The Golden Falcon

Chapter XVII/1 - Golden

THE GOLDEN AFTERNOON

Quinquereme of Nineveh from distant Ophir

Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine

With a cargo of ivory

And apes and peacocks

Sandalwood, cedar wood and sweet wine.

Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus

Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shore,

With a cargo of diamonds

Emeralds, amethysts

Topazes and cinnamon and gold moidores.

Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack

Butting the Channel in the mad March days

Road-rail, pig-lead

Firewood, ironware and cheap tin trays.

(John Masefield 1878-1967)

The 55-year old Hanoverian George I (1714-27), who spoke no English, was invited over to rule England when Queen Anne died in 1714 but the exiled Stuarts made several attempts during his reign to regain the throne, the most important being the 1714 Jacobite rebellion.

George I was succeeded by his grandson George II (1727-60) during whose reign there was another Jacobite invasion in 1745.  Offences punishable by death during his reign were picking pockets, being in the company of gypsies, burning a hayrick or stealing sheep.  In 1763 John Wilkes, fighting for the freedom of the Press, raised the cry "For Wilkes and Liberty", was exiled to France but returned to be the focus of fresh riots.

During the reign of George III (1766-1820), the first English-born Hanoverian to succeed, there were riots against the Catholic Emancipation Bill in England, led by Lord George Gordon.  Canals were built for the first time in England in the Dutch fashion and barges carried goods and raw materials of the Industrial Revolution.

The great architect Robert Adams redesigned Syon Park near Isleworth, Middlesex, property of the Dukes of Northumberland, the walls of which were covered in crimson silk woven by Huguenot weavers of Spitalfields, whose trade was then declining as French silk was being smuggled into England.  De la Motte of Holland was a silk smuggler and the fines paid by some of the English merchants involved in smuggling silk went towards setting up the Greenwich Seamen's Hospital.  Factories rose where workers used the mechanical "Spinning Jenny" which put many cloth workers out of work.  Silk imported from India led to the Spitalfields silk industry eventually dying out.

There was a great increase in population at the time and people moved from areas where their families had lived for centuries to find work elsewhere.

The powerful East India Company, which still ruled the British posession in India and dominated every aspect of trade and politics, continued to bring great wealth into England.

The graceful merchantmen stood at anchor by the docks along the Thames and cargos were unloaded at the Adelphi warehouses: iron and grindstones from Sweden (and New England), tea from China, sugar from the West Indies, tobacco from Virginia (sold to Moscow), English cloth and tallow (sold all over the world), logwood, indigo, cochineal, woad and other dyes were imported from the Indies and the Middle East, flax, tow, madder, and whole fins from Rotterdam,alum from Hamburg, wine, cherry brandy and prunes from Bordeaux, wheat, rye, barley, beans and hops from London, and chocolate.

The merchant princes were wealthy and owned fine houses; their wives had two or more maids in attendance.

Soames Jenyns described the merchants in 1767:

"The merchant vies all the while with the first of our nobility in his houses, at table, furniture and equipage, the shop-keeper who used to be well contented with one dish of meat, one fire, one maid, has two or three times as many of each, his wife has her tea, her card parties and her dressing room and his 'prentice has climbed from the kitchen fire to the front boxes at the playhouse."

In 1772 "As much ceremony is found in the assembly of a country grocer's wife as in that of a duchess".

The merchants controlled the Bank of England, supplied the army and the navy, lent money to the government and even paid Charles James Fox's gambling debts.

"The merchants were not only directors of the Bank of England but also controllers of the East India Company, the Africa Company and the Levant Company" ["Sir Robert Walpole, the Making of a statesmen" - J. H. Plumb quoted in "English Genealogy" - A. R. Wagner, Richmond Herald].

During Regency times the "nouveau riche" bought up country estates.  Cobbet wrote "The new gentry, the lickspittle lords from "Change Alley" and Lombard Street, sometimes sons of Moses" and maintained "the war and Mr Pitt's paper money brought in the nabobs, negro drivers, governors, admirals, generals, loan jobbers, contractors, pensioners, bankers and stock jobbers into the countryside."

