18th century churchwardens and their families

JOSEPH CROWCHER (first warden, 1729)
Crowcher, born c1680, was a wealthy Wapping merchant. Listed in a 1723 document as a ropemaker of Stepney, he was involved in various financial deals. For example, in 1728 he became joint owner with John Sell, another Wapping merchant (d.1754), of Brewhouse Farm in Henham Elsingham, in Essex, for the 'bargain' price of £1850 - sold by the trustees of the South Sea Comany which had gone bust. These documents describe him as a vintner. That same year, the ship Ann Galley was captured by the Spanish en route from Guinea to Jamaica, despite a settlement between Spain and England, and ten years later he and its other owners presented this petition to Parliament for redress. In 1752, the year of his death, he became Master of the Vintners' Company [left]. He was buried in the crypt of the church.

His daughter and heiress Elizabeth (b.1718) married Raphael (Ralph) Schomberg, black sheep member of a family of German Jewish physicians, who struggled to get membership of the Royal College of Physicians - see the Journal of Medical Biography 1994 2: 113-119. Ralph published widely, but not always to acclaim - he was described as long a scribbler, without genius or veracity. He was buried as a Christian at St George's in 1792, aged 77 (as was Elizabeth, who died in Reading in 1807, aged 87 - both in a vault in the crypt, togther with daughter Sarah, who died in 1763 aged 16, and three others without inscription). The National Gallery has a portrait of Ralph by Gainsborough, painted in Bath around 1770 perhaps in lieu of medical fees [right]. Two of Elizabeth and Ralph's ten children (most of whom died young) achieved distinction: the Revd Alexander Crowcher Schomberg, a classical scholar of Magdalen College Oxford (1756-92), and Captain Isaac Schomberg, who had a controversial naval career.

THOMAS TATLOCK (warden 1729-??)
R.H. Hadden's East End Chronicle describes the appointment of the second warden, muddling his forename with that of another candidate, Titus West, and spelling his surname there (but not later) as 'Tatlocks'. Thomas Tatlock was born in Stepney in 1664, son of John Tatlock, and was a grocer of Bread Street, in the City - serving as one of the wardens of the Worshipful Company of Grocers [coat of arms left] in 1710. He was a Citizen of London, and appears on this list [right showing cover page] of liverymen entitled to vote for Members of Parliament for the City of London in the 1714 election, which was the subject of challenge for irregularities.
In 1698 he, with Samuel Garrard, Francis Smith and Allen Hackshaw, who had taken on the debts of Gilbert Fisher (all of them grocers) sold Red Hall, Bourne in Lincolnshire (house and 66 acres of land) to Richard Dixon, an innkeeper, for £500 (the document has a large hole eaten by mice).

He married, first, Ellen Touse in 1694 and they had three sons, Henry, Thomas and Edward, and a daughter Ellen; and then Anne Darling in 1708. They were baptized at All Hallows, Bread Street. Son Thomas was for a time in partnership with Richard Blackburn as merchants of Wood Street.

Born in Great Yarmouth on 23 January 1689, he served an apprenticeship as a plane-maker, and settled in Wapping Lane as a ship-chandler and ironmonger, and encouraged by John Russel, Rector of St John Wapping, developed his enthusiasm for studying history and bibliography, always preferring primary to secondary sources (which made his work valuable for later generations: it was appropriate that one who studied churchwardens' records should himself hold this office for a time!) He became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1736, and its Secretary in 1741, and later, to his delight, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His main works were Typographical Antiquities: or, a History of Printing (1749), based on detailed surveys of over 200 firms [sample page right], much revised and extended by later authors; a catalogue of English engraved portraits; and Parentalia, or Memoirs of the family of Wren (1750, extensively edited, but perhaps largely his own work).

He married Mary Wrayford in 1714 (two years after the death of his mother, who was buried at Wapping); they had six children, only one of whom survived Mary's death in 1734.

He and James Manbey served in the year when a challenge was issued against the appointment of parish officers and the rates they had levied. He was described as a mariner, dealer and chapman [merchant], and latterly resided in West Ham. He - along with others associated with the parish, including Philip Splidt - was appointed one of the seventy Commissioners charged under an Act of 1771 with

In 1789 he was declared insolvent, but was subsequently granted a certificate of release and continued trading.

was involved in the shipping trade. In 1755 Parliament provided for him to receive a bounty:

He was also one of the owners of the privateer Saint George (previously Lively), along with Christopher Huddy and Griffiths Hore from Wapping, and others. It sailed in 1857 with a crew of about 240 who in advertisements were offered advance payment of 6 Guineas for 'Gentlemen sailors' and 3 guineas for 'able bodied landmen', explicitly excluding the recruitment of crew belonging to His Majesty's Service, under Captain Derbyshire, who was killed in an engagement a few months later - more details here.

