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This page is dedicated to Thomas Hunt, Lawyer (c1723-1789) and his
wife - Mary Jacobson (c1737-c1806). As Mary Jacobson was a direct
Bankes Descendant, being descended from Mary (Rand) Mitchell, Bankes's
half-sister, I shall outline what we know of her before writing
about Thomas. Firstly, however, I shall consider the information that we have gleaned from the records of this couple's marriage .
If you would like to see an abbreviated family tree for Thomas Hunt, Lawyer (c1723-1789), his wife - Mary Jacobson - and children you can do so by clicking here.
Marriage
Thomas Hunt,
a widower, married Mary Jacobson, the only known surviving daughter
of James and Mary (Mitchell) Jacobson, by licence on Tuesday 25
April 1758 at St Botolph, Aldgate. In so doing he became a Bankes
Descendant by marriage, and an object of our research.
The marriage
entry (1) states that both bride and groom were of the parish
of St Christopher le Stocks, London. This entry is interesting in
that it bears the signatures of both bride and groom, and two witnesses.
Both Thomas and Mary signed in a flowing style, suggesting education
and confidence. James Jacobson, father of the bride, was in poor
health by the time of his daughter's marriage, but his signature
as a witness proves that he attended the event. The other witness
was Ann Hunt. I do not know the identity of this person. Maybe she
was Thomas Hunt's mother.
Reference to
the Marriage Licence Allegation (2), signed by Thomas the day before the ceremony, shows that his
bride was aged 'twenty one years & upwards', so at least we know
that she was not a minor at that time. The groom's age was not stated.
As you will see below, I believe that Thomas was born c1723, and
that he was about thirty five years old when he married Mary. As
I have not yet discovered the date of Mary's birth, my working assumption
is that she was twenty one on her marriage , and was therefore born
c1737.
Mary (Jacobson) Hunt
Sources of
information about Mary (Jacobson) Hunt are fairly scarce. Such material
as I have found consists of the evidence provided by wills in which
she featured, and the records of the Court of Chancery. I shall
first consider the information gained from the latter of these sources.
Mary was recorded
as being a figure involved in the Chancery proceedings Mitchell
v Holloway in several of the documents I have seen. A Response by Ann Collyer (a cousin) of 1764
mentions that she had married Thomas Hunt, but gives no other information
(3). In a Bill of 1764 Mary was listed as a defendant in the above
proceedings (4), and she signed as a Respondent in a document dated
14 May 1767 (5).
In a Decree
dated 20 January 1783 (6) Mary's spouse was granted £75 "... in
right of his wife..." in respect of arrears of payments of Bankes
annuities. She and her spouse were also granted £1. 10s. 0d costs;
a paltry sum today, but not so paltry then!
Between 1789
(after the death of her husband) and 1792, Mary Hunt received several
remittances in payment of legal costs incurred in the Chancery proceedings.
These costs were awarded under various orders of the court, and
totalled £173. 8s. 2d.(7)
Information
extracted from the ledgers of the Haberdashers' Company shows that
the company made payments to Mary between 1789 and 1805 in respect
of annuities ordered by the Court. These payments totalled £17.
5s. 2d per half-year, which equates to roughly £515 in modern values(8).
Half of the value of these annuities was awarded in Mary's own right,
and half as her spouse's executrix.
The fact that
these payments ceased in 1805 gave me a clue as to when to start
looking for a record of Mary's death. I have not succeeded in tracing
a relevant burial record, but I have found the probate records regarding
her estate (9). The Will was proved in the Prerogative Court of
Canterbury on 16 June 1806, and was made on 27 November 1801. As
we know that Mary received payment of annuities up to 1805, it is
reasonable to assume that her death occurred between 1805 and June
1806 . In the absence of a burial record, this is as close as I
can get to pinpointing the date of her decease.
In making her
will Mary described her place of residence as "... late of Walthamstow
in the County of Essex but now of Winchester Street in the City
of London..."
It seems likely
that she was living with her daughter and son in law - Ann (Hunt)
Stephens and John Stephens - when she wrote her will, as this couple
lived at the stated address. The Will contained
bequests to her four children, among which the Bankes annuity, granted
by the Court of Chancery, was to be divided equally between them.
