CAPTAIN ROBERT URQUHART JENKINS (1828-1857) AND THE CAWNPORE MASSACRE (PART 1)

Allen’s Indian Mail of 6^th January 1846 announced the names of cadets recently joining the Bengal Army of the East India Company. Robert Urquhart Jenkins, a cousin of my great grandfather William Henry Castle (and a great grandson of my 4x great grandparents Rev George Castle and Mary Edye), had signed up with the Bengal Cavalry on  8^th December 1845.

His father was Robert Castle Jenkins, a Calcutta merchant, and his mother was Annie Palmer, daughter of John Palmer, whom The Times described as “one of the most famous merchant princes of Calcutta.” The language is an indication of the unassailable right to rule India which the East India Company had by the 1840s firmly assumed. R.C. Jenkins’ first three sons were all born in Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata). The eldest, Richard Palmer Jenkins, served in the Bengal Civil Service, and R.U. Jenkins’ younger brother Charles Vernon Jenkins rose to the rank of Major-General.

The fort at Multan

(photographed in the 1860s by William Henry Baker)

Robert Urquhart Jenkins joined in time to help fight the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49) which saw the East India Company invade and capture the Punjab when Indian rulers in the Sikh city of Multan resisted the imposition of higher taxes and a puppet governor. RUJ was involved in the siege of Multan whose fall led to the establishment of the North-West Frontier Province.

The British soon ran railways into Multan, and if RUJ was involved in their building it would explain his presence as Captain in command of the Railway Engineers Post in the important garrison town of Cawnpore eight years later in 1857. Cawnpore (modern-day Kanpur) in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, midway between Calcutta and Multan, controlled a number of important supply routes. It was home to a British contingent of 900 men, women and children – soldiers, engineers, merchants and their families. Captain Jenkins’ wife was with him, which suggests that his was a long-term posting in the town.

Nothing is known of Robert’s wife. She may well have been a local woman. The wife of Robert’s commanding officer General Hugh Massy Wheeler was one; Wheeler had learned the local customs and language too, and felt relatively safe from the violent acts of rebellion which were breaking out amongst Sepoy troops elsewhere in India that year. (Incidentally, Wheeler’s grandparents were my 5x great grandparents Hugh First Lord Massy and Rebecca Delap. Small world.)

Sepoy troops (here in uniforms of 1812) made up more than three quarters of the East India Company’s Bengal Army – sepoy literally means soldier

The causes of the Sepoy or Indian Mutiny, as it was known in Britain at the time, are of course complex. But it is hardly surprising that the erosion of native princely power, and the ruthless exploitation of the Indian people for the East India Company’s commercial benefit, had been building massive resentment in the local population for decades and centuries. One example of British insensitivity to local custom was the often cited rumour that army gun cartridges were greased with either cow or pig fat, which soldiers had to bite through to prime their weapons. This caused offence to Muslims and Hindus who held, respectively, pigs and cows sacred.

Unrest was in the air, and it prompted Wheeler to prime his cannons as a precaution. This in turn alarmed the large Sepoy contingent of the Bengal Army stationed at Cawnpore. Despite the relatively cordial relations between the British and the Sepoys in the town, suspicion fed suspicion. On the evening of 2^nd June 1857 it only took one drunken British officer, Lieutenant Cox, firing off a shot at one of his own Sepoys, to spark the revolt.

Read just how wrong Wheeler was in the events leading up to the Cawnpore Massacre, and what happened to Jenkins and his wife, in Part 2, via this link.

CHARLES AMÉDÉE HENRI DE NOÉ (1818-1879) AND THE ECCENTRICITIES OF THE MOMENT

I don’t know how I am related to Charles de Noé, only that I must be! His mother Frances Caroline Halliday is, somehow, at the heart of the closely knit circle of Hallidays, Tollemaches and Delaps from which my 6x great grandmother Rebecca Delap emerged. Frances’s connections by name, through wills and property are too numerous to be coincidences, but as far as I know, no one has been quite able to pin her to any specific part of the Halliday tree. There have been suggestions that she was the illegitimate daughter of Francis Delap Halliday and Frances Tollemache; but that would make her eventual marriage to the Count Louis Pantaléon Judes Amédée de Noé, a member of the French aristocracy, a socially unlikely union.

