The Hadsley Dynasty
From 1685 to 1847 Ware Priory was owned by the Hadsley family, although they did not occupy it for the whole of that period. Indeed Robert Hadsley, Gentleman, of Great Munden, who bought the house from a Thomas Feltham, never resided there but (in the words of his son) “let the same and the Lands belonging thereto to some Tradesman or other to the time of his Death”. Robert Hadsley, who was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1702, also bought the manor of Great Munden; he died in 1715. And in his time the house was not known as The Priory but as “The Grey Fryars of Ware”.
Founded in 1338, it had been a house of the Friars Minor or Franciscan Greyfriars until 1538 and Henry VIII’s dissolution of the “Lesser Monasteries”. It was then acquired by Thomas Byrche, a servant of the Crown and a scrivener (accountant – possibly a moneylender). The Byrche family lived there until 1628 and it was presumably they who demolished the Franciscans’ church, truncated the cloister and converted what had been a monastic building with separate wings for the friars and their guests into a private dwelling. A report of 1631 said that the friars’ buildings were “not altogether beaten down”.
The property then went through five different ownerships before being acquired by Robert Hadsley in 1685. On his death, the estate passed to his widow, Elizabeth. An inventory made for her at Michaelmas 1715 mentions the rooms and fixtures of what must have been a comfortable dwelling for that period. Downstairs were a great parlour, a further room and a little parlour, together with a chapel, a counting house, brewhouse, kitchen, dairy, great cellar and porch. Upstairs were a little chamber, a next room, a wainscot chamber, a best chamber, a further room and a little garret. The panelled or wainscoted rooms still exist on the first floor of the modern Priory.
In May 1740 Elizabeth Hadsley died and her son, another Robert, became the owner. In a long document (dated 1759) complaining about the behaviour of his neighbours, it is stated that Elizabeth Hadsley, like her husband, never resided in the house but on her death “the said Estate & Premises descended & came to Robert Hadsley Esq., the present Owner thereof, who now & for two or three Years Past has Resided there, & is making Improvements thereon”. The improvements mainly concerned the lighting of the building and the insertion of sash windows in the East and Centre Wings and at the rear.
The gist of Robert Hadsley’s complaint was that, while the estate was owned by his parents and let to tenants, neighbours had erected buildings against his garden wall, including “small Dwelling houses, some Stables and Brewhouses & some Hogscoats, very offensive from their noisome Stench”. These structures had damaged his garden wall and taken away his view of the Parish Church, to such an extent that he had had to pull down a summerhouse in his garden. Some of these “incroachments” had been there for 20 or 50 years, and certainly from the time when the present owner was an infant or whilst he was “in Foreign Parts where he resided several Years”. In other words, Robert Hadsley had returned from the Grand Tour and was determined to assert his rights as a property owner. Unfortunately for him, the attorney to whom he addressed the complaint – Elias Harvey of Lincoln’s Inn Fields – argued that, unless the nuisance was tantamount to trespass, then Mr Hadsley would get no redress from the courts, and it would be better for him to come to some accommodation with his neighbours.
Robert Hadsley died in 1765 without issue and in his will1 left Ware Priory (as it was now called) to his cousin, Jeremiah Rayment on condition that he and his family and successors took the surname Hadsley. This Jeremiah did in the same year by Act of Parliament: 5 Geo 3 c.114 P (1765) “pursuant to the will of Robert Hadsley”. Jeremiah Rayment Hadsley was unmarried at the time, but on 17 June 1775 he married a Miss Goodwyn of St. Paul’s Churchyard.2 He would have been aged about 30 and she, from the fact that she was 79 at her death in 1831, aged 23. Sarah Goodwyn or Godwyn went on to produce two daughters – Sarah, baptised in Ware Parish Church on 6 May 1776, and Maria, baptised on 2 November 1777. The birth dates of the two girls will never be known, but there was clearly very little interval between the two pregnancies and indeed there may have been speculation that a third pregnancy was in the offing.
