R.H. Beaumont of Whitley FSA 1749-1810

I said something about the portrait of this eccentric and interesting man and it is now time to say something about him and his life.

RHB was the eldest son of Richard Beaumont and Elizabeth (nee Holt). He was christened at Kirkheaton in March 1749. I don't know where he went to school but he was at Oxford (Brasenose) in the late 1760s.

Old print of Brasenose, given to me by Margaret Shepherd

His father is said to have been a Jacobite, and to have invited Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 to stay at Whitley. I don't know if there is any truth in that, and I am fairly sure such a visit never happened. However a plaid-covered bed was seen in the house many years later!

RHB's father died in 1764, in his forties. His mother would live for many years. She had an estate at Little Mitton in Lancashire, and was the heiress of the Holt family, of that place. But she spent some time in London, where it has been said that the family had a house in Brownlow Street. Hard evidence for this house is lacking. There were two streets of that name, and this would be the one in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn.

Certainly, members of this old Yorkshire family were spending a good deal of time in London. All was not sweetness and light. RHB's youngest brother John had a son born there - before marriage, whilst the second brother Charles died (he was training to be a barrister), stating in his will that he wished to be buried anywhere but Yorkshire!  RHB's wilful sister Elizabeth married the Anglo-Irish officer George Bernard as soon as she was 21. The old lady commissioned George Romney to paint a picture that would show them all as more united than they really were. I wrote a piece recently about that episode.

RHB was in charge of the Whitley estate by now, and Capability Brown visited in 1778. Some proposals were drawn up. Landscaping work was done and trees planted.

(I borrowed the above picture of Whitley from the "country house reader" blog, which had it from the Huddersfield Examiner by courtesy of Stephen Beaumont. I hope they don't mind. The artist is said to be J.T. Taite circa 1858.  J.T. Tuite (husband of one of RHB's nieces) was a painter, and I think, earlier than 1858. I'd be very happy to discuss this with someone who knows about the picture).

The death of RHB's third brother Thomas in 1782 (I wrote recently about the portrait of him) and the fact that RHB was not going to marry, meant that the estates would devolve to John, and John's children. But I don't think John and RHB liked one another much.

RHB set off for Italy in 1787 and was away for about a year. In regard to this trip, certain writers have confused him with his younger brother. He went as far as Naples and wrote various letters to Walter Spencer-Stanhope at Cannon Hall (see note).

RHB was not much interested in managing his estates, though they gave him an income of between £5,000 and £7,000 a year. Naturally he was in Yorkshire a good deal, held various offices there, and was party to numerous leases and other deeds. Amongst the documents are some showing that he leased property at Crosland (a place redolent of family history, or legend anyway) to his cousins George and Walter Beaumont who set up there (unsuccessfully, in the end) as manufacturers. George and Walter were sons of George, the clergyman of Nottingham who died in 1773, and brothers of Rev. Thomas (d.1835) and Richard (d.1828) of Birmingham.

RHB's real interest lay in history, and genealogy. He was accurate, painstaking, and relatively detached. For example, of his own father's actions in moving the remains of ancestors out into the rain and snow, he wrote:

Richard Beaumont deceased 1764 made a Vault in the Choir at Kirkheaton in consequence of which 

the Bones and Dust of Knts Esqs & Gents repose in ye Churchyard except Adam son of Sir Thomas B 

and Richard and Susanna abovementioned.

(at the end of transcripts of deeds sent to his cousin - this Archive, Box 1/18, a puzzling entry)

I suppose RHB spent some more time at Oxford researching documents. But many of the documents that he used were actually in Whitley Hall, including I think the originals of some that Roger Dodsworth (1585-1654) had seen. RHB made his own transcripts, some of which are in this archive (Box 1/18). Fortunately many documents from Whitley have survived, now in West Yorkshire Archives and elsewhere.

RHB realised the value of what he had and wanted to preserve it. He gave some important manuscripts to the Bodleian, whose librarian John Price was his (distant, perhaps) friend. He also sent pictures from Whitley to Oxford, including "Susannah and the Elders" and (in 1802) one that was thought to be of Queen Elizabeth, which had come from Little Mitton.

Many pictures of Beaumonts and their relations were hanging in Whitley Hall in RHB's time. Several that have survived are marked on the back of the frame or stretcher in his handwriting. I have written about this elsewhere, and would say that, where this is found, it is a very strong pointer to the provenance. I confess to being suspicious about some pictures, and would simply urge their present custodians to look on the back, and send me a picture of what they see written there.

RHB had other scholarly acquaintances such as Brasenose contemporaries Richard Williams (1747-1811), of Fron (near Mold) and [Sir] Christopher Sykes (1749-1801) of Sledmere - and of course Thomas Dunham Whitaker (1759-1821).

Another friend was James Paine (1745-1829), his cousin, and the son of the well-known architect. James Paine senior might well have designed the "temple" at Whitley. If it still stands, it must be in a sorry state by now.

Temple at Whitley - in happier days

- and in 1959 (Yours Truly in red jumper, with my mother and brother).

It is known locally as Black Dick's temple, but that is (of course) just guff!

