The Marchioness's Will: A Diamond Tiara and Strongbow's Sword

The real Caroline Anne nee Caithness begins to emerge from the shadows as we peruse her will made four years before she died in 1917. 

Among several heirlooms of the Ely family bequeathed to the trustees of the estate are an inscribed silver gilt christening cup engraved with the Viscount’s coronet, the chased silver gilt cup and cover made from the Great Seal of Ireland, a helmet-shaped ewer and various items engraved with the Ely arms.

 The Loftus Cup (Belfast Museum). The inscription reads: 

This cup was made of the Great Seal of Ireland in the year 1593

 Adam Loftus being then Lord Chancellor. He was also Lord Justice in 1582 and 1583 

in which year he built Rathfernan Castle (below).

Adam Loftus

Paintings similarly bequeathed include the portrait of Adam Loftus, who was Lord Chancellor of Ireland in 1593, a portrait of Lady Loftus (no detail as to which one) and two small portraits of an Earl and Countess of Ely. A more personal piece of memorabilia linked to Caroline’s yachtsman husband is a two-handled racing cup, ‘Bermuda’.

Her servants named in the will receive a sum of money as well as the equivalent of a year’s wages. Her maid, Maria Rance, receives 700 pounds and there is an amount thoughtfully put in trust for Maria’s son, Ernest. Maria is also left ‘my blue enamel carriage clock and all my furs and wearing apparel except my Coronation robes and my lace’.

That Caroline loved animals is shown by her bequests to charitable institutions such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Home of Rest for Horses, Cricklewood and the Home for Lost and Starving Dogs, Hackbridge. Her own dog, Jock, as well as her pony, mare and donkey are not forgotten, funds being set aside for their suitable housing and keep after her death. The Dover Hospital and the Dover Sailors Home and the Hospital for Diseases of the Throat, London, are also remembered. Dover had associations for the 4^th Marquis, whose residence Kearsney Abbey was in that area.

Specific monetary bequests are made to her brother George John Caithness, her niece Violet Irene Caithness and to her godson, George Henry Wellington Loftus, as well as to other members of the Loftus family. Some items of jewellery are mentioned, such as her pearl necklace to her godchild, Violet, and her three stone diamond ring to her brother George John Caithness. However, her diamond tiara is bequeathed to the trustees ‘to be held and enjoyed … by the lady who shall at my death be entitled to the title of Marchioness of Ely … and on her death successively by the other ladies who shall be entitled to such title for their respective lives’.

Perhaps the most intriguing item bequeathed to the trustees is ‘Strongbow’s Sword’ – Strongbow being the nickname of the almost mythical medieval Earl of Pembroke. For what length of time this heirloom, believed to have belonged to Strongbow, had been in the possession of the Elys is not certain but in 1928 it was used to cut the cake at the wedding of Viscount Loftus and Miss Thea Gronwold.

Trove: The Argus, Melbourne, Victoria 1928

Caroline expressed her wish to be cremated and for her urn to be placed with her husband’s at the Ely family tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, London. She had been a widow for 28 years.

Acknowledgement:
Tom Sheldon

The Marquis and the Mariner's Daughter 3

Ely Lodge rebuilt

When the 4^th Marquis of Ely died in 1889 almost all his estates in Counties Wexford and Fermanagh passed to his successor in the title. However, these estates were heavily encumbered with debt. The 5^th Marquis was a remote cousin who was declared a bankrupt in 1882 and was still a bankrupt in 1894, thus being debarred from his seat in the House of Lords.

In the Introduction to the Ely Papers (a vast conglomeration of documents held in The National Archives UK) it is commented, perhaps unfairly, that apart from the Irish properties having become impoverished, there was also an obligation to pay 3 000 pounds a year to the 4^th Marquis’s widow (i.e. Lady Caroline Anne) who lived until 1917, ‘the third Ely widow to saddle the estates with a jointure over an unusually long period of time'.

It seems right that Caroline should have been provided for in her husband’s will: he died at the early age of forty, an event nobody could have foreseen. It would be interesting to see the schedules giving details of the 4^th Marquis’s marriage settlement dated 1875. At the time of his accession, his income was 30 000 pounds a year (with ‘great accumulations’). By the date of his death this had practically disappeared. By the twentieth century the succeeding generations lived in other parts of the country and no longer bothered much with the Irish estates.

A quiet street in Winchmore Hill

Caroline in due course set up her own establishment at Eversley Park*, Winchmore Hill, Southgate, where we find her aged 56 in 1901, described as ‘Peeress’ with ‘Means’ and head of a household comprising her sister-in-law, Ada, aged 39, and 7 servants including a Butler, Cook-Housekeeper, a Lady’s Maid (from Paris), two Housemaids, a Kitchen Maid and a Footman.

1901 Census Eversley Park
[click to zoom]

Ten years later much the same lifestyle prevails at Eversley Park, but Ada is replaced by a Lady Companion.