Jeremiah’s will3, made on 6 December 1777 – just over a month after the christening of Maria – goes into elaborate and extended discussion about provision for an eldest son and the heirs of his body lawfully begotten, a second son and the heirs of his body lawfully begotten, and even a third son and the heirs of his body lawfully begotten, before ever mentioning “for default of such Issue … my Daughters Sarah Hadsley and Maria Hadsley”. Clearly Jeremiah’s will was a lawyer’s delight. But its length may be explained by the rapid growth of Jeremiah Hadsley’s young family, by the enormous wealth at his disposal (about which more later), and about fears for his health. Within three months of making his will, he was in Bath – presumably taking the waters and medical treatment – and was already dead. The provisions of his will, which runs to four closely argued pages, betrayed a man of great and varied wealth. Apart from ownership of the Ware Priory estate and other properties in Hertfordshire and Essex, there is mention of £7,800 in ready money and £13,400 in joint stock (the old and new South Sea Annuities – what we would now call gilts, for this was some years after the South Sea Bubble had been lanced). That total of £21,200 in realisable money (not counting the property) would be today worth about £12,000,000.
An indication of Jeremiah’s wealth and that of his family is the undertaker’s bill for bringing his body from Bath to Ware (see below).
First there was the expense of the coffin itself – a lead inner coffin with quilted lining in which the corpse, dressed in a superior fine shroud and winding sheet with a cap and gloves, lay on a pillow; then there was the outer wooden coffin, filled with bran, fixed down with “2000 best nails” and covered in black cloth, with gilt handles and an engraved brass breastplate. The ceremonies began in a church at Bath, where church dues were paid and gloves provided for the Clerk and Sexton. Then the three-day journey to Ware began with the hearse, drawn by six horses sporting velvet hangings and black feathers, followed by a coach and six with two coachmen and two postilions. There were expenses at the turnpikes and at the lodging houses, where eight men were paid to take the coffin from the hearse and put it back the next morning and women were paid to sit up overnight with the coffin, including one night at Ware. There was all the drapery and hangings: the crepe, black silk and black satin, the Bombazine of two qualities, the Randimore and satin ribbon, not to mention the hatbands, gloves, coats, capes, scarves and lac’d kid gloves for the mourners, clergy, pall bearers, underbearers, maid servants and others. Finally, at Ware Parish Church there were expenses for making and hanging the Achievement (the coat of arms of the deceased), as well as a banner for the pulpit and hangings for the desk of the Parish Clerk. The total cost of the bill presented by the undertaker, Mr Hanbury Pettingal, was £223.13s.5d. – a colossal sum and worth about £12,345 in today’s money.
Jeremiah Rayment Hadsley was buried on 15 March 1778 in the nave of St. Mary’s Church, as was then the custom for the important families of the parish. There is a curiosity about Mr Pettingal’s bill – he dated it “6 Mch. 1777”, a whole year out of date.
