Part 25

He was succeeded by his only son, a second Thomas Tailor, born at Lincoln in 1580, who seems to have been a somewhat eccentric character, if we may judge from the following stories related of him, which were taken down from the mouth of an old inhabitant of Doddington:—“Tommy Tailor once told his steward who was going to Lincoln to market to bring him a goose. On his return he asked about it, and the man told him they were so dear he had not got one. So Tommy shut him up in a room with a lot of money on the table, and kept him there two days, asking him when he came out if he had now discovered that the use of money was to buy what one wanted, not to keep to look at. Another day he met a woman on the road carrying some butter; he asked what it was a pound. The woman told him, and he bought it of her, taking it and putting it on the branch of a tree. She walked on, but soon turned back to take it away. However, he was lying in wait, and pounced on her just as she had taken it down, and said he had bought and paid for it, and he should put it where he liked. Another person on whom he played the same kind of trick took away the chicken he had bought, threw his money at him, and called him _an owd fule_. He kept his money in a great chest, and hid it away, and, unfortunately, died very suddenly of smallpox before he explained where he had put it.” Some have fancied that his ghost still walks the Hall in anxiety for his hidden money; and it was commonly believed of a late owner of Doddington, who was fond of employing his leisure in working in the woods, that he was in search of “Tommy Tailor’s _chist_.”

As Thomas Tailor of Doddington-Pigot, he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1620, and in the visitation of the county in 1634 he signs the short pedigree of his family, comprising only two generations. It was, perhaps, a mark of his eccentricity that, though he had served as High Sheriff, he had not cared to apply for a grant of arms, and the herald has appended to the pedigree a note: “He had been high shreife, but had no coate.” It is doubtful whether he had ever married; but, at all events, he left no issue, and in his nuncupative will, declared 13th December 1652, he acknowledges his niece, Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, to be his heiress.

Thomas Tailor had lived through all the stress of the Civil War, without either himself or his house having apparently been affected by it. In the course of it Lincoln had been twice besieged and taken; Cromwell’s forces had encamped on the neighbouring moor of North Scarle, and must have passed within sight of Doddington as they marched thence to defeat the Royalists at Gainsborough. The house and parish must have been well within reach of the Parliamentary forces at Lincoln, as well as of the King’s troops at Newark, who on one occasion extended their forays past it as far as Kettlethorpe, and on another burnt the very similar hall of the Jermyn family at Torksey, which was garrisoned by the Parliamentary troops. Yet he and his estates seem to have escaped unscathed. It was far otherwise with the family into whose possession Doddington now passed.

Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, who now inherited it, was the only child of the first Thomas Tailor’s daughter, Jane, by her marriage with George Anton, Esq., Recorder of Lincoln, 1598-1612, and M.P. for that city in 1588 and 1592. She married Sir Edward Hussey, of Honington, Knt. and Bart., and so added Doddington to the possessions of that distinguished Lincolnshire family. Sir Edward, her husband, was eldest son of Sir Charles Hussey, of Honington, Knt., and grandson of Sir Robert Hussey, who was a younger brother of John, Lord Hussey of Sleaford, beheaded by Henry VIII. for his supposed complicity in the Lincolnshire rising of 1536. He was already a knight at the time of his father’s death in 1609, having received that honour at Whitehall in 1608, and shortly afterwards, on 29th June 1611, he was advanced to the dignity of baronet. The original bond, cancelled by being cut into shreds, by which he bound himself to furnish £1095 by three yearly instalments for the maintenance of thirty foot soldiers in Ireland for three years, is still preserved at the Hall. He was High Sheriff in 1618 and 1637, and Knight of the Shire in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster, 13th April 1640. When the Civil War broke out he exerted himself zealously on the Royalist side as one of the King’s Commissioners of Array; and in 1642, when the loyal gentry of Lincolnshire resolved to provide horses for the King’s service, Sir Edward undertook to supply six, his brother Sir Charles Hussey, of Dunholme, providing two. Later he and his brother and other Lincolnshire loyalists assembled at Newark for its defence, and there Sir Charles Hussey died. Shortly before its surrender by the King’s order in 1646, we find Sir Edward at Honington endeavouring to make his peace with the Parliament. He was very aged and infirm, he says; he had taken the Covenant; his estates had been sequestered; and he asks that his wife may be allowed to compound for him. In spite of his pleading, the great fine of £10,200 was imposed. This was finally reduced to £8750, of which £4500 was raised and paid in December 1647, and three months later Sir Edward Hussey died. His eldest son, Thomas Hussey, some time M.P. for Grantham, had predeceased him in 1641; the next brother, Captain John Hussey, had been slain in the fight with the Parliamentary troops at Gainsborough in 1643. It was left to his widow, and to his eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, now remarried to Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax, to clear the impoverished estates, and to raise the remainder of the fine, which was finally paid off in 1650. For this purpose Lady Hussey had to sell her jointure, and it must have been a relief to her when, on her uncle’s death at the end of 1652, she inherited Doddington and his other estates. She enjoyed them, however, for no more than six years, dying early in 1658.

