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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Egerton Castle’s 1896 two-volume edition of The Jerningham Letters (1780–1843), Excerpts from the Correspondence and Diaries of the Honourable Lady Jerningham and of her Daughter Lady Bedingfield was based on the sixteen bound volumes of manuscript letters received and kept by Lady Bedingfield. These volumes are now housed at the University of Birmingham. Many of the letters from Lady Jerningham, her family and friends, were cut drastically for publication; a reader of the manuscript volumes will see Egerton Castle’s red and blue editorial marks on the letters themselves. Other letters, dealing with matchmaking, finances, family problems, the upbringing of children, and religious vocations, were omitted altogether. One striking omission is the series of letters from Lady Bedingfield’s youngest daughter Charlotte, ranging from the time in 1815 when she was a pensioner at Hammersmith making her first communion, to her announcement in 1824 that she had just been voted to her profession at Bruges. She called herself the happiest of Lady Bedingfield’s children and was an Augustinian Canoness at Bruges for over fifty years.
1 The Hon. Frances, Lady Jerningham, 1747–1825, was the wife of Sir William Jerningham, 6th Baronet. 1736–1809, of Cossey, Norfolk. She was the eldest daughter of Henry, 11th Viscount Dillon and his wife. Lady Charlotte Lee, eldest daughter of George Henry, 2nd Earl of Litchfield. Sir William and Lady Jerningham had four surviving children: Charlotte Georgiana. 1770–1854, m. 1795 Sir Richard Bedingfield. 5th Baronet. of Oxburgh, Norfolk: George William, 1771–1851, m.1799 Frances SuIyard and became 8th Baron Stafford upon the reversal of the attainder on Sir William Howard, Viscount Stafford; William Charles, 1772–1820, m. firstly in 1803 Anne Wright, m. secondly 1816 Anne Moore: and Edward, 1774–1822, m.1804 Emily Middleton.
2 Sir Richard and Lady Bedingfield’s children were Frances b. 19 April 1796; Matilda b. 8 April 1797; Agnes b. 31 August 1798; Henry b. 10 May 1800; Charlotte b. 9 January 1802; Charles b. 5 September 1803; Edward Richard b. 20 January 1805; and Felix b. 12 August 1808. Frances m. the 11th Lord Petre 1815 and d. in childbirth 29 January 1822, not long before her sister tried the life at Bruges: Matilda m. George Stanley Cary of Follaton 1820 and d. 1881; Agnes m. Thomas Molineux-Seel 1823 during her sister’s postulancy and d. 1870; Henry, 6th Bt., m. Margaret Paston 1826 and d. 1862; Charles, who became a hussar in the Austrian army as his sister’s vocation was coming on, m. Matilda Waterton and d. 1870; Edward Richard became a midshipman and drowned 2 October 1823; and Felix became a barrister and then Colonial Secretary for Mauritius and in 1849 m. Mary Woodward; he d. 1884. See CRS vol 7, p. 237.
3 Of George’s children, whom Lady Jerningham thought far from likely to become nuns, Laura Stafford Jerningham Petre entered the Society of Notre Dame de Namur as a widow in 1850, and in 1875 became Superior of the convent at Namur. She endowed the order with enough money to build schools and colleges in England. Of William’s children, Louisa entered the Franciscan convent at Taunton in 1828 and was elected Abbess in 1847.
4 BU letter 207, January 1802.
5 Castle, vol. 1, p. 338. The Duke d’Angouleme, at some time before March 1809, had heard Mass said by the Abbé Pureville at the Bedingfields’ Yarmouth house.
6 At the Stafford Record Office and Birmingham University there are about forty letters mostly in French from Soeur Ste. Thérèse to Lady Jerningham and Lady Bedingfield, covering the illness and death of Soeur St. François, the settling into the school of Matilda Bedingfield at age five, the progress of several French emigrée girls whose education Lady Jerningham was sponsoring, and news of the travels of French priests at the time of the Peace of Amiens. Soeur Ste. Felicité was the schoolmistress directly in charge of Matilda and other young pensioners, and took care of them with maternal tenderness.
7 BU letter 252, 28 August 1802.
8 BU letter 404, 11 May 1806, and letter from Sister Mary Magdalen Sheldon, OSB, St. Mary’s Priory, Princethorpe, 1958, to the Right Hon. the Viscount Dillon KM, consulted in Heslop Room, University Library, Birmingham University. The Montargis Benedictines moved from Bodney to Heath to Orell Mount and then to Princethorpe, where they built a convent like the one they had left behind in Montargis. In 1966 they moved to St. Mary’s Priory, Fernham.
9 Castle, vol. 1, pp. 345–348.
10 BU letter 554 from Lady Jerningham in London to Lady Bedingfield at Yarmouth, 8 Nov 1810, quoting her son Edward. It is not clear how many of the children were at home at this time.
11 Henry Bedingfield, Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk: The First 500 Years, which gives the date as ‘about 1810.’ The Bedingfields and their eight children were accompanied by ‘their rather fierce nurse Madame Colio, who had escaped the French Revolution.’ Oxburgh was let for a short time to Lord Mountjoy, afterwards created Earl of Blessington. Henry himself was sent to Stonyhurst.
