THE TICHBORNE DOLE.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 553, 3 August 1869, Page 4

THE TICHBORNE DOLE.

(Prom the Jjeisure Hour,) Tlie notoriety of the strange claim to the Tichborne baronetcy, which has excited so much attention, rpminds us of a singular legend which has been current in the family for many generations. This very ancient family dates tho possession of its present patrimony, the manor of Tichborne, near Winchester, as far baclf as two hundred years before tho Norman conquest. It is said to have derived its name originally from thu river lichen, at the head of which its possessions were situated, and thence was denominated -De Itchmhomc, which in course of time has been abbreviated into, its present appellation of Tichborne, • About the middle of the twelfth cen* tury, shortly after the. first of our Plantagnet kings had ascended the throne, the then head of the family, a gallant knight named Sir Roger de Itchenbourne, married Mabel, only daughter and heiress of Sir Ralph de Lamerston, of Lamerston in the Isle of Wight, by whom he acquired considerable estates in that part of England, in addition to his own patrimonial possessions in Hampshire. After many years of wedded happiness, during which the Lady Mabel became celebrated for her kindness and care of the poor, death now approaching, worn out with age and infirmity, she besought her loving husband, as her last request, that he would grant her the means of leaving behind her a charitable bequest, in the shape of a dole or measure of bread to be distributed annually on the 25th of March, the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to all needy and indigent people who should apply for it at the hall door, without respect of persons or exclusion of .any who made the demand. The said bread was to be the produce of a certain piece of ground situated within the present park palings, containing an area of fifteen acres, and of known value worth ; but should the applicants be greater in number than the produce, the value of twopence in money was to be given to each person in its stead. Sir Roger, the husband of the Lady Mabel, was induced to consent to his wife's request only on condition of her crawling or walking round the piece of ground demanded, a condition of apparent impracticability, from the fact of her having been bedridden for many years previous ; and this was to be done, too, while a certain brand or billet of wood was burning in the hall at Tichborne. The venerable dame, however, nothing daunted, ordered her attendants to carry her to the place she had selected, where, being deposited on the ground, she seemed to receive a renovation of strength, and to the surprise of her anxious and admiring lord, who began to wonder where this pilgrimage might end, as well as of all who saw her, she succeeded in crawling round several rich and goodly acres within the required time. The field which was the scene of Lady Mabel's extraordinary feat retains the name of " Crawls" to the present day. .. As soon as her task was completed she was re-conveyed to her chamber, and summoning the family to her bedside, in order to secure her gift to the poor, for whom it was designed, and to render it binding upon her descendants, she proceeded in the most solemn manner to deliver a prophecy respecting the future inheritors of Tichborne — predicting its prosperity as long as the annual dole existed, and leaving her malediction on any of her descendants who should be so mean or covetous as to discontinue or divert it — declaring that when such should happen the old house would fall, the family would become extinct from the failure of heirs male, and that as a final warning of the approach of their decay, a generation would appear of seven sons, followed immediately by one with seven daughters and no sons. The custom thu3 founded in the reign of Henry 11. continued to be observed most regularly for centuries. The 25fch of March became the annual festive day of the family ; and the friends and different branches of the house of Tichborne came from far and near to witness and assist at the performance of the Lady Mabel's legacy. [n the year IG7O Sir Henry Tichborne, who had suffered much in person and property during the Commonwealth, and was recompensed after the Restoration by several lucrative employments under Government, employed Giles Tilbury, an eminent Flemish painter, to represent the ceremony of distributing the Tichborne dole. The picture was highly valuable, as giving a faithful representation of Old Tichborne House in the time of Charles 11., which Camden nearly a century previous had declared to be "a very ancient house." This picture passed by marriage into the hands of Michael Blount, Esq., of Maple Durham, in Oxfordshire, who had married Mary Agnes, the eldest daughter of Sir Henry Joseph Tichborne. and it was sold by his descendants for the nominal value of £400, to the late Sir Edwai d Doughty, the ninth baronet of the house of Tiohbcr.ie, who assumed the name of Doughty on succeeding to the estates of his relative Miss Doughty, of Snarford Hall, in Lin- ' colnshire. The dole continued to be given without a single omission down to the end of the eighteenth century, when, under the pretence of attending the distribution of the Tichborne dole, vagabonds, gipsies, and idlers of every description, assembled from all quarters, pilfering throughout the neighborhood, and causing many complaints amongst the magistrates and surrounding gentry. It was abolished by Sir Henry Tichborne in 1799, partly on account of the enormous tax it had become on the family, and partly to prevent a recurrence of the disorders which the annual distribution produced. Then began the fulfilment of Lady Mabel's prediction. In 1803, four years after the cessation of the gift, a portion of the house fell, and the reinuinder was pulled down, the materials were sold, and the surrounding moat was filled up. Sir Henry, the seventh baronet of the name of Tichborne, who had abolished the dole, had seven sons, Henry Joseph, who succeeded him in the title and estates, and became the father of seven daughters, but without a son ; Benjamin, who died unmarried in 1810 ; Edward, who became the ninth baronet, but who left no heir as his only son died before him ; James Francis, the tenth baronet, of whom presently ; John Michael, who was unmarried, and slain in the mutiny at Vellore, near Madras, in 1806 ; George, who died unmarried in 1802 ; and Roger Robert, the seventh and youngest son, who muyried Rebecca, the daughter o {