She was succeeded in the ownership of Doddington by her grandson, Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart., born in 1639, whose long minority, with the addition of his grandmother’s inheritance, must have done much to repair the shattered fortunes of the family. At the Restoration we find him, with his mother, Lady Fairfax, then a second time a widow, living at Doddington, and contributing, himself £60, and Lady Fairfax £30, towards a loan for the restored King.

In 1662, 20th February, the marriage took place at Great St. Helen’s, London, of “Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart. of Doddington, bach., and Sarah Langham, aged twenty-one, daughter of Sir John Langham, Knt. and Bart., of Cottesbroke, Northants.” Portraits of Sir Thomas and Lady Hussey still look down on the gallery of their former home; and what the house itself resembled in their time we may see from the engraving of it, which was executed by John Kip, after a drawing by Leonard Knyff, _c._ 1700. It represents the Hall and gate-house much as they are at present, with an open grassy court between. Gardens formally laid out, and orchards of young trees in rows, surround the house; but we cannot tell how much of this is due to the artist’s imagination.

Sir Thomas Hussey was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1668, and Knight of the Shire 1681-95. As such he took a prominent part in the reception of a new charter granted to the city by Charles II. in 1685. On this occasion Sir Thomas Hussey, driving in, we must suppose, from Doddington, was met at the entrance of Lincoln by the Mayor and Corporation, who received the new charter from him on the green against St. Katharine’s. After this Sir Thomas, with the Mayor and aldermen, walked up the city to the Guildhall, with bands playing and bells ringing, and the conduits running claret wine, that all might drink the King’s and the Duke of York’s health. At the Guildhall the charter was read publicly by the town-clerk, Mr. Original Peart, and the ceremony terminated with a great dinner at the Mayor’s, and more drinking of healths. Towards the charges of renewing the charter, the Bishop of Lincoln gave £20, and Sir Thomas Hussey and three other gentlemen £10 a-piece.

Sir Thomas Hussey died 19th December 1706, and was buried, as his wife and many children who died young had been, in the vault of the Hussey family in Honington Church. There his monument, with his bust in marble, may still be seen; but it is in their house of Doddington that the portraits of himself and Dame Sarah, his wife, and their three surviving daughters have been preserved. The church, too, possesses a memorial of him, in the shape of a handsome silver paten and flagon, bearing his coat-of-arms, and the date 1707. His niece Rhoda, daughter of his sister, Rhoda Hussey, by her marriage with John Amcotts, of Aisthorpe, Esq., had already presented to the church a silver alms-dish in 1671, engraved with the Amcotts arms. As he left no male issue, his baronetcy passed to his cousin, Sir Edward Hussey, of Caythorpe, who already held the baronetcy conferred by Charles II. on his father in 1661.