12 Guy Toussaint Carron, b. 1760, a French priest, had in September 1792 been exiled to Jersey for refusng to take the oath of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. On Jersey, populated by English Protestants and a number of French émigrés, he opened Catholic churches and schools, as well as a hospital, an orphanage, and a library. Carron came to London in August 1796, where, among other good works, he established a boarding school for sixty girls and one for eighty boys, as well as poor schools at Somers Town. He was ‘by far the most striking personality among the exiled priests, known and respected by Protestants and Catholics alike,’ (Ward, Bernard, The Dawn of the Catholic Revival in England, 1781–1803, London, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909, vol. 2), pp. 173–175.Google Scholar
13 Dame Maura Carrington had come as a secular teacher to Hammersmith in 1796, and was probably professed in 1798. Dunkirk, p. 138. The nuns had to put aside their Religious habit on the first Sunday of Advent 1815, at the order of Bishop Poynter, because ‘calumnies spread abroad against the superior and monks of the Trappist monastery at Lulworth’ had brought suspicion on all religious communities in England. The nuns resumed their habits on 2 July 1816. Dunkirk, pp. 140–141.
14 BU letter 900, 11 September 1815; BU letter 901, 18 September 1815; BU letter 902, 20 September 1815.
15 BU letter 908, 2 October 1815, BU letter 907 2 Oct 1815.
16 Dame Frances Markham and Lady Abbess Placida Messenger were the only survivors of the fifteen Benedictine choir nuns who had returned from Dunkirk after the French Revolution. Dunkirk, p. 140. When in June 1796 the English Benedictine monastery at Pontoise was dissolved because of tremendous debts burdening the house, most of the nuns entered the Dunkirk house (Dom, Basil Whelan, Historic English Convents of Today, London, Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1936), p. 131 Google Scholar. Dame Frances Markham’s sister, Mrs. Marmaduke Tunstall, founded the first English house of the Order of the Visitation; this community, visited by the Jerningham and Bedingfield families, was housed at Acton, Middlesex, 19 March 1804–1810; Shepton Mallet, Somerset, 1810–1832; Westbury on Trym, Glos., 1832–1896; Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, 1896–1948; Castle Cary, Somerset, 1948–1959; and Waldron, Sussex, 1959 to the present (Dom, Adam Hamilton, Chronicle of the English Augustinian Canonesses Regular of the Lateran, at St. Monica’s in Louvain, vol. two pp. 11–12.Google Scholar Letter of 5 December 1992, Sister Mary Joanna Callender, V.H.M., Archivist, Visitation Convent, Waldron, near Heathfield, Sussex TN21 ORX.
17 BU letter 910, 4 October 1815.
18 BU letter 911,5 October 1815.
19 BU letter 914, 10 October 1815.
20 BU letter 917.
21 BU letter 918, 25 October 1815.
22 BU letter 923, 6 Nov 1815.
23 BU letter 929, 29 Nov. 1815.
24 BU letter 933, Dec. 1815.
25 BU letter 936, 1 January 1816.
26 ‘Bath proving still too expensive, it was deemed prudent to go abroad,’ Henry Bedingfield, quoting his ancestor Henry Bedingfield, the future 6th Baronet, in Oxburgh Hall: The First 500 Years. The eldest daughter Frances was now Lady Petre, and Henry, the heir, was at Stonyhurst. Once abroad, Lady Bedingfield found schools for her sons Charles, Edward, and Felix at Alost, Melle, Amiens, and Ghent.
27 Sister Sales was Frances Henrietta Jerningham, daughter of Henry Jerningham, one of the children of Sir William Jerningham’s uncle Henry Jerningham and Mary l’Epine. Sister Sales’s father had settled in Maryland, where she was born in 1745.
28 Bruges records show five Bedingfield canonesses at Bruges before Charlotte Bedingfield. Helen Bedingfield, Sr. Augustina, b. 1604, prof. Louvain 1622, 3rd Prioress at Bruges 12 Nov. 1640, d. 11 August 1661; and her sister Elizabeth Bedingfield, Sr. Augustina, b. 1610, m. Sir Alexander Hamilton, widowed, prof, at Bruges 1674 at age 64, d. 7 Oct. 1683. Helen and Elizabeth were two of the eleven daughters of Francis Bedingfield of Redlingfield and Katherine Fortescue who became nuns. Their niece Mary Bedingfield, Sr. Mary, prof, at Bruges 23 April 1652, became 4th Prioress 16 August 1661, d. 13 May 1693. Mary Bedingfield was the daughter of John Bedingfield and Suzanne Wyborne. Her two nieces Mary and Genofeva Bedingfield, daughters of Francis Bedingfield and Mary Paston of Appleton, became Sr. Mary (prof. 1 August 1678, d. 13 January 1712), and Sr. Agnes (prof. 15 July 1687, d. 11 August 1725). Bruges.