RHB visited his cousin Rev. Thomas Beaumont at Chapelthorpe in the 1790s. He provided pedigrees and evidence to prove how they were related, and thus demonstrated pointedly that he was the rightful proprietor of Whitley (lest there be any doubt). RHB was nothing if not a snob. The letters are polite - I had an unpleasant ride home. Comps to your Brother, two Mrs B's and Miss H - but suggest acquaintance rather than close friendship, and yet my side of the family often mentioned its Whitley connections in a wistful tone. Certainly, my forebears retained what RHB had sent them, now an important element in our collection!

RHBs mother died at her house in York in 1791; this was perhaps on the Mount outside Micklegate Bar. As her second & third sons (who might have been intended to inherit Mitton) had died, RHB was now the owner of that estate as well, which he sometimes visited with great pleasure, according to his friend T.D. Whitaker. Mitton is near Whalley, so Whitaker would in due course cover it in his book on that parish.

In 1793 RHB served as High Sheriff of Yorkshire; this meant visiting York and involvement in matters to do with the 84th Regiment that was raised by his brother-in-law George Bernard that year. The Bernards had a house in York. Nearer Whitley, RHB had given them a site by the river Calder where they had built a house called Heaton Lodge, where I think there was a portrait of RHB, the one which I wrote about quite recently. The Bernards had no children of their own. George however had a lady friend, and a daughter!

By the early 1800s RHB's eccentricity had reached its peak; a visitor in November 1808 noted:
The master of Whitley is a strange creature, half-mad. He leads the life of a hermit, and has not had a brush, painter, or carpenter in his house since he came into possession many, many years ago.
It is more like a haunted house in a romance than anything I ever saw. He is now an old man, and has never bought a morsel of furniture; half the house never was finished; one of the staircases has got no banisters..... The rooms he lives in have not been put to rights for many years - a description of the things they contain would not be easy - hats, wigs, coats, piles of newspapers, magazines, and letters, draughts, bottles, wash-hand basins, pictures without frames, apples, tallow-candles, and broken tea-cups.
The whole house looks like a place for lumber. There are some fine rooms, but so damp and mouldy it is quite shocking. There is a chapel completely filled with old rubbish and a plaid bed which was put up for the Pretender. 
In the room Mr Beaumont sleeps in I saw his coffin, made of cedar wood. He scarcely ever sees a living creature, and quite dislikes the sight of a woman. He does everything in the room, which no housemaid ever enters, nor indeed any part of the house (see note below).

Whitley Hall. The oldest portion at left, ivy-covered. I don't think the third storey had been added in RHB's day.

He was unduly anxious about his own health, and his friend James Paine told the diarist Joseph Farington that he had taken medicine prescribed by a Dr Latham, which made his last days rather uncomfortable. He died in November 1810 and was buried at Kirkheaton. I believe he is remembered now only by a brass plate, amongst the grander monuments of his relations.

An obituary or tribute by T.D.Whitaker is printed in the Introduction to the History of Craven (1812). Three phrases stand out. That RHB was "an excellent judge of forgeries," that when visiting Little Mitton he "contended with the owls for possession," and that he was by the end, a "hermit in a palace."

RHB was survived by his sister Elizabeth Bernard and his youngest brother John. John's son Charles Richard Beaumont had been to RHB's old college and was certainly seen as preferred ultimate successor. However John immediately took possession of Whitley and Mitton, and litigation quickly started, only to continue after Charles Richard himself died (which was in the lifetime of John).
............

Note on RHB's trip to Italy
It has been widely assumed that he went on this trip soon after, or even before, going to Oxford. But the only evidence I have seen for such a trip seems to be for 1787-1788 when RHB was nearly 40. Anna M.W. Stirling, the editor of the Spencer-Stanhope letters - in "Annals of a Yorkshire House" - assumed the writer to be John. See the second volume, pages 123-128. The only letter printed in full starts "Dear Stanhope," suggesting that the name at the end would just be "Beaumont." I think it is more likely RHB than John. I might be able to identify RHB's handwriting if these letters survive.

Whitaker in the obituary says that after his trip to Italy, RHB's understanding and memory were devoted principally to the study of history and antiquities. Whitaker does not give the date of the trip, but being several years younger, would not have had first-hand knowledge of what RHB did as a student.

Note on RHB's hermit-like life at Whitley
See The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Stanhope, ed. A.M.W. Stirling, vol. 1, p.123, footnote, and p.124. This is the same editor as before. It is also there said to be John, but in 1808 John had not yet "come into possession" of Whitley, let alone been there for many years.

Note on pictures
In Bodleian Picture Books, Portraits of the Sixteenth and early Seventeenth Centuries (1952), the Elizabethan Lady (not thought to be the Queen) is said to have been given to the Librarian by RHB in 1802 for the Library Gallery. The booklet adds that it came from "Little Milton" [must mean Mitton]. Today she is on artuk still as given by RHB in 1802. I have no useful information about Susanna & The Elders except that it was said to be by "Jordan" [Jordaens?] according to notes in my possession, and to have measured more than 8 ft x 7 ft.