Lawyer – Abingdon on Thames Town Council

The Dayrell Family

The Dayrells were gentry in Lillingston Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, but a branch of the family became prominent in Abingdon in the first half of the seventeenth century. Their significance in Abingdon’s history is as members of one of the two factions that opposed each other in the town’s institutions – the Corporation, Christ’s Hospital, the churches.

Paule Dayrell was one of the new men brought on to the Hospital’s board of governors in 1598 by Francis Little, leader of one of the factions, after a successful bout of in-fighting against his opponents led by the Tesdale family. Dayrell was Master of the Hospital in 1601, but left the town two years later and was smoothly replaced by his son Walter (1564-1628).

Walter was a lawyer of Gray’s Inn, and husband of Alice who was daughter and sister of two Thomas Mayotts, both several times mayor and politically allied with Little. He resigned as a governor of the Hospital in 1606 to become its auditor and also legal counsel to the corporation, two functions which in Abingdon normally went together. In 1610 Little was able get the town two charter revisions, one of which established it as ‘a borough of the peace’, expanding its legal functions and upgrading its legal counsel to the status of recorder. This was a significant professional advancement for Walter.

The Little faction was conservative in religion, opposed to the aggressive puritanism that was common at the time. Dayrell’s activities extended to Oxford, where the university was generally conservative. He was personally friendly with Samuel Fell, Dean of Christ Church, and became a legal advisor to William Laud, then President of St John’s and later Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud was detested by the puritans, who would later put him to death, for his insistence on traditional religious rites and ceremonies.

The memorial tablet that Alice put up in St Nicolas’ after Walter’s death in 1628 left no doubt about where he stood in the current religious controversies: ‘…the advancement of the clergy being his joy, and the beauty of God’s house his delight’. The ‘beauty of holiness’ was a Laudian slogan, and such sentiments would not have been acceptable in the puritan stronghold of St Helen’s. They also seem to have descended in the family; in 1653, Walter’s son Paule relinquished the family home at Lacies Court to Laud’s friend and biographer Peter Heylin who had been expelled from his Hampshire rectory for his work as a royalist propagandist in the Civil War.

The faction fighting continued unabated after Walter’s death. His son-in-law Charles Holloway followed him as Hospital auditor, but the post of recorder was separated off and given to a Tesdale candidate. However, Walter had started a Berkshire legal dynasty; Charles’s daughter would later marry Edward Dalby, steward (the local name for the recorder) of Reading, and her descendants were active there into the next century.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

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Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt

Simon Harcourt was of a gentry family whose seat was at Stanton Harcourt. He was educated at a dissenting academy at Shilton, near Burford. He went on to Pembroke College at Oxford, which was closely connected with Abingdon.

Harcourt was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1683, became Recorder of Abingdon in 1689, and in 1690 was elected unopposed to Parliament for the Abingdon seat as a high Tory and Anglican. He soon developed a reputation as an orator and administrator, and gradually gained recognition and promotion. This was especially the case in the time of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-14), whose chief minister was Robert Harley. Harcourt and Harley had been contemporaries at the Shilton academy, and they now worked closely together. For many years, he maintained a legal career in addition to his political one, the two feeding off each other, and he became very rich. By 1711, he had become Lord Keeper and was soon made a baron. In 1713, he was promoted to Lord Chancellor.

In the later part of Anne’s reign, Harcourt was among her principal ministers. When she was succeeded by George I, a Whig, it seemed to be the end of his political career, as it was for his colleagues. But unlike them, he was able to make his peace with the new regime. Against expectation, he had government office again in 1720, was made a viscount in 1721, and by 1722 was back in the Privy Council. When the king was out of the country, Harcourt was one of the Lords Justices, holding vice-regal power.

Harcourt made his home at Cokethorpe and bought the estate of Nuneham Courtenay. At Cokethorpe he entertained widely, including literary men of congenial political views such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He died in 1727, and is buried at the old family seat at Stanton Harcourt.

Harcourt was three times married, but his first wife, Rebecca, was the only one with whom he had children: two daughters and three sons. The first and third sons died young. The second, Simon, in spite of the influence his father exerted on his behalf, had a short and only mediocre career. He was MP for Abingdon 1713-15, but was not re-elected. He died in 1720. A grandson, also Simon, became in 1749 Viscount Nuneham of Nuneham Courtenay and Earl Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt.

