, near Wells, in 1960. The building in the centre originally had three storeys
James Keeke Coles married Ann Bacon at Ashcott, near Street, in 1798 and they also had three sons and a daughter: John who died aged only 11, Elizabeth my great-great-grandmother, James and Henry. James became a surgeon and it was Henry who followed his father into paper making. He was probably the most enterprising of all the members of the family who were involved in the business. Before he was 30 he had taken on the paper mill at Stoke Bottom, east of Wells and north-east of Shepton Mallet, and he was to keep an interest there until 1860. Meanwhile, when his father retired at Henley Mill in 1838 he joined in partnership there with his son-in-law, Richard Palin, who had married his daughter Agnes. Henry had been widowed shortly after Agnes had been born. In 1860 Henry and Richard took over Dulcote East Mill, between Wells and Shepton Mallet, which they ran together for six years before Henry retired and Richard and Agnes and the first of their children emigrated to Canada. Henry closed down Henley Mill in 1868 and died six years later in Weston-super-Mare, his other two daughters, Emma and Margaret also having left England, eventually settling in Michigan, USA.
A Coles watermark of 1852: the wire design on the web which impresses the watermark on sheets of paper
One of my more interesting ancestors was my great5-grandfather Elias Perryman. The Perrymans (Perrymen?) came from east Devon where there were two apparently related families living in Sidmouth and in Honiton in the latter half of the 17th century. Elias seems to have been a family name and while there were Eliases in both branches, the one whose story I am going to relate was probably born in Honiton in 1686. The records of his career, and there are many, do not actually name him until 1730, but it is clear that the references to Captain Perryman that occur over a 47-year period are of him.
An eighteenth century merchant ship
Elias Perryman must have been a mere 20 years of age, and presumably only recently deemed competent in seamanship as well as nautical astronomy when in February 1707 he was master of the Mary carrying, amongst other cargoes no doubt, “sundreys” from London for a Captain John Lane of Billerica, just north-east of Boston in the New England colony of Massachusetts. This was a long trip for one so early in his career. He was to be master of a succession of merchant ships that took him all over the European seas, across the Atlantic on several occasions and even as far as the west coast of Africa and, although they are seldom mentioned, the cargoes he transported varied from fine linen cloth to tobacco, bullion to tar and dried fruit to military personnel. The records that have enabled me to trace this remarkable life have been, principally, the London newspapers of the period in which the regular shipping news informed their readers what vessels and their masters had arrived or departed from the home ports and where they were coming from or going to. Towards the end of the period, from 1741 onwards, this information was published in the Lloyd’s Lists.
Cadiz in 1715
A Piece of Eight, a Spanish silver dollar made at Potosi in Bolivia
Elias’s voyage to Boston was not one that appeared in any of the papers but he first came to public notice as master of the Tyger in September 1718. Following the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713 the Peace of Utrecht had ceded the Spanish Netherlands and Sardinia to Habsburg Austria and the Kingdom of Sicily to the Duchy of Savoy. Spain wanted to recover them and in 1717 it re-occupied Sardinia. In July 1718 Spanish troops landed on Sicily. The signatories to the Peace of Utrecht, which included Austria, Britain, France and the Dutch Republic, were determined to reassert the terms of the Peace. On the 11th of August a British naval squadron under Admiral George Byng destroyed the Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro, south of Sicily, depriving Spain’s forces on the island of naval support. When news eventually reached Madrid of the British victory the Spanish seized all the British ships then in their ports. The London papers reported that on the 11th of September Captain Perryman had set sail from Cadiz, narrowly avoiding having his ship impounded, and was thus able to return to London with his cargo of 200,000 Pieces of Eight, 80 chests of cochineal and a quantity of indigo. Three weeks later thepapers made a point of announcing that The Tyger had arrived off Dover.
Reggio in Calabria
We hear of Captain Perryman again in May 1720 when he was in command of the Providence on a voyage to the Mediterranean. Passing through the Strait of Messina, between Sicily and the ‘toe of Italy’, the Providence and a number of other vessels were caught in a violent storm, forcing several of them to be beached. Most were able to be refloated but the London Journal reported that the Providence, which had been driven ashore at Reggio in Calabria, was feared lost.
