Memorials of Old Lincolnshire

by Unknown

What style Thomas Tailor kept up in his stately mansion we cannot tell, but that he had not impaired his fortune in the building of it is evident from his will, proved at Lincoln, 30th November 1607, in which he disposes of considerable sums of money, while the inquisition taken after his death sets forth in detail his numerous landed estates. Though his two wives and most of his children had been buried at St. Martin’s Church, Lincoln, he willed his “bodie to be buried in the parishe church of Doddington.” He was buried there on 26th November 1607, as we learn from the transcript of a former parish register, though there is nothing to mark the place.

He was succeeded by his only son, a second Thomas Tailor, born at Lincoln in 1580, who seems to have been a somewhat eccentric character, if we may judge from the following stories related of him, which were taken down from the mouth of an old inhabitant of Doddington:—“Tommy Tailor once told his steward who was going to Lincoln to market to bring him a goose. On his return he asked about it, and the man told him they were so dear he had not got one. So Tommy shut him up in a room with a lot of money on the table, and kept him there two days, asking him when he came out if he had now discovered that the use of money was to buy what one wanted, not to keep to look at. Another day he met a woman on the road carrying some butter; he asked what it was a pound. The woman told him, and he bought it of her, taking it and putting it on the branch of a tree. She walked on, but soon turned back to take it away. However, he was lying in wait, and pounced on her just as she had taken it down, and said he had bought and paid for it, and he should put it where he liked. Another person on whom he played the same kind of trick took away the chicken he had bought, threw his money at him, and called him an owd fule. He kept his money in a great chest, and hid it away, and, unfortunately, died very suddenly of smallpox before he explained where he had put it.” Some have fancied that his ghost still walks the Hall in anxiety for his hidden money; and it was commonly believed of a late owner of Doddington, who was fond of employing his leisure in working in the woods, that he was in search of “Tommy Tailor’s chist.”

As Thomas Tailor of Doddington-Pigot, he held the office of High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1620, and in the visitation of the county in 1634 he signs the short pedigree of his family, comprising only two generations. It was, perhaps, a mark of his eccentricity that, though he had served as High Sheriff, he had not cared to apply for a grant of arms, and the herald has appended to the pedigree a note: “He had been high shreife, but had no coate.” It is doubtful whether he had ever married; but, at all events, he left no issue, and in his nuncupative will, declared 13th December 1652, he acknowledges his niece, Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, to be his heiress.

Thomas Tailor had lived through all the stress of the Civil War, without either himself or his house having apparently been affected by it. In the course of it Lincoln had been twice besieged and taken; Cromwell’s forces had encamped on the neighbouring moor of North Scarle, and must have passed within sight of Doddington as they marched thence to defeat the Royalists at Gainsborough. The house and parish must have been well within reach of the Parliamentary forces at Lincoln, as well as of the King’s troops at Newark, who on one occasion extended their forays past it as far as Kettlethorpe, and on another burnt the very similar hall of the Jermyn family at Torksey, which was garrisoned by the Parliamentary troops. Yet he and his estates seem to have escaped unscathed. It was far otherwise with the family into whose possession Doddington now passed.

