|
George Ivison Tapps (1753-1835) and his Forebears King's Bench, 17th January 1754 - decision about JJ Clerke's legitimacy. What happened to Benjamin Clerke's non-Hampshire estates, which should have gone to his cousin John Clerke's heirs? Had Lydia Hicks outlived JJ Clerke, she would first have had use for her life. JJ seems to have been the last-living in the male line of John Clerke's father.
Check British Library: The following is probably not quite what the present lord of the manor of Westover had in mind when he stated that the role of Sir George Ivison Tapps has been overlooked in some accounts of the early development of Bournemouth. George Ivison Tapps was born and baptised in January 1753. During that same month, Parliament was discussing Lord Hardwicke's Bill, which led later that year to the passing of the Clandestine Marriage Act. The Bill was introduced because all that was needed to formalise a marriage between adults was their own consent, declared before witnesses, and problems had been encountered by (among others) offspring who needed to prove that their parents had married in order to show their legitimacy and entitlement to inherit. The law on descent and bastardy has even now not changed from that set out in Jacob's Law Dictionary, published in 1729: if a person's parents are not married at the time of that person's birth, he or she will never be able to inherit regardless of whether or not the parents subsequently marry. The parents of George Ivison Tapps were George Jarvis Tapps and Jane Ivison. They married in 1771, when George Ivison Tapps was already 18 years old. In order to obtain their licence to marry, they would have sworn declarations to the effect that there was no impediment to their marriage (such as a previous marriage), and they are recorded as bachelor and spinster in the marriage register. Perhaps they married because George had read a helpful "Explanation of Matrimony" in the Gentleman's Magazine in January 1769, in which it was stated that "When God made the society of marriage he made man superior because he knew equality would breed confusion". Notwithstanding this, the fact that they chose to marry in 1771 is rather puzzling. George was already at least 69 years old, and his handwriting in the marriage register suggests that he was becoming frail. Had they not married in 1771, it might have been assumed that they had married before 1753: if they were concerned about the possibility of this being challenged, provision for Jane and their children (including the bequest of all George's real estate) could simply have been made by George's Will, and neither their marriage nor their re-marriage at this late stage could give their children any right to inherit. Indeed, their marriage in 1771 made matters worse because it was in effect an affirmation of their children's illegitimacy. Marrying by licence rather than banns afforded them only limited privacy. In his Will, George Jarvis Tapps avoids using the word "son" to refer to:
Nowhere in his Will does he call George Ivison Tapps his son. He similarly avoids referring to Jane Ivison Tapps as his daughter, yet refers elsewhere in his Will to the "children" of John Ivison, as if tacitly acknowledging a significant difference in the legitimacy of his own offspring. Elsewhere in his Will, George Jarvis Tapps seeks to prevent his widow using the law to recover for her own use the property bequeathed to their children. He appears to be concerned that his children's illegitimacy might provide his widow with the means to deprive them of their bequests. Early in 1732/3, George Jarvis Tapps inherited his mother's share of the estate of his grandfather, George Jarvis, which included a freehold messuage or tenement in White Cross Street, Saint Giles without Cripplegate, 12 acres of copyhold land at Islington, and two freehold fields at Dogg Row, Bethnal Green. By this time he also had a £50 annuity from George Jarvis's War Bonds. A man of his wealth would be sure to have servants, and it is tempting to suppose that it is in such capacity that Jane Ivison, and perhaps her brother John too, arrived in his household. Maid-servants were generally considered to be fair game for gentlemen, and the gentlemens' reputations were by no means tarnished so long as they made provision for any ensuing bastards. Such was the permissiveness of this age that neither was it unusual for bastards to be brought up in their fathers' households, nor for mistresses to live under the same roofs as wives. It is perfectly reasonable to suppose, therefore, that George Jarvis Tapps and Jane Ivison lived together unmarried in London with their two children, unbothered by gossip and without scandalising their neighbours. It is possible too that the existence of a wife prevented George Jarvis Tapps marrying Jane Ivison before 1771, although he is described as a bachelor rather than a widower at the time of that marriage. In 1770 George Jarvis Tapps lost a cousin (Sarah Greenhill) and a nephew (Richard Buck), but was comforted in his loss by inheriting their estates, including another £50 War Bond annuity. At this time he must also have realised that with so many of his relations dying childless, he was getting ever closer to inheriting the family's really plum pieces of real estate in London and Hampshire, by now in the hands of Joseph Jarvis Clerke. But George was nearing 70 