© AAAHS and contributors 2016

Sir John Holt

Sir John Holt, the greatest English lawyer of his age, was chief justice of the court of King’s Bench from 1689 until his death. He was born in Thame, the son of Sir Thomas Holt, who was recorder of Abingdon and MP for Abingdon. John is believed to have been educated at the free school in Abingdon (now Abingdon School). He was called to the bar in 1664 where he soon became known for his skilled advocacy in a wide variety of cases. In the crisis that arose when the Roman Catholic king, James II, fled the country in December 1688, Holt advised Parliament that James had renounced his position as king and that the throne was vacant and could be offered to William of Orange; thereafter William was summoned to the throne jointly with his wife Mary (daughter of James II). Soon after the accession of William III and Mary, Holt was appointed chief justice of King’s Bench at the early age of 46, which office he held for 22 years. His reputation as a judge rests both on the contribution that he made in developing the content of the common law, through the numerous judgments he gave in disputed cases, and also on the manner in which he conducted the trials that came before him. One biographer said that Holt was ‘the model on which, in England, the judicial character has been formed’. Holt died in 1710, leaving a widow but no children. He is buried at Redgrave church, Suffolk.

A W Bradley

© AAAHS and contributors 2013

Sir Thomas Holt

Thomas Holt, lawyer, was born about 1616 at Stoke in Oxfordshire and educated at Magdalen Hall in Oxford. About 1640, he married Susan Peacock of Chawley, near Cumnor. His activities during the Civil War are unknown, but by 1648 he was a barrister of Gray’s Inn. He was probably resident in Abingdon by 1653. He was a member of the Berkshire Commission of the Peace in that year, and a governor of Christ’s Hospital in 1655. He became Abingdon’s recorder in 1656.

In 1654, he was sent to Westminster as Abingdon’s member in Oliver Cromwell’s first parliament. Members were expected to sign a ‘recognition’ of the protectoral regime, and he seems to have done so. But he later went into opposition. When Cromwell set up army officers as local governors, Holt was prominent by his absence from Major-General Goffe’s advisory committee. He was re-elected to Parliament in 1656, but, with many others of doubtful loyalty, was excluded from it by the executive almost until its dissolution.

Meanwhile his legal career was flourishing. In 1661, amid enthusiasm for the newly restored Charles II, tax was paid on a ‘voluntary’ basis with payers encouraged to vie with each other publicly for how much they would give. Holt contributed £15, more than anyone else in Abingdon. The 1663 Hearth Tax assessments show him as living in Unicorn House in East St Helen Street, with thirteen chimneys, a number usually associated only with large inns.

In 1672, he added to his responsibilities by becoming steward (as they called their recorder) of Reading, and three years later the Abingdon Corporation, citing his frequent absences, sacked him from the recordership in favour of Thomas Medlycott. There may have been an additional reason: Medlycott inclined to the developing Whig party, and Holt to the Tory.

In January 1680, recently knighted, he presided over the county quarter-sessions which combined the functions of a county government and a court of law. This body insisted on joining a Whig-inspired campaign of petitioning for a new Parliament. He objected, and when there next was a Parliament, he was made to apologise for this objection on his knees at the bar of the House of Commons. This did no obvious harm to his career, and in 1686 he was named as a king’s serjeant, the highest legal rank that his career path could lead to. But he died in that year.

His son Sir John Holt (1642–1710), educated at Abingdon School, would become lord chief justice, and one of the greatest lawyers of his generation.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College

Archie Kirkman Loyd

Archie Kirkman Loyd was twice MP for the Abingdon Division of Berkshire, from 1895 to 1905 and from 1916 to 1918. Born in India and trained in England for a career in the Indian Civil Service, he opted instead for the law. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1868 and became a Queen’s Counsel in 1892. In 1885 he married Henrietta Louisa Clutterbuck, of a wealthy landed family in Chippenham. They resided first at West Ilsley and later at Downs House, East Hendred. There were four sons, one of whom was killed in the early months of the First World War.

