Near this place lye the remains of John Braddyll, Esq., descended from an ancient family long seated at Portfield and Conishead, in Lancashire, who from his youth traversed the oceans of Europe and the Indies as a merchant, and having made a handsome fortune, the due reward of honest industry, and learned therewith to be content, he retired to this village, and enjoyed the fruits of his labour with temperance and moderation. Born at Conishead, 1695. Died at Carshalton, 13 May, 1753, aged 58 – Memorial in Tower, All Saints
Carshalton, Surrey.
The splendid Indian Pagoda, recently presented to the [Carlisle] Museum, with so much munificence, by Sir Simon Heward, was the theme of general
admiration and wonder – Carlisle Journal, 1842.1
This chapter is about the legacy of East Indies sojourns. It traces the pattern of bodily return, or failure to return, among the Cumbrian women and men who went to the East Indies. It explores the financial and social outcomes for sojourners and their families after, often, years of physical separation and emotional and material investment in East Indies ventures. It is about how returning Cumbrians reinserted themselves and expressed their success in the Cumbrian world. It also considers how the East Indies infiltrated the fabric of provincial Cumbria in civil society, its politics and the day-to-day institutions of local authority.
At the heart of those processes was a dynamic interplay between place attachment, identity and expressions of success. As previous chapters have shown, going to the East Indies was fundamentally about returning and returns. Yet as sojourners prepared, and were prepared for the East Indies, not coming home was as probable as returning. Financial failure was a constant anxiety. Returning and returns, therefore, cannot be considered without giving attention to the issue of those who did
184 not return to Cumbria. Consequently, the discussion starts with the pattern of bodily return to Cumbria. It notes that some returning sojourners resided outside of Cumbria when they returned to the British Isles. It notes too how the cycle of aspiration, passage and return was interrupted for many by death. It is in the context of death and the way in which Cumbrian sojourners were memorialised, that issues of Cumbrian attachment and detachment associated with the East Indies is initially explored.
Straddling the experience of both bodily return and non-return were the
financial pay-offs associated with East Indies ventures. This is the focus of the second part of the discussion. Again, death becomes a pivot point for the analysis with the value of personal estates, bequests and the inventories of sojourners providing, albeit fragmented, insights into the patterns of wealth among East Indies sojourners, even where Cumbrian sojourners’ returns were prevented by death. The analysis then turns to those sojourners who did return to Cumbria and the ways in which they expressed their success in the midst of Cumbrian provincial life. The focus is initially on the interlock between East Indies experience and positions of local authority followed by a consideration of how East Indies wealth was implicated in the politics around Cumbria’s political representation. The discussion then enters the realm of consumption and social positioning. It gives particular attention to East Indies
returners’ commitment to house building and their pursuit of recognition as gentlemen through the exercise of benevolence and sociability.
185
Bodily Return, Residence, Death and Attachment
Of the Cumbrian men and women who went to the East Indies, many did not return. About thirty percent of enumerated men cannot currently be accounted for. Of the remaining seventy percent, almost half died in the British Isles and of those over half died in Cumbria. Some, like, Andrew Fleming Hudleston died while temporarily away from Cumbria but were buried in Cumbria. Others were buried elsewhere. The largest, albeit still a minority, proportion were buried in the East Indies. Notably, enumerated Cumbrian women sojourners were less likely than enumerated men to die in Cumbria; nine are known to have died in India or at sea and eight of the other twelve known to have returned to the British Isles died outside of Cumbria.
A tranche of returners resided or had businesses in London including Jonathan Winder, Edward and John Stephenson, the Routledges, Dents, Fawcetts, and
Sowerbys. East Indies-involved Cumbrians with parliamentary interests maintained London addresses or properties in proximate counties, including Henry Fletcher, John Robinson and Alexander Nowell. The Braddylls bought lands at Woodford in Essex and both Thomas and his brother Dodding died and were buried there.2 Huddart was for very many years established at Islington and then Greenwich. His ropery was built near the East India Company warehouses and docks on the Thames. John Hudleston lived mainly at Windsor.
Residence or businesses in London should not be interpreted as detachment or disconnection from Cumbria. Previous chapters have shown, along with Marshall’s seminal analysis of county societies,3 that this residential dispersion generated a
2 D. Lysons, The Environs of London: Volume 4, Counties of Herts, Essex and Kent (London, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1796), p. 278.