Elizabeth, Lady Hussey, who now inherited it, was the only child of the first Thomas Tailor’s daughter, Jane, by her marriage with George Anton, Esq., Recorder of Lincoln, 1598-1612, and M.P. for that city in 1588 and 1592. She married Sir Edward Hussey, of Honington, Knt. and Bart., and so added Doddington to the possessions of that distinguished Lincolnshire family. Sir Edward, her husband, was eldest son of Sir Charles Hussey, of Honington, Knt., and grandson of Sir Robert Hussey, who was a younger brother of John, Lord Hussey of Sleaford, beheaded by Henry VIII. for his supposed complicity in the Lincolnshire rising of 1536. He was already a knight at the time of his father’s death in 1609, having received that honour at Whitehall in 1608, and shortly afterwards, on 29th June 1611, he was advanced to the dignity of baronet. The original bond, cancelled by being cut into shreds, by which he bound himself to furnish £1095 by three yearly instalments for the maintenance of thirty foot soldiers in Ireland for three years, is still preserved at the Hall. He was High Sheriff in 1618 and 1637, and Knight of the Shire in the Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster, 13th April 1640. When the Civil War broke out he exerted himself zealously on the Royalist side as one of the King’s Commissioners of Array; and in 1642, when the loyal gentry of Lincolnshire resolved to provide horses for the King’s service, Sir Edward undertook to supply six, his brother Sir Charles Hussey, of Dunholme, providing two. Later he and his brother and other Lincolnshire loyalists assembled at Newark for its defence, and there Sir Charles Hussey died. Shortly before its surrender by the King’s order in 1646, we find Sir Edward at Honington endeavouring to make his peace with the Parliament. He was very aged and infirm, he says; he had taken the Covenant; his estates had been sequestered; and he asks that his wife may be allowed to compound for him. In spite of his pleading, the great fine of £10,200 was imposed. This was finally reduced to £8750, of which £4500 was raised and paid in December 1647, and three months later Sir Edward Hussey died. His eldest son, Thomas Hussey, some time M.P. for Grantham, had predeceased him in 1641; the next brother, Captain John Hussey, had been slain in the fight with the Parliamentary troops at Gainsborough in 1643. It was left to his widow, and to his eldest son’s widow, Rhoda, now remarried to Ferdinando, 2nd Baron Fairfax, to clear the impoverished estates, and to raise the remainder of the fine, which was finally paid off in 1650. For this purpose Lady Hussey had to sell her jointure, and it must have been a relief to her when, on her uncle’s death at the end of 1652, she inherited Doddington and his other estates. She enjoyed them, however, for no more than six years, dying early in 1658.

She was succeeded in the ownership of Doddington by her grandson, Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart., born in 1639, whose long minority, with the addition of his grandmother’s inheritance, must have done much to repair the shattered fortunes of the family. At the Restoration we find him, with his mother, Lady Fairfax, then a second time a widow, living at Doddington, and contributing, himself £60, and Lady Fairfax £30, towards a loan for the restored King.

In 1662, 20th February, the marriage took place at Great St. Helen’s, London, of “Sir Thomas Hussey, Bart. of Doddington, bach., and Sarah Langham, aged twenty-one, daughter of Sir John Langham, Knt. and Bart., of Cottesbroke, Northants.” Portraits of Sir Thomas and Lady Hussey still look down on the gallery of their former home; and what the house itself resembled in their time we may see from the engraving of it, which was executed by John Kip, after a drawing by Leonard Knyff, c. 1700. It represents the Hall and gate-house much as they are at present, with an open grassy court between. Gardens formally laid out, and orchards of young trees in rows, surround the house; but we cannot tell how much of this is due to the artist’s imagination.

Sir Thomas Hussey was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1668, and Knight of the Shire 1681-95. As such he took a prominent part in the reception of a new charter granted to the city by Charles II. in 1685. On this occasion Sir Thomas Hussey, driving in, we must suppose, from Doddington, was met at the entrance of Lincoln by the Mayor and Corporation, who received the new charter from him on the green against St. Katharine’s. After this Sir Thomas, with the Mayor and aldermen, walked up the city to the Guildhall, with bands playing and bells ringing, and the conduits running claret wine, that all might drink the King’s and the Duke of York’s health. At the Guildhall the charter was read publicly by the town-clerk, Mr. Original Peart, and the ceremony terminated with a great dinner at the Mayor’s, and more drinking of healths. Towards the charges of renewing the charter, the Bishop of Lincoln gave £20, and Sir Thomas Hussey and three other gentlemen £10 a-piece.

Sir Thomas Hussey died 19th December 1706, and was buried, as his wife and many children who died young had been, in the vault of the Hussey family in Honington Church. There his monument, with his bust in marble, may still be seen; but it is in their house of Doddington that the portraits of himself and Dame Sarah, his wife, and their three surviving daughters have been preserved. The church, too, possesses a memorial of him, in the shape of a handsome silver paten and flagon, bearing his coat-of-arms, and the date 1707. His niece Rhoda, daughter of his sister, Rhoda Hussey, by her marriage with John Amcotts, of Aisthorpe, Esq., had already presented to the church a silver alms-dish in 1671, engraved with the Amcotts arms. As he left no male issue, his baronetcy passed to his cousin, Sir Edward Hussey, of Caythorpe, who already held the baronetcy conferred by Charles II. on his father in 1661.