The "nabobs" (“nawabs”) who came home from India with great fortunes in the later 18th and 19th centuries were of the merchants class.  G. M. Trevelyan wrote that they "made themselves objectionable to the old-established aristocracy of the society into which they intruded their outlandish ways."  Thackeray's biographer Professor Gordon Ray noted "The clannishness developed among these empire-builders by the circumstances of their residence in India, was reinforced in England by the prevailing indifference or hostility with which returned "Indians" were regarded." ["Thackeray, the uses of Adversity 1811-46", p. 19 - Gordon N. Ray quoted in "English Genealogy" - A. R. Wagner, Richmond Herald].

Rev. Charles Henry Winter's grandfather, George Winter, left England during the reign of William IV (1830-37) who had succeeded his brother George IV (1820-30) whose scandalous life led to anti-Monarchist feeling.

George Winter's father James, a bricklayer of Clapham., was born about 1771 in the 18th century which was a strange mixture of squalor and elegance.  His son George married Sarah Cresse, descended from Spitalfields silk workers.

People in 18th century met at coffee and chocolate houses to discuss politics, gossip and hatch futile Jacobite plots.  There were houses for Dissenters, Quakers and Papists.

It was reported the Jacobites met on Sundays in a large room over a coffee house in Aldersgate Street (one of the areas where there were anti.Hanoverian demonstrations subsequently).  A Non-Juring clergyman officiated and they prayed for the right King they called the Pretender.  The door was kept tightly closed and no one was admitted except those they trusted.

The fashionable met at White's Chocolate House in St. James Street, where the Tory Prime Minister Robert Harley complained to Jonathan Swift that young noblemen were fleeced and corrupted by gamblers and profligates.  Tories went to the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House, Whigs to St. James Coffee House, the litterati to Will's near Covent Gardens, the clergy and Greek scholars to Trubys.

People strolled in St. James Park where duels were fought till they were banned in 1828, flocked to the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall and Walworth, to the Rotunda at Ranelagh, to Smith's Tea Gardens, Finch's Grotto Gardens and St. George's Fields.  They danced at Hampstead Wells, played bowls at Epsom or went to Lambeth Wells where gypsies camped or to Southwark Fair to watch cockfights, bar-baiting or boxing.  By 1788 the Lake District at Windermere became a popular tourist resort.

They sailed down the Thames to Hampton Court and to Don Saltero's at 18, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea where the best creams in all London were sold, to see the curiosities there.  James Salter, Sir Hans Sloane’s Irish valet, had taken it over in 1718 and founded a museum.  Salter was described by Sir Richard Steele in the "Tatler" as "a sage of thin and meagre countenance of that sect which the ancients called "gingivistae" - in our language toothdrawer - my love of mankind made one very benevolent to Mr Salter for such is the name of this eminent barber and antiquary."

His tavern became a meeting place for local celebrities who went there to hear him play "Bonny Christchurch Bells" very badly on the fiddle and to see his collection - cast-offs from the Sloane Museum - which was sold in 1799 and contained "lignified hog, heads of four evangelists carved on cherry stones, an elf's arrow, a piece of Solomon's Temple, idols, stuffed animals, corals, crystals, shells, a Spanish apparatus to prevent cuckoldom" and in Richard Steele's words "Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat" - a straw hat made in Bedford.  The place remained a pub until 1876.

Windows were taxed and the results can be imagined.  London's sewers were awful.  The inhabitants of a house in Spital Square used to punt themselves across from the cellar steps in a wash tub to draw their daily beer.  Chamber pots were emptied into the street and on the piles of dung in the corner of the yards.  Until the Fleet Ditch was covered in the 1730s it had dead dogs and offal from the tripe dressers, sausage makers and catgut spinners.  Paupers graves were left open until the last corpse was buried and fumes from coal burning and the brick kilns blackened the air.  Towards the end of the Georgian period it was considered that "cleanliness was next to godliness" so things improved.