His three surviving daughters became co-heiresses of his estates. The eldest of these was Rebecca Hussey, who “after a life spent principally in devotion and acts of charity, died unmarried, 21st August 1714.” She took care that her charities should not end with her life. Two at least of these—Rebecca Hussey’s Book Charity, and Rebecca Hussey’s Charity for the Relief of Poor Debtors—have kept her name in remembrance down to the present day. The latter was paid for many years out of the Doddington estate, but is now represented by an invested sum of £3192. The youngest was Elizabeth, who in 1714 married Richard, son and heir of Sir William Ellys, of Nocton, Bart., sometime M.P. for Grantham, but who died childless in 1724, and is commemorated with her mother and sister Rebecca on a monument in Honington Church.

Between these came Sarah, who had been already married at the age of twenty-two, at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, in 1700, during her father’s lifetime, to Robert Apreece, Esq., of Washingley, co. Hunts. In a partition of their father’s estates between her and her sister Elizabeth, in 1717, Honington had fallen to her share, but under her sister’s will in 1724 she became possessed of Doddington also for her life, with remainder to her son and daughter as tenants in common. Her son, Thomas Apreece, inherited Washingley and Honington, and was the father of Sir Thomas Hussey-Apreece, created a baronet in 1782. But Mrs. Sarah Apreece bought up her son’s contingent share of Doddington, and by her will, dated 1747, she settled the whole estate on her daughter Rhoda, the wife of Captain Francis Blake-Delaval, R.N., the owner of the great Northumbrian estates of Seaton-Delaval, Ford Castle, and Dissington. It was evidently her wish to secure the continuance of her father’s name and estate, for she strictly entailed Doddington on the second son of her daughter’s marriage, enjoining that he should take the name and arms of Hussey, and resign Doddington to his next brother, if he should succeed to his father’s estates. We are told that amongst their many seats Captain and Mrs. Blake-Delaval resided chiefly at Seaton-Delaval and at Doddington, and we may well believe that it was to Mrs. Delaval’s affection for her family, and her desire to perpetuate their memory in the house that was her own inheritance, that we owe the many family groups of her children, which seem to have been designed for the places they occupy on its walls.

She died in 1759, leaving a numerous and distinguished family of eight sons and four daughters, remarkable for their good looks and talents, which made them of note in the society of the day. Especially was this the case with the eldest son, Sir Francis Blake-Delaval, K.B., who inherited his father’s great estates in Northumberland, and made himself conspicuous in the annals of the time for his wit and gallantry, his reckless extravagance and dissipation. He, however, was not otherwise connected with Doddington than as a visitor to the house, to which he brought his theatrical friend Foote in 1752, and where his own full-length figure, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, may still be seen. We are more concerned with his next brother, on whom Doddington had been entailed. This was John Delaval, born in 1728, who, in accordance with Mrs. Apreece’s will, assumed the name of Hussey on his mother’s death in 1759, and became successively Sir John Hussey-Delaval, Bart., in 1761, Baron Delaval of Redford in the peerage of Ireland in 1783, and Baron Delaval of Seaton-Delaval in the peerage of Great Britain in 1786. He represented Berwick in Parliament from 1754 to his elevation to the British peerage. In 1750 he had married Susannah, widow of John Potter, Esq., Under-Secretary of State for Ireland; she was his first cousin, her mother having been Margaret Delaval, his father’s sister. The young couple at once made Doddington their country residence, John Delaval acting as virtual owner of the mansion and estate, both of which showed signs of energetic management and lavish expenditure. New marble mantelpieces were bought for the more important rooms of the hall in 1760, and to the same date we may ascribe the classic broken architraves with which they and many of the doors are surmounted. The present great staircase was put up in 1761, and the long gallery refloored at a cost of £500, under the direction of Mr. Lumby, the surveyor of Lincoln Cathedral. At the same time the enclosure of the moorlands on the estate was vigorously carried on, many thousand plants of quick being purchased for enclosure, and labourers continuously employed in dyking and fencing and paring sods. Another improvement was the formation of a hop-garden of twenty-six acres in the parish—the only one, it is said, in Lincolnshire. In this Lady Delaval took especial interest, and part of it was known as My Lady’s Acre. In 1770, on the death of his eldest daughter Rhoda at the age of eighteen, he undertook the restoration of the church, adding to it the present south aisle and west tower, and giving it the shape which it retains to-day. He showed his good taste, when church architecture was at its lowest ebb, by copying, though unskilfully, in his additions the fourteenth century work which remained in the older part.

