Another of Lord Delaval’s daughters, Elizabeth, was married 21st May 1781, to George, Baron Audley. This marriage also was by special licence at her father’s town house, which at this time was in Hanover Square. The rector of Doddington, Mr. Hurton, of whom we have already spoken, went up to London to perform the ceremony. Lady Audley only lived till 11th July 1785.
Lord Delaval himself died at Seaton-Delaval, 17th May 1808, at the age of eighty, being found dead in his chair in the breakfast-room. His remains were conveyed in state from the north, and interred in the family vault which he had made in St. Paul’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, in which his wife Susannah Lady Delaval had already been buried in 1783, and his favourite daughter, Sarah Hussey, Countess of Tyrconnel, in 1800. The Gentleman’s Magazine of the day makes mention of “the great funeral pomp and splendour” of his interment: this may well have been the case, as the cost of it was no less than £2300. No other monuments, however, than plain flat stones, with short inscriptions and almost obliterated coats-of-arms, mark the place of their burial; while above them hang the tattered banners, begrimed with the London dirt of a hundred years, on which the arms of Delaval, Blake, and Carpenter (Tyrconnel) may still be distinguished. At Doddington his only memorial is the hatchment in the church, which was fixed to the front of the Hall on his death.
He bequeathed Ford Castle to his granddaughter, Lady Susannah Hussey Carpenter, the only surviving child of his favourite daughter Sarah, Lady Tyrconnel, whose marriage in 1805 to Henry de la Poer Beresford, 2nd Marquis of Waterford, brought it to that family, in whose possession it has continued nearly to the present day. Doddington, however, with Seaton-Delaval and other entailed estates, descended to his next brother, Edward Hussey-Delaval, the only survivor of that band of eight brothers on whom Doddington had been successively settled, and not one of whom left a son to succeed him. As a young man he had been a Fellow-Commoner, and afterwards a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. Here he was a contemporary and friend of the poet Gray, who makes frequent mention of him in his letters. Later he established himself in a house which he had built for himself on his own plan and designs on a piece of ground leased to him by the Crown in Parliament Place. Its site is now covered by the Houses of Parliament, but two views of it taken from opposite points, painted by his friend G. Arnold, A.R.A., now hang in the Library at Doddington, and show its gardens running down to the river-side, with Westminster Bridge in the near distance. Here he devoted himself to philosophical and chemical pursuits, being a Fellow of the Royal and other learned societies, both home and foreign, and gaining their gold medals and other honours by his various papers and treatises published in their Transactions, or as independent works. Late in life he had married, and had an only daughter.
He was in his eightieth year when he succeeded to the family estates, and seems to have concentrated all his care and interest on Doddington, buying up, as far as possible, the reversionary interests of his sisters in it, so as to leave it to his wife and daughter. During the years 1809-12 the whole of the mullioned windows of the Hall were repaired by him, new stonework and glass being inserted where required. The Great Fishpond was laid out and its banks planted in 1811, and all the detached buildings in the Hall yard—laundry and brew-house, stable and coach-house—were rebuilt in 1814 and 1815. An expert was employed by him to survey and restore the woods, which Lord Delaval had so devastated that no timber could be supplied from the estate. Various articles of furniture, pictures, and ornaments were brought here from Seaton-Delaval. A survey and valuation of the estate made in 1812 states that the mansion-house and buildings are in excellent repair.
After six years’ ownership Mr. Delaval died, at the age of eighty-five, the last legitimate male heir of his ancient family. His death took place at his house in Parliament Place, 14th August 1814, and he too was buried in Westminster Abbey, not in the family vault, but in the nave among the philosophers, the place being simply marked by the name E. H. Delaval, cut on one of the stones of the pavement. In Doddington Church, which was repaired at his expense in 1810, his hatchment hangs side by side with that of his brother. Many portraits of him remain at the Hall representing him either in the family groups, or as a young man in his gold-tufted college cap, or seated with a greyhound by his side, or in middle age with the artificial jewels of his making, or as a white-haired old man of eighty-five sitting at the window of his house overlooking the Thames.