Part of a 1780 French map of the Antilles, showing Antigua and St Christopher’s
Elias was to make many trans-Atlantic crossings, both to the West Indies and to the British colonies in North America. In 1722 he was master of the Antegoa (an early name for Antigua) on a trip to Maryland, and two years later his destination was Antigua itself, in command of the Ormond setting sail from Dartmouth. The round trip would have taken several months as a subsequent voyage shows. For several years Elias was master of a ship called the Anna Maria and in November of 1725 he set off from Deal, where he had been awaiting favourable winds, bound for the island of St Christopher’s (now known as St Kitt’s). It was eight months before he arrived back in Gravesend. Return voyages from America generally took less time than those that were westbound because of the prevailing winds, so it is no surprise that while the Daily Journal reported that he had arrived in Antigua in early March 1727 he was back at Deal by the end of June after calling in at St Kitt’s. There was rarely a single destination on such trips, the cargoes he carried both outgoing and inbound being destined for many customers in several ports in the same part of the world. Also it is clear that often several ships would sail together, for company and protection, only to disperse for which ever port they were headed as they neared the end of their journey.
Guinea in 1727 (H. Moll)
In September 1728 Elias was master of the Morris bound for Guinea. What his cargo was is not recorded but although Guinea, which then encompassed all the land along the southern coast of west Africa from modern Equatorial Guinea to Senegal, was notorious as the source of slaves for the Caribbean and the Americas, European states engaged in a great deal of trade with the kingdoms in the region, notably for gold, ivory, grain and pepper. In January 1731, this time in the Mary (probably not the same ship as in 1707), Elias was off to Guinea once more.
Shipping on the Thames (Samuel Scott)
While the Mediterranean and the trans-Atlantic routes had largely been Elias’s stock-in-trade, he also visited north European ports. At the end of November 1730 Elias stopped off at Elsinore, Denmark, on the way back from a trip to St Petersburg, and a couple of weeks later he was in Plymouth taking the Prince William to Guernsey. In June 1731 he brought the same ship to Bristol with a cargo of cambric and brandy from Dunkirk, and a month later he was in Lisbon as master of the Princess Royal before another Dunkirk trip on the Prince William to Bristol, via Plymouth, in September. As master of the Princess Royal again, Elias was in Amsterdam in June of the next year where he was required to give evidence in a case of assault against a fellow sea captain, Robert Reaves, of the Experiment. In 1733 he went to Venice, calling in at Leghorn (Livorno) and Genoa.
Shipping in ‘The Downs’ off Deal in Kent, with Walmer Castle in the foreground
Nothing of Elias Perryman’s private life had been recorded so far. On the 26th of September 1735, describing himself as a gentleman and a resident of Deal, in Kent, he made his will and in it he left all his property, none of which was specified, to his wife Martha. I have been unable to find any record of their marriage but it is evident that she was the daughter of Nathan Brame, an Ostend merchant, and had been born in London in 1717, making her only 18 in 1735 and more than 20 years younger than her husband. In fact Elias was older than his father-in-law. The life of a mariner was a hazardous one and as much of his married life would be spent at sea, making his will when in good health would ensure the future security of his new bride and any children that would ensue. Indeed, about nine months later, in May of 1736, their eldest child was born at Deal. Named Nathan, after his grandfather, he was followed two years later by a second son, named after his father, but he died after only a couple of months. In 1740 Elias was off on the Italian Merchant to Stockholm, docking at Chatham in October with a cargo of tar. And the following year he left for Virginia in February, arriving back on the 1st of October, just in time for the birth of his third son, also named Elias, who was christened on the 15th at St Mary Magdalene’s in Bermondsey, where they had moved from Deal in the intervening period.
The voyage Elias embarked upon in June 1743 in the Italian Merchant, was to prove somewhat longer than might have been expected given that its destinations were all in the Mediterranean. Outward bound he was to visit Genoa before going on to Venice. Then he was to sail down the Adriatic to Kefalonia and Zante (Zakinthos) to take on board a cargo of currants, one of the principal products of those islands. Sailing back he came up against contrary winds in the western approaches which forced him to take shelter off Crookhaven, county Cork, a tiny settlement in the south-westernmost part of Ireland. Many of the Ottoman ports in the Mediterranean, which included the Ionian islands, had been stricken with outbreaks of the plague and the Privy Council had imposed a quarantine, originally of 40 days but by this time reduced to 14, on all ships returning from that area. So from Crookhaven the authorities ordered the Italian Merchant along the coast to the small port of Baltimore where the ship was placed in quarantine for a fortnight. Once released it arrived off the Downs on the 13th of March 1744 and was held in the Thames a week later while Treasury officials decided whether it needed to be quarantined again. Ships returning directly from infected ports had to anchor in Stangate Creek in the Medway estuary and the crews were neither allowed to go ashore nor anybody permitted to board the vessels during the quarantine period. Evidently the Italian Merchant was deemed safe and four days later was allowed to unload its cargo.