Loyd was a second cousin of Harriet Sarah Loyd, daughter and heiress of the very rich banker Samuel Jones Loyd, Lord Overstone. She married Robert Lindsay – who changed his name to Loyd-Lindsay – in 1858 and settled at Lockinge, near Wantage. Loyd-Lindsay was a figure of great influence in North Berkshire. He was one of the MPs for the county of Berkshire from 1865 to 1885 when he became Lord Wantage, and his cousin Charles Lindsay sat for Abingdon from 1865 to 1874.

Archie Loyd was very close to Harriet and her husband. Loyd-Lindsey was one of the founders of what later became the British Red Cross. That organisation met its first great challenge in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and Loyd became Loyd-Lindsay’s private secretary in a period of hectic activity. They went together to organise humanitarian relief in the Serbo-Turkish war in 1876, narrowly escaping being caught up in the extremely bloody battle of Alexinatz, and Loyd personally headed the mission to the Russo-Turkish war a year later. He received the thanks of the Tsar at an audience at Plevna in present-day Bulgaria. When in 1883 Loyd-Lindsay, convalescent after an illness, took a long trip to South Africa, Loyd accompanied him. In 1887 Loyd’s wife gave birth at Lockinge; the boy was named Robert Lindsay Loyd and no doubt had Lord Wantage as godfather.

It was Lord Wantage, as head of the constituency Conservative Association, who nominated Loyd as parliamentary candidate in 1895. The Abingdon division extended as far as Faringdon, Wantage and Wallingford; it was a safe Conservative seat, and Loyd took it with a much increased majority.

Loyd was unopposed in 1900, but did not stand in the election of 1906 because of ill health. In 1916, the then MP, Harold Henderson, resigned, and Loyd came out of retirement to replace him. He was unopposed at the by-election, and held the seat until 1918. His nephew, Arthur Thomas Loyd, would be MP for the Abingdon division from 1921 to 1923.

Archie Loyd was assiduous if unspectacular as an MP. One of his earliest preoccupations was with the level of death duties to be paid on an estate that went to a widow when there were no children – a matter of obvious concern at Lockinge House. Following his patron’s example, he was always ready to take up the cause of ex-servicemen in difficulty with civilian bureaucracy. As a former assize barrister, he was active in reforms of the criminal law, and as MP for a largely agricultural constituency, supported the interests of tenant farmers and worked to get better housing and old age pensions for their labourers.

Loyd was a Berkshire JP and deputy-lieutenant, and a member of the Berkshire County Council. He was a governor of Abingdon School from 1901 till his death. But his abiding interest was the British Red Cross, of which he was vice-chairman, remaining active until late in his life. He published a book on the organisation of the Red Cross during the First World War, as well as several treatises on the law relating to cheques and promissory notes.

Loyd’s career is defined by his relationship with both the Loyd-Lindsays. Harriet refers in her memoir to his ‘life-long affection and devotion’, and made him significant gifts of property after her husband’s death. It was his nephew, Arthur Thomas Loyd, who inherited the major portion of the Lockinge estate.

© AAAHS and contributors 2021

Thomas Medlycott

Thomas Medlycott was recorder of Abingdon, 1675-86 and 1687-9. He had been born in London in 1628, son of James Medlicott or Medlicote who was described as a dyer. His mother, born Elizabeth Joyner, was from Newbury. He was educated at Merchant Taylors School, Christ’s College Cambridge, and the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1653. Little is known of his career before 1675, when he was made a JP for Middlesex.

He came to Abingdon in 1676, having been selected by the corporation to replace Thomas Holt as recorder. The official reason for Holt’s dismissal was that he was also recorder for Reading and spent much of his time there. But it was probably also relevant that Holt supported the Court party, soon to be known as the Tories, and Medlycott the proto-Whigs. Holt sued, and the Corporation paid £29 19s 4d in legal expenses. Medlycott later moved into a house that Holt had previously occupied, the present 28 East St Helen Street.

His appointment was at first welcomed by his future political opponent John Stonhouse, and he and Stonhouse worked together in 1678 on the prosecution of the MP for Milborne Port (Somerset), Michael Malet, for alleged lèse-majesty during the Berkshire county by-election of that year. Malet had commented in public that the Earl of Stirling, the court candidate, was as great a rogue as the king. He spent some months in the Tower, but, having a long history of outrageous utterances, he was considered half-mad and finally released without being brought to trial.

