Hannah's wedding at Colwick on 5 November 1728

Yesterday I visited the ruined church at Colwick, by the river Trent, just outside Nottingham. This was where, on 5 November 1728, Hannah Beaumont married Andrew Burnaby (Burneby in the Marriage Licence and Parish Register).

St.John's Colwick. 26 March 2022

Hannah of course was the youngest child of George, of Chaplethorpe. As is well known, her parents and grandparents all died in 1712 and 1713 when Hannah was nine or ten. Her oldest sister Jane married Abel Smith of Nottingham, the linen draper turned banker, and the Smiths took Hannah under their wing. In the Licence for the marriage she is described as of St.Peter's parish, Nottingham, which after all was where the Smiths lived.

Abel Smith had written on 29 June 1728 to Hannah's uncle, Thomas Beaumont at Chapelthorpe, saying that one Mr. Burnby, a young clergyman of Leics., was very Desirous to make his Address to sister Hannah, but that she is not willing to give him any further encouragement without advice of her Friends and in particular your Selfe to whom she has the greatest obligation. He has a general good character for a sober Honest Gentleman - (see Note).

I wonder if the family gathered at Colwick for a party. We'll never know. It was November 5th so a bonfire would have been appropriate.........

Colwick Hall - as rebuilt some years after Hannah's wedding.
The church is just out of shot to the left.

In due course Andrew Burnaby and Hannah had several children. It would be many years before the Beaumonts and Burnabys lost touch with one another. Hannah's nephew George Beaumont held the office of Vicar of Brampton (Huntingdonshire) from 1754 to 1756, surely thanks to Andrew Burnaby. Andrew was himself a clergyman, Rector of Asfordby, but I suspect Brampton was where he and Hannah lived.

And in the 1790s George Beaumont's son Richard would be involved in the affairs of Hannah and Andrew's daughter Anna Maria at Handsworth near Birmingham. Anna Maria had married Richard Walter of Birmingham, whose brother John was the Rector of Bingham and husband of Hannah's niece Susannah Beaumont.

• Thomas Beaumont of Chapelthorpe (d.1731)
• George Beaumont of Chapelthorpe (d.1712)
• Several incl 
• Jane (d.1743) (in 1713 married Abel Smith d.1756)
• George Beaumont of Darton (d.1735/6)
• incl
• Rev George Beaumont of Nottingham (d.1773)
• several incl
• Richard Beaumont of Birmingham (d.1828)
• Susannah Beaumont (in 1767 married Rev. John Walter, brother of Richard)
• Hannah Beaumont (in 1728 married Rev. Andrew Burnaby)
• several incl
• Anna Maria (d.1796 or 1797) (married Richard Walter (d.1788), brother of John)

(Note. Abel Smith was actually a co-trustee of Burnaby family property at that time, including Brampton (see eg Lincs REEVE 1/21/8), and estates in Huntingdonshire are referred to in his letter. He said Andrew Burnaby was young and in good health - in so many words, that Hannah might do a great deal worse.

Abel's letter must have been taken with other papers from Chapelthorpe to Darton, and thence eventually to Bretton, in which archive it was BEA/C3/B48/60). It is now in West Yorkshire Archives as WYW1849/1/12/316. It is not yet in the online catalogue, but the archivists kindly sent me a spreadsheet linking the old and new references (the name Burnaby was misread in the old catalogue). I have not seen this letter, but a transcript made by my late father when it was at Bretton is in this Archive Box 12/003).

EMB 27 March 2022

Inoculation against smallpox in the eighteenth century

I often wondered why both George and Frances Beaumont at Darton died in 1735 and early 1736 when he was under 40, and she only 31 or 32, and they were hardly living in poverty.

Then I read of an epidemic of smallpox at Nottingham, a place they must have visited. George had spent some of his youth there, in the household of his elder sister Jane, wife of the banker Abel Smith I. Indeed George's brother the clergyman Thomas settled in Nottingham, as did their sister Elizabeth, and the youngest sister remained with the Smiths until her marriage in 1728.

The epidemic that caused a lot of deaths in Nottingham was written about by Charles Deering in a work printed in 1736, An Account of an Improved Method of treating the Small Pocks, by C. Deering MD. 

Printed in Nottingham 1736

(Deering also refers to this outbreak in his History of Nottingham “Vetus et Nova” (based on work largely done c.1740)). 

This epidemic of smallpox hit Nottingham in 1736, between May and September. But there were deaths from it other parts of the country, a number being reported in 1735.

Quite recently I discovered a notice in a newspaper that made me think of this. A certain Mr Sutton was advertising in Manchester in December 1770 that he was offering inoculations by what he called "a new method." I think this was for smallpox. Mr Sutton said that in the years 67, 68, 69 and 70 he had inoculated over nine thousand patients, and he proceeded to give the names of some of them. The names included:

"Two children of [..blank..] Smith Esq., banker, Nottingham, [and] eight children of the Rev. Mr. Beaumont, at ditto." 

(Manchester Mercury & Harrop's General Advertiser, 18 December 1770).

Indeed my direct ancestor George, who was only little when his parents George & Frances of Darton died, who was Rector of St.Nicholas's in Nottingham from the end of 1766, and who was first cousin of the banker Abel Smith II, did have eight children at that time (his youngest was born only in 1772).

The notice doesn't say how the inoculations were administered, but they were not cheap - one to six guineas is what is said.

EMB 24 February 2022