inheritance denied - Kirkby Mallory Leicestershire

"Memorial of Catherine Noel , a devoted wife, a tender mother, a true friend, who departed a life of many sorrows meekly borne. Died February 11th 1832 aged 52 years

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted"

 

"Catherine born at Claybrooke, Lutterworth, was the daughter of Elizabeth Grace 1786 & Halled Smith 1732 - 1795 , a rich attorney who had bought Normanton Turville Hall

She m (1st wife) 7 May 1796 at St Mary's church, Bucklebury, Rev Thomas Noel === , rector of Kirkby Mallory, illegitimate son of Thomas Noel, 2nd Viscount Wentworth of Wellesborough 1815 & Anna Catherina Vanloo 1781 ; His father m2 Mary daughter of Robert Henley, 1st Earl of Northington, Widow of the 1st Earl Ligonier having no further children

Rev Thomas was the grandson of Richard Hon. Edward Noel , Lord Viscount Wentworth, www.flickr.com/gp/52219527@N00/04XW24 1774 & Judith, daughter of William Lambe

Catherine died at Norris Hill, Hampshire

Children

1. Mary Georgiana 1797 - 1815 died unmarried at Malvern

2. Catharine Judith 1798 - 1815 died unmarried

3. Thomas of Boyne Cottage, Cookham, Berks, poet, 1799 - 1861 m 1831 (1st husband) Emily Anne daughter of Alexander Halliday

4. Rowney b/d 1800

5. Jane b/d 1801

6. Major Robert Ralph of Brompton,. 1802 - dsp 1885 m 1838 Louise Von Hennigen .

7. Sophia Anne 1805 - 1876 m 1833 Lt. Lionel Halliday of St Helier, Jersey son of Capt. Francis Alexander Halliday of Ham Lodge

8. Charles +++ , land agent for Lady Byron 1809 - 1857 m 1836 Mary Anne daughter of Rev Jerome Dyke of Burbage

9. Anna Frances 1809 - 1833 (twln of Charles) died unmarried

10. Edward Henry 1811 - 1884 m 1838 Frances Isabella daughter of Maj-Gen. Carlo Joseph Doyle & Chiano Begum

 

=== Her husband Rev. Thomas Noel, rector of Kirkby Mallory, is one of the rare instances of an illegitimate child of a peer receiving mention in Burke's Peerage . Conceived 4 months after his father had succeeded as 2nd Viscount Wentworth of Wellesborough, and born at the end of 1775, Tom lived with his sister Anna Catherine who was 6 years his senior, and their mother Anna Caterina van Loo, the Belgian-born Catholic mistress of Viscount Wentworth, until his mother's death in 1781. "My chief anxiety is about the poor Children," Viscount Wentworth wrote to his aunt Mary Noel 2 days later, "which are truly dear to me, & as fine ones as can be...The boy I shall educate well, & inculcate into him that his future livelihood must depend on some profession he may chuse." Viscount Wentworth stayed true to his word, sending his son to Rugby School where, in his last half-year, his father proudly wrote that Tom had "grown a devilish handsome strapping fellow." In April 1792, Viscount Wentworth sent his son to his own alma mater, Christ Church Oxford, and Tom Noel seems by that point to have decided on the career of a clergyman, for he was baptized in the Anglican church two days prior to his admission.

In the summer of 1795, having completed his third year at Christ Church, Tom Noel accompanied his cousin Sophia Curzon daughter of (1779-1849) to Ravensworth Castle the seat of Sir Thomas Liddell, 6th Bart 1855, later 1st Baron Ravensworth) and his widowed mother. There, Tom and Elizabeth 'Betsy' Liddell, the 21-year-old eldest sister of the baronet, fell in love. Thinking that his father Viscount Wentworth would settle a generous inheritance on his only son, the dowager Lady Liddell encouraged the romance. "Nothing could make me happier than seeing Tom so very respectably settled & his forming so enviable a connection," Viscount Wentworth wrote to his sister Judith, Lady Milbanke, "but surely I could wish that no step might be taken without giving time & particularly to the Lady to reflect on future consequences." Once it became clear to Lady Liddell that Viscount Wentworth was both unwilling and unable (he had many debts and his properties were heavily mortgaged) to provide immediately for his son, she insisted that her daughter break off the romance. .