The wedding of Thomas Gosselin and Sarah Hadsley
The wedding of the title took place in 1809, when Jeremiah’s elder daughter, Sarah, was 33 years old. Her groom was a naval officer, Captain Gosselin, who was 44 years of age. They were not youngsters and perhaps it was the war against Napoleon that delayed their marriage, but it was nonetheless a glittering match – the union of a national hero and a beautiful heiress. Thomas Le Marchant Gossellin, born in 1765, was descended from two ancient families in Guernsey and entered the navy in 1778. During the wars against France and Spain, he was present in all the major actions in North America and the West Indies, notably the Battle of the Saintes off Dominica in 1782, and assisted in the capture of Surinam in 1799. In 1808, while in command of the 74-gun Audacious, Gosselin convoyed a large force of troops to the River Tagus in the Peninsula War; and in January 1809 he covered the embarkation of the army at Corunna, a service for which he received the thanks of both houses of parliament. After that, he never went to sea again but remained a naval officer on half pay and was promoted as such.4
The wedding took place on 9 May 1809 at St. James’s Church, Westminster (St. James’s, Piccadilly) – Captain Gosselin lived in the parish, while also keeping a house in St. Peter Port. The ceremony was attended by members of Guernsey’s leading families, including his father, Joshua Gosselin – a former Greffier (Clerk of the Royal Court) and well-known painter and botanist – and also by many of Westminster’s leading citizens. It was celebrated by the Most Revd and Hon. Edward Venables-Vernon, who had been confirmed as Archbishop of York in the same church a year before. The register was signed by Thomas and Sarah (“Sarah Hadsley Jun”), by the groom’s younger brother, Gerard (a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Life Guards, later the Army’s most Senior General); by his brother-in-law, the Revd Nicholas Carey (Rector of St Martin’s, St. Peter Port, and later Dean of Guernsey); and by the bride’s mother, Sarah Hadsley. For the occasion of their wedding, Thomas and Sarah had their portraits painted.* They show a rather serious young man and a society beauty, with a pearl headdress, earrings and necklace. A miniature of Thomas Le Marchant Gosselin in naval uniform was painted in the same year by George Englehart, the well-known miniaturist.
Thomas and Sarah began their married life in Westminster, where a daughter was born on 24 May 1811. She was christened Emma on 29 June 1811 at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, as recorded in the register of that church and also in the register of Bengeo Parish Church (St Leonard’s) in a memorandum dated 1812. It was in that year that Thomas and family took a lease on Bengeo Hall from Thomas Hope Byde of Ware Park. The family now included Thomas’s father, Joshua Gosselin, who painted two landscape views from the house, both dated 1812.5 Joshua died in May the following year and was laid to rest in the Byde family vault in St Leonard’s Church. Another milestone in the life of the family was reached in June 1814, when Thomas Gosselin was promoted Rear Admiral.
On 5 July 1813, Sarah was delivered of a son and the following July of a second daughter: they were baptised together in St Leonard’s as Martin Hadsley Gosselin and Mary Gosselin. There was to be another child, Charlotte, but before her much delayed baptism in March 1817 there occurred the funeral of their mother. There is no description of the funeral of Sarah Gosselin; she probably died in childbirth, in which case there would have been a simple walking funeral from Bengeo Hall to St Leonard’s. The burial took place on 28 November 1815 and she was laid to rest in the Gosselin vault in the churchyard.** One interesting point about all these Bengeo baptisms and burials is that they were not celebrated by the Vicar or Curate, but by the Revd Dr M.H. Luscombe – clearly a family friend. Dr Luscombe was Master of the East India College at Haileybury, curate at St Andrew’s, Hertford, and later Bishop of the Anglican Congregations in Europe.
Mrs Hadsley’s funeral
After Sarah’s death, the Rear Admiral and his young family at Bengeo came under the care of Mrs Hadsley and her daughter, Maria, at Ware Priory. They were the children’s guardians and in 1820 Maria gave each of them a silver sauce tureen, engraved with the Gosselin coat of arms. On 27 May 1825 Thomas Gosselin was promoted to Vice Admiral.
Mrs Hadsley died in April 1831 during a visit to London and Maria called Mr Gilbertson of Hertford up to Town to arrange the funeral. The body was taken in a hearse and four back to Ware, accompanied by the servants – Mrs Grapes, Smart, Mary the housemaid and Felsted the Butler. They set out at one o’clock. Maria, accompanied by the older Gosselin children, Emma and Martin, set out in a coach and four at two o’clock to be home before the corpse arrived. The hearse arrived a little before seven and the coffin was placed in the dinner parlour. The Admiral and his two younger daughters, Mary and Charlotte, came at seven.
