Monumental Inscriptions of Wiltshire
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Wiltshire Record Society (formerly the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and l\Iatural'History Society) VQLUME 53 FOR THE YEAR 1997 Impression of75O copies Memorial to Henry Dam/ers (died 1654) in I/Vest Lavington church The epitaph is transcribed on page 247. MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS OF WILTSHIRE AN EDITION, IN FACSIMILE, OF MONUMENTAL INSCRIPTIONS IN THE COUNTY OF WILTON, BY SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS, 1822 EDITED BY PETER SHERLOCK TROWBRIDGE 2000 © Wiltshire Record Society ISBN 0 901333 30 1 THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF MICHAEL LANSDOWN, 1916 — 1999, HONORARY TREASURER OP THIS SOCIETY FOR FORTY-EIGHT YEARS UNTIL HIS DEATH Michael Lansdown was a great-grandson of the founder of the Trowbridge Advertiser (predecessor of the I/Viltshire Times).Another great-grandfather was William Millington, theVictorian Trowbridge artist.Afi:er a degree at Cambridge and war service he joined the newspaper in 1946 and retired as editor in 1981. His knowledge ofVictorian Trowbridge was encyclopaedic, and he wrote many pieces of local history in the newspaper, as well as several pamphlets on aspects of the town's history. He managed the finances ofthewfltshire Record Society with a success probably unparalleled by any similar body.The enthusiasm and humour with which he reported the intricacies of postage, packing, and covenants, and the quirks of printers and booksellers will remain a vivid memory with all who served on the Society's committee. Produced for the Society by Salisbury Printing Company Ltd, Salisbury Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS Dedication Preface INTRODUCTION THE FACSIMILE NORTH WILTS SOUTH WILTS INDEX OF PERSONS INDEX OF PLACES List cf Merhbers List of Pablicatioris PREFACE For permission to reproduce in facsimile the copy of Monumental Inscriptions in their possession the Society wishes to express formally its thanks to the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, and to that Society’s Sandell Librarian,Mrs Lorna Haycock. Mr Sherlock, the Editor of this volume, wishes to acknowledge also the help given to him by Jane Freeman, Clive Holmes, and Judith Maltby; and the staffof the Bodleian Library, the College ofArms, and the British Library. He is grateful too for the financial support of the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme of the Association of Common- wealth Universities, and of the Hungerford and Associated Families Society. Mr Sherlock and I are both indebted to Lorna Haycock for her kind co-operation in enabling the facsimile to be made. JOHN CHANDLER INTRODUCTION In 1822 Sir Thomas Phillipps ordered his printer, Adolphus Brightley, to produce six copies of his transcriptions of the monumental inscriptions ofVI/iltshire at the Middle Hill Press in his home.By 1824 the work was complete,yet it passed almost immediately into obscurity. For the last 175 years, the handful of copies have remained largely unconsulted in Phillipps’s collections and in a small number of libraries. Despite its inaccuracies and omissions the volume is of value to genealogists, those with an interest in Wiltshire, and historians of death and commemoration, not least because many ofthe epitaphs recorded no longer exist.This edition is intended to make Phillipps's work available to a wider audience, with the much-needed addition of an index. SIR THOMAS PHILLIPPS Thomas Phillipps entered the world on 2July 1792 at 32 Cannon Street, Manchester, and was baptised at the city's church on 22 July 1792. He was born out ofwedlock, but was raised by his father Thomas Phillipps (1742-1818) as his only son and heir. He had little contact with his mother, Hannah Walton (1770-1851) who in 1812 married Frederick Judd of London.The few surviving letters between mother and son relate to an annuity due to her until her death. Phillipps grew up at ‘Middle Hill’, a property purchased by his father in 1794, near the town of Broadway, Worcestershire, where his grandfather had been a farmer. His early education was at the academy at Fladbury run by John Harward, prior to entering Rugby School in 1807. In 1811 he matriculated to University College Oxford, from which he graduated B.A. in 1815 and M.A. in 1820. At the death of his father in November 1818 he inherited the substantial Middle Hill estates. Due to their entailment under the terms of his father’s will, he had access to their annual income only and not the capital itself, a source of later frustration. His father’s death allowed Phillipps to marry the woman who had captured his affections but who had incurred the disapproval of the senior Thomas.The wedding took place in February 1819, the bride being Henrietta, daughter of an army General, Sir Thomas Molyneux.The couple made their home at Middle Hill, not far from the Molyneux residence in Cheltenham.They had three daughters, Henrietta (1819), Maria (1821) and Katharine (1823), who