Clapham (were George Winter was born), then in Surrey and in the countryside, was the haunt of foot pads and highwaymen and Rev. Henry Venn used to on shooting trips on the Common.  It was drained in 1751 and by 1811 had a population of 5,000.

When the Common was drained by the local magistrate, a large number of trees known as "cotton trees" were planted there, said to have been brought back by Cook who sailed from Whitby.  James Cook, a seaman of Whitby, Yorkshire discovered the fabulous South Sea Islands of Tahiti, he landed in New Zealand, saw the first kangaroo at Botany Bay, Australia and was killed by natives in Hawaii, the year that the very first iron bridge was built over the Severn in Shropshire.  Bankes was encouraged to go on Cook's voyage by George III - Botany Bay was so-named because he collected 1,000 strange plants there.  Sir Joseph Bankes, the botanist on Cook's voyage, was a friend of William Wilberforce.  Bankes and George III died 1820.

Samuel Pepys retired to Clapham with his friend William Hewer, who also owned land in Norfolk.  His great friend and fellow Diarist John Evelyn wrote:

25.7.1692: "We went to Mr Hewer's at Clapham, where he has an excellent, usefull and capacious house on the Common, built by Sir Den. Gauden and by him sold to Mr Hewer, who got a very considerable estate in the Navy, in which, from being Mr Pepys clerk, he came to be one of the principal officers, but was put out of all employment on the Revolution, as were all the best officers, on suspicions of being no friends to the change; Mr Hewer lives very handsomely and friendly to everybody."

Dennis Gauden, was Victualler to the Navy and was subsequently knighted when Sheriff of London..  William Hewer was nephew of Mr Blackburne and his father died during the plague.  He became Commission of the Navy and Treasurer for Tangier, was Pepys's constant companion and was buried in the old Church of Clapham.

23.9.1700: "I went to visite Mr Pepys at Clapham where he has a very noble and wonderfully well furnish'd house, especially with India and Chinese curiosities.  The offices and gardens well accommodated for pleasure and retirement." [John Evelyn’s Diary].

26.5.1703: "This day died Mr Sam. Pepys, a very worthy, industious and curious person.  When King James II went out of England, he laid down his office and would serve no more, but withdrawing himselfe from all public affaires, he liv'd at Clapham with his partner, Mr Hewer, formerly his clerk, in a very noble house and sweete place, where he enjoy'd the fruite of his labour in greate prosperity".  [John Evelyn’s Diary].

Henry Venn, father of John (both of whom were clergymen there) wrote: "As soon as we were married we lived at Clapham in Surrey, a favourite village where many London merchants having acquired fortunes, chose their country seats, desiring in general only to enjoy themselves."  There was a mulberry tree in the garden of parsonage at Clapham, usually planted to provide leaves for silkworms.

Henry, 2^nd son of John Venn, rector and Kitty King of Hull was baptised at Holy Trinity, Clapham on 10.02.1796.

Henry Venn was at West Horsley, Clapham and Yelling which was presented to him by Lady Smythe, widow of Chief Baron Smythe.  She left the advowson of Bidborough to John Venn, and legacies to his children.  In 1773 John Venn senior and James Stephen were in school together at Hull.

Clapham gave its name to the abolitionists who were called the Clapham Sect or Clapham Saints whose members with with John Newton, William Wilberforce, Zachary Macauley, James Stephen and others began a fight to abolish slavery.

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) from Hull led the fight to abolish slavery.  The Abolitionists won their first victory in 1772 when a British judge Lord Mansfield ruled that no one could be a slave in Britain.  In 1807 a Bill was passed in the British parliament prohibiting British ships from taking slaves to British colonies and in 1833 a few weeks after Wilberforce's death, the government passed an Act emancipating slaves throughout the British Empire.  By the 1820s most European countries followed suit.  Britain blockaded the West African coast - the centre of the blockade was Sierra Leone called the Slave Coast.

William Wilberforce went to school at Bewdley, Worcestershire when John Cawood was Evangelical vicar there.