29 BU letter 997, 26 Dec 1816 and 2 Jan 1817.
30 BU letter 1046, July 1817.
31 See Williams.
32 Eugenie and Antoinette de Gramont d’Aster were nuns at Amiens by July 1808; their widowed mother, Mme de Gramont d’Aster, 48, formerly lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette, was a ‘docile novice’ at Amiens in January 1814. In April 1814, alarmed that Louis XVIII would remember her, Madame de Gramont d’Aster begged permission to make her vows at once. Louis XVIII called her to court, too late. Her daughter Eugenie was Mother Assistant.
33 Charlotte Goold was the daughter of George Goold and Lady Charlotte Browne. Lady Charlotte was Lady Jerningham’s niece, daughter of Valentine Browne, 1st Earl of Kenmare and his first wife, the Hon. Charlotte Dillon, who had died in 1782. Lady Charlotte’s glee at being given permission at last to marry George Goold, who did not have a great fortune but whom she loved, will be remembered from the first volume of the published letters, Castle, vol. 1, p. 217. Money continued to be a problem for the Goolds. Mr. Goold became Sir George GooId of Old Court, Co. Cork.
34 BU letter 1107, 14 August 1818.
35 See below. Louisa Jerningham, b. 14 July 1808, was the daughter of William Jerningham and his first wife, Anna Wright, now deceased. William, who married secondly Anne Moore, had moved his family to Ghent in September 1817.
36 BU letter 1108, 23 August 1818. In 1843–1844 Mother Charlotte Goold of the Society of the Sacred Heart wore herself out trying to establish a school on her cousin Lord Clifford’s property at Cannington. She was sent by Mother Barat to the Sacred Heart foundation at Berrymead Priory. See Williams, which describes the Cannington foundation as well as the Amiens school.
37 BU letter 1115, 24 September 1818.
38 BU letter 1116, 4 October 1818.
39 BU letter 1120, 18 Oct 1818.
40 BU letter 1124, 1 November 1818.
41 BU letter 1128, 15 November 1818. Mere Ducis was the daughter of the French dramatist Jean-François Ducis, 1733–1816, who had adapted the plays of Shakespeare for the French stage. His original works include Oedipe chez Admete (1778) and Abufar (1795). Madame Ducis taught the children at Sacred Heart to read classical poetry aloud. (Williams and Encyclopedia Britannica.)
42 BU letter 1143, 24 January 1819.
43 BU letter 1146, 2 February 1819.
44 BU letter 1151, 11 March 1819. By April 1819 Edward was at Sedgeley Park working hard. Soon after he became a midshipman. See BU letter 1164, 23 April 1819.
45 BU letter 1166, 29 April 1819.
46 Egerton Castle’s index entry for ‘Bedingfield, Charlotte Elizabeth’ (vol. two, p. 411) errs in placing Charlotte Bedingfield on pp. 144 and 145 of Volume two, in August 1819, blushing over her cards before the Duke of Sussex at the Holkam house party. This was instead Charlotte Georgina Jerningham, Charlotte Bedingfield’s cousin, eldest daughter of Sir George Jerningham and the former Frances Sulyarde. Born on 8 October 1800, Charlotte Georgina Jerningham was to marry Thomas Fraser of Lovat on 6 August 1823. Agnes, who was at the HoIkham house party with her aunt and cousin, was recovering from a broken betrothal to Charles Nevili, heir to Nevill Holt. Mr. Neville m. 1822 a Protestant, Lady Georgiana Bingham, dau. of Richard, 2nd Earl of Lucan and Lady Elizabeth Belasyse (former wife of Bernard, Duke of Norfolk). BU letters 1171, 1177, 1184.
47 BU letter 1215, 31 Oct 1819. By the middle of November 1819, Edward Bedingfield, fourteen, was settled on board the Phaeton under a Captain Montague. BU letter 1221, 18 November 1819.
48 BU letter 1248, 4 March 1820.
49 Bruges 1990.
50 BU letter 1373, 29 May 1821. Elizabeth Anne Mary Petre [d. 4 March 1848], 4th daughter of Robert Edward, 10th Lord Petre, and sister of the Lord Petre referred to here, m. 15 May 1817 Michael Henry Mary Blount, Esq., of Maple Durham [b. 1789], and eventually had eight surviving children: Michael Charles, Charles John, John, Robert Martin, Mary Catherine, Charlotte Elizabeth, Georgiana Frances, and Henrietta Matilda. Another Mrs. Blount connected to the Jerningham family was the first Mrs. William Jerningham’s sister, Eliza Wright [b. 1782, d. Feb. 1826], daughter of Thomas Wright, Esq., of Fitzwalters, Essex, and his wife Lucretia Havers, who m. in 1821 William Blount, Esq., of Orleton, Hereford [b. 1799], and had issue William. Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1882.