Medlycott was made a Berkshire JP in 1678 as was usual for a recorder, but dismissed in the purge of 1680 as politically unreliable. He was reinstated a year later.

In 1683, an Abingdon Corporation member, George Winchurst, supported by Lord Norreys, the future Earl of Abingdon, wished to be elected mayor. As a Tory, he stood little chance, and wanted to restrict the polling to men who had taken oaths of allegiance to the regime. Medlycott advised that this would be illegal, thus making himself, and Abingdon, unpopular with the central government of the time. The result was that a new revised charter was forced on Abingdon in 1686. Among many other changes, Medlycott was replaced as recorder by the Tory William Finmore.

But soon after, James II changed his religious policies, hoping to be able to give Catholics the civil rights they lacked under cover of giving them also to Protestant Dissenters. To general consternation, he began to claim a royal dispensing power to allow evasion of the existing restrictive laws. His judges held their office ‘during (the king’s) good pleasure’ and would be sacked if they did not comply. In July 1686, Medlycott was defending a large group of Abingdon and Berkshire Dissenters being prosecuted by Finmore for attending their own services rather than those of the Church of England. One of the judges was Richard Holloway, an extreme Tory. Medlycott taunted him: “your lordship has served the defendants more effectually than I, and they owe you greater thanks – you and the judges have declared your opinion that His Majesty is a sovereign prince, the laws are his laws and he can dispense with them when necessary, and he is judge of that necessity, and has so judged and has provided a patent under the broad seal”. He then produced the dispensatory document that he had obtained from the king’s minister the Earl of Sunderland, and the case collapsed.

When William of Orange invaded in 1688, Medlycott came out in his support. James’s changes to town corporations had by then been rescinded, and he was once more recorder. William stayed briefly at his house in East St Helen Street on his erratic route from Exeter to London. Medlycott was elected to represent Abingdon in the convention called after James’s flight into exile. The electoral campaign against Stonhouse was violent and chaotic.

Medlycott was already entering his sixties, and had left his parliamentary debut rather late. Also, Stonhouse had appealed and his tenure might be brief. So he lost no time in making his mark. On 28 January 1689, he called for an immediate vote on the knotty problem of the vacancy of the throne. On 19 February, after the first speech from the throne by the new-made William III, he proposed that the convention declare itself a parliament, which after further discussion it did. But in May the House of Commons, considering the violence at his election, ruled that it had been invalid. He chose not to stand again.

Abingdon now turned against him. The Holt family was still influential and it seems that it was by their machinations that he was finally dismissed as recorder in October 1689 in favour of the future Lord Harcourt. At this point he seems to have retired both from legal and political activity.

Medlycott and his wife had six sons and a daughter. Two of his sons would become lawyers and MPs in their turn. One of them, Thomas jnr, had bought an estate at Malet’s old constituency of Milborne Port, and it was there that his father died in 1716.

© AAAHS and contributors 2016

Benjamin Morland

Benjamin Morland was an Abingdon solicitor who has left an enduring memorial in the Old Gaol, which was built probably at his initiative and certainly under his administration.

Morland was born in 1768 to a wealthy brewing family in West Ilsley. His father William died when he was five years old, and it was a cousin, Henry Sellwood of Aldworth, who became his guardian and who in 1784 articled him for five years to a Newbury attorney, Richard Townsend. In or soon after 1789, coming at 21 into a considerable inheritance, he began to practise law in Abingdon, where another kinsman, Samuel Sellwood, was already a prominent solicitor and Town Clerk. His practice was in Bath Street, but after 1812 he made his residence at Sheepstead in Marcham, which had belonged to his maternal relatives, the Bunce family of Frilford.

Sheepstead in 1858. (Artist unknown).(Courtesy of the Marcham Society)

Morland very soon began making his mark. He proved an effective administrator, and throughout his career was named variously as clerk, treasurer, agent, or commissioner for a great number of public organisations: turnpike trusts, canal companies, militia regiments, enclosure commissions and the like, often working together with Samuel Sellwood. He handled significant amounts of public and private money, and his name is sometimes listed among those of Abingdon bankers which suggests that the money did not lie idle in his keeping. By 1793, he was on the Abingdon Corporation as a Secondary Burgess. At some time, probably in the 1790s and certainly by 1803, he also became clerk to the Berkshire magistrates when they met in their Quarter Sessions . At this time, it was the magistrates in Quarter Sessions who performed the functions that would later devolve on the county council. As clerk, he both provided the magistrates with any legal advice they might need and acted to give practical effect to their decisions, since they had no other executive officers on whom they could call.