Seaton-Delaval and his other entailed estates devolved on his nephew, Sir Jacob Astley, Bart., son of his eldest sister Rhoda, by whose descendants they are still possessed. But he had bought up the greater part of the reversionary interests in Doddington, so as to settle them on his wife and daughter. The latter had married in 1805 James Gunman, Esq., who was possessed of considerable property in the neighbourhood of Dover and Coventry, and who was the last of a family singularly devoted to the sea, which had produced a succession of noted naval captains. The fact that he died without issue, leaving all his property to his wife, and the subsequent destruction of his Dover mansion owing to the extension of the town, has added a fresh strain of interest to the Elizabethan Hall, by the removal to it of the journals and other memorials of several of these seamen, including the portrait of Captain Christopher Gunman, the first of the line, who was captain of the yacht of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., as well as pictures of the yacht itself, and of the sea-fights with the Dutch in which he was engaged.
By the wills of Mrs. Gunman, who died in 1825, and of her mother, Mrs. Hussey-Delaval, who survived till 1829, all their property was left to their friend, Lieut.-Colonel George Ralph Payne Jarvis, who had served in the Peninsular War and in the expedition to Walcheren. He came into residence at the Hall in 1829, and bought up the remaining portions of the estate, which is now in the possession of his grandson, George Eden Jarvis, Esq., J.P. and D.L.
Having thus sketched the history of its successive owners, let us enter the house itself. We shall find it still peopled with their memories, their portraits looking down on the rooms in which so much of their lives was passed. Passing through the triple-gabled gate-house which forms the main entrance, we find ourselves in the east garden or fore court, now well-nigh filled with four stately cedars of Lebanon. These might seem coëval with the house itself, but in fact they are coëval only with the latest family of its owners, having been planted here about 1829. Fronting us is the central porch on which more elaboration has been bestowed than on any other part of the building. This admits us directly into the hall, a room 53 feet in length by 22 feet in breadth, filling up the whole width of the body of the house. Originally its floor was plaster, and from this and the general whiteness of its walls and furniture it was known as the White Hall. But in 1861 it was refloored with oak grown on the estate, and furnished with more regard to comfort and suitableness as a general sitting-room for the family. At one end hangs a fine picture by Guido of the Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael in the wilderness, its purchase and presence here being due to Mr. Edward Hussey-Delaval’s artistic tastes. The marble mantelpiece is one of those bought by Lord Delaval in 1761, and over it are ranged steel caps and helmets; and among these an iron branks or scold’s bridle, with a projecting spike before the mouth, used as a punishment for scolding women. Near it is another grim relic of the past—the headpiece of the irons in which a man, commonly known as Tom Otter, was gibbeted on Saxilby Moor in 1806 for the murder of his wife. Here, too, we may see several of the oak carvings, framed as pictures, and remarkable for their depth of cutting and multiplicity of figures, that were executed by Colonel Jarvis in his later life.
Passing out of the hall into the northern wing, we enter on the left the dining-room, panelled in oak, now freed from the white paint with which it was formerly coated. Over the marble mantelpiece is a portrait of the late owner of the house, G. K. Jarvis, Esq., painted by Lutyens in 1868. Opposite are the portraits of Mr. Edward Hussey-Delaval with the artificial gems of which we have already spoken, and of his daughter Sarah, afterwards Mrs. Gunman, the latter painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Amongst other pictures hanging here are a three-quarter length likeness of James I. in a quaint drab suit; and a small one of Prince Henry, his eldest son. At the end of the room the square mirror with deeply carved gilt frame was brought from the residence of the Gunman family at Dover, and hung formerly in the Anne, the royal yacht of the Duke of York, by whom it was presented to Captain Christopher Gunman in 1671. Near it is a portrait on panel of the Infanta Donna Maria, “ætatis suæ 19, 1617,” daughter of Philip III., the Princess on whose account Charles I. made his adventurous expedition to Spain. The massive oak table below was originally a plain table in the servants’ hall, but was fashioned by Colonel Jarvis’s skill in carving into a handsome side-board. It shows the size of the oaks that grew on the estate before Lord Delaval cut them down.
Opposite the dining-room, at the east end of the wing, is the Library, formerly known as the Green Parlour. Here may be seen an oil painting of the Duke of York’s yacht, which Captain Gunman commanded from 1670 to 1675. Here, too, hang the pair of landscapes representing views up and down the Thames, taken from Mr. Delaval’s house in Parliament Place. They were painted by his friend G. Arnold, A.R.A., the figures of Mr. Delaval seated in the one, and of Mrs. Delaval and their daughter in the other, being put in by G. F. Joseph, A.R.A., who painted the full-length picture of Mrs. Delaval in a similar red velvet dress, which is now in the Long Gallery.