Jacobs Street, Bermondsey (bottom centre), from John Rocque’s Map of London, 1747
Chesapeake Bay in 1719; the Rappahannock River is the third inlet from the bottom on the left
Martha gave birth to their fourth son, named Elias James, in April 1745 at their home in Jacobs Street, Bermondsey, and almost exactly two years later Thomas Perryman was born there too. One can only hope that Martha was well supported, looking after four boys aged from a newborn to an 11-year-old, because a month later, in May 1747, on a new vessel, the Beaufort, Elias took on troops and military stores at Woolwich for a voyage to Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. The fort at Louisbourg had been built by the French to guard the entrance to the St Lawrence River. It had been captured by the British in 1745 and the soldiers on the Beaufort were being sent to reinforce the garrison there. Being a privately owned vessel, the Beaufort was to have a commercial role once the troops had been landed. Its owner, Henry Blommart, had contracted to take on a consignment of tobacco in Virginia and bring it back to England. After eventually sailing from the Downs on the 8th of June, Elias arrived at Cape Breton on the 17th of October. The Beaufort then proceeded down the coast of North America to the Potomac River, off Chesapeake Bay, reaching there on the 4th of December before turning south into the Rappahannock River. Elias moored the ship up the river at a place called Hob’s Hole, by a small settlement called Tappahannock and it was there, in early January that three of the crew jumped ship, taking with them a pinnace and some weapons. A pinnace is a boat that typically has a sail or several oars and its presence on the Beaufort gives some indication that it was a larger vessel than the merchantmen Elias had been accustomed to. He put an appeal in the local newspaper, the Maryland Gazette, for the recapture of the three who had absconded but whether they were is not known. After an extended stay on the east coast of America Elias called in at Waterford and Cork on the return journey, presumably to drop off, and perhaps take on, other cargo before arriving back at Gravesend on the 22nd of December 1748, a round trip of more than 18 months.
The Maryland Gazette, 24 February 1748
But that was not the end of the story. Henry Blommart, the owner of the Beaufort, had been contracted by the firm of Jonathan Sydenham and Thomas Hodgson, agents for the Virginia and Maryland trade, to have Elias collect some debts for them in Virginia. Evidently this had not happened so in April 1749 Sydenham and Hodgson sued Blommart in the Court of Chancery. Elias, apparently, refused to give a statement to the court apart from to confirm the arrangement. So Sydenham brought a case against Elias too.
Edward Cornwallis, Governor of Nova Scotia 1749-52
Elias Perryman took the Beaufort back to Nova Scotia in 1749. Hired from Henry Blommart by the government, this time the ship was to carry settlers and it reached its destination in October. Once there, the newly-appointed Governor of Nova Scotia, Edward Cornwallis, hired the Beaufort, preventing its return, and kept it at anchor as a store ship at Chebuctu where he was starting to establish the port which would become Halifax, the future capital of the province. Because he was being required to stay in Nova Scotia for longer than he had anticipated, Elias, as master, incurred additional expenses to maintain the ship, and he called upon Henry Blommart to meet them. Blommart, in turn sought reimbursement from the Board of Trade in April 1751 for the hire of the ship by the Governor. Eventually the Beaufort was free to leave and arrived back in June 1750.
The last surviving house in Prescot Street, Whitechapel, like the one where Elias and his family lived
At around this time the Perryman family moved from Jacobs Street, Bermondsey, close to the River Thames, and took up residence in Prescot Street, Whitechapel, a much more salubrious address; Henry Blommart lived in the same street. And it was there that my great4-grandfather, Philip Thomas Perryman was born in December 1751.
The unsettled business following the trip to Virginia in 1748 dragged on. In 1752 Henry Blommart sued Elias, but the following year it was announced in the Gentleman’s Magazine that Blommart was bankrupt, so his cause was taken up by the assignees of his bankruptcy who proceeded to sue Elias for whatever Blommart had felt Elias had owed him. A detailed examination of the Chancery records would, no doubt, shed more light on what was being claimed and why. The souring of relations with Henry Blommart resulted in Elias taking command of a different vessel, the Fanny, for a trip to Newfoundland in 1753. He returned via Lisbon and almost immediately set off again in mid November, heading back to Lisbon before returning via Cork. This was to be Elias’s last voyage. On Thursday the 24th of January 1754 the London Evening Post printed the following:
He was 67 years old. When the same announcement was printed in the Kentish Weekly Post or Canterbury Journal a week later it added that he “had acquired a handsome fortune”.