The different functions that Morland assumed often gave rise to what would be seen today as impermissible conflicts of interest but which were accepted as normal at the time, and the origin of the Old Gaol was one such case. Here, he was working simultaneously in his personal interest and in those of the county and of the town. In the late 1790s, as a commissioner for land tax redemption, he came to an agreement with Catherine Powell, widow of the last tenant of the dilapidated White Hart Inn at the entrance to the Abingdon Bridge. This seems to have given him the idea that the site would do well for a badly needed new gaol. As clerk to the Berkshire magistrates, he will have conducted the negotiations on their behalf, even though he was also a member of the Abingdon Corporation. It was agreed in 1803 that the magistrates would acquire the site from the Abingdon Corporation for £500, but three leaseholders appeared whom the county would have to pay off: Catherine Powell, Morland himself, and an unnamed person for whom Morland was also acting. They received £800 among them. Morland, as effectively chief executive to the magistrates, then proceeded to organise the building project, engaging contractors and paying them on his own authority. Construction took place over a period of almost twenty years as cash came in from the rates, and he will have charged for his time. The Old Gaol finally cost some £26,000, and remains as Benjamin Morland’s great legacy to the town.

Morland was married twice. His first marriage was in 1796 to Harriet Baster of Newbury. They had one child, a daughter who would become known as the geologist and palaeontologist Mary Buckland. Harriet died in 1799. Morland then married Elizabeth Rose Thornhill of Kingston Lisle with whom he had five sons and five daughters. Three of his sons would become lawyers; one of them, George Bowes Morland, would eventually take over most of his father’s practice and functions. Another son, Edward Henry Morland, would acquire the Eagle and Abbey breweries in Abingdon, making brewing a major local industry. Two sons of George Bowes, John Thornhill and Edward, would become mayors of Abingdon.

Benjamin Morland died in 1833.

© AAAHS and contributors 2015

George Bowes Morland

George Bowes Morland was a prominent citizen of Abingdon, and active in the affairs both of the town and of the county of Berkshire.

The extensive Morland family had originated in West Ilsley, where they made their fortune as brewers. However, George Bowes’ father, Benjamin, had become a lawyer. He settled at Sheepstead House in Marcham and developed a large legal practice in Abingdon. The young George Bowes took this over in 1829 and expanded it, specialising as legal agent for many of the greatest local landowners. He was also active in the family brewing business, helping to finance its development in Abingdon.

He was first elected to the Borough council in 1831, and remained a member when this was re-organised under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. In 1848, he was to become mayor, but declined the honour and resigned in the following year. The reason given was his frequent absences from Abingdon, but there may have been more to it than that. In 1840, the Earl of Abingdon, as Lord Lieutenant, had given him the position of Clerk of the Peace for the county. He was required to officiate at the Quarter Sessions of the county magistrates, which carried out the functions of local government that would only much later devolve upon the county council.

Unfortunately, at this time the justices and the Abingdon Council were at odds; the justices wanted to close the Abingdon Gaol and transfer its functions to Reading, to which the Abingdon Council was implacably opposed. Even resignation from the council did not free Morland from an embarrassing conflict of interest; his business partner, Daniel Godfrey, was town clerk for the Borough, and they were obliged to send each other polite but hostile letters. When matters came to a crisis in 1859, he was accused of failing to pass on the justices’ letters to the town council, and of deliberately withholding the legal advice that the justices expected from him. Nonetheless, he retained the post almost until his death, and was succeeded in it by his son, John Thornhill Morland, who also inherited the legal practice.

Nos. 29-33 Bath Street, formerly the home and offices of George Bowes Morland

George Bowes Morland became a governor of Christ’s Hospital in 1833, and served four times as its master. He was also an important local landowner. The manor of Chilton had long been connected with Abingdon, having passed through the hands of the Knapp and Metcalfe families before being acquired by Benjamin Morland in 1803. George Bowes developed a specific breed of pigs, and won prizes for his turnips and mangel-wurzels.