There was a simple walking funeral the next day from the Priory to the Church, conducted by the curate, the Revd James Britton, whose large family had benefitted considerably from the late Mrs Hadsley’s beneficence. In the evening the family returned to London, where they were obliged to put lights in the windows as part of the Reform Movement’s campaign to have Parliament dissolved. The following day legacies were given to the servants, with a little extra to those who had provided for their mistress’s personal comfort. Maria then purchased jewellery for the family mourners – the invoice from Barratt the jeweller in New Bond Street totalled £66.1s.6d., of which the biggest item was 15 guineas for three pearl rings with diamonds in the centre for the three Misses Gosselin.
Before leaving London, Maria went to Doctors’ Commons to prove her mother’s will, took over the bank accounts and paid all the outstanding bills. She returned to Ware and then walked to Bengeo for dinner. She was 54 at the time and clearly physically strong as well as a good businesswoman.
Maria Hadsley’s Journal
In the 1840s there were significant changes in the family’s fortunes. On 23 November 1841 Thomas Gosselin was promoted to full Admiral and on 17 August 1842 his eldest daughter, Emma, married Captain Edward Spencer Trower of the 9th Lancers in St Leonard’s Church, Bengeo. The following year – on 1 February – Martin Hadsley Gosselin married Frances Oris Marshall in Kent. Many of these changes were reflected in the little red notebook which Maria Hadsley kept as a journal from July 1844 to February 1845. She was then 67 years old and just as good a businesswoman and just as strong in her mind as she had ever been. She wrote in a clear strong hand which only occasionally became erratic – she suffered with her eyes and had great difficulty getting the right spectacles and the best medicine. Medicine arrived last night – opened & began taking it – God grant a blessing upon it.
The greater part of the diary is concerned with social engagements. On most days Maria would take her carriage and drive to the home of the Puller family at Youngsbury, the new Vicarage off Poles Lane or Bengeo, or receive visits from neighbours of the same rank. She gave a dinner party about every 10 days and would plan the guest list a week in advance. She was not superstitious – there were sometimes 13 at table and she recorded the number! Occasionally, when there were young or talented people present, there was music after dinner. If the Admiral came to Ware unaccompanied, Maria made sure that he got home. (Set the Admiral on his way home.) Usually he came with Mary or dear Charlotte, occasionally with Martin and his wife, Fanny. It is interesting to note the people she did not socialise with. There is no mention in the diary of Mrs Maria De Horne Hooper, a very rich and similarly charitable lady who lived at Amwell House. The reason must be that Mrs Hooper, the daughter of the poet John Scott, was a Quaker and a liberal. Miss Hadsley was a conservative and an Anglican.
The diary records two visits to London – where she visited shops as well as her doctor, bankers and stockbrokers – and a 17 day visit to Brighton, where Martin and Fanny had taken rooms. Here she did all the things required of a visitor: heard the band playing, saw the Camera Obscura and the pier and saw Punch for my amusement. The visit to Brighton is the only occasion on which Maria records travelling by train. She never took the train to London – she always went in her own carriage. The “railroad”, as she calls it, from Ware was obviously not all that reliable. A friend stopped at the Priory for two hours to wait for a train, and then Maria sent her to the station in her carriage with the luggage being taken in a wheelbarrow. But on the trip to Brighton, Maria put her carriage and horses on the train at London Bridge. It was imperative to have one’s own carriage if one was paying calls. She once borrowed a landau from Admiral Gosselin, but the door catch broke on a trip to Youngsbury and she had to hold the door to throughout the return journey.
It is a very business-like diary, but there are some intimate glimpses of the writer. She belonged to a book club and read Disraeli’s Coningsby and Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – both within a few months of their first publication. She greatly mourned the death of her little dog, Duch – much grieved for the loss of my affectionate intelligent little Dog, buried him in a plantation in front of the Dinner Parlour. When she left Brighton, Martin and Fanny gave her another dog which she called Tiny. She supported innumerable charities and good causes, including the sick and poor in Ware and she let a girls’ school use part of the Priory. She actively raised money for the Ware Lying in Charity and paid a substantial part of the cost of the new St Mary’s National Schools and Wareside Church.