Martha outlived him, dying in 1763, her will revealing a hitherto unrecorded daughter, Elizabeth, to whom she left all her worldly possessions. Judging by the fact that three of Elias’s sons, Nathan, Elias and Philip, became Ostend merchants it seems probable that they were taken under the wing of their grandfather Nathan Brame. Of the other two nothing further is known.
As a postscript, some 21 years after Elias’s death, a notice was published in the Daily Advertiser in August 1775 announcing: “If Mrs Perryman, widow of Capt. Elias Perryman, in the Virginia trade about the year 1750, or her Heirs, will apply at Mess. Hopkins & Co’s, No 36, Pater-noster Row, they may hear much to their Advantage, by a Gentleman just arrived from Virginia”.
My great3-grandparents, John and Martha Gillett, were married at Long Sutton in Somerset in September 1811. John Gillett had been born just up the road in Somerton in 1785. Martha’s maiden name was Isaac and she had been born a year earlier in Sturminster Newton in Dorset, the daughter of William Isaac and Elizabeth Clark. Elizabeth’s younger brother, Joseph, was the father of Cyrus and James Clark, the founders of the firm of C & J Clark, shoe makers, of Street, making them Martha’s first cousins. Martha had a younger sister, Mary, who married William Palmer, a farmer in Long Sutton, and their three sons, George, Samuel and William Isaac, were, with Thomas Huntley, to become Huntley & Palmer, biscuit makers, of Reading. It is remarkable that from such a close circle of families two great business enterprises should grow.
John and Martha settled in Langport, four miles to the west of Long Sutton, where John Gillett carried on a business as a grocer, draper and chemist. He and Martha had ten children, six boys and four girls, and their eldest daughter was Maria, born in 1816, from whom I am descended (click here to see them in my family tree).
Overleigh, Street
Alfred Gillett (1814-1904)
When John Gillett retired he built a house in Street. It was called Overleigh and was built of the Blue Lias rock that is found in the area and which has been a singularly productive source of marine fossils such as the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur. Maria’s older brother, Alfred, who had been an ironmonger in Yeovil, later retired to Street and lived in his parents’ former home there. He was a keen amateur palaeontologist and during explorations of the quarries from which the building stone was being excavated, recovered several complete fossils of these prehistoric sea creatures from about 200 million years ago. Some of his specimens are in the Natural History Museum in London and others remain in Street in the care of a trust named after him.
A fossil plesiosaur discovered by Alfred Gillett
(From left) Maria Simpson, Martha Gillett, Thomas Simpson, Emily Simpson and John Gillett at Overleigh in the 1850s
In 1837 Maria married Thomas Simpson, a ‘fustian, nankeen and cotton manufacturer’ from Manchester, where he was in partnership with his brother John; two years later Maria’s sister Ellen married Thomas’s brother William. Maria and Thomas lived in Chorlton-under-Medlock, as it was called then, although the 1851 census shows them at Whalley Range, an up-market and then largely under-developed suburb south-west of the city. Thomas ended his partnership with his brother in 1862 having set up on his own in Preston where he employed 750 people, and lived in style at Hutton Hall, later to be the headquarters of the Lancashire Police. The family and Quaker connections with the Clarks at Street brought Thomas Simpson back to Somerset in 1863 where he advised Maria’s cousins on how to restructure their shoe business. Such family connections were to prove useful again later in the century when my great-grandmother, Emily, Thomas and Maria’s eldest daughter, and her husband Charles Spencer were able to draw upon another cousin, William Isaac Palmer, to help them financially with Charles’s iron foundry business in Melksham (seeThe Spencers).
The Quaker connection was significant in several of these families. The Clarks were, and still are, members of the Society of Friends, as were the Gilletts and the Palmers. The Simpsons were Quakers too, and came from Greyrigg in Westmoreland, so when looking for marriageable partners it was frowned upon in Quaker circles to look beyond the families of Friends.
