THOMAS GURNEY (1705-1770) AND THE SMART WIDOW

My 5x great grandfather has a genuine claim to fame as the inventor of a system of shorthand; I don’t know why I haven’t written about this yet, and perhaps I will soon. It was while looking into the origins of Gurney, as his system became known, that I became aware of his appetite for marriage proposals.

Thomas Gurney (1705-1770)

I wrote earlier about the unpopularity amongst his many children of his second wife, whom they almost entirely erased from the family history: she is referred to only as Miss R. Their mother was his first wife Martha Marsom, daughter of John Bunyan’s prison companion Thomas Marsom (of whom I have also written). Tom married Martha in 1730. But today I was reminded of an even earlier attempt at marriage, which he used to joke about with his children.

After an evening meal, perhaps during the week (surely not on a devotional Sunday, for he was a devout Particular Baptist) his eye would catch that of Martha, Mrs Gurney. He might wink; she might blush; the children – young Martha, young Thomas, Joseph and John – might smile. They knew what was coming and had heard the story many times.

“I’ve been married to your mother these twenty years now, you know, thanks be to God. Never a cross word!” (Pause for laughter.) “But you know, I should have been married much earlier, if I’d not taken so long before I made my offer. Oh, not to your mother.” (“Oh Tom! Honestly!” chipped in mother Martha.)

“Fools rush in,” he may have added, “where angels fear to tread. Praise the Lord that I was not as fleet as I then wished I had been.” He undid a button of his waistcoat, settling into the tale.

"When I was a young man," he continued, "a dear friend of mine died while still in his prime, leaving a very smart widow." He emphasized the description, and Martha feigned offence at an insult he had feigned at every telling of this story. "I thought to myself, she would make a very desirable wife." (More tutting and eye-rolling from Martha, and grins all round from the teenage children.) "What’s more, I felt that she would not be long without an offer. 

"Therefore I called upon her the day after the funeral –  (“The day after? Really, father! So soon!” his eldest son Thomas interjected dutifully.)  – and I told her all that was on my mind. She immediately broke out, 'Oh, Mr Gurney! I wish you had mentioned this before.'  (“And we wish you hadn’t,” muttered his youngest, John.) 'I wish,' " Thomas Gurney pointedly pressed on in a comic high voice with his recital, " 'I had had any idea of your intention. There is not a man in the world for whom I have so great an esteem, or with whom I should have anticipated so much happiness.' Not a word of a lie, my children, those were her exact words." (Groans of disbelief.)

"Well, I may tell you that I expressed my surprise and confusion that, feeling thus, she should have refused me. She then added by way of explanation, “I am engaged! I am sorry, but I couldn’t help it. You remember Mr So-and-So who was at the funeral yesterday? He returned here afterwards; he stayed and took tea with me; and I could not get rid of him without making him a promise. I am sorry for it, but I must keep my word.'

"Well of course I had to consent that this was her proper course – as you know, my children, one must always keep one’s word, whether one wishes to or not. Never make any rash promises, children." (“Or proposals, father!” his daughter piped up.) "I took my leave; and at the end of three months, she put off her widow’s weeds and arrayed herself in wedding garments.

“I don’t recall,” Thomas Gurney concluded, “that I’ve ever told you that story before. But I am every day thankful that Providence ordered it so; for it has given me, by waiting, one of the most excellent of wives.” (“Only amongst the most excellent?” protested John. “To our most excellent mother!” Joseph raised a glass, and was joined by all present.)

And Martha sat back and smiled, basking in the warm love of her husband and children, but perhaps also in the knowledge that she had later met Mrs So-and-So the very smart widow, and heard her version of the story.

(The version I have, from which most of the above comes verbatim, is the one told by Thomas' grandson William Gurney, who presumably got it from his father, Tom's son Joseph.)

THOMAS MARSOM (d. c1726) AND THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

Amongst my 128 6x great grandfathers, Gurney was a miller, Salter was a brickmaker and Delap was an owner of slaves and sugar plantations. Thomas Marsom was an ironmonger to trade, a useful profession but not his main claim to fame.

(I’m going with the majority here in calling him my 6x great grandfather, but from the dates and a reference to him by my genealogical predecessor Brodie Gurney he may well have been a generation earlier. Thomas was certainly a family name across several generations, and a later descendent Thomas Marsom (1743-1815) wrote a New Year’s Day hymn. My Thomas Marsom’s daughter or grand-daughter Martha married my 5x great grandfather Thomas Gurney in 1739, but Marsom himself died in 1725 or 1726 and was old enough to have been in prison in the mid to late 17th century. Martha was born in about 1705.)

Anyway, this Thomas Marsom’s place in history was assured when he found himself in Bedford Gaol along with 59 other religious dissenters, one of whom was none other than John Bunyan. We can’t be sure of the exact date, because Bunyan was in and out of prison several times between 1660 and 1675.

John Bunyan, asleep in Bedford Gaol

During one such incarceration Bunyan had been inspired in a dream to begin work on a new allegory. And it was while the two men shared a cell that Bunyan showed Marsom an early draft of it. Marsom was sufficiently impressed to say to Bunyan, “John, print it.”

The draft was of Bunyan’s great work The Pilgrim’s Progress, and it duly appeared in print in 1678. It became the most widely read book in the English language after the Bible. Chances are that it would have got to print even without Thomas Marsom’s ringing endorsement; but Thomas certainly played his part in the history of English literature, and in the evolution of the dissenting church which would be central to the faith of his descendents for 200 years.

Thomas Marsom's contribution to English literature

THOMAS GURNEY (1705-1770) AND THE DIFFICULT SECOND MARRIAGE

The Gurney family’s attitude to my 5x great grandfather Thomas Gurney is full of contradictions. On the one hand he invented the system of shorthand by which the family made its name; and they celebrate his ingenuity, his piety, his religion, his character, his geniality, his family leadership and his first wife their common ancestor.

Thomas Gurney (1705-1770)

twice-married inventor of the Gurney system of shorthand

On the other hand there is his second wife – not I hasten to clarify a bigamous relationship, but the woman he married some years after the death in 1756 of his first. Of course it’s quite common for the children of a first marriage to resent a second (although I ought to make it clear to my own half-siblings that this wasn’t the case for me!). But the opprobrium heaped on her head in the biographical memoirs of his grandson Brodie Gurney is quite shocking to see in Victorian print.

Where his first wife Martha Marsom was “an excellent and sensible woman”, his second was a homewrecker so beyond the pale that Brodie Gurney can’t even bring himself to name her, and she is referred to only as Miss R. As he tells it, when his grandfather remarried, his children left home and his property was dissipated to gratify her habits of intemperance. In other words she drank the family silver.

Thomas and Miss R had a daughter, Rebecca; and Brodie Gurney denies us the chance to find out what happened to her by telling us only that she married a Mr F of Hertfordshire. That marriage produced two children – Martha, still alive in 1845 and living in W, wherever that is; and Thomas, who had died by then leaving five children.

That’s all Brodie Gurney gives us, which I think is shameful given the elaborate lengths he goes to in extolling the virtues spiritual and temporal of the descendents of Thomas’ first marriage. Maybe Miss R was a drunk, but that doesn’t seem like Thomas Gurney’s type given his hard-working life and staunch non-conformist religious convictions. And even if she did drink, marrying her was his call and perhaps his consolation late in life. And even if she did wreck the family home, it’s no reason to erase her child and grandchildren from the family history.