The current project to catalogue the Act Books of the Court of Arches from 1677 to 1682 (Arches A 13-15) is well advanced and on course for completion by the end of 2022.
The diverse business of the Court during these years included suits concerning the dilapidation of parsonage houses and bishops’ palaces. The deaths of successive Bishops of Worcester, for instance, led to suits concerning the state of the palace at Worcester and Hartlebury Castle. The death of John Hacket, Bishop of Lichfield, whose efforts saved Lichfield Cathedral from ruin caused by the civil war, also led to a lengthy suit; his successor Thomas Wood, complained that Hacket had not lavished equal concern on his palace. The deeds and misdeeds of the clergy were also exposed in court, as in the case of Thomas Turner, Vicar of Milton-next-Sittingbourne (now Milton Regis, Kent), whose drinking and playing at cards and dice at the Three Hats, the Red Lion, the Crown, the White Hart and the Queen’s Head often ended in the gutter with the revelation ‘I am damned drunk’.
Suits concerning marriage and divorce were also to the fore. Lady Elizabeth Percy, the greatest heiress of her day, widowed at the age of thirteen, secretly married Thomas Thynne, known (on account of his wealth) as ‘Tom of Ten Thousand’. A suit followed, whereupon Thynne was murdered in 1682. Elizabeth then made a third marriage, at the age of 15, to the Duke of Somerset. Less fortunate was the life of Posthuma Bullocke, forced by her husband to wear a chastity belt, ‘an engine commonly called an Italian padlock’ for almost two years. No less remarkable were the marriages of Anne Pierrepont, daughter of the Marquess of Dorchester. Her marriage to Lord Roos, afterwards Duke of Rutland, was ended by a legal separation in the Court of Arches and then by a parliamentary divorce, the first in England. Anne went on to marry Henry Vaughan, only to return to the Arches in 1681 seeking yet another divorce on account of his cruelty. Marriage contracts were also disputed in court, as in the engagement of Donough O’Brien, Lord Ibrackan, to a daughter of Thomas Osborne, afterwards Duke of Leeds. In this instance the Dean of the Arches allowed himself a moment of candour, urging a speedy marriage to avoid ‘the distast and exasperation which judicial proceedings may begett’.
Other cases ranged from the violation of churchyards, the impersonation of the Vicar General at a visitation, and penances for adultery, to more mundane disputes over tithes, rates, institutions to benefices and rights to pews. Time and again the records reveal the unexpected. The elegant white marble monument to George and Judith Ayliffe in the church at Foxley, Wiltshire, celebrates their lives and five children. Few would guess the reality revealed in court, that Judith left her husband after having been cruelly beaten.
Variations in the spelling of names in the seventeenth century present challenges to cataloguers. It was pleasing to rescue the poet John Dryden from the obscurity of ‘John Draydon’ and to identify ‘John Eveling’ as the virtuoso John Evelyn. Both were protagonists in Arches cases, as was another diarist, Samuel Pepys.
With the support of the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library, a further phase of the project to catalogue the acts of court of the Court of Arches has been completed, focusing on the act books from 1671 to 1677. 8,502 acts of court have been catalogued, raising the total in the online catalogue to 24,891. Each of these has been recorded and dated for the first time, with identifications of people and places and pointers to related material elsewhere. The catalogue now includes over 10,000 references to related documents, mainly in the National Archives. These have assisted the identification of protagonists in cases before the Court as well as providing further information concerning them.
In this period the Court was at its busiest, requiring extra sessions to be fitted into the legal calendar. Over a hundred cases were in progress at any one time, advancing in session after session, often over a period of years. The will of Nicholas Love, Warden of Winchester College, for instance, came before the Court 37 times over four years, complicated by the fact that his son was one of the regicides. A suit for dilapidations against the executors of Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, was before the Court for six years, delayed by the misfortune of his son and namesake. Hopelessly out of his element while attending the Duke of York on his flagship, and seasick too, Matthew Wren junior made his will as the Dutch fleet came into view and was mortally wounded not long after.