51 BU letter 1379, 19 June 1821. On the page facing p. 167 in Castle, vol. two, is a drawing by Matilda Bedingfield which gives some idea of the brilliant company frequented by the Bedingfields. Titled ‘A Tea Party at Ghent (1820),’ it depicts the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, her sister the Duchess of Clarence, their mother the Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen, their brother the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, Baron Beulwitz, two Dames d’Honneur, ‘Mama’—Lady Bedingfield, and Agnes and Matilda Bedingfield. Lady Bedingfield’s friendship in these court circles brought her the post of Lady in Waiting to Queen Adelaide, formerly Duchess of Clarence.
52 Bruges 1990.
53 BU letter 1420.
54 Sister Albana Paterson was a convert to the Catholic faith. For a description of her Protestant father’s aid to the Bruges nuns on their leaving England in 1802, see Link, p. 398.
55 According to Daumont, p. 546, the Prioress at this time was Mother Mary Monica Hill, who served for the three years 1820–1823. p. 411: Mother Hill had lived in the world until, on becoming a widow at age twenty-eight, she converted and entered the English cloister where her Religious life was marked by a devotion to the Divine Office. She was struck by blindness, but, it is said, blessed God for it, happy to be able to meditate longer in prayer.
56 Bruges 1990.
57 BU letter 1456, February 1822.
58 BU letter 1482, March 1822.
59 BU letter 1483, March 1822. In addition to the five Bedingfield canonesses mentioned above, there had been six Jerninghams. Two were daus. of Sir Francis Jerningham of Costessey Hall, 3rd Baronet, and Anne, dau. of Sir George Blount of Goldingham (d. 1730): Ann Jerningham, Sr. Winefred, prof. 4 Dec. 1698, d. 2 August 1741; and Mary Ann Jerningham, Sr. Mary Theresa, prof. 8 October 1699, d. 27 May 1757. Three were daughters of Henry Jerningham and Mary, dau. of Nicolas Jouquet de l’Epine (d. 1746): Ann Jerningham, Sr. Ann Teresa, prof. 4 December 1735, d. 28 December 1796 at Hengrave Hall; Elizabeth Jerningham, Sr. Mary Agnes, prof. 8 October 1745, d. 30 March 1807; and Edwardina Jerningham, Sr. Francis Joseph, prof. 29 May 1752, d. 22 June 1796. The sole survivor was their niece Henrietta Frances Jerningham, Sr. Mary Sales, dau. of their brother Henry Jerningham of Maryland, prof. 2 July 1777, d. 17 Ocober 1824. Bruges.
60 BU letter 1501, 12 April 1822. The Miss Watertons were at Bruges in June 1822, BU letter 1538.
61 BU letter 1505, 17 April 1822.
62 BU letter 1508, 23 April 1822.
63 BU letter 1509 BU, 24 April 1822.
64 BU letter 1521, 15 May 1822.
65 BU letter 1523, 15 May 1822.
66 Bruges 1990.
67 BU letter 1536, 7 June 1822.
68 Lady Jerningham’s housekeeper, Mrs. Clarke, had been at Cossey at the time of Sir William Jerningham’s death in July 1809. In May and June 1822, she and Emily Jerningham’s servant, Caroline, nursed Emily, and ‘this most good and religious woman was taken ill with the same disorder on the 9th of June and died on the 18.’ Castle, vol. two, p. 249. BU letter 1539, 21 June 1822, Sir Richard Bedingfield in Ghent to Lady Bedingfield in London: ‘Poor Mrs. Clarke! I was afraid it would end in her losing her life. Had not your mother been overwhelmed by the greater afflictions, she would have been most keenly hurt at the death of such an old and faithful servant, and as it is, I daresay she will feel a great deal, when she reflects a moment how much attached that poor woman was to her, and to him whose loss we all so much deplore.’
69 BU letter 1538, 17 June 1822.
70 BU letter 1539, 21 June 1822.
71 As noted above, the first English foundation of the French Order of the Visitation. The nuns had moved from Acton, Middlesex, in 1810 when the community became too large for the house there. The house at Shepton Mallet was in a low, damp situation, and proved unhealthy to the young sisters, who developed TB. Letter of 5 December 1992, Visitation Convent, Waldron.
72 BU letter 1546, 19 July 1822.
73 Bruges 1990.
74 See below, BU letter 1684, 3 February 1824: the Novice Mistress, Sister Elizabeth Howell, was one of three Howell sisters who were nuns at Bruges.
75 Up until 1644 the Bruges nuns rose at midnight to say Matins and Lauds. In Charlotte Bedingfield’s time, in fact from 1645 to 1900, they rose at 3:30 a.m. and said Matins at 4 a.m. Later, Matins and Lauds were recited the last thing at night before retiring, and the nuns rose at 4:45 a.m. Link, p. 262.
76 Another description of the Bruges postulant’s habit can be found in Monica Baldwin’s I Leap Over the Wall. Monica Baldwin was Sister Mary Cuthbert, Canoness Regular of St. Augustine at Bruges, Hayward’s Heath, and St. Monica’s Priory, Hoddesdon, where she left Religious life in October 1941 (Bruges 1990). Link has a picture of this habit opposite p. 143.
