[1] Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi, 2 vols., 1861.
[2] Mrs. Piozzi: a Sketch of her Life, and Passages from her Diaries, Letters, &c., 1891.
Mrs. Piozzi was the last of an old knightly Welsh family, Welsh by long residence, if not by blood, called in the early records Salbri or Salsbri, and Englished as Salesbury or Salisbury, and in more recent times as Salusbury. It produced a goodly number of soldiers, scholars, and divines; the latter chiefly in a younger branch seated at Rûg in Merioneth in the sixteenth century. Among these were William Salesbury, "the best scholar among the Welshmen," who compiled a Welsh dictionary, and made the first translation of the New Testament into that language; Henry Salesbury, a noted doctor and grammarian, and John Salesbury, a Jesuit, Superior of the English Province. In the same century the elder or Llewenny line boasted of John Salesbury, a Benedictine monk who forsook his vows and married, but was made by Queen Elizabeth Bishop of Sodor and Man; Foulke Salesbury, first Dean of St. Asaph, and Thomas Salesbury, who was executed for his share in Babington's Plot.
In the course of centuries a goodly number of romantic legends had attached themselves to the earlier generations, particularly in connection with their armorial bearings, in which Mrs. Piozzi was an enthusiastic believer. As far back as the sixteenth century the Salesburys had claimed as their eponymous ancestor a certain Adam, believed to be a younger son of Alexander, Duke of Bavaria, hence known as Adam de Saltzburg, who made his way to England, and was appointed by Henry II Captain of the castle of Denbigh. Another and less probable version of the story, favoured by Mrs. Piozzi, makes him a follower of William the Conqueror, and gives him a fair estate in Lancashire, on which he built a seat called Saltsbury or Salisbury Court. Of her descent from this Adam she says: "I showed an abstract to the Heralds in Office at Saltzburg, when there, and they acknowledged me a true descendant of their house, offering me all possible honours, to the triumphant delight of dear Piozzi, for whose amusement alone I pulled out the Schedule." This may be satisfactory evidence for the existence of Adam, but of course the Heralds had to take the descent on trust. The fact appears to be that Adam of Llewenny was an Englishman who settled in Wales after its conquest at the end of the thirteenth century, and was a member of the family of Salesbury of Salesbury, co. Lancs. Adam's descendant, Sir Henry Salesbury "the Black," "having taken three noble Saracens with his own hand on the first Crusade, Cœur de Lion knighted him on the field of battle, and to the old Bavarian lion which adorned his shield added three crescents." This Henry is supposed to have built Llewenny Hall. The name of another Henry, who fought in the Wars of the Roses, "stood recorded on a little obelisk, or rather cippus, by the roadside at Barnet, ... so long that I remember my father taking me out of the carriage to read it, when I was quite a child. He had shown mercy to an enemy on that occasion, who, looking on his device ... flung himself at his feet with these words—'SAT EST PROSTRASSE LEONI.' Our family have used that Leggenda as motto to the coat armour ever since." The arms of the present Piozzi-Salusbury family are: Gules, a lion rampant argent, ducally crowned or, between three crescents of the last, a canton ermine, with motto as above.
We are on firmer ground when we arrive at Sir John Salesbury of Llewenny, Kt., M.P. for Denbigh in the sixteenth century, and his family of fourteen children, of whom the eldest and youngest sons were the ancestors of Mrs. Piozzi on the maternal and paternal side respectively. John, the eldest, married Catherine of Berain, a lady who deserves a paragraph to herself. Their grandson, Sir Henry Salusbury of Llewenny, was created a Baronet by James I, but this line came to an end with his granddaughter Hester, who married Sir Robert Cotton of Combermere Abbey, co. Chester, Bart., ancester of Lord Combermere. Their granddaughter, Hester Maria Cotton, was Mrs. Piozzi's mother.
CATHERINE OF BERAIN
By W. Bond after J. Allen, 1798
Catherine of Berain above mentioned, called from her numerous descendants Mam y Cymry, or Mam Gwalia, "Mother of Wales," was a great-granddaughter of Fychan Tudor of Berain, a personage claimed by Mrs. Piozzi, though not acknowledged by the genealogists, as a younger son of Sir Owen Tudor, Kt., by Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V. That the Mother of Wales (who would, on this hypothesis, be a cousin of Queen Elizabeth) was a lady of great attractions, both in person and in purse, may be gathered from the story of her four matrimonial ventures, which cannot be better told than in the words of Pennant, the historian and naturalist, who was himself one of her descendants. "The tradition goes that at the funeral of her beloved spouse (Sir John Salesbury), she was led to Church by Sir Richard (Clough), and from Church by Morris Wynn of Gwydyr, who whispered to her his wish of being her second. She refused him with great civility, informing him that she had accepted the proposal of Sir Richard on her way to Church; but assured him—and was as good as her word—that in case she performed the same sad duty, which she was then about, to the Knight, he might depend on being her third. As soon as she had composed this gentleman, to show that she had no superstition about the number three, she concluded with Edward Thelwall of Plas y Ward, Esq., departed this life Aug. 27, and was interred at Llanivydd on the 1st of Sep. 1591."
For the paternal ancestry of Mrs. Piozzi we must return to Roger, the youngest son of Sir John Salesbury, M.P. He married Anne, one of the daughters of Catherine of Berain by her second husband, Sir Richard Clough, Kt., another picturesque figure who deserves a separate mention. He was the youngest son of a Denbigh glover, who became a prosperous merchant, and was a partner of Sir Thomas Gresham, whom he assisted to found the Royal Exchange, and whose continental business he superintended. This necessitated a residence at Antwerp, where he also acted as a kind of unofficial agent of the English Government. His mercantile pursuits were not, however, so absorbing but that he could make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he was made a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and thereafter bore the five crosses of Jerusalem in his arms. During one of his brief visits to England, about 1567, he married, as we have seen, Catherine of Berain, then widow of Sir John Salesbury of Llewenny, and began building two mansion-houses, one called Plas Clough and the other Bach-y-graig, both in Flintshire, and both in the Dutch style, perhaps by means of imported workmen. The former was inherited by his son Richard, by a former wife, an Antwerp lady named Van Mildurt, whose descendants still possess it. The latter he bequeathed to Anne Salesbury, one of his daughters by Catherine of Berain. It thus became the seat of the younger line of the family down to the time of John Salusbury, Mrs. Piozzi's father, and came to her on the death of her parents.