The Court concerned itself with the institution of clergy to benefices , the dilapidation of parsonage houses and bishops’ palaces, rights to pews, faculties for church buildings, tithes, rates, wills, marriage and divorce and the enforcement of morals. There were also numerous suits for defamation, as in the case of Kate Lingley, of St. Sepulchre, London, who was called ‘a whore, a hackney whore, everyone’s whore’. The Court was also active in the repression of nonconformity and clandestine marriages. Amongst errant clergy was John Cull, curate of Knightsbridge, who was rash enough to solemnise the clandestine marriage of Frances Hyde, daughter of the Earl of Clarendon. Edward Northmore, Vicar of Newton St. Cyres, Devon, was himself married in secret in a private room in Oxford, although in this case the Court found for the validity of the marriage, thwarting his efforts to rid himself of an unwanted wife. Conversely, when George Rodney Bridges MP sought to ditch his long-term partner Ann Smith, a shopkeeper in the New Exchange in the Strand, the Court dismissed Ann’s claim to be his wife and exposed her tampering with the parish register of Holy Trinity Minories.
That the past is a foreign country is vividly illustrated by child marriage. The abduction and forced marriage of children, as in the case of Hannah Hunt, below the age of twelve, carried off from Little Marlow and married in a private house in Southwark, was as unacceptable in Stuart England as it is today. However, marriages with consent (above all the consent of parents or guardians) were viewed quite differently, as in the marriage of John Power, Viscount Decies, aged seven, and Catherine Fitzgerald, aged about twelve, performed by Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon in Lambeth Palace Chapel in 1673. Mary Damerill, who came before the Court in 1677, was already into her second marriage at the age of fifteen, having been married first at the age of eleven. Bridget Hyde had also to shake off an early marriage in order to emerge (eventually) as Duchess of Leeds. In 1674, at the age of twelve, she had married her cousin, John Emerton. The courts upheld the marriage and it was only after 1682, when Bridget forced the issue by marrying (bigamously) the future Duke of Leeds, and only after the future Duke had paid 20,000 guineas to Emerton, that an annulment of her first marriage was achieved.
During 2021 the project focused on the act books from 1666 to 1671, containing almost 9,000 acts of court. Each of these has been recorded and dated for the first time, with identifications of people and places, cross-references between cases, and pointers to related material elsewhere. The online catalogue now includes some 10,000 references to related documents, mainly in the National Archives. These have assisted the identification of the protagonists in cases before the Court as well as providing further information concerning them. The project to catalogue these act books has been generously supported by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library.
First session of Trinity Term, 22 May 1665. Arches A 4, f.115v
The diverse business of the Court included suits concerning the dilapidation of parsonage houses, bishops’ palaces and deaneries. The Bishops of Ely, Oxford, Salisbury, Winchester and Worcester all brought cases between 1666 and 1671. There were also suits from the northern province. Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, netted £100 for dilapidations at Bishopsthorpe and other palaces from the executor of his predecessor Accepted Frewen, as well as costs of £70 for the suit, which was fought in the Court of Arches from 1665 to 1668. William Sancroft, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, was also pursued for dilapidations arising from his brief tenure of the deanery of York in 1664. The act book preserves remarkable documentation of his expenditure at this time.