Wilberforce's aunt was John Thornton's half-sister; she and her husband had a house at St. James and a villa in Wimbledon.

The Thorntons came from Hull and were in the Baltic trade with the Wilberforces.  The Company of Baltic Merchants traded in furs and timber; Hull had nothing to do with slavery.  In 1810 the Baltic Merchants had their premises at the Antwerp Coffee Club in Threadneedle Street (where the Bank of England was situated) near Lombard Street where Lloyds insurance had been move by Edward Lloyd from Tower Street.  He was buried at St. Mary, Woolnoth.

Robert Thornton, father of Samuel, Henry and John bought an estate south of Clapham Common.  Samuel Thornton (1760-1815) was born at Clapham, his brother Henry was a banker and MP for Southwark who became Treasurer of the Church Missionary Society, another brother, John, bought Battersea Rise House where Wilberforce settled in 1791 and where the CMS met regularly.  Samuel and his brother Robert Thornton lived at Clapham but Samuel moved to Albury Park, Guildford in 1801.

Samuel Thornton, lord of Clapham manor, patron of the living and Vice-President of the Church Missionary Society offered the living of Clapham to John Venn.

Wilberforce lived at Clapham in an apartment in Thornton's residence "Battersea Rise House" (demolished in about 1848) then at "Broomfield" built by the Thorntons.  He moved to Kensington Gore where Thornton died and finally to Mill Hill (1759-1833).

Others friends and supporters of Wilberforce were the Ministers Pitt and Fox, Windham (who helped the French refugees), the poet Sheriden, Tierney, Mackintosh, Burdett, Robert Stewart (Lord Castlereagh), Romilly, Whitbread, Grenville, Sharp, William Smith, Clarkson, Dickson, Dolben, Babbington, Milner and the Moore sisters.

Thornton, Macauley and Wilberforce held East India Company stocks, Grant became a director and Shore (Lord Teignmouth) was Governor-Genera of India.

Charles Grant, director of the East India Company had houses built for himself and Edward Elliott at Battersea Rise called "Broomfield" and "Glenelg" by the Thorntons.  Broomfield was also the name of a house in Caterham belonging to a Mrs Winter.  Charles Grant was responsible for smuggling out missionaries to India against the wishes of the government and the East India Company.  The Company headquarters (originally the house of Sir William Craven) where Charles Lamb (bur. All Saints, Edmonton) was a clerk, was situated to the east of Leadenhall Market (now the site of Lloyds Insurance).

Wilberforce also knew Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta.  After the Napoleonic Wars, Wilberforce was one of the MPs who suggested Ceylon, Cape Town and Trinidad be retained by Britain.  Ceylon became officially British after the Peace of Amiens of 27.3.1802.  There was a Huguenot settlement in Cape Town where George and Sarah Winter settled for awhile. - theDuke of Beaufort was its first Governor.

Lord Henry Bathurst was Secretary of State and contemporary of Wilberforce who knew William Petty, 2nd earl of Shelburne, MP and Secretary of State (mentioned in John Strange Winter's "Reminiscences").

Wilberforce often helped French émigré clergymen and naval officers in jail for debt.  He helped to release one midshipman only named in his diary as "E" from Morpeth jail.   vicar.

The Wilberforce and Cresse or Creasey families were intermarried:

Joseph Wilberforce = Jane Margaret Creasey on 20.11.1814 at St. Mary Magdalen, Bermondsey.

One member of the Clapham Saints was Rev. John Venn, vicar of Holy Trinity, Clapham who baptised George Winter.

John Venn and his father Henry were vicars of Clapham Holy Trinity and John was born there in 1792.  John was rector of Clapham from 1791 to 1813 when he died.

He was founder of the Church Missionary Society (CMS).  It was established on 12.4.1799 at the "Castle and Falcon" Inn, Aldersgate (the area where Jacobites met in a room over a coffee house).  It was opposite the Moravian Chapel where the Wesleys were converted and was demolished in 1905-6 to make way for the GPO.

