Wedlock (54 page)

Information in this chapter on the ancestry of the Bowes family is from Wills, and Durham County Council,
passim
. Biographical details on George Bowes can be found in Wills, and ODNB, vol. 6, pp. 931-4. Background on the history of the north-east England coal industry is from Flinn and Stoker; and Atkinson, both
passim
. For information on the Gibside estate, now NT, see Wills and Garnett, and Wills, both
passim
. My thanks to Tony Walton, former NT property manager of Gibside, for kind help and advice during my visit 23 October 2006. The contents of Gibside Hall at the time are from two sources: Inventory of the household goods, etc, at Gibside, 29 Oct 1761: SPG, box 185, bundle 5; and an inventory of the contents of Gibside, listing furniture, linen, plate, china, art and books bequeathed by George Bowes to MEB produced in 1779 in answer to a case in Chancery begun in 1777 by Thomas Lyon on behalf of MEB’s five children by Lord Strathmore: NA Chancery Records, C12/1057/31 (schedule). A list of paintings purchased by George Bowes is preserved as DCRO SEA D/St/E5/2/18.

1
William Blakiston Bowes to Lady Elizabeth Bowes, 20 March 1718: BL Add. MSS 40747 ff. 164-5.

2
MEB describes her father and her childhood in Bowes, p. 49.

3
Miss Verney’s poems: SPG, vol. 338.

4
Letters regarding the marriage of George Bowes and Eleanor Verney: SPG, Bowes-Lyon Letter Books, vol. 39, ff. 71-153

5
Marriage settlement of George Bowes and Eleanor Verney, 29 and 30 September 1724: DCRO SEA D/St/D13/5/22.

6
Halsband (1956), p. 123; Perry, p. 504.

7
Chester, vol. 9, p. 312; Sykes, vol. 1, p. 141.

8
George Bowes to Henry Vane, 9 March 1743, cited in Durham County Council, p. 7.

9
Marriage settlement of George Bowes and Mary Gilbert, 10 June 1743: DCRO SEA D/St/D13/5/32. Mary Gilbert’s date of birth is unknown but her age is given as sixty when she died in January 1781 on the inscription in the mausoleum at Gibside, suggesting that she was born in 1720 or 1721.

10
‘March 28 Mary Eleanor Daughter of George Esqr. and Mary Bows [sic], Born Feb 24th’: Parish register St George’s Church, Hanover Square, baptisms 1749, CWAC.

11
Mrs Bowes’s Cash Books, 16 March 1749: DCRO SEA D/St/E15/5/98. The household accounts date from 1744 to 1760; all details of family purchases are from this source.

12
Captain William FitzThomas to George Bowes, 3 March 1749, and Fra. [Francis] Oneal [sic] to George Bowes, 4 June 1749: BL Add. MSS 40748 ff. 103- 4 and 105.

13
Hester Chapone, cited in Hill, Bridget, p. 74.

14
Will of George Bowes, 7 February 1749 [old style, ie 1750], proved 12 December 1761, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, York University.

15
Mrs Bowes’s Cash Books, 29 August 1750 and 22 May 1751: DCRO SEA D/St/E15/5/98. Cash book of Gibside receipts and expenditure, 1748-54, 11 August 1750: DCRO SEA D/St/E5/5/7.

16
Brand, vol. 1, pp. 434-5.

17
Lancelot [Capability] Brown to George Bowes, 22 October 1750: DCRO SEA D/St/C/3/11. More information on the column can be found in Wills, pp. 43-7, and Hudson, pp. 2,460-1. Estate accounts list various stages of the work in Cash book of Gibside receipts and expenditure, 1748-1754: DCRO SEA D/St/E5/5/7.

18
Climenson, vol. 2, pp. 36-7.

19
Angerstein, pp. 273-4.

20
George Bowes’s memo books 1754-6: SPG, box 186, bundle 3.

21
George (1976), p. 399. Figures quoted from the London Bills of Mortality show that 63 per cent of babies born in London between 1750 and 1769 died before the age of five.

22
Foot, p. 14.

23
Bowes, pp. 49-50. Subsequent quotes are from the same pages.

24
Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London, to Elizabeth Montagu, 1 September 1760, in Climenson, vol. 2, p. 198; Myers, p. 246.

25
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Lady Bute, 28 January 1753, in Halsband (1965), vol. 3, pp. 20-4.

26
Hill, Bridget, p. 44.

27
de Salignac, pp. 2, 3 and 14.

28
SPG, box 243.

29
Mrs Bowes’s Cash Books: DCRO SEA D/St/E15/5/100. Andreas Planta was paid his ‘entrance money’ on 29 January 1757; a pair of stays was bought on the servants’ account for his daughter Elizabeth Planta on 10 March 1757.

