(1) the letter of 28 December 1791 (see previous item);
(2) the apparent existence of a portrait of Chiverton Hartopp which might be by the same artist as portraits of some of the banking Smiths, and some of the Beaumonts (this is for another day).
So I looked at the history of the house. I found information which is definitely (in places) inaccurate or muddled, but I don't claim to solve all of the problems!
Here is a picture of this fine house taken in June 2018:-
c.1701 At the very beginning of the c18 Thomas Mansfield of West Leake buys the house then on the site.
1706 The house is inherited by Thomas Mansfield junior. It seems that he may have had it as a town house for some years and that eventually (my guess is c.1731) he sells it to Thomas Bennett (note 1).
c.1731 Thomas Bennett has been roped in by the Howe (Whig) faction to stand as a stop-gap Member of Parliament, as Lord Howe (Emanuel Scrope) has gone to Barbados. As Mr Bennett is a Leicestershire gentleman, I suppose he finds this house useful both as a residence and as helping to secure Nottinghamshire support.
The story that it was the town house of the Howes has been around for a long time. I think that means the political base, not a house the Howes owned or where they lived.
The deeds summary suggests the house is subject to a mortgage at this time, and though the actual documents may well never come to light, I would bet that the lender is Abel Smith, the emerging banker. Perhaps Howe money is involved somehow.
1738 Thomas Bennett dies childless and leaves what he calls the house wherein I now live at Nottingham to his sister (in-law) Mary Bennett for her life. His only surviving actual sibling is Elizabeth, a spinster who lives near Wrexham. The Bennetts are dying out. Their first cousins and nearest relatives are people called Hartopp, children of their aunt Arabella:- Chiverton Hartopp, two spinster sisters, and another sister, called Mrs Hacker.
[This paragraph added 12 August 2018] In Charles Deering's History of Nottingham, which was ready for publication in 1740 though not in fact published until eleven years later, is mention of the late Mr Bennet's house in Castle-gate amongst the gentlemen's houses of the town.
Thomas Bennett's will looks as if it was cobbled together late one night with the assistance of several glasses of Madeira and the Duke of Kingston, who witnessed it in person.
I think it gave Chiverton Hartopp a life interest in the house after Mary, and in fact he has a very special connection with it, in that his wife Catherine is the sister of Thomas Mansfield, former owner of the house. Thomas Mansfield and Abel Smith are Mr Bennett's executors. If the Hartopps had had a son, the house might have passed down that way, but they did not.
1744 It is called Madam Bennet's house on the 1744 Badder & Peat map; referring either to Mary or Elizabeth. At some point Mary dies, Mr Hartopp moves in, and old Elizabeth Bennett of Wrexham (now the real owner, or reversionary owner), who is the last of the Bennetts, pays for a family monument in Melton Mowbray church.
It suits Chiverton Hartopp to have a house in Nottingham. At the end of 1745 he becomes Major in the Light Cavalry Regiment the Duke of Kingston raises to help deal with the Scottish rebellion, and afterwards he gets an honorific post which takes him to Plymouth a good deal.
The seat occupied by Thomas Bennett has been again temporarily filled, this time by The Hon. John Mordaunt - who is Lt-Col in Kingston's Light Horse. Lord George Augustus Howe comes of age in 1745 and though he is away in the army his aunt, Lady Pembroke, wishes him to be elected at the next opportunity. Lady Pembroke (nee Howe) is in fact now the wife of the Hon Colonel Mordaunt.
[In fact (added this in May 2022!) she had married John Mordaunt back in October 1735 - since 1738 he has been holding the seat for her interest, and this presumably explains how he became involved in Kingston' Horse in 1745-6. This leaves me speculating whether he and Lady Pembroke may have perhaps leased the house from about 1738 as the headquarters of her political operation]
1747 Lord Howe becomes MP for Nottingham (Note 2).
1753 Elizabeth Bennett dies leaving only £100 to Major Hartopp. The Bennett estate at Welby (near Melton Mowbray) and all her property in Nottingham or Notts goes
with all the furniture plate and linen of my late brother Thomas Bennett Esquire deceased which were at the time of his decease in my chief or mansion house in the said town of Nottingham
to Hartopp's daughters.