77 BU letter 1576, 13 November 1822.
78 BU letter 1577, 19 Nov 1822.
79 See Camm.
80 BU letter 1584, 26 December 1822. Camilla Stanley Cary, niece of Sister Mary Agnes, was born 21 October 1821 to George Stanley Cary of Follaton and his wife, Matilda Bedingfield. Camilla became ‘the popular and amiable’ friend of Egerton Castle, editor of The Jerningham Letters. In September 1896, at the time of publication of the two-volume Castle edition dedicated to her, the Hon. Lady Jerningham’s great-granddaughter was nearing her 75th birthday. As noted below, three of her sisters were canonesses at Bruges.
81 BU letter 1593, 1 June [1823].
82 BU letter 1544, n.d. but classified in the Catalogue as having been written in July 1822. However, the reference to Charlotte Jerningham’s impending marriage places it in 1823.
83 Three of Matilda’s seven daughters took the veil at Bruges. Their names in religion were Sister Agnes Joseph, professed 1846; Sister Mary Matilda, 1852; Sister Agnes Austin, 1855. Bruges 1990.
84 Siyietter 1624, 23 September 1823.
85 BU letter 1635, Oct. 1823.
86 BU letter 1650, 1 November 1823.
87 Daumont, p. 546, says that Mother Mary Clare Moore was Prioress 1810–1820 and 1823–1826. She was zealous for the maintenance of observances and showed admirable patience in the face of trials. She died in 1845. Daumont, p. 411.
88 BU letter 1659, 27 Nov 1823.
89 BU letter 1667, 2 Jan 1824.
90 BU letter 1679, 30 January 1824.
91 An Elizabeth Howell, who became Sister Clementina, was the first novice clothed in England in refugee days at Hengrave Hall. Sister Clementina Howell and Sister Sales Jerningham were among the small party of nuns from Hengrave who with the chaplain Mr. Oliver first came back to Bruges in July 1802. See Link p. 383, 396. See also below, BU letter 1762, 30 November 1824, where Sister Mary Agnes says that Sister Elizabeth Howell was her Novice Mistress.
92 BU letter 1684, 3 February 1824.
93 Castle, vol. 2, p. 295, letter of 21 May 1824. There are letters addressed to Lady Bedingfield in Lovendighem on 11 June 1824; in Paris on 3 August 1824; and in London on 6 September 1824. See Catalogue.
94 BU letter 1724,18 September 1824. All the material that follows, up until the death of Sister Sales, comes from this letter.
95 BU letter 1724, 18 September 1824.
96 BU letter 1759, 30 October 1824.
97 BU letter 1756, 20 October 1824.
98 BU letter 1762, 30 November 1824.
99 Bruges 1990.
100 Castle, vol. two, p. 301.
101 Castle, vol. two, p. 302.
102 Betham, p. 223.
103 Betham, p. 225.
104 By this time the Prioress was Mother Mary Austin Nyren, who served from 1826 to 1835. She had great intellectual powers, and edifying patience in the face of physical and mental sufferings up to her death in 1848. Daumont p. 411.
105 Bruges 1990.
106 See Link, p. 442. The royal party included the Queen of the Belgians, Lord Liverpool, Lord Aberdeen, Lord Charles Wellesley, Lady Canning, Sir Hamilton and Lady Seymour, the Bishop and Governor of Bruges, and the Burgomaster, Baron de Pelichy. Queen Victoria ‘seemed altogether pleased and expressed her admiration of the richness and precision of the children’s singing. The house was decorated with evergreens and flowers, but all was in perfect simplicity and neatness which became the Convent better than any other decoration. An account of the visit was inserted in the newspaper called The Tablet.’ Daumont, pp. 411–412, says that the Prioress of the time was Mother Mary Fidelis Gray, who served from 1835 to her death in 1849. Mother Gray was exceptionally kind and much loved by her daughters. She also is remembered for having had built the little wing comprising the apartment of the Prioress and the parlours.
107 Mother Ann Teresa Quick was Prioress from 1849 to 1876; she died in 1880. In 1853 Mother Quick enlarged the school. Daumont, p. 412.
108 Bruges 1990.
109 Bruges 1990.
110 Bruges 1990.
111 The children of William Jerningham and Anne Wright were Lucretia Jerningham b. 10 August 1804; Edmund William b. 5 Sept. 1805; Arthur William b. 26 Feb. 1807; Louisa Mary b. 14 July 1808; William Charles b. 28 Nov. 1809, d. 25 Dec. 1809; Gertrude Frances b. 31 July 1811; Frederick William b. 1 August 1813. The letters indicate that their mother never recovered her health after the birth of Frederick. She died almost exactly a year after his birth, on 26 August 1814.