That said, scandal was never far from that generation of Tollemaches. Frances Tollemache’s sister Jane eloped with Francis Delap Halliday’s brother John (see my earlier blog about Jane); and Frances Caroline Halliday’s marriage to the Count was witnessed by another Tollemache sister, Louisa. It seems entirely possible that they might all have closed ranks over an illegitimacy in order to see Frances Caroline married off, and married off well at that.

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé (1818-1879)

Charles Amédée Henri de Noé was the fifth son of the marriage, and could therefore have little expectation of inheritance. He was expected to go out and work for a living, and was lined up for a career in engineering after education at an institut de technologie. Instead, he went to painting classes led by Paul Delaroche and Nicolas Charlet and began a hugely successful career as a satirical cartoonist.

In the same way that Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi adapted his initials to sign his work Hergé (the sound of R.G. in French), Charles Amédée took the pen name Ch-Am – Cham. Since his surname is the French for [son] of Noah, Cham was also a  jokey reference to Ham son of Noah. Probably not a belly-laugh even in the 1840s, but perhaps enough to trigger a smile which might become a laugh as you read his cartoons.

"Noah and his family prepare for the rainy season."

Cham wasn’t above inserting his own image into his drawings.

From the rear: Charles, his brothers Franck and William,

and as Noah himself, Charles’s father Louis de Noé

Cham’s strength was as a social rather than a political commentator. In a career lasting 40 years he is credited with over 40,000 drawings, an invaluable resource in the twenty-first century for studying the French nineteenth-century middle class and what one reviewer, R.L. Mayer, describes as “all eccentricities of the moment.”

If your French is better than my schoolboy understanding, you will enjoy http://amedeedenoe.unblog.fr/ a blog dedicated to Cham’s memory.

Cham, son of Noah

ROBERT JOHNSTON BARTON (1839-1879) AND THE BATTLE OF HLOBANE

It doesn’t take long to build up a detailed picture of the prominent Tipperary families of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have direct lines through the Coopers, Sadleirs, Chadwicks and Massys, who are united frequently by weddings, sometimes in successive generations. The ruling class, the Protestant Ascendancy as they are known, were a tiny self-contained minority in Ireland for hundreds of years. They kept within their own social and political circle of course and so it’s no wonder that the same families repeatedly intermarried. Other names, although not my direct relations, are also interwoven through those lines; and I can’t help but become curious about another family which seems to be an integral part of the same circle as my own.

Captain Robert Johnston Barton (1839-1879)

of the 2^nd Coldstream Guards

commanded the Frontier Light Horse at Hlobane

So it is that I now have a large Barton family tree on file. None of my direct ancestors were Bartons; but for example my 5x great grandfather Hugh Massy’s cousin Grace Massy married William Barton, and Hugh’s wife my 5x great grandmother Rebecca Delap’s aunt Margaret married Thomas Barton. I’m fascinated by such connections – but even I have to admit that it’s a tenuous justification for writing today about Margaret and Thomas Barton’s great grandson Robert Johnston Barton.

Robert’s modest entry in the Barton tree – “killed in action in Zululand 28^th March 1879” – does not begin to tell his story. 1879 was the year of the Zulu War, a year which began disastrously for the British with the events depicted in the films Zulu and Zulu Dawn. 28^th March was the date of the last of three morale-sapping massacres inflicted on the British by the Zulu army.

The slopes of Hlobane

tough on foot, tougher still on horseback

(photo by Neil Aspinshaw)

He was part of a foiled attack against a 3000-strong Zulu stronghold on a plateau called Hlobane Mountain. The British approach, under cover of darkness on the night of the 27^th March, was hampered by the difficult terrain – steep, boulder-strewn slopes – and by a violent storm whose lightning flashes illuminated the British advance to the Zulu guards. At dawn it became clear that the Zulus were fully prepared for the attack with barricades and a network of caves and tunnels from which they were able to attack the British troops with ease.