In 1771, however, his eldest brother, Sir F. B. Delaval, died, and Sir John Hussey-Delaval succeeded to the great Northumberland estates. According to the settlement, Doddington ought to have passed from him to his next brother, Edward Hussey-Delaval, Esq., but a compromise was agreed to by which he retained possession of Doddington on condition of paying his brother an annuity of £400. A consideration for this mentioned in the deed is that he found the mansion and offices in a very ruinous and decayed condition, and had laid out upwards of £17,000 in building farm-houses, planting timber, making fences, and draining and enclosing the moors.

Naturally, with his accession to these more important estates, his interest in Doddington declined. The restoration of the church, begun so energetically in 1770, was not completed till 1775. On Sunday, 18th June 1775, the church was reopened in the presence of 800 people, the Sub-dean of Lincoln, the Rev. Robert Dowbiggin, taking the chief part in the ceremony. By that time, however, Sir John’s only son was dying at Bristol, and none of the family were present. In their absence, the rector, the Rev. R. P. Hurton, entertained at dinner at the Hall “thirty gentlemen and ladies of the first fashion in the county, including the Champion of England, both Neviles (_i.e._ of Thorney and of Wellingore), Mr. Amcotts (of Kettlethorpe), &c.” Refreshments were liberally provided for the other less distinguished guests.

The very first funeral that took place in the newly-opened church was that of Sir John’s only son and heir, John Hussey-Delaval, who died at the Hotwells, Bristol, on 7th July 1775, in the twentieth year of his age. On Sunday, 15th July, his body, in charge of a Bristol undertaker, arrived at Newark, where it was met by Mr. Portes, the Doddington steward. Next morning they left at ten o’clock, and were met between Newark and Collingham by all the servants in black hat-bands and gloves. Within half a mile of Doddington they were met by the labourers, six of whom in black cloaks, hat-bands, and scarves, acted as bearers. On arrival at Doddington at 2 P.M. the body was laid in the White Hall till 5 P.M. Again none of the family were present, but the rector and Mrs. Hurton, with eight others, followed next the body. Then came the tenantry and a large concourse of people. We learn that “there was a very good collation and great plenty of victuals, with a very well furnished table in the Low Paper Parlour, where Mr. Hurton and the other clergymen and several more dined. The tenants dined in the steward’s room: 4 bottles of rum, 4 of brandy, 18 of white and 18 of port wine were consumed, and there was ale enough in the cellar.” The charge of the Bristol undertaker was £203, 8s. 9d., “besides the local bills, some £43 more.” His father began to build a handsome mausoleum in the grounds at Seaton-Delaval, but this was never used, and his body, with that of his sister Sophia, Mrs. Jadis, who died in 1793, still remains in the vault beneath the church, in which the only memorial of him consists of the blackened walls which were so coloured for his funeral.

In the cellars of the Hall there is still some ale which was brewed at the time of young John Delaval’s birth, 26th May 1756, and was bottled in order to be drunk at that coming of age which never took place. Some of the bottles bear the Apreece arms; others a stamp with the name of Sir J. H. Delaval, Bart., or the initials J.H.D.

After his son’s death Lord Delaval, as he shortly after became, not being on good terms with Edward Delaval, his brother and next male heir, cut down all the timber at Doddington that would fetch any money. In the engraving of the Hall in Sir Thomas Hussey’s time we may see a row of young elms standing along the churchyard wall. An old man, employed as a carpenter on the estate, who died, aged 95, in 1858, recollected cutting these down. It blew hard at the time, and Lord Delaval looked out of a window of the gate-house, and gave directions how they should fall. They were then very large, beautiful trees, and the wood quite sound and red. He recollected also fine oaks all over the lordship, but all were cut down for bark and “kids.” This is fully confirmed by the estate accounts of 1775 and the following years, and is the reason why there are no very old trees on the estate, those now in the extensive woods having grown up since Lord Delaval’s time.