Her eldest son - James Marsom Hunt - was left the interest on £200
worth of 3% Government stocks for the duration of his life, and
was also left a bureau, which had been the property of his father.
As the deceased
person owned Bank of England Stock, a copy of the will was registered
at the Bank of England. An abstract of this can be seen at the library
of the Society of Genealogists, London (10).
As you may
expect, Mary was a beneficiary in the will of her husband. One bequest
that may be of interest was a payment of £50 in respect of a legacy
left to her by a certain Mr David Langton deceased. In those days
the property of married women belonged to their husbands, and presumably
Thomas Hunt had received this money on behalf of his spouse (11).
I have traced
several other wills that included references to Mary, including
two that relate to some Jacobson cousins of Mary, who had moved
to live in the Channel Island of Jersey - Magdalen Jacobson(12)
and Esther Jacobson(13). Both of them mention Mary as a beneficiary,
which indicates to me that the ties of kinship between these people
were quite strong.
Thomas Hunt
You may think
that as Thomas Hunt was a lawyer his history would be fairly easy
to trace. After all, he must have been well educated, and his name
may be expected to appear in many legal records. In fact I have
traced Thomas in a variety of records, but the essential fact of
his parentage has eluded me!
On his Marriage
Licence Allegation Thomas stated that he was of the parish of St
Christopher le Stocks, London. This information was confirmed by
information in the will of James Jacobson, prospective father in
law to Thomas, which was made in the same month (14). Alas, this
information has not helped me to find a record of Thomas's birth,
and my various attempts have not yet enabled me to find this information.
I have one
item of evidence that attests to Thomas Hunt's approximate date
of birth. A report by a Master in the Court of Chancery, dated 1776,
states:-
"...I find
by the affidavit of William Jacobson and Thomas Hunt and his wife
Mary sworn the 2nd day of December 1773 ... that the said Thomas
Hunt was then of the age of fifty years and upwards or thereabouts..."(15).
Court of Chancery
evidence has generally proved reliable in my experience, so I believe
that Thomas Hunt was born c1723.
As I mentioned
above, Thomas Hunt was a lawyer. I have managed to compile some
information about his career, and shall outline this in the following
lines.
Until the summer of 2008 I had assumed that Thomas Hunt had been a lawyer for the whole of his working life. However, last June I was shown a quite fascinating document that provided convincing evidence that this was not the case. Follow this link to see a transcription of this document
It appears that after completing his clerkship to an attorney, and thus training as a lawyer, Thomas served from 1748 to c1756 as a Customs Officer in London. In a document dated 1773 Thomas recounts how, in the course of performing his duties, he discovered what can only be described as illegal activities being carried out by the East India Company. It appears that customs duty was being evaded on a grand scale. Hunt put the value of the tax evasion at over one million pounds sterling - a fantastic amount of money in the mid eighteenth century(16).
Thomas then "...ceased to be an Officer of the Customs, with a certificate in writing...".
The certificate Hunt referred to was a character reference, given to him by his superiors in the Customs. This stated that:
"We do in justice to Mr Hunt, readily certify, that from the experience we have of his conduct, we believe him to be a capable, diligent and honest man."(17).
The fact that this glowing reference was given to Thomas by senior people in the Customs service leads me to believe that his accusations of malpractices by the East India Company were almost certainly essentially correct. This reference indicates that he apparently left without a stain on his character.
When he left the service of the Customs Thomas Hunt became a lawyer. The dates cited by Thomas Hunt would lead me to believe that this change of career took place around 1756, but in fact the earliest other evidence I have traced about his legal career shows that he was admitted as a solicitor in the Court of
Chancery on Tuesday
13 May 1755(18). His address was then recorded as Great Winchester Street,
which is in the City of London. He was aged around 32 at this time,
and considering that his legal career was only just starting it surprises me that he appears to have started his career at such a senior
level.
I know, from
a Court of Chancery statement dated March 1760 in the cause Mitchell
v Holloway, that Thomas was representing Sarah Holloway, a cousin
and Bankes descendent, in this cause (19). I am sure that a painstaking
search of Chancery cases in the 1760s would reveal other causes
in which Thomas was involved, but this would be an extremely time-consuming
enterprise, and is beyond my scope at present.