1911 Census Eversley Park
[click to zoom]

As we shall see, Caroline would not forget any of her servants when making her will.

Bells for summoning servants:
shades of Upstairs and Downstairs

*Eversley Park in Green Dragon Lane was built in 1865.

Acknowlegement:

Tom Sheldon

The Marquis and the Mariner's Daughter 2

The marriage entry, 9 December 1875, for Caroline Anne Caithness and John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus gives the groom's residence as Ely Lodge, Enniskillen in the County of Fermanagh, Ireland. 

This house dates back to the 1830s when the 2nd Marquis, lacking a seat in County Fermanagh (they had estates there as well as in County Wexford), built Ely Lodge on a promontory beside Lough Erne. Stone for its construction came from another family home, Castle Hume not far away, which had been demolished. 

'Ely Lodge was a large classical house ...The main front was a five-bay, two storey, stuccoed block with Tuscan pilasters and a central, columned porch. On either side were single-storeyed bowed wings.' This residence lasted for thirty years. In 1870, for a series of possible reasons described as '(1) an unwelcome visit from Queen Victoria, (2) the discovery of the agent's fiddling and (3) the building of a bigger and better house, Ely Lodge was blown up as the climax of the festivities that marked the coming-of-age of the 4th Marquis.'

The proposed new house was never built, probably because the 4th Marquis overspent on rebuilding his other seat, Loftus Hall, County Wexford. However, from his will made in 1884 it seems that the stable block at Ely Lodge was converted to domestic use and became in time the seat of the family until sold in 1947.

Loftus Hall: near Fethard-on-Sea, Co. Wexford, 'a gaunt three-storey mansion of 1871 with rows of plate-glass windows and a parapet, incorporating parts of a previous late 17th c house. The house, (which was built by the 4th Marquis of Ely after he turned 21) stands near the tip of Hook Head, an extremely windswept spot bereft of trees and shelter.' The coastal view above gives an impression of the starkness of the place.

Whether Lady Caroline Anne ever spent any time at either Ely Lodge or Loftus Hall history doesn't relate. If she did, perhaps Kearsney Abbey in the softer countryside of Kent, the 4th Marquis's English residence by the 1880s, was more to her liking.

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon 

The Marquis and the Mariner's Daughter

Lady Caroline Anne

For Caithness family researchers, the importance of the 4th Marquis of Ely rests on his marriage to Caroline Anne Caithness, daughter of George Caithness, which event took place on 9 December 1875 and was announced in the London Standard's Marriages column of Monday 13 December: 

According to an account in an American newspaper (see previous post on this blog) the 4th Marquis had at one time prior to his marriage been in the running as a suitor to Princess Beatrice but this did not eventuate and 'the Marquis was seen no more at court'. 

In fact it appears that the Marquis was rarely seen in England at all, spending most of his time 'abroad' and becoming well-known as 'a yachtsman'. The circumstances of his meeting with Caroline Anne Caithness remain conjecture. As the daughter of a mariner - even a respectable Master Mariner - Caroline was unlikely to have moved in the same circles as the Marquis, yet meet they did and presumably fell in love. 

John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus, Caroline's husband, was the only son of John Henry, 3rd Marquis, and was educated at Harrow and Oxford, succeeding to the marquisate at the age of eight on the death of his father in July 1857. Though the 4th Marquis was described prior to his marriage as 'young, rich and handsome and a favourite at court', by the time he died in 1889 things had changed.

The 'two jointures' mentioned would have been those to the Dowager Marchioness, the 4th Marquis's mother, Jane (who died a year after her son), and to his widow, Caroline Anne. The latter's will shows that Caroline was left fairly well-off. She survived her husband by 28 years, dying in 1917. There is a reference in the London Gazette to her attendance as one of the Dowagers at the coronation of King George V on 11 June 1911, perhaps Caroline's last public appearance.

Kearsney Abbey, Dover, Kent, residence of the 4th Marquis
at the time of his death in 1889

Built by the Dover banker John Minet Fector in 1820-22, Kearsney Abbey was described as 'a charming residence, in extensive grounds, in which the two branches of the Dour unite, forming a lake, in which there are ornamental fountains'. A manor house rather than an Abbey (it had never been a monastic building) materials from the ancient town walls and demolished churches were used in its construction. 

To be continued 

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon

Cremation of a Marquis 1889: Macabre Details

'FIRE BURIAL'

The 4th Marquis of Ely 'had specially provided in his will that his remains should be disposed of in this way', i.e. by cremation or 'fire burial'.

That the London event was of international interest is shown by this and other reports appearing in American newspapers, this brief column being published in the Las Vegas Daily Optic of 10 May 1889. 