The Jacobite Circle used to meet at Chester, where a stage chaise service was started on 18.6.1750 from the "Three Pigeons" Inn, Bridge Street to the "Castle and Falcon" Inn, Aldersgate.  The mail coach service lasted till 1837.  The name of the inn is intriguing as the as the Winters' crest was "a falcon or rising from a tower imbatched argent".

Dupont, proprietor of the "Castle and Falcon", attended the Spa Fields Chapel and allowed the Evangelists to meet at his Inn.  The City of London Electric Company was built there in 1924 and the old cellars still remained then.

One wonders whether David Cresse was called a “postman” because he belonged to “La Correspondence” or whether he actually delivered mail.

Sir Richard Hill was a member of the CMS and Rowland Hill of Bruce Castle, Tottenham (who started the penny post), was a contemporary of Venn at Cambridge.

The first General Post Office (where there were at least two Jacobite spies) was known as the Mail Coach Office and many Regency Inns were mail coach stations.

Spitalfields weavers jointed GPO when the silk industry failed owing to the importation of Indian cloth and Thomas Fowell Buxton, founder of the RSPCA and friend of Wilberforce, made a speech at Mansion House on behalf of distressed Spitalfields silk workers.  Henry Foster, trustee of John Thornton's Will and vicar of St James, Clerkenwell (1804), used to preach at Spitalfields church.

John Venn may have had some connection with the West Indies where descendants of the Winters of Portsmouth settled.  There was a relationship between the Brodbelt family of Jamaica and those of Ben Nevis.  Their pedigree concluded with the following: "Note - 10.5.1753 registered fom Mr B's family bible and sworn before William Wynter Esq., signed by John Venn, rector".  This William Wynter would have been the one on HM Council, Jamaica who died in July 1772 and whose obituary appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine".

Many English families traded with and settled in the West Indies, others were transported there after the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745 or for crimes even for sheep stealing while they were dying of hunger when the Highlands were cleared for sheep farming.  Others returned to England or had went to settlements in Virginia and Carolina, some went to India and joined the East India Company so the same surnames appear in these areas.

There were Venns who were parishioners of St. Leonards, Shoreditch:

03.10.1774 - Catherine, d. of Richard & Catherine Venn of Old Street Road.

15.01.1776 - Thomas, son of Richard & Catherine Venn of Old Street Road.

14.0.4.1771 - Mary, d. of Richard & Catherine Venn of Pitfield Street.

Rev. Richard Venn bur. 20.02.1738 St. Antholins,

The Venns were clergymen since the Reformation and were descendants of William Venn (1600-1621), vicar of Otterton, Devon.  Henry Venn and his son John were both vicars at Clapham and were involved with the Clapham Saints, William Wilberforce and the Abolitionists of Slavery.

The Venns were married into the Huguenot family of Guillemard.  Tamazine Venn (d. 27.1.1818 at Tottenham, buried at Spitalfields churchyard), 5th daughter of Henry Venn of Payhembury, Devon by his wife Mary Cooke married on 11.1.1802 at Holy Trinity, Exeter, a Huguenot Pierre or Peter Guillemard of Tottenham and South Hill, Reading (b. 4.1.1771, baptised St. Jean, Spitalfields on 2.7.1.1771, d. 13.4.1828).  They had 8 children, one Anne Guillemard (born 27.11.1802 and baptised 25.12.1802 at Christchurch, Spitalfields) married at Hackney on 17.9.1839 William, son of Dean Bath and his wife Dorothy Venn.

Daniel Guillemard, his brother (b. 7.2.1772, bapt. St. Jean, Spitalfields on 7.3.1772, d. 7.8.1822, bur. Spitalfields) married on 27.5.1806 at Payhembury, Devon as his second wife Susannah, 3rd daughter of Henry Venn and Mary Cooke.

James Edward Gambier, rector of Langley, Kent, was the son of W. J. Gambier of Camberwell who married Henry Venn' sister Mary.  The Gambiers probably had naval connections as a James Gambier was Admiral in 1806.