prior to marriage would dutifully assist their father by transcribing manuscripts and preparing copy for his printer. A. N. L. Munby, Phillipps’s biographer, argues that the early 18205 were his happiest years. Besides a happy family life, Phillipps enjoyed social success: he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1820 and created a Baronet the following year, thanks to his father-in-law’s connections. Financial difficulties soon followed, however, then in viii INTRODUCTION 1832 Phillipps’s wife died aged 37. After a long, unsuccessful quest for a bride (with a large income to solve his financial woes), he was married a second time in 1842 to Elizabeth Harriet Anne Mansell, who survived him. During his early years, Phillipps had begun collecting books and manuscripts, at the age of 16 compiling a precocious catalogue of the 110 volumes in his possession. Once he was settled at Middle Hill, this became his life’s occupation, accompanied by a series ofantiquarian endeavours. His manuscript collection was considerably enhanced by sojourns in continental Europe during the 1820s, where he was able to purchase voluminous quantities at auctions. By his death, Phillipps’s ‘vellomania’ had led to his possession of the largest personal manuscript library in the world. He was well-known to all major booksellers and auction houses, and on two occasions had been arrested for unpaid debts as he consistently bought beyond his means. Besides collecting, Phillipps also maintained a private press at his residence and printed various manuscripts in his possession alongside his antiquarian researches. Most of these offerings appeared in such small numbers that they retain the status of manuscripts. No complete catalogue of his publications exists. In 1862 the size of his collection forced Phillipps to remove to the larger Thirlestane House, near Cheltenham, formerly owned by Lord Northwick. SirThon1as died here on 6 February 1872, aged 79.The Middle Hill estates passed according to their entailment to his eldest daughter Henrietta and her husband James Halliwell- Phillipps, the Shakespearean scholar. His second and favourite daughter, Maria, wife of the Reverend John Walcot, predeceased him in 1858. Due to Phi]lipps's estrangement from his eldest daughter and son-in-law, he lefi: his personal assets —Thirlestane House and his library — to his youngest child Katherine, wife of the ReverendJohn Fenwick. The Fenwicks did not have sufficient means to maintain such an enormous collection of manuscripts and books.The library was gradually dispersed in a series of auctions between 1886 and 1913, beginning with duplicate copies of books. Large purchases were made by foreign governments, ensuring the repatriation of important manuscripts. In 1945 the remainder of the collection, the contents of which could only be guessed at, was sold by the Fenwick family to the Robinson firm of booksellers, who deposited Phillipps’s voluminous personal papers in the Bodleian Library.' WILTSHIRE HISTORY AND TOPOGRAPHY Phillipps’s interest in Wiltshire is intertwined with the beginning of his antiquarian and collecting career. He began his research on the county while at University, during visits to Ferne in Donhead St Andrew, the Wiltshire residence of his closest friend Charles Grove, where he calendared the family’s deeds and compiled genealogies.3Thc county was one of only many interests, for Phillipps’s time in Oxford led to an interest there as 1 On Phillipps’s life and work, see Edward Kite, ‘WiItshire Topography [1659-1843] with some Notes on the late Sir Thomas Phillipps, and his Historical Collections for the County’, I/Viltshire Notes and Queries, voI.6, December 1908, pp.145-161; A.N.L. Munby, Phillipps Studies, 5 vols., Cambridge, 1951-60, particularly Vol.2; idem, Portrait Qfan Obsession, London, 1967. 2 Ibid,p.6. INTRODUCTION i>< well, one which saw him employ William Kirtland in the 1810s and 1820s as a scribe in the Bodleian and nearby archives.“ Wiltshire became the primary region of interest from 1819, however, when he encountered the circle of antiquaries centred on Sir Richard Colt Hoare and his library at Stourhead. In 1818, Colt Hoare was in the midst of completing his Ancient Wiltshire (1812- 21), and was desirous of undertaking a modern history to match. In his pamphlet of that year, Hints on the Topography of Wiltshire, he urged local folk from the noble to the artisan classes to join with him in producing a multi-volume history of the county by adopting a parish or a hundred. Phillipps wrote offering to take responsibility for the entire northern half of the county, having already arranged to spend the summer of 1818 in the archives of Salisbury. Colt Hoare responded enthusiastically, and thus began a productive partnership which saw Phillipps acquire the status of Sir Richard’s second- in-command of the Wiltshire history project over the following few years.‘ Phillipps produced his first publication in 1819, a miscellaneous set of Collections for I/Viltshire, privately printed at Salisbury.