On June 3, 1780, Lord Delaval’s youngest daughter, Sarah Hussey-Delaval, then only sixteen, was married by special licence at Grosvenor House, her father’s London residence, to George Carpenter, second Earl of Tyrconnel. He is said to have been the handsomest man of his time, while she is spoken of as “the wild and beautiful Countess of Tyrconnel,” and as “the lovely Lady Tyrconnel, who had hair of such luxuriance that when she rode, it floated upon the saddle.” The following month they visited Doddington. “I am delighted,” writes Lord Tyrconnel, “with Doddington; it has an air of grandeur and solitude about it which pleases me extremely; it is a cruel hardship upon it that you should have two other places which you prefer to it. We have this evening been to Lady Delaval’s hop ground. We had such a game of Blindman’s Buff in the Hall: Mr. and Mrs. Hurton and Mrs. Grant were of the party.”

An elder daughter, Frances, had married in 1778 John Fenton-Cawthorne, Esq., of Wyerside, co. Lanc., who represented Lincoln in Parliament from 1784 to 1793. Lord Delaval exerted his interest actively in his favour, and we hear of Lincoln freemen being entertained at dinner at Doddington, while his steward’s letters to his lordship treat frequently of electioneering matters at Lincoln, of Mr. Cawthorne’s visits there at the time of the races, of his dining with the Hunting Club and “at what they call the Lunitick Club,” and with the aldermen on the day of the Mayor’s election, of his distribution of coals among the freemen, and of the three rival candidates in 1790 walking the streets with their colours flying.

Another of Lord Delaval’s daughters, Elizabeth, was married 21st May 1781, to George, Baron Audley. This marriage also was by special licence at her father’s town house, which at this time was in Hanover Square. The rector of Doddington, Mr. Hurton, of whom we have already spoken, went up to London to perform the ceremony. Lady Audley only lived till 11th July 1785.

Lord Delaval himself died at Seaton-Delaval, 17th May 1808, at the age of eighty, being found dead in his chair in the breakfast-room. His remains were conveyed in state from the north, and interred in the family vault which he had made in St. Paul’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, in which his wife Susannah Lady Delaval had already been buried in 1783, and his favourite daughter, Sarah Hussey, Countess of Tyrconnel, in 1800. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ of the day makes mention of “the great funeral pomp and splendour” of his interment: this may well have been the case, as the cost of it was no less than £2300. No other monuments, however, than plain flat stones, with short inscriptions and almost obliterated coats-of-arms, mark the place of their burial; while above them hang the tattered banners, begrimed with the London dirt of a hundred years, on which the arms of Delaval, Blake, and Carpenter (Tyrconnel) may still be distinguished. At Doddington his only memorial is the hatchment in the church, which was fixed to the front of the Hall on his death.

He bequeathed Ford Castle to his granddaughter, Lady Susannah Hussey Carpenter, the only surviving child of his favourite daughter Sarah, Lady Tyrconnel, whose marriage in 1805 to Henry de la Poer Beresford, 2nd Marquis of Waterford, brought it to that family, in whose possession it has continued nearly to the present day. Doddington, however, with Seaton-Delaval and other entailed estates, descended to his next brother, Edward Hussey-Delaval, the only survivor of that band of eight brothers on whom Doddington had been successively settled, and not one of whom left a son to succeed him. As a young man he had been a Fellow-Commoner, and afterwards a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Here he was a contemporary and friend of the poet Gray, who makes frequent mention of him in his letters. Later he established himself in a house which he had built for himself on his own plan and designs on a piece of ground leased to him by the Crown in Parliament Place. Its site is now covered by the Houses of Parliament, but two views of it taken from opposite points, painted by his friend G. Arnold, A.R.A., now hang in the Library at Doddington, and show its gardens running down to the river-side, with Westminster Bridge in the near distance. Here he devoted himself to philosophical and chemical pursuits, being a Fellow of the Royal and other learned societies, both home and foreign, and gaining their gold medals and other honours by his various papers and treatises published in their Transactions, or as independent works. Late in life he had married, and had an only daughter.