Hutton Hall, near Preston, the home in 1861 of Thomas and Maria Simpson and family
The older brother of my great-grandmother, Georgiana Graham, was John Berney Worgan who had been born, like all his siblings, at Catthorpe in Leicestershire, where his father was curate at St Thomas’s church. John went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1856 but abandoned his course in favour of entry into the Bengal Civil Service. There he became a Magistrate and Collector, supervising a local administrative area. He would eventually become a judge in the Indian High Court. He had returned to England on furlough in 1866 where, in Brighton, he married his second cousin, Bertha Woods.
John and Bertha Worgan (standing centre) with John’s mother, Philippa (seated left), and sisters Georgiana (seated right), Constance and Frances, at Croydon in the 1860s.
Returning to India, John and Bertha raised a family of ten children, six girls and four boys (another boy had died in infancy) before Bertha died, in London, on the day before her 47th birthday.
Captain R.B. Worgan, 20th Deccan Horse
The youngest of the boys, who was only eight when his mother died, was Rivers. Evidently educated, to begin with, in India, he finished up at Bedford School from where he went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst before being commissioned in the Army Service Corps in 1900. After service in the South African War he transferred, in 1905, into the 20th Deccan Horse, a regiment in the Indian Army. There must have been something that marked this young Lieutenant as someone to watch, for within a couple of years he had been appointed ADC to the Governor of Madras, Sir Arthur Lawley, the first of several such posts Rivers Worgan was to hold over the next 20 years that emphasised has strengths in administration and efficiency. In 1909 he was promoted Captain.
Rivers Worgan and his polo trophies
Rivers’ book on the Madras Governors’ Body Guard
In India, as an officer in a mounted regiment, he, perhaps inevitably, developed an enjoyment of polo, a sport in which he clearly became very skilled. Another passion was big game hunting. He even found time to write a short book. He had been appointed to command the Governor’s Body-guard in 1910 and that year he published his revision of the Historical Records of the Body Guard of H. E. The Governor of Madras.
At the outbreak of the First World War troops from the Empire were called upon to play a part in fighting the Germans. The 20th Deccan Horse was sent to France, landing at Marseilles in September 1914 and, after a month, moved to Orleans and then on to the Pas-de-Calais where they first saw action that November. Rivers was promoted Major the following year. The regiment was held in reserve for most of 1915 but Rivers was detached from the regiment and in January 1916, as a temporary Lieutenant Colonel and still only 34, was given command of the 9th Battalion of the Cheshire Regiment. The battalion was engaged in the Battle of the Somme from 1st July 1916, the opening day of the offensive, and for the following fortnight, going back into action after a few days away from the front for the attack on High Woods and the Battle of Pozières. In the Spring of 1917 the 9th Cheshires were north of Messines in Belgium, where the Germans held the ridge that gave them a commanding view of the landscape south of Ypres. The British mined the ridge, the massive explosion taking place in the early hours of the 7th June, whereupon Rivers led his battalion (literally) in a series of coordinated advances over the next two days until they were relieved. Rivers, who was awarded the DSO, remained in command of the 9th Cheshires until October that year when, promoted to temporary Brigadier General (though still only having the permanent rank of Major), he took command of the 173rd Brigade, relieving Captain (but temporary Brigadier General) Bernard Freyburg VC, who had been wounded.
Villers-Bretonneux by Arthur Streeton, 1918 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney)
Rivers Worgan, 36, in the uniform of a Brigadier General, 1917
The 173rd Brigade were engaged in the Second Battle of Passchendaele at the time but appalling weather and atrocious mud prevented the Brigade from making any significant headway. Exhausted and suffering many casualties they were relieved at the end of October. Rivers Worgan was promoted Lieutenant Colonel in 1918, though he still retained his temporary rank of Brigadier General. In March the 173rd were positioned near La Fère, north of the River Oise and about 15 miles south of Saint-Quentin, when the German Spring offensive began. After four days’ fighting they were unable to withstand the German advance, and so withdrew across the river. By the beginning of April what was left of the Brigade were moved to Villers-Bretonneux, 50 miles to the west and near to Amiens, where they were reinforced. They were in action again on the 24th April when the second German advance began. Using tanks and firing gas shells the Germans made significant gains but were then driven back.
The 173rd Brigade were moved out of the line and in July Rivers handed over his command.
After the war, Rivers was back in India and between 1919 and 1920 served in the Third Afghan War and in the Waziristan Campaign. But, as I mentioned previously, his particular skills in administration were to be called upon again. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, son of Queen Victoria and a Field Marshal in the Army was to tour India in 1921 and Rivers, now a full Colonel, was appointed his Military Secretary. For his services to the duke, Rivers was appointed a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order.