Despite heavy casualties, the British fought their way onto the plateau. Barton was dispatched with 30 men to bury those who had died on the ascent. As he rode off, his commanding officer was horrified to see in the valley to the south a massive column of Zulu warriors, estimated at 22,000, moving quickly towards Hlobane. Retreat to the north was impossible because of even steeper slopes and the British were faced with having to fight their way back down through the very Zulus whose defences they had breached on the way up – Zulus now much emboldened by the approaching army of reinforcements – and towards the huge force now approaching them.

Massacre on Hlobane Mountain

(known to Zulus since 1879 as “Stabbing Mountain”)

Barton and another officer, Weatherley, joined forces, and with their combined cavalry of some 220 men, tried in vain to find another way off the mountain before forming a line and charging the defenders. Under a hailstorm of assegai spears, only 20, including Barton, survived. They fled down into the valley, straight into the arms of the advance party of the Zulu column. 15 more of them died then. Barton was injured, his horse too; but he paused to scoop up a wounded fellow officer before attempting to outrun the fast-moving Zulu army. After some miles the horse collapsed and they continued on foot; but escape in their condition was impossible.

A year later, with the war won and peace with the Zulus established, a British escort party was led to Barton’s body, still lying where he fell, by the very Zulu who had killed him; and Colonel Wood, who had planned the Hlobane raid, buried him at last.

A great deal has been written about the Zulu War. There are several accounts of the Battle of Hlobane, including vivid descriptions by JohnYoung, and by William Watson Race & Jon Guttman. Whatever you think of warfare, or imperialism, or even the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, there are tales of selfless, hopeless heroism at Hlobane which cannot fail to move you.

HUGH, FIRST LORD MASSY (1700-1788) AND SUIR CASTLE

It’s funny how things come in bunches – buses for example, and some days everywhere you look you’ll see nothing but ambulances, or magpies, or reruns of Friends. I don’t get much feedback at all from this blog, which is perfectly okay with me; but in the last month or so I’ve had three very different contacts from readers of an old post here about Rebecca Delap. It’s led me to some enjoyable detective work and the piecing together of a story.

Suir Castle and demolished mansion from the east, 2004

Rebecca was my 5x great grandmother. She married Hugh Massy on 16th April 1754 and almost exactly nine months later, on 13^th January 1755, their first child Francis Hugh Massy was born at their marital home. They lived in Suir Castle, near the village of Golden in Co Tipperary – the principle Massy residence, the family seat at Duntrileague in Co Limerick was presumably still occupied by Hugh’s father. I described my visit to Suir in that earlier post. Before my visit it had just been a name on a genealogical chart to me, and afterwards all I really knew was that at some point a mansion house had been built beside the old fortified tower; both were ruined when I went to see them.

My image of it was transformed by a picture sent to me by my first correspondent. It’s a sepia watercolour of "Suir Castle and the old mansion house" by the Irish artist George Victor Du Noyer. The chap who sent it thought it looked deserted, and added that it was certainly unoccupied ten years later when it was given no value in Griffith’s valuation of 1850.

Suir Castle and deserted mansion from the west, 1840

He also put me in touch with a fellow Massy descendent, a distant cousin living in the Yukon in northwestern Canada. From her fantastically detailed family tree research I found the names of several of Rebecca and Hugh’s children who had been born at Suir, the most recent (Rebecca’s granddaughter Rebecca!) in 1816.

Then this week a third person got in touch. He’d been walking in the area, found the castle, was intrigued enough to Google it, and found my post. In the course of comparing notes with me he told me of a nearby Georgian or Regency building called Suir Castle House which has changed hands recently and is still after many facelifts a home.

So …  it’s still work in progress, but putting all this together, the four of us can now tell quite a lot of the Suir Castle story. The mansion there may well have been built for newly-weds Hugh and Rebecca Massy. There is no information yet of any earlier event than the birth of their first born. It was a family home for at least two generations of Massy: Hugh and Rebecca, and then their son Francis Hugh Massy (the first to be born in the Suir Castle mansion). Francis Hugh’s eleven children were all born at Suir, and the eldest, Francis, is styled Francis Massy of Suir Castle, suggesting a third generation of occupancy before the mansion was deserted by 1840. (Francis’ father Francis Hugh died in 1817.)