By March 1773 Thomas Hunt had been representing Bankes descendants in the various Court of Chancery proceedings relating to John Bankes's Estate for at least thirteen years, and he was thoroughly disillusioned at the way in which the causes were proceeding. In writing his document Truth Faileth so that Equity Cannot Enter he gave expression to the frustration and disgust that he felt in relation to these matters, and at the same time asserted his own good character and conduct. Hunt derived the title of this document from a quotation from the Old Testament of the Bible - Isiah 59:14:
And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
After recounting the relevant bequests in John Bankes's will, Thomas Hunt outlined what he saw as incorrect transactions that had taken place in the way in the winding up of Bankes's estate, and dubious decisions that had been made by the Masters in Chancery who had dealt with the cause - Robert Holford and his son Peter Holford. For example, according to Thomas, John Bankes's stock, which had been recorded as being worth £1316, had not been included in the calculations made in relation to the estate. Furthermore, Thomas pointed to several payments that took place between Bankes's executors that had not been recorded properly, misdemeanours by the trustees of the Bankes Trust, and misappropriations of funds:
"Many thousands pounds have been, by some persons, converted to their own use."(20)
The end result of all this, Thomas claimed, was that:
"... the suitors of the said Court, and the said seventy poor persons, have been wronged of Seven Hundred Pounds a Year, for upwards of Thirty Years, in manifest Violation and Contempt of the said Decree and of all laws human and Divine."
Truth Faileth so that Equity Cannot Enter is a most remarkable document, which gives a fascinating insight into the character of Thomas Hunt, and also into the Court of Chancery proceedings. Of course, by its nature, it is a biased account of the court proceedings and the way in which the Bankes Trust was handled. However, the character reference that was given to Thomas by his superiors in the Customs speaks volumes for his honesty, and it seems likely that his protests at the injustices of the court proceedings had substance. He comes across as a man of great principle, who was appalled by what he saw as the injustices that had been wrought on the intended beneficiaries of the Bankes will.
Further evidence of the professional activities of Thomas Hunt
are the copies of Browne's Law Lists that survive from that period.
Compilation of these annual lists started in the second half of
the eighteenth century, and the copies that have been available
to me yielded the following information (21):-
|
Date
|
Address
|
Court
in which Active (if stated)
|
|
|
1779
|
Bread
Street
|
|
1780
|
Beard
St (?misprint), Cheapside
|
|
1782
|
Hunt &
Massy, 43 Threadneedle St
|
|
1787
|
Threadneedle
Street, 45
|
King's Bench & Court of Common Pleas
|
|
1790
|
Allhallows-Court,
Gracechurch-Street
|
King's Bench
|
I assume that
the 1779 and 1780 entries both refer to the same address.
The 1782 address
was for a legal firm named Hunt & Massy. Given that its address
was similar to that given for Thomas Hunt in 1787, I assume that
the 'Hunt' in this entry was 'our' Thomas.
It will be noted
that all the addresses stated above were in the City of London,
and very close to one another. I assume that they were all business
addresses, and that Thomas and his family probably lived elsewhere.
When he made his will, in 1788(22), his place of residence was stated
as follows "...late of the parish of St.John, Hackney, Middx, but
now of St.Mary, Walthamstow." However, recollection of the above
reference to his residence in 1758 in the parish of St Christopher
le Stocks, suggests that Thomas Hunt probably lived in the city
of London earlier in his life.
It is interesting
to note that the area where Thomas worked was the focus of much
concern during 1780, when the Gordon Riots - a Protestant protest
against the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 - took place. The Bank of
England, situated in Threadneedle Street, came under severe attack,
and had to be defended by soldiers, some of whom were garrisoned
in the church of St Christopher le Stocks(23). Roy Porter describes
the scene as fires raged and property was destroyed across the metropolis(24).
We can only speculate what impact these events had on the everyday
life of Thomas Hunt, lawyer, but surely they must have caused him
some concern.
