From Counter to Coronet

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 744, 17 August 1929, Page 20

From Counter to Coronet

Famous Families and Trade

It is not common knowledge perhaps that the foundation of many of Britain’s noble families can be traced to the industry, the enterprise, and the luck of some humble and obscure ancestor.

Indeed there are innumerable examples of Disraeli’s well-remembered declaration that “the British peerage owes to a large extent its very existence to apprentice boys whose blood mingles in its veins with that of the Percys and the Howards.”

It is difficult to recall one truly great family whose origin is not founded in commerce and whose history does not begin with business romance.

The following article (published in “News of the World”) is devoted to illustrations of the remarkable manner in which small beginnings in other centuries were destiued to establish the stately homes there are in England today.

To a London audience recently the Duke of Leeds said he was proud to think that, at the head of his family tree, the founder of his house was a man who had served behind a counter, who, by grit and honesty and industry, with certainly a stroke of good luck, rose to be Lord Mayor of London. His Grace was referring to i Edward Osborne, the City apprentice, who —and this was the stroke of luck —rescued his employer’s only daughter from the swollen waters of j the Thames, married her, succeeded his father-in-law, Sir William Hewityk as a great London merchant, and had for great-grandson the first of the ducal line of Leeds. The Duke of Northumberland can trace his existence, and not a little of his wealth, to one Hugh Smithson, a yeoman's son, who left the paternal farm to serve behind the counter of Ralph and William Robinson, haberdashers, in the 17th century.

From the haberdasher’s apprentice: descended, in the fifth generation,' that other Hugh Smithson, who, as the story goes, was serving in a Loudon druggist’s shop when accident m’a d e him acquainted with the Lady Elizabeth

Seymour. How the Duke’s daughter

lost her heart and gave her hand to the druggist’s assistant, and how this descendant of husbandmen

blossomed into Earl Percy and Duke of Northumberland Is one of the most romantic of all peerage stories. The Marquis of Northampton can boast many noble ancestors of long descent; but, high in his family-tree, there figures a London apprentice-lad to whose industry his house owes much of its gilding, and, no doubt, some of its fine qualities.

The Marquess of Salisbury is rightly proud of his descent from three centuries of ennobled Cecils, headed by the famous Lord High Treasurer, Burleigh, but he should be, and probably is, proud also to count among his forbears one Christopher Gascoigne, who was a merry London apprentice nearly two centuries ago, and who was the first Lord Mayor to make his home in the Mansion House. The Marquis of Bath need not search long among the ramifications of his family tree to find one William de Bothefeld, who was a worthy under-forester in Shropshire a good many centuries ago, and whose descendant, who gave his name to this noble family, was known as “John o’ th’ Inne” at Church Stretton. The Earl of Warwick, whose pedigree bears such great names as Plantagenet, Neville, Beauchamp and New-

burgh, would not be quite the man he is but for the enterprise of two apprentice forefathers. One was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who, from very small beginnings, lived to play the host to Queen Anne in the Guildhall, and to see his daughter “my Lady Brooke.”

The other was William Greville, who left his modest home at Campden to seek and win fortune as a wool-stapler in London,

Godfrey Fielding, who served City ladies of "the 15th century in a Milk Street shop, and who was London’s chief magistrate in 1452, was an honourable ancestor of the Earls of Denbigh. The veteran Earl of Leicester comes lineally from Thomas Coke, who used a yard measure In a City drapery shop, and who had to pay £B,OOO of his hard-earned gold, by way of fine, to that rapacious monarch, Edward IV. Earl Brownlow has for ancestor —as also has Lord Onslow —‘Sir Samuel Fludyer, a Cloth Hall factor, who, it is said, originally came to London from the West Country in charge of a team of clothier’s pack-horses. William Beckford, the descendant of a Maidhenead tailor, married his daughter to a Duke of Hamilton. A one-storeyed cottage in the small village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, was the cradle of the house of Craven, of which the present peer is the fourth earl, and thereby hangs a very remarkable romance. One day, in the reign of “good Queen Bess,” William Craven, the youthful son of William Craven, a husbandman, left the paternal roof. Partly on foot, partly In the carts of friendly carriers, he made the long journey to London to win some of the gold with which its streets were said to be paved. When the lad, footsore but strong of heart, found a place as errand-boy in a City draper’s shop he considered himself already on the high road to riches. Indeed, he really was. To such excellent use did he put his shrewd Yorkshire head and robust constitution that, in 1600, he was made Sheriff of London. Eleven years later he reached the goal of his ambition in the lord mayoralty, and in 161 S the farm labourer's son died Sir William Craven, one of London’s richest and most honoured citizens. His two sens both became barons. One was that brave soldier of Gustavus Adolphus, who is supposed to have married the widowed Queen of Bohemia, daughter of King James 1., while of his two daughters one found a husband in a baronet, the other in Thomas, Lord Coventry. All four children of the husbandman’s son cradled in a hovel, thus bore titles, while he had for daughter Et-in-law a queen, the daughter of a King of England, and a daughter of a lord (Spencer). It is, however, from Henry Craven, uncle of the boy who founded the family fortunes, that the present earl is descended.

The noble House of Dudley had as one of its founders William Ward, son of a poor Staffordshire man. Like William Craven, he too left his native village to win fortune in London. There he became apprentice to a jeweller, and found the business so lucrative that he amassed a great fortune, largely through the Queen’s patronage. His son climbed several rungs higher still up the social ladder. He was dubbed a knight, married a baroness in her own right, and died Lord Ward. The name Humble given to this pioneer Ward peer by his father the

jeweller, is borne today by his descendant, the 12th Earl of Dudlev The Earls of Harewood flourish on the wealth made by their 18th cen-

tury ancestors in trade, and Lords Downe and Aveland spring lineally from Gilbert Heathcote. The latter, from being a London apprentice, rose to be its Lord Mayor. These are but a few of England’s noble families who owe, and in most cases are proud to owe. titles

miuuu lo owe, titles and great possessions to forefathers who once dispensed tea and ribbons and other commodtities over shon counters. v