Suir Castle House, c2005

But if the new Suir Castle House is genuinely of Regency date, it was built somewhere between 1811 and 1820. As it happens Francis Massy of Suir Castle got married in 1820, to one Anne Molloy. So perhaps he built Suir Castle House for another pair of Massy newly-weds, himself and Anne. (Unfortunately I don’t know where their children were born: it would confirm all this speculation if it turned out to be Suir Castle House!)

Hugh, Lord Massy, was elevated to the peerage in 1776, and presumably Rebecca became Lady Massy. But Rebecca was Hugh’s second wife, and the Lordship passed through the children of his first marriage. Although the Massy family was a dominant force in Irish society, the Suir Castle branch never achieved the status of the more senior branch of the name. But at least we can piece together some of its history through the buildings it lived in.

Suir Castle, 2004

(and that's another story ...) 

MARTHA GURNEY (1733-1816) AND THE POWER OF PRINT

My eighteenth century Delap and Halliday ancestors never knew personally those in my Gurney tree. But if they had, they would have been sworn enemies. It is quite possible that the former would have been aware of the latter, and particularly of the activities of my 5x great aunt Martha Gurney. While they were enjoying the fruits of their use and abuse of slaves on a sugar plantation in Antigua, aunt Martha was campaigning for a boycott of the products which earned them those fruits.

An Address to the People of Great Britain,

on the Consumption of West India Produce

written by William Fox, published by Martha Gurney in 1791

She was a remarkable woman, a bookseller and printer of whom her biographer Timothy Whelan writes, “No British woman played a more prominent part in raising the consciousness of the English people against the slave trade.” Her pamphlet An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Propriety of Abstaining from West India Sugar and Rum (written by William Fox in 1791) sold more than 200,000 copies in Britain and America and was the best selling pamphlet of the eighteenth century. With public debate on the topic at its height, the publication ran to about 30 impressions or reprints, and drew 20 further pamphlets responding to its contents either for or against.

Report on Remarkable Trials

(including those of 32 prisoners "capitally convicted")

published by Joseph and Martha Gurney

She published fourteen such anti-slavery pamphlets and another 25 transcriptions of state trials and other proceedings – one of the benefits of being the sister of Joseph Gurney, official shorthand writer to the Old Bailey and the House of Commons, who had privileged access to such events. Joseph was also able to bring first hand knowledge of the debate over slavery which raged in parliament in 1791 and 1792.

Medallion of the logo of the Society for Effecting 
the Abolition of Slavery, produced in 1787 by the manufacturer 
and abolitionist Josiah Wedgewood; 
it became a fashionable accessory in polite society

Joseph, also a bookseller, had subscribed to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slavery since its founding by Quakers in 1787, and Martha published her first anti-slavery leaflet the following year. It was A Sermon on the African Slave Trade, by James Dore the minister at Maze Pond Baptist Church of which all her family were members.

Joseph introduced Martha to William Fox, another bookseller and like Joseph a member of the Humane Society. In 1782 she moved her printshop from its premises in Bell Yard of the Strand, a few hundred yards north to Fox’s place in Holborn, and it was from here that they collaborated on their campaigning publications. They became close friends personally and professionally, and when Fox died in 1794, she remained there until her death.

Plan of the slave ship Brookes, 1789,

licensed to carry 450 slaves, but often taking over 600

It is not really any surprise that Martha espoused the abolitionist cause. She came from a long line of radical religious dissenters. Nevertheless, her willingness to nail her colours so explicitly to the mast was brave – the pamphlets all carried her name as publisher when many of their authors remained anonymous (including Fox on that 1791 Address). In her shop, her nephew Brodie Gurney remembered 40 years later, she openly displayed on a wall the now-famous drawing of the sardine-like packing of slaves on the slave ship Brookes, which was commissioned by the Abolition Committee in 1789.

Trading in slaves became illegal in Britain in 1807. Having slaves however did not. In 1823 a new Anti-Slavery Society was formed, which soon called for a new boycott of West Indian produce. In 1830 Martha and William’s 1791 pamphlet was reprinted and at last in 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed – a landmark of humanity which Martha Gurney can take some small credit for having helped to build.