1753-1754 Portraits of various people in this saga seem to have been done in 1753 or 1754. This is for another day!
1754 Chiverton Hartopp Esq., [of] Castlegate, votes for Lord Howe in 1754. No surprise that he voted so. The interesting thing is that he has a vote in Nottingham. I am not sure if a life interest would qualify for him for a vote, but he was given the freedom of the town (in June 1746, after Culloden). I suppose that that is the explanation, and that his connections helped. The election is a bitter and corrupt fight. Lord Howe is returned to Parliament. But he soon goes to America and is killed at Ticonderoga in early July 1758, aged only 33.
1759 Chiverton Hartopp dies. I have found no will, nor anything to suggest that at the time of his death he actually owned any real property in the full sense.
1760 Sale of the contents, and of the house. An Inventory refers to the fixtures to the Dwelling House or Out Offices belonging to the late Chiverton Hartopp Esq....... that is not proof of ownership of the house, though it has perhaps led people to assume so.
The sellers are, of course, the husbands of his daughters. One of the Hartopp girls has married (in 1754) a man called J.M. Heywood and the other (in 1758 - a few months before the news from Ticonderoga) the naval officer Richard lord Howe, who is the brother and now successor of Lord G A Howe.
I think that the property had devolved upon Elizabeth Bennett's executrix Arabella Myddleton (nee Hacker), and that the lawyers for the new Lord Howe and Mr Heywood would have ensured it was duly transmitted to them.
So the Howe connexion to the house now ends, with the sale to Valentine Stead, a wealthy man originally from Halifax.
1761 Valentine Stead dies, not long after buying the house. His widow Anne has it for the next ten years or so until she moves away (she remarries in 1771 at St.Nicholas' up the road - it is likely that George Beaumont conducted that ceremony, as he was Rector there then).
1775 William Stanford buys the house from Valentine Stead's son. William Stanford is one of Nottingham's wealthy business elite and is the nephew of a man called William Elliott, to whom in his youth he was apprenticed, and from whom he expects a large inheritance.
It is now, surely, that the house is remodelled, so calling it Stanford House is correct.
May 1788 W.E. Stanford (son of the owner) marries Frances (Fanny) Beaumont. Her brother Thomas conducts the ceremony, at their late father's former church. (Readers of Abigail Gawthern's Diary will remember that Fanny fell in the River Leen back in 1772, getting throughly wet but coming to no harm).
28 December 1791 Letter in verse from "TB" to Mrs W.E.Stanford, Castlegate, Nottingham (Box 18/307) (see previous piece). The sender being her brother. It is written from Bingham where other family members are gathered, and thanks her for sending some fish which they much enjoyed!
1792 William Stanford (senior) takes the name Elliott on his uncle's death.
1796 William Elliott (formerly Stanford) dies and his sons now take the surname Elliott as well, and that means so does Frances. In due course they move to Gedling House (which W.E. Elliott buys from Thomas Smith - see my earlier piece, on Land Tax etc). Frances had been born at Gedling though no doubt in a much humbler dwelling, when her father had been the curate there before he was Rector of St.Nicholas.
I haven't pursued the history of the Castlegate house after this.
Note 1. Miss V. Walker, the Nottingham librarian and archivist, may have seen the evidence in the deeds she summarised. To me it is not proved that the house Chiverton Hartopp occupied was the one that had belonged to Thomas Mansfield, but it seems overwhelmingly likely.