3 J. D. Marshall, ‘Cumberland and Westmorland Societies in London, 1734-1914’, Transactions
186 network of Cumbrians with strong provincial attachments and identity. Most East Indies returners maintained property and business interests in the Cumbrian counties. Indeed, John Hudleston died in Whitehaven while on a business excursion from the south. As Beckett has pointed out, Cumbria’s absentee landowners, including successive Lowthers, could be, and were at times more, innovative and effective managers of their businesses and property in Cumbria than full-time residents.4
In his history of the parish, identity and belonging, Snell argues that
memorials and gravestones show that parish loyalties were particularly strong prior to the nineteenth century, with county loyalties increasing during the Victorian era. He attributes that tendency to a proliferation of multiple residences among a rising middle class and the impacts of global mobility.5 If that is the case, Cumbrian East Indies returners in the eighteenth century were forerunners in an emerging trend. The Westmorland and Cumberland county societies were some of the earliest established in the British Isles. Cumbrian East Indies sojourners carved their connections to Cumbria in stone.
John Braddyll’s handsome memorial, the inscription of which was quoted at the beginning of this chapter, was only one example (Plate 5.1). Catherine Holme’s memorial at East Clandon (Plate 5.2) notes her father’s estate at Holme Hill,
Cumberland. Even earlier, Jonathan Winder marked connections with Cumberland, the marital alliance between the middling Winders and the Cumberland gentry
Williams, and the East Indies, with a wall monument redolent with signs of status and accomplishment; an ionic column, arms, a crest and elaborate carving (Plate 5.3).
4 J. V. Beckett, ‘Absentee Land Ownership in the Later Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries: The Case of Cumbria’, Northern History, 19 (1983), pp. 93-106.
5 K. D. M. Snell, Parish and Belonging: Community, Identity and Welfare in England and Wales,
187 Plate 5.1 Memorial John Braddyll at
Carshalton
Source: All Saints Carshalton
http://www.carshaltonallsaints.org.uk/Interior /Braddyll.jpg
Plate 5.2 Memorial Catherine Holme at East Clandon
Source: John E. Vigar
http://www.flickriver.com/photos/41621108@ N00/15171449349/
Plate 5.3 Winder Memorial at All Hallows, Barking
Source: Stiffleaf
http://cdn.ipernity.com/127/23/23/17182323. 8f00b0c5.240.jpg?r2
Plate 5.4 Memorial John Bellasis at St Thomas’ Cathedral Bombay
Source: B. Groseclose, British Sculpture and the Company Raj: Church Monuments and Public Statutory in Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay to 1858 (Newark, University of Delaware Press, 1995)
188 The Winder memorial inscription was prepared as a narrative of success and
connection:
Near this Place lieth interred the Body of John Winder of Grays Inn Esqr. Barrister at Law Eldest Son & Heir of John Winder, Gent. of Lorton in ye
County of Cumberland where ye Family flourished, in a Lineal Succession, above 300 Years. He married Lettice, one of ye Coheirs of William Williams of Johnby Hall in ye same county Gent.by whom he had two Children, William and Mary, and died 27 Jul. 1699 Aged 41. And also the Body of Jonathan Winder, Esqr. his 3d Brother, sometime Agent for ye Hon E. India
Com' at Bengalwho departed this Life, unmarried, 12 Jan 1717, in the 48th.
Year of his Age. Pursuant to whose Will and Desire, his Executors erected this Monument. And likewise the Body of Samuel Winder.6
There were, too, memorials in the Cumbrian counties designed to
commemorate Cumbrian East Indies sojourners buried elsewhere. John Bellasis’ career was recorded in the church at Long
Marton, as well as on a grand affair in St Thomas’ Cathedral, Bombay (Plate 5.4). Interred at Mysore, Jonathan Moorhouse was memorialised at Clifton, Westmorland. Charles Denton was memorialised at
Crosthwaite, Keswick (Plate 5.5). At Kendal, James Pennington’s memorial
commemorating his death in India was
“erected by his three surviving brothers as a tribute of their sincere affection.” In the East Indies, there were memorials explicitly connecting individuals to Cumbria. James Fawcett was memorialised in the Cathedral at Bombay and his inscription tied a Cumbria, London, India triangle together:
6 G. H. Gater and W. H. Godfrey (eds.) Survey of London: Volume 15, All Hallows, Barking-By-The-
Tower (Part II) (London, London County Council, 1934), p. 88.
Plate 5.5 Memorial Crosthwaite Church of the Vicar’s son Charles Denton