JOHN HALLIDAY (c1715-1779) AND THE LADY OF QUALITY

John Halliday, my 6x great uncle, was a very big, very rich fish in a small pool. He was the tax collector in St John’s on the tiny island of Antigua, a British Caribbean sugar colony a very long way from home. There was a lot of money to be made by the little circle of white plantation owners, who lived extremely well on the island with minimal disruption from London. 

Antigua in 1750

drawn by Eman Bowen 

Some owners chose to be absentee planters, living extremely well in London with minimal involvement in the affairs of their plantations; but they were dependent on their plantation managers, who were not always scrupulously honest in posting the income of the estates to their owners back in Blighty. One friend of Halliday’s, William Mackinnen, had to move to the island in 1773 having never been there at all until 

“his overseer forgot he had any superior, and having occasion for the whole income, had sent his Master no remittances for above two years. He [Mackinnon] found things however in very good order, as this gentleman for his own sake, had taken care of that.” 

Mackinnen owned two plantations. Halliday had seven, a measure perhaps of his success in the post of Customs Collector, which he held from 1739 to 1777. In addition he had married Elizabeth, a daughter of another very successful plantation owner on Antigua, my 6x great grandfather Francis Delap, creating a powerful island dynasty. (By 1829 Delaps Plantation on Antigua was owned by John Halliday’s grandson, Rear Admiral John Delap Halliday Tollemache.)

Cutting the sugar cane on the Delap Estate, 1823

by Wlliam Clark 

John Halliday was lucky. Abundant and rich as life was on Antigua, two things were in short supply: water, and women. There was only one small spring on the island, and what rainwater the owners could collect in large cisterns frequently ran out in periods of drought. In times of peace, water was imported from the neighbouring French island of Guadaloup; in wartime they had to send to Montserrat for it. As for women, the island council once went as far as to petition London to send some.

One remarkable woman visited the island in December 1774, en route not from London but from Burntisland in Fife, bound not for the West Indies but her brother in law in North Carolina. Janet Schaw of Lauriston in Edinburgh kept a diary of her travels which lay virtually unknown outside academic circles until it was finally published in 1921 as the “Journal of a Lady of Quality.” It is a rich, very human account, full of her observations, interests, prejudices and amusements. And it is thanks to her that we have a glimpse of Halliday’s private life beyond his public position.

1921 title page of Janet Schaw's

"Journal of a Lady of Quality" 

Halliday was one of a party of prominent Antiguans of Scottish decent who called on Miss Schaw’s lodgings on the day of her arrival, clamouring for news:

“Here was a whole company of Scotch people, our language, our manners, our circle of friends ans connections, all the same. They had a hundred questions to ask in a breath, and my general acquaintance enabled me to answer them. We were intimates in a moment. … Mr Halliday is from Galloway, extremely genteel in his person and and most agreeable on his manners; he has a very great fortune and lives with elegance and taste. His family resides in England and he lives the life of a batchelor.” 

There is no suggestion that Halliday behaved in any way improperly, although the following morning it was Halliday’s carriage that Miss Schaw and her companions chose from the seven which arrived after breakfast – all sent by their owners to be at the travellers’ disposal. “Mr Halliday’s [wrote Janet Schaw] was drawn by English horses, which is a very needless piece of expense, as they have strong horses from New England, and most beautiful creatures from the Spanish Main.” 

The following Sunday after church they took lunch at one of John Halliday’s grand plantation houses, a meal of such luxurious largesse that it “might figure away in a newspaper had it been given by a Lord Mayor or the first Duke in the kingdom.” They dined on an Antiguan staple – turtle – in two forms. First came soup, made from old turtles, and “remarkably well dressed today.” And there was the shell,

“indeed a noble dish, as it contains all the fine parts of the Turtle baked within its own body; here is the green fat, not the slobbery thing my stomach used to stand at, but firm and more delicate than it is possible to describe.” 

Taste is a relative thing, I suppose. Bear in mind that when Miss Schaw and friends set off again for North Carolina, the first thing the Scottish captain of the ship did was to slaughter one of the live sheep in the hold – that evening they 

“had a Scotch dinner under the Tropick in the middle of the Atlantick. We ate haggis, sheep-head, barley-broth and blood-puddings. As both our Capt and Mate are Scots, tho’ long from home, they swore they had not seen such an excellent inner since they left their native land.”