The Court was also concerned with marriage, divorce and morality. In these years Sir Thomas Ivie, a former Governor of Madras, continued to be harassed by his unscrupulous wife Theodosia, who had emptied his pockets long before. Benjamin Overton, who was to make his name as a politician and pamphleteer, was brought to court for carrying off Anne Darcey, a vulnerable heiress aged 17 who was deaf and dumb from birth. The anatomist Thomas Wharton led a commission of eight physicians and surgeons appointed to test the virility of Samuel Sadler, of St. Sepulchre, London, in a case of nullity of marriage. Martha Atkyns, widow of Sir Patrick Acheson, who had inherited a patent for printing law books, brought a case for divorce, on grounds of cruelty, against her husband, Richard Atkyns, a writer on printing who had started a hare running by claiming (on the basis of an alleged manuscript at Lambeth Palace) that printing had begun in England prior to Caxton. The court also pursued errant clergymen such as Theophilus Hart, Rector of Wappenham, a celebrated adulterer who was subsequently murdered. Lay men and women were also prosecuted for immorality, and, surprisingly, a number of men came to court to confess their own adulteries, sometimes asking to pay a fine rather than endure public penance in church. Penances were also imposed on women convicted of defamation. The act books often preserve their colourful words of abuse as well as the formula of penance to be spoken by them in church.
Testamentary cases were also to the fore. Amongst the plaintiffs identified by the project was the religious thinker Lodowicke Muggleton. He appears in the case as the beneficiary of the will of Thomas Hudson, an innholder of St. Botolph Aldersgate, London. The will records Muggleton as a ‘dear and most beloved friend’ and provides valuable evidence on Muggletonianism by naming others who were ‘members with me in the true faith of our Lord Jesus’.
The project has also added to the catalogue sixty appointments of guardians to act in court on behalf of minors. These records were once held to be of little importance, but, like so many records of the Court of Arches, they are a goldmine for genealogists.
During 2021 the project focused on the act books from 1666 to 1671, containing almost 9,000 acts of court. Each of these has been recorded and dated for the first time, with identifications of people and places, cross-references between cases, and pointers to related material elsewhere. The online catalogue now includes some 10,000 references to related documents, mainly in the National Archives. These have assisted the identification of the protagonists in cases before the Court as well as providing further information concerning them. The project to catalogue these act books has been generously supported by the Friends of Lambeth Palace Library.
The diverse business of the Court included suits concerning the dilapidation of parsonage houses, bishops’ palaces and deaneries. The Bishops of Ely, Oxford, Salisbury, Winchester and Worcester all brought cases between 1666 and 1671. There were also suits from the northern province. Richard Sterne, Archbishop of York, netted £100 for dilapidations at Bishopsthorpe and other palaces from the executor of his predecessor Accepted Frewen, as well as costs of £70 for the suit, which was fought in the Court of Arches from 1665 to 1668. William Sancroft, a future Archbishop of Canterbury, was also pursued for dilapidations arising from his brief tenure of the deanery of York in 1664. The act book preserves remarkable documentation of his expenditure at this time.
The Court was also concerned with marriage, divorce and morality. In these years Sir Thomas Ivie, a former Governor of Madras, continued to be harassed by his unscrupulous wife Theodosia, who had emptied his pockets long before. Benjamin Overton, who was to make his name as a politician and pamphleteer, was brought to court for carrying off Anne Darcey, a vulnerable heiress aged 17 who was deaf and dumb from birth. The anatomist Thomas Wharton led a commission of eight physicians and surgeons appointed to test the virility of Samuel Sadler, of St. Sepulchre, London, in a case of nullity of marriage. Martha Atkyns, widow of Sir Patrick Acheson, who had inherited a patent for printing law books, brought a case for divorce, on grounds of cruelty, against her husband, Richard Atkyns, a writer on printing who had started a hare running by claiming (on the basis of an alleged manuscript at Lambeth Palace) that printing had begun in England prior to Caxton. The court also pursued errant clergymen such as Theophilus Hart, Rector of Wappenham, a celebrated adulterer who was subsequently murdered. Lay men and women were also prosecuted for immorality, and, surprisingly, a number of men came to court to confess their own adulteries, sometimes asking to pay a fine rather than endure public penance in church. Penances were also imposed on women convicted of defamation. The act books often preserve their colourful words of abuse as well as the formula of penance to be spoken by them in church.