Note 2. I don't yet understand the events of 1747 when Lord George Augustus Howe first took a Nottingham seat. In May that year at a by-election he had been heavily defeated. The general election was only a month or so later. The Whig candidate was John Plumptre but the effect of Lord Howe standing was to split the Whig support base. Plumptre eventually withdrew in disgust, and I think that in the end there was no actual vote. A marriage was arranged between Lady Pembroke's ward and Abel Smith's son. This harmed Mr Plumptre, though publicly I think the Smiths themselves sat on the fence as they had customers on both sides. This then was a stitch-up between the Tory candidate Sir Charles Sedley, and Lady Pembroke on behalf of Lord Howe - who was himself in Flanders with the army.
I suppose that Major Hartopp would have been pleased to receive important people, or let them use the house. I really don't suppose that Lord Howe built a "magnificent mansion" in Castlegate, as has been widely stated.
Principal primary sources used:-
Summary from title deeds (Notts Archives DD/683/19); copy documents (M/16209-16213).
Will of Thomas Bennett (Notts Archives)
Will of Elizabeth Bennett of Croesnewydd (PRO)
Other things:-
"Mansfield [and Smith] -v- Hartopp [and Hacker and Bennett]" of c1738 (PRO) (not seen) looks like a settlement of affairs under Thomas Bennett's will.
Nottingham Borough Records, volume 6.
The 1754 Poll Book (Ecco Editions, reprint)
Nichols, Antiquities of Leics., makes a rare mistake, stating Major Hartopp to be the Bennetts' nephew. This is widely followed. But their father St.John Bennett was the brother of his mother Arabella. Both Bennett wills call him cousin.
"History of Parliament" - on Emanuel Scrope Howe (who did not stand in 1732, but became Governor of Barbados), Thomas Bennett, John Mordaunt, George Augustus Howe, John Plumptre (both father and son).
Numerous secondary works over the years. The "magnificent mansion" idea has been copied and pasted endlessly.
3 July 2018
1747 Lord Howe becomes MP for Nottingham (Note 2).
1753 Elizabeth Bennett dies leaving only £100 to Major Hartopp. The Bennett estate at Welby (near Melton Mowbray) and all her property in Nottingham or Notts goes
with all the furniture plate and linen of my late brother Thomas Bennett Esquire deceased which were at the time of his decease in my chief or mansion house in the said town of Nottingham
to Hartopp's daughters.
1753-1754 Portraits of various people in this saga seem to have been done in 1753 or 1754. This is for another day!
1754 Chiverton Hartopp Esq., [of] Castlegate, votes for Lord Howe in 1754. No surprise that he voted so. The interesting thing is that he has a vote in Nottingham. I am not sure if a life interest would qualify for him for a vote, but he was given the freedom of the town (in June 1746, after Culloden). I suppose that that is the explanation, and that his connections helped. The election is a bitter and corrupt fight. Lord Howe is returned to Parliament. But he soon goes to America and is killed at Ticonderoga in early July 1758, aged only 33.
1759 Chiverton Hartopp dies. I have found no will, nor anything to suggest that at the time of his death he actually owned any real property in the full sense.
1760 Sale of the contents, and of the house. An Inventory refers to the fixtures to the Dwelling House or Out Offices belonging to the late Chiverton Hartopp Esq....... that is not proof of ownership of the house, though it has perhaps led people to assume so.
The sellers are, of course, the husbands of his daughters. One of the Hartopp girls has married (in 1754) a man called J.M. Heywood and the other (in 1758 - a few months before the news from Ticonderoga) the naval officer Richard lord Howe, who is the brother and now successor of Lord G A Howe.
I think that the property had devolved upon Elizabeth Bennett's executrix Arabella Myddleton (nee Hacker), and that the lawyers for the new Lord Howe and Mr Heywood would have ensured it was duly transmitted to them.
So the Howe connexion to the house now ends, with the sale to Valentine Stead, a wealthy man originally from Halifax.
1761 Valentine Stead dies, not long after buying the house. His widow Anne has it for the next ten years or so until she moves away (she remarries in 1771 at St.Nicholas' up the road - it is likely that George Beaumont conducted that ceremony, as he was Rector there then).