EUSTACE FOSTER BARHAM (c1825-1895) AND WINE VERSUS THE LAW

I came across one of those meaningless flukes of genealogy a few years ago, one of those entirely coincidental little loops of history which show just what a small world it is (although you wouldn’t want to have to serve writs on, or wine to, everyone in it). Now pay attention.

Eustace Barham (whose 4x great aunt Rebecca Delap is my 5x great grandmother) was in the early 1850s a business partner of my 3x great uncle Charles Castle, in the Bristol legal firm of Castle, Henderson and Barham. Castle and Barham were not otherwise related, but Charles’ nephew William Henry Castle would later marry Eleanor Wilhelmina Sadleir, a great great granddaughter of Rebecca Delap by another route.

Is that clear?! No, of course not - but what I'm trying to say is that both men are related to me, by quite different and circuitous lineages although both are descended from Rebecca Delap. And by coincidence they ended up working in the same law firm together for a while. It really is that trivial.

Henderson and Barham were connected by marriage, having married the sisters Arabella and Ellen Hore in the 1840s; and by business, having formed the firm of Henderson and Barham in 1852. A year later they admitted Charles Castle as a partner, but it was a short-lived and unhappy partnership.

Castle, whose father Thomas was a distiller and merchant in the important Bristol spirits industry, had from the start expressed a desire to move into the business of wine-importing; and it was understood (at least by his legal colleagues) that he would withdraw from the partnership if and when that happened. When it did happen, and to the dismay of Barham in particular, Castle showed no sign at all of withdrawing, but rather of sitting tight and continuing to draw a third share of the legal firm’s profits.

There followed a delightful correspondence of veiled, restrained anger between Castle and a very unhappy Henderson acting on behalf of Barham. In a series of letters, all sides expressed their “disappointment” in the other party’s position, and their failure to comprehend the other party’s “disappointment”.

Under duress, Castle offered to repay part of his share of the profits in recognition of his lesser part in the business of the firm; but he made the offer with such bad grace that both Henderson and Barham withdrew their acceptance of it. In November 1854, the partnership was formally dissolved, although not until 1857 and following further bitter exchanges between Barham and Castle would the latter’s financial settlement from the firm be settled finally. (Castle had taken part of his share in the form of a client’s mortgage debt, on which I think the client had subsequently defaulted just when Castle most needed a further injection of capital in his wine business.)

Barham continued with Henderson for a while before setting up in business for himself as Barham and Co, later Carslake and Barham and later still as Barham and Barham (Eustace with his son Thomas).

I’m not sure what happened to Henderson. Charles Castle, many of whose letters I inherited, seems to have tried his hand at many things in his life – mini careers in the law and as a vintner sit alongside periods of political activity and military service. Without a doubt, more from him in future posts!

REBECCA DELAP (1728-1784) AND THE SPANISH EYES

Amongst the family history treasures that I inherited from my Uncle John there was a scrawled note which read as follows:

8-11-26

My dear May,

I never saw that house before, it is not one of our family. Our Sadleir Grandma was the daughter of the Hon’ble Eyre Massy and he was the son of Lord Massy who married a Spanish lady. That is where some of the family get “Spanish eyes” they come out in every generation. Grandmother Sadleir was very dark but she hadn’t “the eyes”. She married again and she had a daughter more Spanish than any of you. I have seen them all. Our Aileen has a look of your mother and Netta said she has the “Spanish eyes”. If I could get upstairs I would look for the pamphlet and lend it to you. I live off the hall and if I come downstairs I have to sit down and bump down each step.

With love dear neice, your aff aunt Louie

I have no idea what house affectionate Aunt Louie was referring to, but I love the image of her bumping down the steps with a pamphlet in her hand. More excitingly I had no idea as I read it who any of the people involved in the note were. But now that she’d mentioned it, I had to agree with Aunt Louie about the Spanish eyes; one, perhaps two of my brothers, definitely.

Antigua, 1752

It was Rebecca who brought them to the family. She took some tracking down, and I think the “Spanish” was a bit of a euphemism. She was my 5x great grandmother, the daughter of Francis Delap, who owned a large sugar plantation on Antigua. He was Irish, from Scottish stock, and her mother was Elizabeth Donaldson, so it’s hard to see where the Spanish eyes come in, unless there were some shenanigans on the plantation.