30
Gibside Cash Book 1758-60, quarrying for the chapel, 5 January 1760, digging the foundations, 19 July 1760: DCRO SEA D/St/E5/5/9. The chapel and Gibside estate are described in Paine.

31
Sykes, vol. 1, p. 229.

32
Annual Register
, 1760, vol. 3, p. 131,
London Magazine
, 1760, vol. 29, p. 556, and Sykes, vol. 1, p. 229, all put MEB’s inheritance at £600,000. Barlow, vol. 2, p. 464, puts her inheritance at £1,040,000. Other, later, sources also value her inheritance at £1,040,000, for example, Vincent, p. 702 and anon,
The Monthly Chronicle
, vol. 1, p. 196.

33
Will of George Bowes, York University.

34
Bowes, p. 52. Parish rates books, St James’s Church, Piccadilly, CWAC. Mrs Bowes paid rates at no. 40 from 1763 to 1767.

35
Clark, vol. 3, p. 61.

36
Bowes, p. 53.

37
MEB to Elizabeth Montagu, Saturday 29 March [1760]: HL MO 623.

38
Blunt, vol. 1, p. 65-6.

39
Lord Lyttelton to Elizabeth Montagu, 11 October 1760 in Climenson, vol. 2, p. 203.

40
Grosley, vol. 1, pp. 22, 34, 35 and 44-5.

41
Ilchester and Stavordale, vol. 1, p. 188.

42
Bowes, p. 54.

43
For information on the history of marriage (and divorce) see Stone (1977) and (1995); and Habakkuk.

44
London County Council, vol. 39, p. 3.

45
Sir William Temple in
Popular Discontents
, 1680, cited in Habakkuk, p. 144.

46
Savile, p. 25.

47
Astell, p. 12.

48
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Philippa Mundy, April 1712, in Halsband (1965), vol. 1, p. 122.

49
George (1976), p. 305.

50
Foreman, p. 74.

51
Papendiek, vol. 1, p. 9; Sarah Scott to Elizabeth Montagu, March 1762, in Doran, p. 110; Papendiek, vol. 1, p. 75.

52
Bowes, pp. 54-5.

53
Ilchester, vol. 1, pp. 202-3.

54
ODNB, vol. 20, pp. 609-22.

55
Blunt, vol. 1, pp. 65-6.

56
John Stuart, First Marquess of Bute (1744-1814), ODNB, vol. 53, pp. 182-3; Ilchester, vol. 1, p. 180.

57
Bowes, p. 65.

58
Walpole to Horace Mann, 13 November 1766, in Lewis, vol. 22, p. 465.

59
Hare, vol. 2, p. 172. Hare was the great-grandson of Lady Anne Simpson, sister to the ninth earl.

60
Osborn, pp. 132-3; Toynbee and Whibley, vol. 3, p. 925.

61
Colman and Garrick, p. 42.

62
Account of Miss Bowes’s wedding clothes on her marriage with the Earl of Strathmore: BM Archives. Marriage settlement on intended marriage of Mary Eleanor Bowes and John, Earl of Strathmore, 6 and 7 October 1766: DCRO SEA D/St/D13/5/43. Parish register, marriages, St George’s Church, Hanover Square, 1760-8, 24 February 1767, CWAC.

The main source for the Stoney family’s history is Stoney,
The Annals
, which is based on private family papers, including the family bible which bears the date of ARS’s birth, and also transcribes the diaries of George Stoney (ARS’s father) for 1765 and 1781. Information on family life is taken from these diaries and letters unless otherwise stated.

1
Sykes, vol. 1, p. 191.

2
Extract of William Newton’s will: DCRO D/X540/1; Newton v Stoney, Chancery bill 14 April 1773: NA Chancery Records C12/1626/23.

3
Baptism 11 November 1747 of ‘Hannah daur. of Wm Newton Burnopfield’, baptism register, St Margaret’s Church, Tanfield, DCRO.

4
Foot, p. 7, citing a letter from ‘a mother in Bath to her daughter in London’.

5
Army Commission Book 1763-7, NA WO 25/30. Stoney enlisted on 28 November 1764.

6
ODNB, vol. 2, pp. 427-8.

7
John Scott to George Stoney, 13 February 1746, in Stoney, p. 9.

8
Thomas Johnston to Lieutenant Robert Johnston, 20 April 1765, in Stoney, p. 16.

9
Thomas Johnston to Lieutenant Robert Johnston, 20 April 1765, in Stoney, p. 16. Details of the movements of the King’s Own Regiment and other background information are from Cowper, vol. 1, pp. 190-225.