John Brasier and Edward Parry (a director of the East India Company) were parishioners of St. Giles's, Camberwell, where Gambier and his wife (nee Venn) lived.  Camberwell was then countryside and Mendelsohn's "Spring Song" was originally called "Camberwell Green".

Brasier and Parry had just returned from India where Charles Grant met Parry.  Grant had led a dissolute life till his children died in India but two boys survived, Robert and Charles who became pupils of John Venn.

Pennington, Gambier, the Middletons, Newton and the Elliotts had naval connections.  As early as 1664 Thomas Middleton became Commissioner of the Navy with Samuel Pepys who wrote in his Diary:

3.6.1660: "Up and by water to White Hall and the met with Mr. Coventry who tells me the only news from the Fleet is brought by Captain Elliott of the "Portland" which by being run on board by the "Guernsey" was disabled from staying abroad, so is come into Albrough [Aldeburgh, Suffolk]."

Another Elliott defended Gibraltar for Queen Anne.

The Elliotts were related to the Venns who were intermarried with Huguenots.  Charles Elliott, silk merchant and widower lived in Bond Street and married on 20.12.1785 at Yelling, Eling Venn, daughter of Henry Venn and Eling Bishop.  They later moved to Clapham.  The Rev. Charles John Elliott married Rosemary Bannington, relative of the abolitionist.

Captain Charles Elliott, RN nephew of Admiral George Elliott and nephew of Lord Minto (a former Governor-General), became the East India Company's Junior Superintendent of Trade in Hong Kong and China.

The Company did not at first approve of the opium trade carried on quite legitimately in China and India.  Calcutta in Bengal was one of the areas in which the poppy was grown and Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta reported in his "Narrative of a Journey through the Upper Province of India in 1828" that he was pleased to see the natives tending their poppy fields in which the flowers swayed in the breeze.  It was only known as a medicine in the West but when the abuses were discovered and after much agitation, the trade was controlled.  In 1729 China passed an edict banning the importation of opium except under licence for medicinal purposes.

The firm of Jardine Matheson, founded by William Jardine and James Matheson, a former ship's surgeon, went into partnership in 1828, their interpreter was a medical missionary called Charles Gutzlaff - the firm prospered through the opium trade.

Charles Elliott was involved in the Opium Wars and was dismissed by the Prime Minister, Palmerston, for failing to press for full indemnity for the merchants whose opium was destroyed.  He had been in the Navy in peacetime, become Protector of Slaves in British Guiana in 1830, appointed Charge d'Affairs in Texas after his dismissal and went into the diplomatic service in Bermuda, Trinidad and St. Helena, eventually becoming an Admiral.  The Elliotts may have been a Jacobite family - James II's nurse was Katherine Elliott.

Newington Butts (where George Winter lived) was a centre of Evangelism.  The Evangelists house belonged to John Jowett, brother of Henry Jowett, both of whom were John Venn's schoolfriends and CMS missionaries.  Newington Butts was the site of one of the Elizabethan theatres or playhouse.  Samuel Pepys's parents were married at St. Mary's Newington - his wife was a Huguenot.

Another member of the Clapham Sect John Newton, son of a merchant seaman deserted the Royal Navy in the 1770s to become captain of a slaving ship.  He converted to Christianity, was curate of Olney, author of the Olney Hymns (1779) which included "Amazing Grace", "How sweet the name of Jesus sounds" and "Glorious things of Thee are spoken" and friend of the poet William Cowper.  A member of the Clapham Saints John Thornton placed him as vicar at St. Mary Woolnoth, Lombard Street where he was rector for 28 years until he died in 1807.  Richard Conyers, vicar of St. Paul's, Deptford was one of Thornton's nominees.

George Winter of Aldeburgh, Suffolk married Hepzibah, daughter of John Wagstaffe of Olney.

John Shore, later Lord Teignmouth and Governor-General of India, moved to Clapham so did Zachary Macauley, an ex-slaver and manager of an estate in Bermuda who was with Wilberforce's Sierra Leone Company.