He was appointed High Sherriff of Essex, and had a house at Stratford Langthorne in West Ham. He was one of many signatories of a 1775 petition protesting to the King about unjustifiable proceedings of some of your Majesty's colonies in America. He died in 1778. There were other local family members: William, of Limehouse, who died in 1759, and Edward, of St Botolph-without-Aldgate, who died in 1771.

Two of his daughters married into the St Barbe family (which had naval connections over several generations, and held property in Bitterne Tithing, near Southampton), both of them at one time hoytakers [inspectors of chartered ships] at the Victualling Office:

Ann Manbey married John St Barbe (1742-1816); she died in 1771, having borne him 2 children, John and Caroline. He remarried and had a further nine children between 1774-87.  He was a powerful figure, who had served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy (superannuated with the rank of Commander at 8s. 6d. a day), had commanded merchant ships, and (as he said in 1796 - by which time he was described as shipbroker and shipowner - in his evidence to the committee appointed 'to enquire into the best mode of providing sufficient accommodation for the increased trade and shipping of the port of London &c', during the last War I was employ'd by the Victualling Office as Hoy Taker, and had the Management of the whole Marine Department of that Office. (In this role in 1767 he had a hand in arrangements for the expeditionary voyages of Lt (later Capt) James Cook: the Admiralty Secretary wrote to Victualling Board: With reference to letter of 1 June 1767 ... Ordered that Mr. Soley, Mr. St. Barbe and Mr. Dixon do purchase on the best terms they can to be paid for in ready money, one hundred pounds of the newest and best mustard seed, unground and that the same be packed in tight cask.)   In 1782 the Victualling Board had received petitions complaining about the 'exactions' - compulsory gratuities - which he demanded, alleging also that he gave preference to vessels in which he had a personal interest. He promised to stop this practice, and the Board issued a simple reprimand, defending his professionalism as a hoytaker and as a surveyor of provisions (one source suggesting that this was out of sympathy to his need to maintain a large family). See Roger Morriss Naval Power and British Culture 1766-1850: Public Trust and Government Ideology (Ashgate 2004) p107. His personal commercial interests, in the whaling, convict and slave trades, indeed came to dominate. He was a Lloyd's underwriter, and in 1790 (together with Samuel Enderby junior) proposed to the Home Office that transported convicts could be sent out in whaling vessels, as part of the protected 'Third Fleet'. (Cpatain William Irish was involved in such a project backed by St Barbe; and compare the activities of Robert Curling). In 1794 he was one of the syndicate of brokers consigning the vessel Sandown to transport slaves from Sierra Leone. He was involved in the setting up of Commercial Hall. Latterly he lived at Blackheath.

Ann's surviving sister Christian married Alexander St Barbe junior (1743-99). His father had been appointed hoytaker at the Victualling Office, Tower Hill, in 1756 (replacing Francis Ellis, sacked for 'misbehaviour') during the 'Seven Years War', and his son 'inherited' this position some years later, being paid £60 a year with £20 a year house rent. Christian bore him four daughters, of whom Eleanor (1773-96), having married a clergyman, predeceased both parents, and Elizabeth (1773-1808) and Christian (1784-1806) predeceased their mother, leaving only Catharine (born 1774 - who had married a relative of Thomas Jefferson from the United States). This was the background to a Chancery case over Alexander's will ((he died in Blandford, Dorset): in White v St Barbe (1813) 21 E.R.C. 499, 1 Ves & B [Vesey & Beames] 399, 12 Revised Rep. 246, it was agreed that the mother had the power to nominate grandchildren as heirs. The case became a precedent for the law against perpetuities.