The Duke of Connaught and his entourage at Poona in 1921. Colonel Worgan is seated far right.
The Prince of Wales after the tiger hunt (Illustrated London News, 14 January 1922)
Clearly Rivers had proved to be a success as a Military Secretary, so later the same year he was appointed to the same position when the Prince of Wales also toured the sub-continent. This, of course, was a much more prestigious affair, although I suspect a little less formal given the Prince’s character. However, it would inevitably included a great deal of travelling and many receptions. It also involved a tiger hunt, which was a favourite pastime of Rivers. The hunt took place at Karrapur and the tiger that was shot was, in fact, dispatched by Rivers rather than by the Prince. Again, for his services, Colonel Worgan was decorated, this time being made a Companion of the Order of the Star of India.
Lord Reading, Viceroy of India 1921-26
Rivers Worgan would be appointed Military Secretary for a third time in 1923 when he took on the role for the Viceroy of India, Lord Reading, but this time it was an appointment for three years rather than just for the duration of a royal tour. At the age of 49, Colonel Worgan retired from the army with the honorary rank of Brigadier General and settled in London, in an apartment in Pall Mall. In 1932, appropriately given his past career, he was made one of His Majesty’s Body-guard of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms. But the honour was to be short-lived; he died on the 6th February 1934 at the early age of 54.
Brigadier General Rivers Berney Worgan, CSI, CVO, DSO (1881-1934) in the uniform of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms
When he wrote his will in 1769, shortly before he died, my great5-grandfather Thomas Munday described himself as a gentleman of Chamber Street in Whitechapel, just to the east of the City of London. He was evidently a man of some means, leaving bequests to his three children, Thomas, Elizabeth and Mary, and the bulk of his personal estate to his widow, Elizabeth.
St Botolph’s without Aldgate, London
His son, Thomas, had married Dinah Mitchell at St Botolph’s without Aldgate in 1754 where, the previous year, my great4-grandfather John Worgan had been appointed organist, so it is entirely possible that he may have played the organ on that occasion. Four years later it was at St Mary’s church, Whitechapel, that Thomas’s younger sister, Mary, was married to John Berney, whose great-grandfather had been a baronet, but who had recently completed his apprenticeship in the Merchant Taylors’ Company. John would go on to become the Master of the Company.
Thomas and Dinah Munday raised a family of eight children: daughters Elizabeth, Ann, Dinah and Mary, and sons Samuel, and Thomas. Two others died in infancy. All were baptised at St Botolph’s. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Edward Wollstonecraft whose sister Mary was to achieve fame as the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and as the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. I am descended from Ann who, at a date yet to be discovered, married Philip Thomas Perryman whose family had also lived in Whitechapel, in Prescot Street which was parallel to Chamber Street, but who, together with his brother Nathan, had become a merchant based at Ostend in what was then the Austrian Netherlands. Their father, Elias, had been a sea captain; the master of merchant ships carrying produce from mainly European ports (see Elias Perryman – sea captain).
The organ in St Botolph’s, Aldgate; John Worgan was organist there from May 1753, successor to his brother James
Mary Munday and John Berney had a large family, 11 daughters and six sons, most of whom were also baptised at St Botolph’s. Tragically, but all too common in those times, only two sons and three daughters survived into adulthood. The younger son Edward who, so the story goes, became a Roman Catholic priest but later abandoned the priesthood and died at Cleves, in Germany, married his first cousin, once removed, Philippa, the daughter of Ann Munday and Philip Perryman. Their eldest daughter, another Philippa, was to marry John Hartland Worgan, the grandson of the Aldgate organist John Worgan.
In July 2015 I had the great pleasure, with my late wife Sue, of attending a concert at St Botolph’s without Aldgate at which the music of John Worgan was played. The concert was organised by Tim Roberts, who has championed John Worgan’s music and recorded some of it. The organ in the church is the same organ that he played. It was installed in 1704-5, being reinstalled when the church was rebuilt in the 1740s, and is reckoned the oldest surviving church organ in the country. Click here to see a video of Dame Emma Kirkby singing one of John Worgan’s songs at that concert. My wife and I can be seen sitting on the left in the second row of pews from the front.
Not only is John Worgan my ancestor but so are the two Thomas Mundays and their wives, as well as Mary Munday, Ann Munday, Elias, Philip and Philippa Perryman, John, Edward and Philippa Berney, and John Hartland Worgan (and his father Joseph and mother Jemima).