Zachary Macauley's brother General Colin Macauley was with the Duke of Wellington at Seringapatam and Paris.  Wellington was in India where his brother Richard Wellesley, Lord Mornington, was Governor-General of India from 20.6.1796 till 10.3.1805 and was briefly in Trincomalee, Ceylon (22.12.1800-7.1.1801).  It was Wellington who persuaded Louis XVIII to abolish slavery in France with the help of Madame de Stael (daughter of Marechal Neckar who wanted her to marry Wilberforce).  When Napoleon returned on 13.3.1815, Louis went to Ghent.  ["Wellington - Years of the Sword and Pillar of State" - E. Longford].

The Venns, Wilberforces and Stephens were connected by marriage.

The abolitionist James Stephens was brought up at Lambeth where he met his first wife.  His father was in the export/import business at Brooks Wharf and was jailed for non-payment of debts.  His jailer was named Strange (1768-1770) and he and his wife treated Stephens well.

James Stephens lived at Dell Cottage, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire in 1825 and his illegitimate son was vicar of Bledlow, Buckinghamshire.  James Stephen's uncles and friends were in the East India Company and he went out as a slave overseer to the West Indies where his uncle was a doctor.  Stephens went to Clapham in 1794 on his return from St.Kitts, West Indies where he was a lawyer.

James Stephens (Virginia Woolf's great grandfather), married as his second wife, Wilberforce's sister Sarah, widow of Dr Clarke.

15.5.1800: "James Stephen of the Middle Temple, widower and Sarah Clarke, widow, were married by John Venn, rector of Clapham at Battersea church by licence in the presence of William Wilberforce and B. A. Wilberforce".  She was Barbara Anne Wilberforce née Spooner and the bride Sarah Wilberforce, was William's sister and widow of Rev. T. Clarke of Hull.  James Stephen was Master in Chancery and member of the Clapham Sect Abolition Committee, MP for Tralee and East Grinstead.

His son James Stephens junior married Catherine Venn (they were Virginia Woolf's grand parents)  James junior was knighted and was a lawyer who worked at the Colonial Office.  His son Leslie Stephens (Virginia Woolf's father) was a clergyman and married as his first wife, Harriet Marian Thackeray, daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray.  Both the Thackeray and Stephens families were involved with India and according to family tradition W. M. Thackeray was Eurasian.  Leslie Stephen's second wife was Julia (Virginia Woolf's mother) a widow (Mrs Herbert Duckworth née Jackson) with 3 children.  Julia's mother, Maria Pattle, married John Jackson.

In 1788 Virginia's maternal grand grandfather James Pattle married Adeline de L'Etang, daughter of Antoine, Chevalier de l'Etang and Therese Blin de Grincourt of Pondicherry.  Antoine de l'Etang was in the household of Marie Antoinette and was banished to Pondicherry.

The Pattle sisters married Anglo-Indian officials.  Virginia Pattle married the Duke of Bedford, then Henry Somerset.

Virginia's husband Leonard Sydney Woolf, BA Cantab., was Governor of the Hambantota District, Southern Province of Ceylon (19.11.1904-1911) which included Galle and was author of the "Village in the Jungle" about a village called Baddegama, the heroine of which was a Sinhalese woman named Hinnihamy.

James Ramsay, another Abolitionist, was a surgeon on one of the ships belonging to Sir Charles Middleton, Lord Barham, who was also a supporter.  James Ramsay (d. 1789), vicar of Teston, Kent in 1781 and buried there with his freed slave Nestor, was a friend of Admiral Middleton on whose ship he was chaplain.  Middleton lived at Barham Court built of the site of the home of one of Thomas a'Becket's assassins.

James Ramsay was of the same Scottish clan as the Chevalier Ramsay who was Charles Edward Stuart's tutor after James Murray.  The painter Allan Ramsay painted a portrait of Flora MacDonald who helped the Prince escape and went to the Tower for it but was released.

Ramsay the painter and Wesley the Methodist are buried in the church of St. Marylebone.  Byron was baptised there in 1788 so was Horatia, Nelson's daughter by Emma Hamilton in 1803.  The poet Sheriden was married there.  Sir Thomas Sheriden was a Jacobite and died in exile; his son was with him at the time.