Testamentary cases were also to the fore. Amongst the plaintiffs identified by the project was the religious thinker Lodowicke Muggleton. He appears in the case as the beneficiary of the will of Thomas Hudson, an innholder of St. Botolph Aldersgate, London. The will records Muggleton as a ‘dear and most beloved friend’ and provides valuable evidence on Muggletonianism by naming others who were ‘members with me in the true faith of our Lord Jesus’.
The project has also added to the catalogue sixty appointments of guardians to act in court on behalf of minors. These records were once held to be of little importance, but, like so many records of the Court of Arches, they are a goldmine for genealogists.
The project to produce new catalogue descriptions of the act books of the Court of Arches from 1660 to 1666 has been successfully completed, including the final volume, compiled during the interlude between the Plague and Fire of London. This, and all the volumes in this project, were salvaged amid chaos in the city as the fire advanced, in contrast to their recent orderly transition to the new Lambeth Palace Library.
Cases from this period in the Court of Arches include Kirkham v Lovell and Sydes, relating to church rates in Northamptonshire. The case papers include not only entries in the act books, but also this early 14th-century cartulary of Fineshade Abbey, containing an abstract of the priory’s charters, which was used as evidence in the dispute and hence retained in the archive of the court. [Arches Ff291.58v-59r]
Documents in the Court of Arches were filed in separate series according to their character (libels, witness statements and so on). The act books are the central record which links them all, introducing each case and tracing its progress through session after session of the Court. The project has recorded and dated, for the first time, each act of court, with identifications of people and places, cross-references between cases, and pointers to related material. The catalogue now includes almost 6,000 references to related documents in the National Archives (mainly PCC wills, Chancery suits and Court of Delegates appeals), enhancing the Arches data and supplying alternative spellings of names without which searching would be fruitless.
The Court was at its busiest following the Restoration as it dealt with a backlog of disputes concerning marriage and divorce, wills, the institution of clergy to benefices , the dilapidation of parsonage houses and bishops’ palaces, rights to pews, tithes, church rates, defamation and the enforcement of morals. Typical of those brought to books was John Everett, who in 1640, while a churchwarden of St. Botolph Bishopsgate, London, had removed a table of church rates and replaced it with one which gave less income to the Rector. Another was Nathaniel Swan, Vicar of Alderminster, accused of ‘negligence, drunkenness and boasting of friendship with Oliver Cromwell’.
Arches cases often yield vivid insights, as in a case concerning Richard Burt, who died at the height of the plague in August 1665. For two days and a night he was nursed by his mother , ‘all that time looking to him and binding him keeping him in bed’. During this ordeal his mother was called away to a sister, also dying of the plague, returning to lay out her son, wrapping him in a winding sheet for burial in the churchyard of St. Sepulchre. The movement from house to house of his mother reveals that obedience to the plague orders by no means universal. Court proceedings resumed after the plague but were ended again by the Fire of London. Reading a witness statement given some months before the Fire by Thomas Knight, a glazier in Pudding Lane, one almost wants to shout a warning.
Post-restoration, the Court of Arches typically dealt with four types of case; matrimonial, testamentary, morals of clergy and laity, and parochial disputes. Of these, matrimonial and testamentary cases accounted for the vast majority of all suits heard in the Arches Court between 1660 and 1857, at which point they become the jurisdiction of the secular courts.[1] Unlike other cases bought before the Court of Arches, in matrimonial cases, there was a lot more circumstantial and background evidence discussed.[2]
For example, in the 1721 case of Paul v. Paul, Elizabeth Paul of St. James’, Westminster was obliged to publicly recount to the court how she met her future husband. They had married in secret, first meeting when they were both twelve years old at a dancing lesson. Daniel Paul had insisted on secrecy, knowing that his parents would never consent, particularly his mother who was assisting with his advancement in the military.[3] Obviously, by appearing in court the illusion of secrecy was somewhat shattered.
“Elizabeth P., alias Murray v. Daniel P., of St. James, Westminster, Middx.; suit to establish clandestine marriage, 1721”, (Arches/B/15/65A, Lambeth Palace Library, London).