To the Right Honourable Thomas Rawlinson Esquire Lord Mayor of the City of London and the Rest of his Majesties' Justices of the Peace for at the General Quarter Sessions at the Peace held at Guildhall in and for the City of London Assembled The Humble petition of John Horsford of the Parish of Saint George in the County of Middlesex Surgeon and Apothecary  SHEWETH That on the twenty second day of October 1753 one Ann Coulson Spinster was upon a proper and Legal Examination taken before Boulton Mainwaring Esquire one of his Majesties' Justices of the peace for the said County of Middlesex Passed as a Vagabond from the said Parish of Saint George to the Parish of Saint Nicholas in the Town of Newcastle upon Tyne in the County of Northumberland being her Legal Settlement That in Pursuance of Such Pass she was Conveyed to the Parish of Saint Botolph Aldgate London in her way to her said Settlement and Delivered to one Constable of the said Parish of Aldgate who thereupon Gave a Receipt for her That Notwithstanding she was so Delivered to him together with her Pass and Duplicate of Examination he has Totally Refused to Obey the Same and was Counter and as your Petitioner Beleives [sic] therein by the Churchwarden or some other officer of the said Parish and she Still Continues in the said Parish the he had Repealed Orders from Alderman Cockayne to Obey the said Pass That about three Months after such Pass she was Delivered of a Male Bastard Child which is now as your Petitioner beleives [sic] Chargeable to the said Parish That Since her Delivery she has made Oath Before two of his Majesties' Justices of the peace for the said city that your Petitioner is the Father of the said Bastard who have thereupon Ordered your petitioner to pay three Pounds to the Churchwardens or Overseers of the Poor of the said Parish being so much Expended by them in Maintaining the said Bastard Child and also two shillings and Sixpence a Week Weekly for its Future Maintenance That your Petitioner being Conscious of his not ever having any criminal Knowledge of the said Ann Coulson thinks himself Greatly Aggreived by the said Order And your Petitioners is Informed that the said Constable by not Obeying the said Pass has Acted illegally and Contrary to the Acts of Parliament and that thereby your Petitioner is Discharged the Parish having by their own Act Drew the Charge upon themselves Your Petitioner therefore Most Humbly Hopes and prays that you would please to Quash the said Order or Adjudication touching the Maintenance of the said Bastard Child and further Releive [sic] your petitioner as you shall think proper And He as in Duty Bound will ever Pray &c. John Horsford

To the Worshipfull John Hawkins Esquire and to the rest of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex in their General Session Assembled. The Humble Petition and Appeal of Diedrick Peckerson of the Parish of Saint George Middlesex, an Inhabitant paying to the Relief of the Poor within the said Parish, SHEWETH That a Rate or Assessment was [...] on the nineteenth day of August last made for the relief of the Poor of the said Parish by John Horsford and Lancelot Bowler, Churchwardens, and William Ray, William Gunniss and John Hopkins, overseers of the Poor of the said Parish, and all owed by Roberts Pill and Christopher Scott Esquires, two of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace of the said County, which Rate was made for three Months Commenceing [sic] at Lady Day now last past. That your Petitioner conceives himself aggrieved by the said Rate because [...] heard the other Inhabitants of the said Parish are thereby Rated or Assessed by an Annual Assessment by the Pound, Whereas the Custom and Usage of the said Parish hath constantly for great numbers of Years last past been to make a Monthly Rate or Assessment, which being discretionary was much better Calculated to Answer immediate Occasions without bringing a perpetual burthen on the Inhabitants. That the said Rate is in many Instances partial and unequal, and in particular that your said Petitioner is charged much higher in proportion to the Annual Value of the Premises Occupied by him than other Persons within the said Parish, and therefore and for other Defects in the said Rate your Petitioner Appeals therefrom. Your Petitioner therefore humbly prays that your Worships would be pleased to order the benefit of the said Appeal to be saved to your Petitioner, and that your Worships would be pleased to appoint a Day in the next General Quarter Session of the Peace to hear and determine the said Appeal; And at the same time that the Church-wardens and Overseers of the said Parish may produce the Books of the Old Rates for the Relief of the Poor of the said Parish, as also the Books of the present Rate ...

ROBERT PELL (warden 1776-77), WILLIAM PELL (warden 1780-81)

Robert and William were sons of William Pell, born at Chatham in 1684, who had worked as a boat builder and repairer at Wapping, marrying Martha Pilgrim at St Botolph Aldgate in 1707. He became an officer in the Royal Navy and perished in 1745, together with 1,000 men, on board HMS Victory, apparently in a gale on the rocks off Alderney known as The Caskets [Casquets] - pictured right by Peter Monamy. Martha died in 1752.

Robert was born in 1722, and married a widow Esther Wilson (née Long) in 1747; they had between 15 and 21 children (accounts vary), few of whom reached adulthood. He practised as a physician in Wellclose Square. Where did he train, and how was he financed, for this? We do not know, but he certainly prospered: financially, for (described as a gentleman) he was party to legal actions in the 1750s and 60s over 12 messuages, 2 Dove houses, 12 gardens, 300 acres of land, 300 acres of meadow, 300 acres of pasture, 500 acres of wood & common of pasture in Harefield, Ickenham & Middlesex. In the medical world he was described (on his death) as eminent, and was a founding life governor and steward of the London Hospital. He served as magistrate for the Tower Hamlets Liberties, and was signatory to this 1775 loyal address:

In 1778, as a freeholder, he was supposed qualified to serve on juries. He was a Major in the Middlesex Militia, and died in camp on Farley Common in November, 1779 (his will is at the National Archives at Kew). Yet in the 1783 Medical Register Robert Pell of Wellclose-square is still listed; is this a mistake, or a son?