Presumably Francis returned regularly to Ireland, or perhaps kept his family there rather than exposing them to a strange colonial life on the plantation. At any rate his daughter met and married Hugh, first Lord Massy (of Stagdale, Duntrileague, Suir and no doubt a few other Irish castles) in 1754 – Lord Massy was himself 54, 28 years her senior, and she was his second wife. She had six children with him, one of them the Hon Eyre Massy that Aunt Louie mentions, and perhaps that’s why, despite being 28 years his junior, she died four years before Hugh.

Suir Castle, co Tipperary

She died at Suir Castle. The castle itself will have been a ruin even in Rebecca’s day. There was a modest country house next to it, of a date which suggests it might even have been built for Rebecca. There were several outhouses – stables, dairy, servants’ quarters – and an ornamental lawn in front with a semicircular drive for the carriages to pull up to the house. the house and the picturesque ruin of the old castle stood on a high bank above the River Suir, with a long view west across the Golden Vale to the sunsets over the Galty Mountains.

Lord Massy died not at Suir but at his seat, Stagdale. And I wonder if they were living separate lives, or whether he just couldn’t bear to go back to Suir after Rebecca died.

Suir Castle stables in the rain - sunset not pictured

It’s certainly a desolate place now. Or at least is was when we found it at the end of a long overgrown lane, two miles from the nearest tarmac road, in the pouring rain one October afternoon. The servants’ quarters are still standing, mostly roofless, although someone was doing up the stables when we visited. You can still see the traces of the drive, and the embankment created by levelling the lawn, but the house itself is a pile of rubble, barely one stone on top of another. And the ruined castle is still a ruin.

LADY JANE HALLIDAY (1750-1802) AND THE UNSUITABLE MARRIAGES

I confess I’m only very VERY distantly related to Lady Jane, and then only by marriage, but she’s one of those unconventional people one would so like to have met.

Lady Jane Halliday, nee Tollemache (1750-1802)

growing old disgracefully

She was born Jane Tollemache, into a very wealthy old family. At the age of 20 she eloped to Gretna Green with John Delap Halliday, the son of a rich tax collector on Antigua and grandson of Francis Delap (1690-1766, my 4x great grandfather), a slave and plantation owner whose name still survives as a district of that island. Fearing disinheritance or at least disapproval, the runaway couple had the pragmatic good sense to remarry formally in Worcester the following year to legitimise their relationship under English law as well as Scots.

It was a smart move. Their inherited wealth increased in leaps and bounds, and they had four children. But blood will out. Their daughter Charlotte Elizabeth Halliday was disinherited by her father for … yes, eloping to Scotland to “enter the connubial state” without his approval!

It came out in the next generation too. Their first grandchild, Elizabeth Jane Henrietta Tollemache (whose father had taken the Tollemache name on inheriting a fortune from a maiden aunt) was considered something of a rebel. Against family advice she first married, and presumably for love, Captain Christian Frederick Charles Johnstone a man of modest means – far too modest for her as it turned out, and the marriage failed.

Lady Jane’s granddaughter then eloped, in 1823, with the rather wealthier 7^th Earl of Cardigan (of Charge of the Light Brigade notoriety); but although they did eventually marry in 1826, she eloped again in 1827. This may have been with Lord Colville, described as her final intrigue, or perhaps an earlier affair. Her marriage to Cardigan finally ended in 1846, and it’s a miracle it lasted that long.

Jane herself, widowed in 1794, no doubt sailed through it all. Indeed, she lent her name to a ship owned by a Sir Richard Neve (who must have had his own reasons for naming one of his vessels after her). While tied up in Britain in 1796, the Lady Jane Halliday was burgled of 20 lbs of raw sugar (perhaps from her inherited interests in Antigua and St Kitt’s). The sugar was valued at eight shillings, and the thief, a dock worker called William Blue, was sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Botany Bay. Seven years for eight shillings.

In March of 1802 Lady Jane remarried, against all family advice, a Mr G.D. Ferry. It was no doubt a happy marriage, but a short one; she died on 28^th August the same year, having undeniably and magnificently grown old disgracefully.