A more detailed account appeared in The Northern Indicator, Iowa: 'Four Pounds of White Ashes All that is Left of Princess Beatrice's Lover - The Event may make Cremation Fashionable - Other Peers to be Burned.' ... 'The urn contained about four  pounds of snow white ashes, similar in appearance to a sample of the best brand of Minneapolis flour, and two or three small pieces of beautiful, silver-like, frosted bone.'  These were 'the mortal remains of the Right Honourable and Most Noble John, fourth Marquis of Ely, the rich, handsome young noble who, fifteen years previously had been within an ace of becoming the husband of a  princess of the royal house of England.' 

Cremation became legal in Great Britain in 1885. There had been increasing interest in this form of disposal of human remains during the second half of the 19th c, influenced by ideas from Italy. 
A surgeon and physician to Queen Victoria, Sir Henry Thompson, became the promoter of cremation in England because he believed:
‘it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied’. 

In addition, he believed, cremation would prevent premature burial, reduce the expense of funerals, spare mourners the necessity of standing exposed to the weather during interment, and urns would be safe from vandalism.

In 1878 an acre of land in Woking was purchased for the establishment of a crematorium. The resulting apparatus was first tested in March 1879 when the body of a horse was cremated. The inhabitants of Woking protested vigorously against the use of the facility. Cremation was eventually declared legal in February 1884, the first official cremation in the UK taking place in Woking on 26 March 1885.

At the date of the 4th Marquis of Ely’s cremation, April 1889, only three years later, anything concerning the cremation topic was still hot news, though perhaps the Northern Indicator's report pushed the boundaries of good taste.

THE PRINCESS AND THE MARQUIS

It's not certain whether the same newspaper’s remarks on the 4th Marquis of Ely having been a suitor for the hand of Queen Victoria’s 5th daughter and youngest child, Princess Beatrice, were based in fact. The Queen was against Beatrice marrying, preferring to keep her daughter at her side as companion and unofficial secretary, an arrangement to which Beatrice apparently consented. 

Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial

Various suitable matches were nevertheless put forward. Among the contenders was Louis Napoleon, the Prince Imperial of France, to whom Beatrice was attracted, but her hopes were blighted when the Prince was killed during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. Interestingly, the 4th Marquis of Ely’s mother, Jane, was a friend of the Prince Imperial’s mother, Empress Eugenie.

Princess Beatrice eventually married Prince Henry of Battenburg in July 1885. Ten years later Prince Henry died of malaria contracted during service in the Asante War, and Beatrice remained with her mother until the latter’s death in 1901. It was Beatrice who undertook the thirty-year long task of editing Queen Victoria’s journals for publication, deleting much private material: the resulting journals are only a third as long as the originals (which were destroyed as the editing progressed). 





Acknowledgements:
Tom Sheldon

Caithness family: Death of a Marquis 1889

John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus, fourth Marquis of Ely, died in Nice in the South of France on 3 April 1889 at the age of forty. The Hampshire Advertiser of 6 April reported his demise thus:

The report refers to Caroline Anne, wife of the deceased and daughter of George Caithness, and mentions the Caithness family association with Totton, Hampshire.

Extract from the Nice Death Register re the Marquis of Ely,
'marie a Caithness, Caroline Anne'.

John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus (1848-1889),
 fourth Marquis of Ely, with his mother Jane, third Marchioness of Ely.
 This picture was probably made when John succeeded to the title
 at the age of eight on the death of his father, the third Marquis. 
Portrait by John and Charles Watkins published by Mason and Co.

Jane, 3rd Marchioness of Ely, (3 December 1821 – 11 June 1890) was a Lady of the Bedchamber and an intimate friend of Queen Victoria. Her parents were James Hope-Vere and Lady Elizabeth Hay; through her mother she was a cousin of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington. After her marriage to John Loftus, the third Marquis of Ely, Jane developed friendships with Queen Sophie of the Netherlands and the Empress Eugénie. Jane arrived at court as a Lady of the Bedchamber in 1851 continuing to serve until April 1889 when after the death of her only son (see above) she wrote the Queen tendering her resignation, reporting that ‘this last blow has quite crushed’ her. Jane died on 1 June 1890 and is buried at Kensal Green cemetery, London.

John Henry Wellington Graham Loftus was born on 22 November 1849. He was the son of John Henry Loftus, 3rd Marquess of Ely and Jane Hope-Vere. He married Caroline Anne Caithness, daughter of George Caithness, on 9 December 1875. He died on 3 April 1889 at age 39, without issue. He succeeded to the title of 4th Baron Loftus of Long Loftus, co. York on 15 July 1857. He succeeded to the title of 5th Baronet Tottenham on 15 July 1857. He succeeded to the title of 4th Baron Loftus of Loftus Hall, co. Wexfordon 15 July 1857. He succeeded to the title of 4th Marquess of Ely on 15 July 1857. He succeeded to the title of 4th Earl of Ely on 15 July 1857. He succeeded to the title of 4th Viscount Loftus of Ely on 15 July 1857. Source: www.thepeerage.com/p8545.htm#i85449

For more on Caroline Anne Caithness see

molegenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/07/souvenir-saturday-caithness-scorey.html

Acknowledgement:

Tom Sheldon