112 Thomas Havers, Esq., of Thelton Hall, Norfolk, and his wife Catherine Dutry, had eleven children: (1) Thomas, the heir, who m. Elizabeth Cliffe and had six sons: Thomas, Robert, Edward, Richard, Henry, and William and four daughters: Eliza, Lucretia, Harriott, and Charlotte; (2) John; (3) William; (4) Edward; (5) Catherine, m. Francis Philip Bedingfield, Esq., of Ditchingham, Norfolk; (6) Mary, m. Jeremiah Norris, Esq., of CoIney Hall, Norfolk; (7) Lucretia, m. Thomas Wright, Esq., Banker, of Henrietta Street, London, and Fitzwalters, Essex [who d. 1818 after three marriages], and had three children: Thomas William Wright, who in spring 1820 sold his share in the bank for 20,000 pounds and an annuity of 1,200 pounds, and in November 1820 parted with the estate of Fitzwalters for three pounds; Anne Wright, who m. William Charles Jerningham; and Elizabeth Wright [d. 6 Feb. 1826], who at age thirty-nine m. William Blount, age twenty-one, of Orleton Hall, Hereford and Orches Hill, Bucks; (8) Henrietta Maria; (9) Rosa Lelia, m. John Needham, Esq., of Bickham, Somerset; (10) Anna; and (11) Maria Henrietta. The widow of Thomas Wright, banker, of Henrietta Street and Fitzwalters, Essex, who in the Jerningham Letters is referred to as the Comtesse de Front, is in the index to the Diary of the Blue Nuns named Mary Bostock, of the Bostocks of Whixhall, Shropshire, a family of physicians. Mary Bostock was herself married three times: to Sir Thomas Fleetwood, seventh and last Bt. of Calwich, who d.s.p. at Bath 3 Dec. 1802; to Count d’Aglie, the Sardinian Ambassador; and to Thomas Wright. Landed Gentry, ‘Havers of White Hill,’ and CRS vol. 8, Diary of the Blue Nuns, index, ‘Wright,’ ‘Blount,’ and ‘Bostock.’
113 Woodchester.
114 Handlist.
115 Woodchester.
116 Records of school girls of the English Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre at New Hall, Essex, show that ‘The 2 Miss Wrights of Fitz Walters arrived the 8th of October 1799… They left us the 25th of July 1801,’ CRS 17, p. 172.
117 Before William’s marriage to Anna Wright her father asked that William go to confession ‘that he may be in the habits of a Christian before he gives up his daughter to him,’ [BU letter 301, September 1803] and that the couple have between them £2000 income, or a capital of £20,000. Lady Jerningham wrote: ‘Miss Wright is a most pleasing little girl, her love has softened and polished her, she appears most overcome with sentimental feeling in the present circumstances. Her love for William, her fear for her mother, her respect for this family and a very pretty little face and figure encloses all this sentiment. She appears much more what would have pleased Edward than William.’ [BU letter 278, 22 April 1803]. Poor Mrs. Wright died during a brutal operation in June 1803, not long before her daughter’s wedding at Fitzwalter.
118 BU letter 893, 10 August 1815.
119 ‘There certainly cannot be any objection to a reasonable well behaved Catholic young woman who has sufficient for to be of no incumbrance and who will I hope make his home comfortable and is very presentable anywhere. Her size which looking to outward appearance might be objected to, is in his eyes a perfection. She has had education and will I dare say feel the advantage of the connection and be attached to him. I feel more comfortable in the idea of it than in his remaining single,’ BU letter 908, 2 Oct 1815.
120 Lady Jerningham thought it was ‘highly necessary for Lucretia to be removed to some regular place such as has been chosen for her. She will otherways grow too disagreeable and her poor father who doats upon her has the good sense to wish to make this sacrifice for her good. The aunt resists, but I think it will be carried,’ BU letter 987, 27 November 1816.
121 BU letter 1108, 23 August 1818.
122 BU letter 1171, 8 July 1819.
123 Catalogue, p. 81, referring to BU letter 1188, 9 August 1819.
124 BU letter 1215, 31 Oct 1819.
125 Sister Albana had taken the name of Alban Butler, who had been instrumental in her conversion. Her father, a Protestant, helped the nuns go back to Bruges in 1802, hiring a handsome vessel to transport them. See Link, pp. 380, 398.
126 BU letter 1297, 26 October 1820.
127 BU letter 1348, 25 February 1821.
128 BU letter 1351, March 1821.
129 BU letter 1380, dated ‘31st of June’, 1821.
130 BU letter 1397, 7 September 1821, in which Louisa quoted what the nuns had written in her book.
131 BU letter 1456, February 1822.
132 See above, Charlotte’s description, from BU letter 1482, March 1822.
133 Mrs. Jerningham had had a difficult birth in 1818, and the child seems to have died, for no mention is made of it in Burke’s Peerage. In 1820 she lost her husband. In the summer of 1822 she agonized over the illness and death of her friend Hugo Smythe, and tried to soothe the anguish of his wife, the former Lucy Sulyard. BU letters 1099, 9 June 1818; 1281, 6 October 1820; 1516, 9 May 1822.