William was presumably Robert's (younger?) brother. There are records of the baptism of his children between 1764-78 at St George-in-the-East, from various addresses in Cable Street, Betts Street, Wellclose Square and Back Lane. He was a sugar refiner, trading as William Pell & Co (listed in 1781 and 1784), but died in 1788 - his will of October that year is at the National Archives in Kew. However, curiously in 1799 the London Gazette enquired

Sir Albert Pell DCL, born 1768, was Robert's 15th child, the youngest of his three surviving sons. He was educated at Merchant Taylor's School (where apparently he and a friend trained a dog to eat the inedibly fatty meat they were served). One obituarist commented patronisingly that Pell, in early life, was not in comfortable circumstances. It was hardly probable that a medical practitioner, however able (and no doubt Mr. Pell's talents were considerable) should be in a condition to rear his sons in opulence. At Cambridge Albert was keen on poetry (with some of his verse published) and the theatre, and also, for a time, on gaming. In 1786 he became a Fellow of St John's College, holding this post until his marriage; but meanwhile he had entered the Inner Temple, as pupil to Henry Blackstone the 'special pleader', and on qualifying worked in the Western Circuit and Hampshire Sessions. After some years as a junior counsel he was made a Serjeant at Law in 1808, and King’s Serjeant in 1820, working on the circuit and also in London. He is said to have had a practice worth £6,000 a year, often with two hundred ongoing retainers. (Here are comments on his skills as an examiner of witnesses.)

He retired from this work in 1825 because of ill-health, but on recovery became an active magistrate for the Middlesex Sessions, keen, it's said, to reduce financial abuse and waste. In 1831 he was made one of the judges of the new Court of Bankruptcy (which had yet to 'prove' itself), at which point he was knighted. In 1813 he had married the Honourable Margaret Letitia Matilda St John, a co-heiress of Lord St John. They had six children (one of whom, also Albert (1820-1907), became MP for South Leicestershire - and had introduced rugby football to Cambridge University). They moved to Pinner Hill House [right] in the early years of the century, though also took a house in Harley Street when he became a bankruptcy judge, where he died suddenly in 1832, at the age of 64.

A final family member is William Pell (was he Robert's or William's son?) who traded with John Edward Allen in the early 19th century from 125 Aldersgate Street as chemists, druggists and lozenge manufacturers. In an 1811 Old Bailey case two men were convicted of stealing 2lb 10oz nutmegs, value £2 10s, and transported for seven years.

JOHN BRISTOW (warden 1784)
John [or was it his father?] was an engineer who desgned and built fire engines, from premises on Ratcliff Highway close to the church 'opposite Cannon Street [Road]'; he also bought out the firm of Newsham and Rags at 18 New Street, Cloth Fair, West Smithfield - Richard Newsham had patented the first commercially-produced fire engine in 1725 - more detail here. Bristow's 'floating engine' was made in nine different sizes, and advertised both for firefighting and for watering gardens. A handbill of around 1850 shows

decorated with pictures of axes, hoses and buckets; a vesel on fire at sea; the sun; and at the top, his fire engine.

Bicester Local History Society has unearthed a Bristow engine, probably from between 1730-60 [left], and is seeking to restore it.

By the turn of the century, the firm was run as a partnership between Margaret and John Bristow (Margaret insuring the premises at 47 Ratcliff Highway in 1801 in her own name - as fire engine-makers, dealers and chapmen, - and then as a partnership of engine makers until the mid-1820s, but by 1827 they had run into financial difficulties. William Stutfield, and Samuel Hart (a currier of Great Paternoster Row) acquired their effects, and they were declared bankrupt in 1831. However, they were given a certificate of release, and two years later 'Margaret Bristow and Son' continued to trade as fire engine-makers from 12 Commercial Road. It would be good to know more about her role in an unusual business for a woman.