The architect Gibb (d. 1764) and John Rysbrack the Flemish sculptor (who sculpted the monument to Gibb at St. Martin's and the monument of Colston at Bristol to Gibb's design) were both buried at St. Marylebone.

James Gibb (1674-1754) was a Scotsman who studied for the Catholic priesthood in Rome and then architecture under Carlo Fontana, becoming an apprentice of the Wrens.

He built Derby cathedral (finished in 1725) and designed a monument to Edward Colston (d. 1721) at All Saints Church, Bristol, the Senate House, Cambridge (1722), Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire (home for 3 and half centuries of the family from whom the American General Robert E. Lee descended), the mausoleum of St. Cuthberts, Kirkleatham, Yorkshire (1740), Sudbrooke Park, Petersham (now the golf club house) near Richmond Park, Raphoe, Donegall, Church of St. Chad's. Shrewsbury (built by George Steurt in 1790-2 to designs by James Gibb), the tower of St. Clement Danes.

On 19.3.1721 Gibb was selected as architect to enlarge St. Martins-in-the-Fields (1722-6) in Trafalgar Square (where Gibb's monument can be found) and work commenced on 19.3.1722.

Many American churches were based on it and a replica built in Calcutta so St. Martins-in-the-Fields may have been the church on the Strand in which Charles Edward Stuart became a Protestant.

In a draft proclamation of 1759 Charles Stuart said "In order to make my renountiation of the Church of Rome the most authentick and the less liable to malitious interpretations, I went to London in the year 1750 and in that capital did then make a solemn abjuration of the Romish religion and did embrace that of the Church of England as by Law established in the 39 Articles in which I hope to live and die."

In his "Memoires d'un Voyageur" Rev. .Louis Dutens, vicar of Elsdon wrote that he was told by the Abbe Fabroni, rector of Pisa University that at the beginning of the War of American Independence he had seen letters from Boston, Massachusetts inviting Bonnie Prince Charlie to lead the insurrection, an offer he turned down as he did not want to be a traitor to England.

Gibbs also also built the Radcliffe Camera (1737-48) at the John Radcliffe Library.  Radcliffe, physician to William III, left money for this in his Will.  At the opening of the library in April 1750, Dr .William King (1685-1763) Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford University, made a Latin speech cleverly expressing his Jacobite sympathies.

The Young Pretender, Charles Stuart, at whose birth the Jacobites composed a ballad "The bricklayer's son has a son of his own", had returned to France in defeat after the rebellion of 1745 and lived in bitter exile as his father and grandfather before him.  Spied upon, harried from France to Rome, he had married in middle age, Louise of Stolberg-Gedern who ran away with an Italian poet Alfieri.  Charles was rumoured to have had a son in Siena or Leghorn.  He died on 31.1.1788, the anniversary of the execution of his great grandfather, Charles I.  Barely a year later, his only daughter, the illegitimate Charlotte, Duchess of Albany also died, after suffering from a liver complaint, leaving behind 3 illegitimate children, whose father was a French prelate, Cardinal Rohan of Bordeaux.

Many Jacobite families followed the Stuarts to their courts-in-exile at Avignon, Rome and Florence.  There were also English families in Montpellier and Beziers during the Revolution and in 1812 when Napoleon came to power.  Marie-Caroline, Queen of Naples (Marie Antoinette's sister) helped Napoleon.  Emma (née Amy Lyons) and Sir William Hamilton, English ambassador were in Naples when Nelson entertained Henry Stuart, Cardinal York and the King and Queen of the Two Sicilies (the Stuart heirs) on board his ship after the Cardinal fled Rome via Messina when Napoleon's troops advanced upon the city in 1798.  Some English were imprisoned in France during the Napoleonic Wars, others followed Wellington to Paris and Brussels after Louis XVIII was re-instated on 6.4.1814 and Wellington became English ambassador in Paris on 22.8.1814.

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