134 Lady Mary, daughter of George, 1st Marquess of Buckingham, sister of the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, was born in 1797 and in 1811 married James Everard Arundel, who succeeded as Lord Arundel of Wardourin 1817. Debrett’s Peerage, 1831. See for instance Castle, vol. two, p. 22: 26 June 1812: Lady Mary Arundell, wearing mourning for her mother Lady Buckingham, who had died in March 1812, was walking about with her husband at Lord Clifford’s while Emily Jerningham played the piano well enough to please the Prince of Wales.
135 BU letter 1501, 12 April 1822. One of Lady Jerningham’s refugee Blue nuns was also at Taunton, now professed a Franciscan of the Third Order: the convert vicar’s daughter Elizabeth Edwards. Sister Joseph Edwards of the Paris Blue nuns had been Novice Mistress Mother Mary Ursula’s only success. Mother Mary Ursula was Lady Anastasia Stafford-Howard, through whom at her death in 1807 the succession to the attainted barony of Stafford passed to her heir, Sir William Jerningham. M. Ursula had been Abbess before she was novice mistress. See CRS vol. 8, Diary of the Blue Nuns, or Order of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady, at Paris, 1658–1810.
136 BU letter 1505, April 17, 1822.
137 See above, BU letter 1521, 15 May 1822.
138 BU letter 1523, Sister Albana Patterson at Bruges to Lady Bedingfield, 15 May 1822: ‘My Dear Madam, A letter from Mrs. W. Jerningham dated the 2nd of May gives me reason to suppose she had not received my last to her, as she repeats her [devise?] of Miss Lucretia returning here after spending some days with your Ladyship, a thing I had positively assured her could not be granted; informing her at the same time that the person I proposed as a proper conductor could equally receive her daughter from you as from hence. What she will determine I know not; finding her anxious disposition renders her misterious, in seeming to express herself confidentially, but as I hate mistery in triffles as much as I value prudence, I can only adhere to what I have clearly announced to her, as an inviolable rule with us.’
139 BU letter 1538, 17 June 1822.
140 BU letter 1550, 15 August 1822.
141 BU letter 1576, 13 November 1822.
142 BU letter 1584, 26 December 1822.
143 BU letter 1544, classified as July 1822 but probably written July 1823.
144 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/94, 8 July 1823.
145 BU letter 1611, 15 July 1823.
146 BU letter 1635, October 1823.
147 BU lettr 1650, Sister Mary Agnes Bedingfield to Lady Bedingfield, 1 November 1823.
148 BU letter 1665, Christmas Day 1823.
149 BU letter 1664, 23 December 1823.
150 In BU letter 1665, Sir George Jerningham thought it a pity that Lady Bedingfield could not go over and see what was the matter with Louisa. At the end of November 1823 Lady Bedingfield had learned that her daughter Charlotte would be clothed as a novice at Bruges on 1 January 1824. She was not present at her daughter’s clothing.
151 BU letter 1666, 26 December 1823.
152 BU letter 1667, 1 and 2 January 1824.
153 BU letter 1672, 9 January 1824.
154 BU letter 1678, 20 January 1824.
155 BU letter 1684, 3 February 1824.
156 Frances Huddleston, youngest daughter of Thomas Huddleston, Esq., of Milton, Cambridge, and his wife Elizabeth Mackworth, m. John English, Esq., of Bath. On 23 September 1822 she wrote to Lady Bedingfield about the education of her children, several of whom entered Religious life: Ferdinand English became Archbishop of Trinidad, Louis English became Rector of the English College at Rome, Cecilia English, with great musical and literary talents, became a Benedictine nun at Hammersmith. [Introduction to CRS vol. 8, Diary of the Blue Nuns; Dunkirk.] Mrs. English wanted to send her daughters to Bruges, after discussing the school with Lucretia Jerningham, but decided that ‘it must be an advantage to English children to be in a French house for some time.’ She therefore considered the Sacred Heart at Amiens, and the Ursuline Convent at Rouen. Cecilia had three hours of music lessons a week ‘from the best mistress I can procure her.’ Agnes had more taste for drawing, ‘and I have had a Mistress for her for some months. I teach them history, geography, grammar, French, etc., myself, and keep them entirely apart from other children. No one here enters much into my ideas on these subjects, but I please myself with the hopes that you will approve them at some future day. Mr. English I am happy to say coincides with me on these subjects. Any suggestion from you I should be truly grateful for.’ BU letter 1566, 23 September 1822. Lady Bedingfield undertook to write to Amiens about Cecilia and Agnes English, and Mrs. English asked that Sister Mary Agnes Bedingfield mention the girls to the Sacred Heart nuns: ‘it will be a comfort to me, they will scarcely be considered as strangers.’ BU letter 1711, 5 June 1824.
157 BU letter 1711, 5 June 1824.
158 Woodchester.
159 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/96, 20 July 1827.
160 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/95, 4 August 1827.