Two months later, Viscount Wentworth discovered that his son's "vanity was the only part much hurt by his dismission." Seven months later in May 1796, Tom Noel received his bachelor's degree from Oxford and eloped. "Tom has stole a match with Kitty Smith" and "must lie in the bed he had made for himself," Viscount Wentworth reported to his sister Judith Milbanke.

Catherine Smith was the 22-year-old daughter of Holled Smith, a Leicestershire attorney who had died the previous summer. Having lost her mother when she was aged 13 , Catherine, the 4th of five surviving daughters, was a close neighbour to Viscount Wentworth and his son, for Normanton Turville Hall, her father's seat, was less than 5 miles from Kirkby Mallory. Left to her own devices immediately following her father's death, as her only brother Thomas Grace Smith (1770-1812) was distracted with the £33,000 sale of Normanton Turville, Catherine and Tom Noel found sympathy for their secret romance from Catherine's elder sister Susannah Coxe (1768-1836), and were married by her husband Rev. Richard Coxe, Vicar of Bucklebury.

Likely it was Tom Noel's stepmother Countess Ligonier who smoothed things over between her husband Viscount Wentworth and his impulsive son, for Tom named his firstborn child, which followed 9 months after his wedding, 'Mary' in his stepmother's honour. In 1798, Viscount Wentworth was reconciled enough to Tom that he presented him the livings of Kirkby Mallory and Elmsthorpe. Rev. Noel received his Master's degree from Oxford in 1801, and settled down for the next 12 years as the rector of Kirkby Mallory. In 1812, he asked for, and was granted, the honour of performing the wedding ceremony of his cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke, the legal heir of Viscount Wentworth, to Lord Byron. The poet took a ring from his finger and gave it to Rev. Noel as a souvenir of the occasion, but one of Tom's daughters wrote to a friend, "Papa expects something more substantial for the service he has rendered Lord Byron."

Tom was increasingly frustrated by the inheritance situation following his father's death in 1815 - To provide for Tom & his sister, Viscount Wentworth stipulated in his will that his Gloucestershire estates were to be sold for payment of his debts and to provide legacies for them. However his aunt Judith Milbanke had laboured determinedly for the past two decades to insure that Viscount Wentworth designated her and her only daughter as his legal heirs, and Judith even agreed to her brother's stipulation that she, her husband, her daughter and even her son-in-law Lord Byron all had to legally assume the surname Noel. Judith triumphantly moved into Kirkby Hall immediately on inheriting it, and never left it again. With her usual incapacity for seeing any perspective other than her own, she then legally blocked her brother's executors from selling his Gloucestershire estates.

In 1816, Rev. Noel and his sister Mrs. Biscoe, both with large families, sued their father's trustees, Judith, and her husband for a settlement under the terms of their father's will. Not blessed with the several manors and estates of the Milbankes and Noels which Judith had successfully combined, Viscount Wentworth's two children needed the cash he had stipulated for them to help provide for their families, and didn't have the luxury of waiting for property values to increase, which seemed to be Judith's goal in delaying the sale. Judith once referred to Tom's wife Catherine as "a poor timid low-spirited creature," so it's no surprise that when she took possession of Kirkby Hall, Tom appointed a fellow prelate to perform the clerical duties of the parish, and vacated Kirkby Mallory.

Judith's death in 1822 prompted Rev. Noel's request to Lord Byron to intercede with Lady Byron, the new legal owner of Kirkby Hall, to obtain a promise that, following his death, the living of Kirkby Mallory should be given to one of his sons. Though Annabella, Lady Byron flic.kr/p/2iG6XoT (later 11th Baroness Wentworth) was a far more generous lady of the manor than her mother had been, the damage Judith had caused Rev. Noel ran too deep. He wrote bitterly to Annabella in 1846: "Madam a stranger has afforded me the assistance of the loan of £60 which your silence or contempt on my application denied me, & from which the consanguinity betwixt us and your ample means derived from my late Father you could so readily afford to his publicly acknowledged son. Much of his property you are now enjoying had he not been so suddenly seized with paralysis he meant to leave to me & my sister, as He stated to me previous to his leaving Kirkby for London for the purpose of altering his will."