He was married in 1836 to Maria Thornhill of Oxford, who was probably a cousin since his mother had been a Thornhill. They are noted in the 1871 census as living in Bath Street, Abingdon, with a household that included seven servants. This will probably have been the present 29 Bath Street, and No 33 will have been his office; the intermediate No 31 seems to have been built during his occupation as a formal entrance to both. There were ten children of the marriage, of whom all but two survived him. Two of his sons became mayors of Abingdon: John Thornhill six times and Edward twice.

John Morton

John Morton was Abingdon’s MP from 1747 until 1770 and its recorder from 1753 until his death in 1780. Like several of his predecessors and successors, he found it profitable to combine the careers of politician and lawyer.

He came from a wealthy family long established in Tackley, some five miles north-east of Woodstock. Born in or about 1715 and educated at Abingdon School, he went on to Trinity College, Oxford, and then to the Inner Temple, being called to the bar in 1740. His early career is obscure, but in 1747 he became MP for Abingdon, replacing John Wright who did not contest the seat. Wright had been recorder as well as MP, but in 1753 that position also was given to Morton. Wright’s political opinions were not those of Abingdon’s corporation at that time, and his dismissal was brusque.

Morton progressed faster in his legal than in his political career. He was a bencher – a senior member – of the Inner Temple in 1758, and became a King’s Counsel in 1760. In 1761 he was considered as a candidate for Speaker of the House of Commons, but was turned down because of his political views and at least in part as being considered of too low a social origin. Perhaps in consolation, he was made Chief Justice of the county palatine of Chester, a function which seems to have been lucrative without requiring too much personal attendance. According to some newspaper reports, he also became a judge in the court of exchequer which carried the courtesy title, but not the other prerogatives, of a baron, but this is probably incorrect.

In his politics, Morton was a Tory, even though under the first two Hanoverian monarchs this meant exclusion from government office. He was close to the Leicester House court of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and married the sister of one of its high officials, the solicitor-general Paul Jodrell. But when the prince died in 1751, he made no move towards any of the Whig factions. Only when George III succeeded his grandfather in 1760 and suspicion of Tories as actual or potential Jacobites began to be relaxed, did he move into the ambit of the new minister, Lord Bute.

He remained a back-bencher, though increasingly influential especially where his legal knowledge was of use. He generally supported the government, notably in its American policies and in its response to the challenges set by the populist agitator John Wilkes. But he retained his old allegiance to the Leicester House interest; when the government wanted to exclude the king’s mother, the dowager Princess of Wales, from a regency council, it was he who ensured that her name would be on the list.

But although Morton would remain a member of Parliament until his death, he would not represent Abingdon after 1770. The election of 1768 was a disaster for him. His position in Abingdon had always depended on the active support of the Corporation which was solidly Tory while the population in general, and especially the large Dissenting minority, was overwhelmingly Whig. To ensure his re-election against Nathaniel Bayly the Corporation took measures that went well beyond the degree of corruption that was acceptable at the time. In the run-up to the poll, two new poor rates were levied. The lists of people to be charged – who would also have the right to vote – were augmented by a total of 55 names, almost all of whom would vote for Morton. The final result was a win for Morton by just two votes in 250. The Whigs published the poll book with annotations, and on their calculation voters from the pre-1768 list had rejected Morton by 117 to 79.

Bayly petitioned, and the matter hung fire for a couple of years while negotiations took place behind the scenes. Somehow, Bayly was able to dredge up three separate matters on which Morton might credibly be accused of accepting bribes, which would put an end to his legal career. He gave in, and the government found him an alternative seat at New Romney and later another at Wigan. He was made solicitor-general to Queen Charlotte. Towards the end of his life, Morton began to take a radical view on the misuse of public money.

Morton memorial in Tackley Church by John Bacon
(Photo by Norfolkboy-1)

We know little of Morton’s private life. His home was at Hill Court in Tackley, which had been acquired by his great-grandfather before 1659. He greatly enlarged it, and enclosed a large tract of land to the south of the village. He later bought property at Medmenham in Bucks where he was living at his death. There were apparently no surviving children of his marriage, and in his will he enjoined his wife Elizabeth to make a will of her own immediately after his death to ensure the estate would descend ‘to such person or persons as she shall deem the properest objects of her kindness and courtesy’. He was buried at Tackley. What had been the family house at Tackley was demolished in 1959.