Sir THOMAS COXHEAD MP (warden 1785-6)
Thomas' origins are unknown. He married Deborah Healey at Ratcliff church in 1761. By 1770 he was listed as citizen and cooper (a

JOHN MOXSY (warden 1795)
The family came from Devon or Dorset and were bakers, with premises in the City at at 10 Hart Street, Crutched Friars, and at 63 Ratcliff Highway. John senior (probably the one who served as warden) died in 1808. His son John, born c1771, was a member (contributing a guinea a year) of the Philanthropic Society, founded in 1788 and incorporated in 1806 to tackle the problems of homeless and delinquent children. He died in 1819, aged 48; two days later, his brother Francis, of Whitchapel Road, died aged 41. The next John (who traded with Daniel Callard at the Ratcliff Highway premises) was living in Wellclose Square in 1837 when, described as a gentleman, he invested £500 in the Great North of England Railway. In 1831 he took over the affairs of Edward Bowring, silk shag manufacturer, who had gone bankrupt. John was involved in cases involving family wills: Bate v Hooper in 1848 (with amendments in 1850, 1852 and 1876) and Sewell v Moxby & others in 1851-52, where he was said to be the only defendant who had followed the proper procedures in the ecclesiastical courts which dealt with probate at that time.

William Moxsy of Whitechapel Road (son of Francis?) was a flour factor in 1842, and became the joint assignee with John Bird, a timber merchant of Beaumont Road, Stepney, of the effects of Marmaduke Wooding. Some of the family emigrated to the USA.

Who being on their Oaths say and First the said David Richardson for himself Saith That on the Evening of the twenty fourth day of September Inst. a Fire Happened in Wapping Street when the House of him this Informant together with many others was Burnt down That at the said Fire this Informant has lost a great Quantity of Goods Consisting of Jackets Trowsers Check Shirts and other Articles of Slop Work besides what were Burned in the said Fire That the Several Articles or Goods now produced by the other Informant the said John Hinde consisting of Seven Blue Common Jackets Two Large Blue Jackets [nine] seven White Flannel Jackets Six pair of Breeches Twelve Canvas Trowsers Twelve Checked Shirts one Marble Flannel Waistcoat and one piece of Brown Stuff are the Property of him this Informant and were taken away from his said House at the time of the said Fire That he [clear and positive] believes that he saw the person now present who says his Name is Walter Batley with others very Active about this Informants House at the same time

In 1811, from an address in Wapping High Street, he was co-executor (with Alexander Mitchell, a cabinet-maker of St Catherine's Street, the Tower) of a deceased neighbour, George Young, painter, glazier and ship-chandler of Great Hermitage Street. His partnership with James Richardson and William Francis (warden 1850), was dissolved by mutual consent in January 1822. He died in 1831; his will is at the National Archives in Kew.

Richardson's wife Janet was the sister of Major Robert Stobo, hailed as perhaps the least appreciated, most undervalued hero of our colonial period. When their parents in Glasgow died, he sold their property and set up in business in Virginia, but it failed; so he enlisted, and was appointed a captain in the Virginia militia shortly before the French and Indian War. In 1754, as part of the terms of surrender of Fort Necessity, he and Captain Jacob van Braam were taken to Fort Duquesne as hostages pending a prisoner exchange. At great risk, he was able to make detailed sketches of the fort and suggested plans for its destruction, which were smuggled to the British forces. His words included:

I send this by Monacatootha's brother-in-law, a worthy fellow and may be trusted. On the other side you have a draught [sic] of the Fort such as time and opportunity would admit of at this time ... When we engaged to serve the country it was expected we would do it with our lives;—let them not be disappointed, consider the good of the expedition without the least regard to us ... I wou'd Die ten thousand Deaths to have the pleasure of possessing this Fort but one Day, they are so vain of their success at the [Battle of the Great] Meadows it's worse than Death to hear them.

The French recovered these papers and he was convicted at Quebec as a spy and sentenced to death, but this was commuted to close confinement, and he managed to escape and rejoin the British forces.

Lloyds' Evening Post and The Westminster Journal of June 20-23 1770 reported:

He was presumably given a suicide's burial, in a place unknown. However, his oldest sister Janet, next of kin and heir at law, was granted his goods, chattels and credits; she and her sister Margaret Lockhead contrived to keep the manner - and even the fact - of his death secret. A few months later Captain Lieutenant Isaac Augustus d'Aripé was promoted to the post of captain in the Fifteenth Regiment, vice Robert Stobo, deceased.

Stobo's memoirs, lodged at the the British Museum, were published in Pittsburgh in 1854; see also Robert C. Alberts The most extraordinary adventures of Major Robert Stobo (Houghton Mifflin 1965), which includes the epilogue He early professed the religion of Christ, and walked upright.

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