161 Woodchester.
162 See Handlist. The original community, which followed the Rule of the Third Order of St. Francis Enclosed, was at Brussels 1619–1637; Nieuport 1637–1662; Princenhoff, Bruges 1662–1794; Winchester 1794–1808; Taunton 1808–1953; and Goodings, Berkshire, 1953–1972. In 1972 sixteen members of the community at Goodings amalgamated with the Poor Clares at Arundel, a community founded from Belgium in the nineteenth century. Three others went to Woodchester. A booklet about M. Abbess Francis Agnes Jerningham is in preparation by the nuns at Woodchester and Arundel. Woodchester and Sister M. Austin, letter of 31 August 1991, Convent of Poor Clares, Cross Bush, Arundel, Sussex.
163 Lady Jerningham’s youngest son Edward, a passionate lawyer for the Catholic cause who was elected secretary of the English Catholic Board in May 1808, had in 1804 at age thirty married the very young convert Emily Middleton, daughter of Nathaniel Middleton of Town Hill, Hampshire. They had four sons and two daughters: Charles Edward Jerningham b. 27 November 1805; Valentine Robert b. and d. 1807; Henrietta Maria b. and d. 1808; Mary Clementina b. 6 September 1810; John Edward b. 13 June 1813; and James Edward b. 31 January 1817. Edward Jerningham and the Catholic Board are discussed in Ward, Bernard, The Eve of Catholic Emancipation: Being the History of the English Catholics during the First Thirty Years of the Nineteenth Century, [3 vols., London, Longmans, Green and Co., 1911]Google Scholar.
164 BU letter 900, 11 September 1815; BU letter 901, 18 September 1815; BU letter 910, 4 October 1815.
165 Catalogue, p. 96, BU letter 1391, 27 July 1821; p. 97, BU letter 1407, 25 Sept 1821.
166 BU letter 1509, 24 April 1822. Emily Jerningham’s letter was written principally to condole with Lady Bedingfield on the death of her daughter Lady Petre. On this subject Emily wrote: ‘I cannot myself get accustomed to the dismal truth, or make up my mind to the idea of never more seeing your angelic daughter in this world. To see her in another, I look forward to with hope and confidence, though I can scarcely hope for a place very near her.’ She went on to complain that her son Charles, who was with Lady Bedingfield at Ghent, had not written to her. Emily had been taking Agnes Bedingfield out into London Catholic society.
167 Castle, vol. two, pp. 244–254.
168 BU letter 1560, 13 September 1822.
169 BU letter 1551, 16 August 1822.
170 Laura Jerningham, daughter of Sir George and Lady Frances Jerningham, b. 15 January 1811. The insight and amiability she employed when Mistress of Novices of the Sisters of Notre Dame at Namur were with her even at age eleven. See Camm. On 6 July 1825 her father’s claim to the barony of Stafford was allowed by the House of Lords. On 5 October 1826 he asumed the name and arms of ‘Stafford’ before that of ‘Jerningham.’ Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage.
171 BU letter 1560, 13 September 1822.
172 BU letter 1565, 20 September 1822.
173 Catalogue, p. 108, ref. to BU letter 1569, 8 Oct 1822.
174 Catalogue, p. 108, BU letter 1573, 29 Oct 1822.
175 Catalogue, P. 109, BU letter 1582, 10 Dec 1822.
176 Catalogue, p. 110, BU letter 1598, 10 June 1823.
177 BU letter 1611, 15 July 1823.
178 BU letter 1724, 18 September 1824.
179 Mrs. Gandolfi was possibly the widow of John Vincent Gandolfi, Esq., of East Sheen, born Teresa Hornyold, sister and heiress of T. C. Hornyold, Esq. John Vincent Gandolfi died in 1818. A daughter of this marriage, Teresa, became a nun at Taunton and died in 1878. Records of the Franciscan nuns show a Mrs. Gandolphi, a lady boarder, welcomed with verses at Taunton in 1829; the mother of a nun at Taunton in 1838, and professed as a Secular Tertiary there in 1840. Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1882. Handlist.
180 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/89, 10 May 1827.
181 Laura, now the Hon. Laura Stafford-Jerningham, had suffered a severe attack of typhoid fever the year before, at age sixteen; in 1829, when she was eighteen, Laura had a London season and then, to please her parents, married the Hon. Edward Petre, thirty-four, son of Robert Edward, ninth Baron Petre and his second wife, Juliana Howard, daughter of Henry Howard of Glossop. Edward Petre, who suffered from gout, died on 8 June 1848. See Camm.
182 Mrs. Dillon was the wife of Lady Jerningham’s brother Henry [1759–1837], major-general in the French and English services, colonel of the Dillon Regiment. She was b. Frances Trant, dau. of Dominick Henry Trant of Easingwold, Yorkshire. She d. 12 October 1828.
183 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/92, 29 August 1828.
184 SRO letter D641/3/P/13/88, date obscured.
185 The former Marianne Smythe, whom he had married on 16 June 1828. She is listed in Burke’s Peerage as the daughter of John Smythe. By some accounts she was the natural daughter of George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert. See Shane Leslie, Mrs. Fitzherbert, [Benziger Brothers, New York, 1939], Appendix III.
186 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/91, 13 October 1828.
187 SRO letter D641/3/P/3/13/90, 18 October 1828.
188 Burke’s Peerage: Dictionnaire des Nobles Francais.