Pray keep my secret.
The day after this letter was written, postage stamps – Penny Black and Twopenny Blue – were placed on sale in Britain’s post offices becoming immediately popular. Though in use for less than a year, over sixty-eight million copies of the Penny Black were distributed. The cost of sending a pre-paid simple letter had already been drastically reduced to just a penny, indicated here by a dated tombstone PAID handstamp and a clerk’s single red stroke of the pen. Those would gradually be replaced by the postage stamp.
The new labels, as they were called, quickly gave rise to the
hobby of stamp collecting which even now is popular enough to ensure that a
letter franked with a Penny Black will cost over a hundred pounds and sometimes
much more (I mean thousands). In contrast, the stampless letters I generally work with have mostly cost a few pounds.
This letter is written from gaol, though not from a
common criminal since as a group common criminals were overwhelmingly
illiterate. No, this one’s from a vicar
in Gloucester Gaol for debt and asking for financial help. The signatory is
Charles Richard Fanshawe (1780-1859), Vicar of Coaley in Gloucestershire, who
appeals to Quintin Dick MP at his home address and clearly knows him. Earlier
in his career Fanshawe held church livings in East Anglia where Dick held
parliamentary seats; this is probably the origin of their acquaintance. In 1819
when Fanshawe was Rector of Dengey (now spelt Dengie) in Essex it was proposed
that the Duke of Clarence’s youngest son by the actress Dorothea Jordan should
go to live and study with him. The boy Augustus Fitzclarence saw little of his
mother after his parents separated in 1811; Mrs Jordan resumed her theatrical
career and died in 1816. I have not been
able to establish whether Augustus actually went to live in Dengey though in
1819 Fanshawe was appointed Chaplain to the Duke and that well-remunerated
position suggests that the young Fitzclarence may have spent time with
Fanshawe. In 1821 the boy is with a different vicar in Hampshire so perhaps
things didn’t work out in Essex.
This brief history marks out the Reverend Fanshawe as possessing
some distinction; but now he has come down in the world with a bump. Of course,
others had more brutal bumps in Gloucester Gaol: Mary Anne Barry was hanged
there in 1874, the last woman to be executed in England by the short drop
method. She did not die instantly and the executioner had to press down on her
shoulders to finish the job.
It is a puzzle that no one in his very extensive family has acted
to help the clergyman. At this period, his son and namesake the Reverend
Charles Fanshawe was an energetic figure in Southampton where a street is named
after him; he was an original trustee of the Royal South Hants Infirmary. The
father’s parishioners in Coaley have not come to the rescue either; the letter
states plainly that some have created his current predicament. Perhaps he
confessed his plight to no one in his family; perhaps he was widely unpopular
in his parish; perhaps ….
Hariette Wilson in her Memoirs estimated Quintin Dick’s
annual income at fifteen or twenty thousand a year, at least. I have an 1823 note sent by Dick to his
lawyer, Baron Mclelland in Dublin; in it he explains that the money he has sent
to the Baron’s account at the Bank of Ireland comprises the half-year interest
on £50 000 of bank stock and likewise on £50 000 of three percent government
Consols. In addition, he would have had income from property and business
activity managed by his brother Hugh in Dublin. He was never reputed generous
but he sent the Reverend Fanshawe five pounds. If the Reverend had used all
that to send out more letters through the publicly-owned mail service, he could
have sent out 1200 at the new one penny rate; as I write in 2026 the privately-owned
Royal Mail would charge £1920. But with a more mixed basket of goods, five
pounds in 1840 is usually reckoned equivalent to about £500 today.
I do not know what to feel about the Reverend’s plight; reading
other letters I have reacted to the writers as one does to characters in a
story: sometimes laughing, sometimes wishing that things could have turned out
better for them, sometimes moved, sometimes just curious.
No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode.
(Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard)
*
Transcription
Addressed to: Quintin Dick Esqre MP Curzon Street May
Fair London Datelined: Gloucester
jail 5th May 1840
Dear Sir
I make no claim but throw myself on your Charity for a small
assistance. The frivolous & vexatious delay of the persons named in March
1839 to apportion the rent charge of my Parish has justified the farmers in
withholding two years arrears due last Lady day. A spiteful Attorney who knows my politics has
persuaded his clients to put a judgment in place against my person.
Pray consider my case I am nearly blind & quite destitute. A
few pounds will enable me to bless you as much as you are already esteemed by
your grateful friend
Pray keep my secret
Charles R. Fanshawe Address at Mr Lovegrove’s Sol’r [Solicitor] College Green Gloucester
Docketing note: Sent him 5£. 9th May 1840.
*
Reference
sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:fanshawe-reverend-charles
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