1775 William Stanford buys the house from Valentine Stead's son. William Stanford is one of Nottingham's wealthy business elite and is the nephew of a man called William Elliott, to whom in his youth he was apprenticed, and from whom he expects a large inheritance.
It is now, surely, that the house is remodelled, so calling it Stanford House is correct.
May 1788 W.E. Stanford (son of the owner) marries Frances (Fanny) Beaumont. Her brother Thomas conducts the ceremony, at their late father's former church. (Readers of Abigail Gawthern's Diary will remember that Fanny fell in the River Leen back in 1772, getting throughly wet but coming to no harm).
28 December 1791 Letter in verse from "TB" to Mrs W.E.Stanford, Castlegate, Nottingham (Box 18/307) (see previous piece). The sender being her brother. It is written from Bingham where other family members are gathered, and thanks her for sending some fish which they much enjoyed!
1792 William Stanford (senior) takes the name Elliott on his uncle's death.
1796 William Elliott (formerly Stanford) dies and his sons now take the surname Elliott as well, and that means so does Frances. In due course they move to Gedling House (which W.E. Elliott buys from Thomas Smith - see my earlier piece, on Land Tax etc). Frances had been born at Gedling though no doubt in a much humbler dwelling, when her father had been the curate there before he was Rector of St.Nicholas.
I haven't pursued the history of the Castlegate house after this.
But Added this 14 July 2020:- It seems clear that W.E.Elliott's younger brother John ("Colonel Elliott" in some references) lived in the house for ten or more years prior to his death in 1823. Also that their sister Mrs Burnside lived there when she died in 1824. W.E.Elliott lived (at Gedling) until 1843 or 1844 and the house was apparently let, being occupied by one John Morley at the time of the 1841 census. After 1844 the house came to the Burnside family, and was sold. This note compresses a lot of information into one paragraph and should be treated with caution.
Note 1. Miss V. Walker, the Nottingham librarian and archivist, may have seen the evidence in the deeds she summarised. To me it is not proved that the house Chiverton Hartopp occupied was the one that had belonged to Thomas Mansfield, but it seems overwhelmingly likely.
Note 2. I don't yet understand the events of 1747 when Lord George Augustus Howe first took a Nottingham seat. In May that year at a by-election he had been heavily defeated. The general election was only a month or so later. The Whig candidate was John Plumptre but the effect of Lord Howe standing was to split the Whig support base. Plumptre eventually withdrew in disgust, and I think that in the end there was no actual vote. A marriage was arranged between Lady Pembroke's ward and Abel Smith's son. This harmed Mr Plumptre, though publicly I think the Smiths themselves sat on the fence as they had customers on both sides. This then was a stitch-up between the Tory candidate Sir Charles Sedley, and Lady Pembroke on behalf of Lord Howe - who was himself in Flanders with the army.
I suppose that Major Hartopp would have been pleased to receive important people, or let them use the house. I really don't suppose that Lord Howe built a "magnificent mansion" in Castlegate, as has been widely stated.
Principal primary sources used:-
Summary from title deeds (Notts Archives DD/683/19); copy documents (M/16209-16213).
Will of Thomas Bennett (Notts Archives)
Will of Elizabeth Bennett of Croesnewydd (PRO)
Other things:-
"Mansfield [and Smith] -v- Hartopp [and Hacker and Bennett]" of c1738 (PRO) (not seen) looks like a settlement of affairs under Thomas Bennett's will.
Nottingham Borough Records, volume 6.
The 1754 Poll Book (Ecco Editions, reprint)
Nichols, Antiquities of Leics., makes a rare mistake, stating Major Hartopp to be the Bennetts' nephew. This is widely followed. But their father St.John Bennett was the brother of his mother Arabella. Both Bennett wills call him cousin.
"History of Parliament" - on Emanuel Scrope Howe (who did not stand in 1732, but became Governor of Barbados), Thomas Bennett, John Mordaunt, George Augustus Howe, John Plumptre (both father and son).
Numerous secondary works over the years. The "magnificent mansion" idea has been copied and pasted endlessly.
3 July 2018