See Glossary for explanations of technical terms.

The Sellwood Families

Many of the élite families in Abingdon’s history may not have regarded themselves as Abingdon families at all. They were, rather, branches from trunks that flourished elsewhere. They might have kept in close contact with their ancestral homes and returned there to be buried. Examples are the Knapps of Chilton, the Morlands of West Ilsley, the Bowles of Longworth.

There were three Sellwood families in Abingdon at different times. They were not directly descended from each other; one probably and two certainly came from the contiguous villages of Eaton and Appleton, some five miles to the north-west.

The first of these families appeared in the mid-sixteenth century with Thomas and Elizabeth Sellwood who had children baptised at St Helen’s, as did, in the following generation, Christopher and Joan. An unfortunate Anne Sellwood buried an illegitimate daughter Sysliein 1559. But none of these achieved any great prominence in the town, and there is no clear evidence that their offspring remained there in the following century.

The second Sellwood family first appears in the Abingdon records when, some time about 1620, Robert (I) Sellwood (1607-44) came from Appleton to be apprenticed to the baker Richard Wise. In due course, he married his master’s daughter Katherine and continued in the baking trade. There were two sons, Richard (?-1683) and Robert (II) (1637-1722), and a daughter, Alice. The 1664 hearth tax records show Richard Sellwood, who continued his father’s bakery business, living in St Nicolas’ parish, probably in Stert Street, and having three hearths, which shows a reasonable middle-class lifestyle. Richard and his wife Martha had three sons and three daughters. One of the sons, John, (?-1725) is noted as a clock and watchmaker; a number of Sellwoods had been clockmakers in London, although they were no longer active when John was at an age to be apprenticed. Another of Richard’s sons, Samuel, (?-1731/2) continued as a baker, and was buried in St Nicolas’. Richard and his family were religious dissenters, and were occasionally fined when this was illegal, but were obviously ready to conform to the extent needed to carry on their trades and have conventional burials.

Robert(I)’s other son, Robert (II), an apothecary, married into the élite Cheyney family, and, in spite of having been a presbyterian as late as 1673, became a governor of Christ’s Hospital in 1676. He was mayor four times between 1677 and 1702 and, elected again in 1720, had to be excused on account of his ‘great age and indisposition of body’. He will then have been 83 years old. His son John (c.1663-1715) was mayor three times between 1697 and 1707. Robert(II)’s daughter Elizabeth married a wealthy London brewer, William Hucks, who would use his Abingdon relationships to challenge the well-entrenched Simon Harcourt for the borough’s parliamentary seat and, in 1708, to replace him in it.

The third family was that headed by the lawyer Samuel Sellwood. He was born at Eaton in 1752, the son of Robert and Mary Sellwood née Mayow. By 1778, Samuel was a secondary burgess in Abingdon’s corporation. By 1780 he was town clerk, a function he would retain until his death 38 years later. He had a large legal practice, was also clerk to Christ’s Hospital, and acted in similar roles for numerous other institutions. He married Frances Kendall at St Helen’s in 1783. They had a big house on the north side of Ock Street; it had three living rooms and four bedrooms, with four more for servants. In 1801, they sold it and lived for the rest of their lives at Old Abbey House.

Samuel Sellwood was particularly active in political matters. He was advisor and agent for Abingdon’s patron and MP, Edward Loveden Loveden, and later for his near neighbour, George Knapp. He worked for the local volunteer militia that was set up in 1798 in fear of a French invasion, took the rank of Captain – unpaid and not subject to military discipline – and negotiated with the then MP, Thomas Theodosius Metcalfe, for a stand of colours – the set of ceremonial flags that defined a regiment. He worked closely with two local fellow-lawyers: Benjamin Morland, who seems to have been a distant cousin, and John Bowles, a predecessor as town clerk. When Bowles died, Samuel Sellwood became guardian of his young son Thomas. Thomas Bowles eventually married Sellwood’s daughter, Hester Sophia,and many of their descendants still live in the Abingdon area.

Samuel Sellwood died in 1818 and his wife in 1842. Both are buried in Appleton, as are two of their children who died young. A son, also Samuel, became a fellow of Magdalen College and died without issue. The Sellwoods are commemorated in Abingdon in the name of Sellwood Road.