10
Colonel Andrew Robinson to George Stoney, 17 September 1765, in Stoney, p. 17.

11
Lieutenant Colonel George Maddison to Colonel Robert Brudenell, June 1766, in Stoney, p. 17.

12
General Bigoe Armstrong to George Stoney, 12 July 1766, in Stoney, pp. 17-18.

13
Elizabeth Montagu to Sarah Scott, n.d. [1758], in Climenson, vol. 2, p. 138. Sophia Curzon (née Noel) to Mary Noel, 28 September 1779, in Elwin, p. 145. General information on eighteenth-century Newcastle can be found in Brand; Ellis; and Middlebrook, all
passim
.

14
Newcastle Chronicle
and
Newcastle Journal
, 1767-8,
passim
.

15
Elizabeth Montagu to Lord Lyttelton, n.d. [October] 1760, in Climenson, vol. 2, pp. 205, 207-8.

16
Stoney, p. 19.

17
Foot, pp. 5-6.

18
Extract of William Newton’s will: DCRO D/X540/1.

19
ARS to George Stoney, 23 April 1768, in Stoney, p. 19.

20
Anon,
The Irish Register
. The phenomenon is discussed in Habakkuk, pp. 203-4.

21
The letters, all reproduced in
The Annals
, are ARS to George Stoney, 23 April 1768, 19 June 1768, 2 August 1768 and 10 September 1768, in Stoney, p. 19-22.

22
Newcastle Chronicle
, 12 November 1768;
Newcastle Journal
, 5-12 November 1768;
Newcastle Courant
, 12 November 1768.

23
ARS to George Stoney, 7 November 1768, in Stoney, p. 19. The letter is dated 7 November - perhaps the date it was posted - although it was written on his wedding day, which was 5 November.

24
Dating from at least the fourteenth century, the house and estate of Cole Pike Hill were acquired by the Newton family in the early eighteenth century. The original hall was extended in 1854 and the house is now divided into three homes.

25
The horse-whipping incident must have happened in 1769 since this is when the regiment was stationed in Perth. ‘Answers for Mr Stoney Esq, Ensign in the 4th regiment of foot, to a complaint preferred agt. him by John Smith his servant’, n.d., SPG, Bowes Papers, vol. 41. Stoney was promoted to lieutenant on 22 December 1769 (private communication, Peter Donnelly, curator of the King’s Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster). He exchanged places with a Lieutenant Rooke in the 30th Regiment at some point after April 1770. S. Hodgson to ARS, 9 April 1770: SPG, Bowes Papers, vol. 41.

26
Letters addressed to Stoney in Ireland, George Forbes, 27 October 1769 and S. Hodgson, 9 April 1770: DCRO SEA D/St/C1/13/1; SPG, Bowes Papers, vol. 41.

27
Accounts of Rowland Stephenson’s receipts and expenditure for Cole Pike Hill and Twizedale estates, 1767-9: DCRO SEA D/St/E8/18.

28
Robert Morrow to ARS, 17 March 1772: SPG, Bowes Papers, vol. 41. Morrow succeeded Stephenson when he died in 1770.

29
Eight letters to ARS asking for payment of bills 1769 to 1775: DCRO SEA D/St/C1/13/1.

30
SPG, vol. 33, p. 128.

31
Foot, pp. 6-8.

32
Foreman, p. 97.

33
Robert Johnston to ARS, 19 August 1771: SPG, Bowes Papers, vol. 41.

34
Will of Hannah Stoney: DUL, 1776/523/1.

35
Newton v Stoney, 14 April 1773: NA Chancery records C12/1626/23. No outcome is recorded. The trees were advertised for sale in the
Newcastle Chronicle
, 13, 20 and 27 March 1773.

36
ARS to George Stoney, 21 June 1775, in Stoney, pp. 28-9.

37
Bill for ARS, 20 July 1775: DCRO SEA D/St/C1/13/1.

38
Newcastle Journal
, 16 March 1776. The burial register reads: ‘14 Mar 1776 Hannah wife of Andrew Robinson Stoney Esq., Coltpighill’, burial register, St Margaret’s Church, Tanfield, DCRO.

Mary’s first marriage and various flirtations are described in her
Confessions
. For background information on the study of botany in the eighteenth century see Shteir; Desmond (1995); Lemmon, all
passim
.

1
Newcastle Chronicle
, 4 April 1767.

2
Young, vol. 4, p. 584.

3
MEB said she had been ill before leaving Hertfordshire. The poet Thomas Gray had written that MEB was ‘with child, and not very well, as I hear’ in June. Bowes, p. 66; Gray to Brown, 2 June 1767, in Toynbee and Whibley, vol. 3, p. 961.

4
Bowes, p. 65-6.

5
Bowes, p. 8.

6
Annual Register
, 1767, p. 81. The bill was given royal assent on 3 April.

7
Lord Chesterfield to the Duke of Newcastle, 20 June 1766, in Dobrée, vol. 6, p. 2,744.