While the case of Elizabeth and Daniel Paul’s is one of young love and comparative innocence, frequently the evidence exhibited during marital disputes was shocking in its sordidness. During the case of Stamford v. Stamford, the court heard from Thomas Grey, the 2nd Earl of Stamford, that his wife was having sexual relations with numerous members of his household and had become a violent alcoholic, threatening at one point to cut his lordship’s throat. This claim was supported by witnesses who stated that Lady Stamford had wished for her husband’s execution after he’d been implicated in the Duke of Monmouth’s failed rebellion in 1686. Lord Stamford further claimed that because of his wife’s extravagant and reckless spending, she had racked up to £30,000 in debts. Lady Stamford insisted that these debts were as a result of his lordships fondness for fast women and slow ponies.[4] Their subsequent divorce seems to have been a sensible decision. The image here is Lady Stamford’s testimony in court. We can see her signature at the bottom of the page.
“Thomas Grey, 2nd Earl of Stamford, politician, v. Elizabeth, Countess of Stamford; divorce (adultery), 1686”, (Arches/EE/6/108, Lambeth Palace Library, London).
In order to corroborate or contradict these claims, large numbers of witnesses were called to give evidence. Many witnesses were the servants of the couples appearing in court. We can only imagine the looks of ill-disguised satisfaction as they were asked to recount the scandalous behaviour of their masters and mistresses. These witnesses would often prove invaluable during a case. The evidence of Revd. Edmund Robert’s butler, Charles Cook, proved pivotal in his divorce proceedings. In court, the butler alleged that he had discovered that the door to the library had been locked and that the key hole had been bunged up. He further added that he believed the occupants of the locked room were his master’s wife and the young tutor.[5]
“Edward R., of St. Paul’s Cray, Kent v. Elizabeth Ann R.; divorce (adultery), 1852”, (Arches/EEE/72, Lambeth Palace Library, London).
While many cases would become topics of local gossip, some cases were so sensational that they became the talk of society. A particularly shocking and notorious example was the divorce case of Bowes v. Bowes. In 1776, the wealthy heiress, Mary Eleanor Bowes, met and married Andrew Robinson Stoney, a man of more modest means. High society buzzed with the rumour that Bowes had fallen pregnant before the marriage had taken place and that Stoney was not the father.
Whether Stoney was aware of the rumour or not, the marriage nevertheless deteriorated rapidly when he discovered that a trust had been set up that prevented him from controlling his wife’s fortune. Incensed, Stoney resorted to violence against his new wife to gain control of her wealth. Bowes appealed to the courts, citing domestic abuse and adultery. However, before the courts could intervene, Stoney abducted his wife and subjected her to further torment. Stoney was eventually apprehended and brought before the Court of Arches to answer for his crime which resulted in his imprisonment. Bowes was granted her separation and reclaimed control over her money.[6]
We know that this particular case captured the imagination of the public as a book was written in 1789 that gave extensive details of the case. An engraving depicting the “cruelty displayed” by Stoney towards his wife formed the frontispiece of the book and is seen here. In the engraving we can see Stoney threatening his wife with a knife while pulling at her hair.
The Trial of Andrew Robinson Bowes, Esq. For Adultery and Cruelty (London: R. Randall, 1789).
Today, it would be unthinkable that a case such as this would be handled by anyone other than a criminal court, such are the severity of the charges. However, as marriage was a sacrament, the dissolution of a marriage would only ever be handled by those with an understanding of ecclesiastical law.
References
[1]M. Barber, “Records of the Court of Arches in the Lambeth Palace Library”, Ecclesiastical Law Journal: Vol. 2 (ed. Michael Goodman), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 14.
[6]R. Cosgave, “The Court of Arches”, Lambeth Palace Library: Treasures from the Collection of the Archbishop of Canterbury (ed. R. Palmer and M.P. Brown), (London: Scala Publishers, 2010), pp. 144-145.
A Monument of Fame 