A. F. Nunez, Esq., of Belmont Park, but died childless in 1849, Sir Henry, the eighth baronet, and eldest of the spven sons, married Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Burke, Baronet, of Marble Hill, and by her had seven daughters in the following order : — 1. Eliza Anne, married to Joseph Lord Dormer ; 2. Frances Catherine, to Henry Benedict, Lord Arundell of Wardour ; 3. J ulia, to Charles Talbot, Esq., who became the mother of Bertram, seventeenth Earl of Shrewsbury ; 4. Mary, who died unmarried in 1827 ; 5, Catherine Caroline, married to Colonel Greenwood, of the Grenadier Guards; 6. Lucy Ellen, to JohnTowneley,Esq. ; and Emily Blanche, the seventh and youngest, who married John, the Qldesst son of John Bennett, Esq., M,P. for the county of Wilts. Iv 1826, Sir Henry's second brother, Edward, who eventually became the ninth baronet, having inherited the extensive property of Miss Elizabeth Doughty, of Suarford Hall, was obliged by the strict terms of her will to drop the name of Tichborne entirely, and assume that of Doughty solely ; thus fulfilling in some measure that part of Lady Mabel's prediction which foretold that the name would j become extinct. Sir Edward Doughty married in June, 1827, Katherine, daughter of James, ninth Lord Arnndell of Wardour, and had an only son, who died before he attained the age of six years. Sir Edward's brother, James, who eventually became the tenth baronet, married Henrietta Felicita, daughter of Henry Seymour, Esq., of Knoyle, in Wiltshire, and had two sons, Roger Charles, who was lo3t at sea off the coast of South America in the spring of 1854 (the recent claimant from Australia calls himself the said Roger), and Alfred Joseph, the eleventh baronet, whose son Henry, a posthumous child of a few years old, is now in possession of the title and estates. When the only son of Mr Edward Doughty (subsequently the ninth baronet) died, May 30th, 1835, the hitherto singular fulfilment of the prophecy struck him so forcibly, that he besought his elder brother, Sir Henry Joseph, to restore the ancient dole, which he agreed to do ; and it was again distributed, with certain restrictions, iv flour, and confining it to the poor of the parish of Tichborne only, instead of being promiscuously given to all comers as before, on the 25th of the following March, 1836, after a suspension of thirty-seven.years, and in this manner it continues to be distributed to the present day. The ancient dole measure, in which the bread was weighed out, is still preserved in the family 'mansion, and has on one side the inscription " Fnndatum Henrico •S'cciMido regnante," and on the other, " Tichborne Dole Weight, lib. lOoz. avoir." The custom in general every year was to bake about 1200 loaves, but on one occasion, when the 25th of March fell upon a Sunday, not less than 1225 loaves were distributed, with sums of twopence each to the value of Giles Tilbury's fine painting, to which we have before alluded, representing the distribution of the dole in the year 1670, in the courtyard of the old mansion, and including upwards of 100 portraits, is still to be seen at the hall. An account of Chedecke Tichborne, an ill-fated member of the family who perished on the scaffold in the sixteenth century, imiy be found in Disraeli's " Curiosities of Literature." Whether the resumption of Lady Mabel's gift may be considered sufficient to ward off the fatal prediction which foretold the failure of the family, time alone will show. The male race may be said to be confined to a single infant two or three years of age — for we are not disposed to give the slightest credence to the story of the Australian claimant, without proofs that may be found satisfactory to a court of law.