Lady Byron's refusal to loan money to Rev. Noel could have been a result of his own foolish behaviour. After the death of his wife Catherine in 1832, Rev. Noel seems to have moved to Calais, perhaps fleeing creditors. In 1838, at the age of 62, he made a second marriage in the Town Hall there, to the 30-year-old Henrietta Elizabeth 1808 - 1878 daughter of Thomas Fisher of Gravesend 1814 and had 2 more sons.

His 5 surviving children from his first marriage, grown-up and starting families of their own, with the financial support of Lady Byron, were dismayed by their father's second wife and family. Rev. Noel felt betrayed enough by his son Charles +++ , who had accepted Lady Byron's offer in 1831 to serve as her resident land agent at Kirkby Mallory with an annual income of £100, that he cut him out of his will.

Rev. Noel died 22nd August 1853 in Plymouth aged 77 & was buried in Ford Park Cemetery leaving dual families: a 45-year-old widow with two young sons, aged 10 and 8, and grown children with families of their own scattered throughout England, Germany and Greece.

It is evident that, thanks to the support of Lady Byron, the children of Rev. Noel's first marriage did much better in life than the two young sons of his second marriage. When his widow Henrietta died in Plymouth in 1878, her estate was valued at less than £300.

Her elder son Dr Vincent Edmund Noel 1843 - 1866 a physician, he died of scarlet fever at age 23 while treating an outbreak of it in Plymouth.

The second son Rev Henry Anthony 1845 - 1893 rector of a Manchester parish m 1869 Jane Elizabeth daughter of Capt. Henry O'Neil of Plymouth leaving 2 sons , the elder, Ternan Noel, a labourer who immigrated to Canada and died in a psychiatric facility, and the younger, Archibald Noel, a bookkeeper in Manchester

 

Rev. Noel spent the last four decades of his life focused on his father's will and the unfairness of the Wentworth inheritance. The bitterness is completely understandable. Viscount Wentworth spent the last 20 years of his life at Kirkby Mallory with his son Tom the young rector, and the county locals certainly viewed Tom as the natural heir to the manor. The History of Leicester in the 118c (1871) even goes so far as to say "The family is now represented by Lord Wentworth, the grandson of the late Lady Noel Byron, and by the male descendants of the last Viscount, who (it is believed) duly contracted a marriage on the Continent with Catherine Louisa Van Loo--a Belgian lady--but not according to the rites of the Church of England. The offspring of this union was Thomas, afterwards the Rev. Thomas Noel, Rector of Kirkby Mallory." If his mother's Catholicism was indeed the only reason keeping Tom from legitimacy, it's a real shame as there's every indication that Tom Noel would have made a worthy peer. His marriage to Elizabeth Liddell would have been a far more brilliant match than his father's to Countess Ligonier, and demonstrates Tom had the ability and personality to surpass his father's limited achievements and influence at court and in the political arena. That Rev. Noel ended his life stewing under the assumption that he had been cheated from an inheritance is sad, for the appointment of Charles Noel as land agent shows that Lady Byron, unlike her obsessively ambitious mother, recognized an importance in keeping the Noel line at Kirkby Mallory.

 

Charles, the son Rev. Noel felt inclined to cut out from inheritance, was able to reach a state his father never could: forgiveness. He wrote to Lady Byron: "Relating to the will of my late Father I wish to place on record my earnest desire in relation to that document. First I freely forgive the dead. Next I wish to prove to the widow that I cannot in hope of a future world before my eyes use the same weapons in defence...and I trust that I may be enabled to live and die without receiving in any way benefit from my Father's property." That a son engaged in a material career proved more spiritual in the end than a father engaged in a clerical one may not be so unusual among the 19c English clergy. Lord Byron deferred to his estranged wife on the matter of Rev. Noel, "she is a better judge of parsons than me."

 

- Church of All Saints, Kirkby Mallory, Leicestershire

royaldescent.blogspot.com/2016/05/descendants-of-rev-thom...

 

Picture with thanks - copyright John Salmon CCL - www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5103609

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