I have searched
the relevant records of the King's Bench(25), but although they
contain several references to people named Thomas Hunt, I have not
been able to identify 'my man'. There are other sources I can use
in my pursuit of more information, but that will require further
research. One such source is the Affidavits of Articles for Kings
Bench lawyers. I understand that in making these affidavits, people
newly admitted to King's Bench often stated details of their legal
training(26).
It is also possible
that a search of the records of the Court of Common Pleas may enable
me to discover more about the career of Thomas Hunt, but I have
not yet been able to undertake this.
Among other
references to Thomas Hunt in the records of the Court of Chancery,
there were several awards of payment of annuities, arrears of annuities,
or legal costs:
5 January 1771
'...To the said Thomas Hunt in Right of the said Mary his wife the
sum of seventy five pounds..(27)'
18 December 1776
' ... To the said Thomas Hunt the yearly sum of One pound ten shillings
...(28)'
20th January 1783
Thomas Hunt was granted £75 "..in right of his wife.." in respect
of arrears of annuity payments. He and his spouse were also granted
£1.10.0 in respect of their costs(29).
Thomas Hunt's
status as a lawyer meant that he was cited as an executor, or received
administration grants, in the wills of several of his kinsmen. Those
that I have traced in the records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury
were as follows:
-
James Jacobson
(father in law), probate 20th June 1759(30).
-
Mary (Mitchell)
Jacobson (mother in law), probate July 1771(31).
-
Mary Mitchell
(spouse's grandmother), probate May 1773(32).
-
Magdalen
Jacobson (spouse's cousin), probate June 1781(33).
-
Esther Jacobson
(spouse's cousin), probate 7th July 1789(34).
Thomas died
in January 1789, and was buried on 18 January in that year at New
Independent Burying Ground, Marsh Street, Walthamstow(35). His will
was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 23 January
1789(36),and it contained a number of bequests, including the following:
-
£1000 was
left in Trust, to be used for the benefit of James Marsom Hunt,
eldest son of Thomas and Mary Hunt. James Marsom Hunt was to
have no control over this bequest. In the event of the death
of James Marsom Hunt, the above amount was to be transferred
to Thomas Hunt's other children - Mary Hunt, Thomas Hunt, William
Hunt and Ann Hunt in equal shares, so long as they had reached
the age of 21 years. If any of these children predeceased James
Marsom Hunt, their share of this benefit was to be divided among
the surviving children.
-
£700 worth
of three per cent Bank Consolidated Annuities were bequeathed
to each of the following of to Thomas Hunt's children: Mary
Hunt, Thomas Hunt, William Hunt and Ann Hunt, providing that
they had reached 21 years of age. In the case of any of these
children not having reached 21 years of age, the annuities were
to be invested on their behalf until they reached 21 years of
age.
-
£1000 worth
of three per cent Bank Consolidated annuities were bequeathed
in trust, the "interest dividends and proceeds" to be used for
the benefit of Thomas's wife, Mary Hunt. On her death, the investment
was to be transferred to Mary Hunt, Thomas Hunt, William Hunt
and Ann Hunt, children of the testator, so long as they have
attained the age of 21 years. Each of these children was to
receive equal shares. If any of these children had not attained
the age of 21, the proceeds of this investment was to be used
for their maintenance or benefit until they reached the age
of 21 years.
-
The remainder
of the testator's real or personal estate, after payment of
his debts, funeral expenses etc., was bequeathed to his spouse
- Mary Hunt.
The
value of the bequests left by Thomas Hunt was considerable, as can
be appreciated when one considers that according to Bank of England
estimates £1,000 in 1790 was worth approximately £51,000 in today's
money values(37).
The reader will
no doubt appreciate that there are many gaps in our knowledge of
Thomas Hunt, Lawyer. The fact that we live in the Midlands and most
of the sources that would be most likely to yield information about
this man are in London means that any progress we make in this research
is bound to be slow. However, we are pleased to have discovered
as much about this man as we have.
One of the children
of Thomas and Mary Hunt was Rev Thomas Hunt, Baptist Minister (1762-1844).
Click here to see material about him.
G M Culshaw December 2005
Last updated January 2009
You can see references for the material displayed on this page by
clicking here.
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