Maria Hadsley died on Saturday 4 December 1847. The Hertfordshire Mercury reported that she had been in a declining state of health, but there had been no immediate fear until she succumbed to the influenza epidemic. It went on to say:
The unexpected death of this inestimable lady has occasioned a deep feeling of regret in the town and neighbourhood, where her Christian example and the numerous unostentatious charities had excited the esteem and respect of all classes of the community. The poor will have cause, especially at this season of the year, deeply to deplore the loss of a benefactress who invariably met the appeals of her suffering fellow creatures with the most prompt and bountiful attention.6
The funeral on 10 December was a simple walking funeral, without carriages, but it still required quantities of crepe, silk, ribbons, hatbands, cloaks and gloves, supplied by Robert Cocks & Co., of Hertford (successors to Gilbertson and Cocks) at a total cost of £111.12s.8d. The “Stout Lead Coffin” and outer moulded oak coffin with engraved breastplate were supplied by the builder James Hitch. Mr Hitch and his men also built a new brick grave in the nave of St Mary’s for Maria and her parents and took down and repaired the Hadsley family pew. The account of the Vicar, the Revd Joseph Blakesley, records the tolling of the “Passing Bell & the Great Bell of Ware”. The chief mourners were the Admiral, Emma and Edward Trower, Martin Hadsley Gosselin and Fanny, and the Misses Mary and Charlotte Gosselin.
In her will Maria left the Priory to Martin and his family – in accordance with the provisions of both her parents’ wills.7 In 1850 he retained the services of the famous architect, George Godwin, and carried out a major restoration and refurbishment of the medieval building. Martin Hadsley Gosselin died in Ware Priory in 1868 and Fanny sold the estate, moving instead to Blakesware. Thus ended the Hadsley connection with Ware Priory. Admiral Gosselin died in December 1857, having – as the Hertfordshire Mercury put it – “arrived at the patriarchal age of 93.”8 The newspaper described him as the senior Admiral of the Fleet, which was incorrect. Although he was the senior admiral in the Royal Navy, it was the decision of the Board of Admiralty that, if there was a vacancy for Admiral of the Fleet, the senior admiral should be promoted only if he had flown his admiral’s flag at sea; Thomas Gosselin had not seen service at sea for 48 years.
Sources of Reference
This article is an amplified version of a talk given to the Hertford & Ware Local History Society on 19 April 1990. It is based on a large collection of documents assembled by H.J.E. (“Jumbo”) Shayler who lived at the Pest House, Hertford and later at Water Row, Ware. After his death, his daughter, Mrs Ann Hammond of Thundridge, gave the collection to the Ware Museum who in turn deposited them in the Hertfordshire Archives & Local Studies (HALS Acc. 3855). The other sources which have been consulted in compiling this article are numbered in the text. They are as follows:
1. 22 February 1765 (National Archives PROB11/906/234)
2. Jones, A. (ed.) 1993 Hertfordshire 1731-1800 – as recorded in The Gentleman’s Magazine Hertfordshire Publications (page 156)
3. 6 December 1777 (National Archives PROB11/1040/321)
4. The Dictionary of National Biography
5. View from Bengeo Hall and View towards Ware Park (from Bengeo Hall), Guernsey Museums and Galleries, www.wikigallery.org
6. Hertfordshire Mercury 11 December 1847
7. 20 January 1848 (National Archives PROB11/2967/318)
8. Hertfordshire Mercury 12 December 1857
Notes:
* The portraits are owned by the Trower family of Stanstead Bury. Thomas’ and Sara’s eldest child, Emma married Captain Edward Spencer Trower of the 9th Lancers.
** This is an assumption, based on the reports that, while Joshua Gosselin was buried inside St. Leonard’s, his son was buried in the churchyard. On the death of Admiral Thomas Le Marchant Gosselin in 1857, his remains “were interred in the family vault in the old church-yard at Bengeo. (Hertfordshire Mercury 12 December 1857.)
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