and seemed unlikely to outlive Joseph Jarvis Clerke, who was 40 years his junior. Joseph Jarvis Clerke was still unmarried, but by the standards of his social station at the time he could expect to enjoy another 10 years or so of bachelorhood before settling to the task of producing an heir. It is likely that his inheritances in 1770 facilitated George Jarvis Tapps's purchase of lands at North Church, where the family is not known to have had any previous connection, and where they could settle with a degree of anonymity. NO, no, no: Lancashire CRO DDR 15/4 indicates that he was already "of King's Langley" (=North Church) by 23/24 Jun. 1749. Did he have a previous wife there through whom he came to own property (despite being a "bachelor" in 1771)? He subsequently bought more property there for the use of wife Jane after his decease. The Oxford English Dictionary offers only a twentieth century origin for the term "git", meaning a worthless person. It is, however, claimed that the term was being used as early as the 16th century in the north of England and Scotland "to describe someone who was illegitimate, a bastard in the original and strictest sense of the word". It therefore seems unlikely that the cruel irony of baptising an illegitimate child with the initials GIT would be lost on Jane Ivison, whose family (according to Burke's Peerage) were from Carlisle. This was, after all, an age between 17th and 19th century formality in which people felt it their duty to reject solemnity, witnessed by humorous epitaphs such as that of Samuel Foote, a one-legged comedian buried at Westminster Abbey:
It would be tempting, if frivolous, to suppose that the new-born George Ivison Tapps wasn't much welcomed by his parents. Such isolation followed him in later life, as the Earl of Malmesbury remarked in a letter that Sir George Ivison Tapps and his son "are not much liked - Sir George is a very narrow-minded penurious fellow". Given the extremely high rates of infant mortality in these times - in the 1740s in some London parishes only 20% of children survived past their 6th birthday - it was neither fashionable nor, to be ruthless, sensible to lavish too much care and affection on children. Incidentally, it might appear that Joseph Jarvis Clerke was entitled to the manors by virtue of a bequest in his father's will, but because Benjamin Clerke was only tenant for life under the Trust instigated by Dame Lydia Mews's Will, the Law dictated that any such bequest was void. On reaching the age of 21, Joseph Jarvis Clerke would ordinarily have inherited the manors as tenant for life, but he appears to have executed a cunning piece of legal trickery in order to "bar the entail". Had he not done so, on his death, childless, in 1778 the manors would have passed to Dame Lydia Mews's Right Heirs. It seems likely that those right heirs would be the descendants of Henry Jarvis of Leavenheath, Colchester, cousin of Dame Lydia's father. OR NOT - WERE COLLATERAL BRANCHES BARRED BY THIS TYPE OF ENTAIL? Rather curious is the bequest (without explanation) of the considerable sum of £2,000 in the 1835 Will of Sir George Ivison Tapps, Bt. to:
and significantly
Real estate could only be inherited by "the blood of the first Purchaser", and in the case of Joseph Jarvis Clerke's real estate, the first purchasers were the several daughters of George Jarvis of Islington (father of Dame Lydia Mews). It appears from close study of numerous wills and legal cases that on the death of Joseph Jarvis Clerke in 1778, George Ivison Tapps and his sister Jane were the only remaining living descendants of George Jarvis, and were it not for his bastardy George Ivison Tapps would himself have been the heir at the Common Law of any of the real estate owned by Joseph Jarvis Clerke. So by the terms of the bequest quoted above, George Ivison Tapps appears to have been acknowledging his own bastardy and his consequent inability lawfully to inherit. It would be instructive to discover how this bequest was executed by his son, George William Tapps-Gervis. Although quite prepared to sell the Manor of the Borough of Christchurch (this appears to have been a political decision in which he was encouraged by the promise of a Baronetcy - see here), George Ivison Tapps appears to have been reluctant to invest heavily in the development of the land that he retained. It was only after his death in 1835 that George William Tapps-Gervis began the process of laying out his "Marine Village" at Bournemouth, some quarter of a century after Lewis Tregonwell had begun the development of the town. This might be explained by the expiry (with George Ivison Tapps) of the right of Dame Lydia's Right Heirs to enter on the land and take possession: after George William Tapps-Gervis's inheritance of the estates, any recovery would have had to be made by costly legal action. The rapidity with which George William Tapps-Gervis's scheme was put into execution suggests that it had been planned for some time, perhaps even with the encouragement of George Ivison Tapps, whose opposition to the commencement of development during his lifetime has hitherto been unexplained. The Law on descent of real estate changed significantly in 1833 with the passing of both the Inheritance Act and the Real Property Limitation Act. The RPLA 1833 introduced a 20-year time limit during which a wronged party could bring an Action to recover land, timed from the date at which that wronged party became entitled to the land. There is, however, in section 26 of that Act a proviso which might yet be exploited by Dame Lydia's Right Heirs:
What was the effect of the Reform Act 1832? The end of the patronage system under which the Mews/Clerke/Tapps family had thrived - did GWT look for new sources of income and influence? Sir George Ivison Tapps wrote his Will in 1832, presumably at around the time that the Bills for these Acts were making their way through Parliament and the Lords - Houses where the barrister George William Tapps and his father Sir George respectively had seats. It is reasonable to suppose that they jointly supported the progress of these Bills, and might even have been partly responsible for their promotion. Did the draft Bills contain any other clauses beneficial to the Tapps interests? The above quoted clause raises the question of whether Sir George Rose was aware of the circumstances when he purchased the Manor of the Borough of Christchurch from George Ivison Tapps in 1791. In 1754, George Jarvis Tapps had (with others) challenged in Court whether Joseph Jarvis Clerke was the legitimate son of his cousin, Benjamin Clerke, and whether he was therefore entitled to inherit Dame Lydia Mews's estate. It is ironic that the Trustees of Dame Lydia Mews's estate did not raise such questions when George Jarvis Tapps's own son came to inherit the estate in 1778, and it is interesting to discover why they failed to do so. Under her original Will, Dame Lydia's sole executor was the amusingly-named lawyer Peniston Lamb. He died on 29th January 1735 (his obituary in Gentleman's Magazine described him as "an eminent Conveyancer"), but Dame Lydia had specified that on his death the execution of the Trust was to fall to his heirs: it was obviously sensible to appoint a Trustee who could not foreseeably become a beneficiary of that Trust. Peniston Lamb's heir was his nephew, Sir Mathew Lamb, who married Charlotte Coke: the Cokes of Melbourne Hall were rich landowners, to whom Sir Mathew was legal adviser and to whom Dame Lydia mortgaged the manor of Christchurch in 1728. Charlotte Coke inherited the Coke estate of Melbourne Hall in 1751 on the premature death of her brother. John Coke's interest in the mortgage passed to Lady Isabella, daughter-in-law of The Duke of Bolton (aka The Marquess of Winchester), who as a widow worth £150,000 married in 1750 the much younger, notorious, and broke Francis Blake Delaval (M.P. for Andover 1754-68). [She subsequently, successfully and famously sued him for adultery after he conspired with others to abduct "a female infant apprentice for the purpose of prostitution".] The Lambs were clearly not impartial Trustees of Dame Lydia's estate. By 1790, Newport, Isle of Wight, was represented in Parliament by Sir Mathew's son and heir, Sir Peniston Lamb, Bt., 1st Viscount Melbourne (another supporter of Pitt), the heir and great-nephew of Dame Lydia's executor. Since his father's death in 1768, Sir Peniston Lamb had been, nominally, the Trustee of Dame Lydia's Estate, which of course included the manors of Christchurch and Westover. His impartiality concerning the fate of the politically-sensitive estate and the soon-to-be-appointed Baronet, George Ivison Tapps, must at least be questionable, and given that he squandered his own inherited fortune it can hardly be expected that he would take any care over the inheritance of others. However, in her Testamentary Schedule Dame Lydia appointed different executors, namely her nieces Agnes Greenhill (née Clerke) and Mary Buck (née Tapps), and Mary's two elder sons. If it was her intention that they should also be executors of her Real Estate (and it is doubtful that this was indeed her intention, given that her Real Estate is not mentioned in the Schedule), she would not have foreseen that by 1778 they would all have died, along with the named beneficiaries. Still less would she have foreseen that one man, as yet unborn to unmarried parents, would claim by descent to be both her executor and residuary legatee. Post-mortem Obfuscation If further evidence to support the claim of Sir George Ivison Tapps's bastardy is required, there is a rather telling paragraph in his Will. Taken at face value, it appears to be a touching tribute to Lydia Jarvis, the 43-year-old spinster who had the good fortune to be a wealthy heiress at just the time when the 46-year-old bachelor Sir Peter Mews might have needed some cash to prop up his political career, which was sinking along with those of other Tories in the mire of the Hanoverian Succession. Sir George Ivison Tapps, somewhat disingenuously, claimed to wish to mark his respect for Dame Lydia Mews (the woman whose estate he had at least questionably taken from her right heirs) by desiring that his son change his name to Tapps-Gervis. He suggested that "Gervis" was a well-used variant of the name "Jarvis", yet the spelling doesn't appear in any of the many contemporary documents used in this study. He also suggested that George Jarvis (or Gervis) was a descendant of the ancient family of Devon, which even if true denies the family's more recent merchant ancestry in Essex and London. This could be read as an attempt to throw attention away from Dame Lydia's right heirs in Essex. He might more credibly have demonstrated his respect for Dame Lydia by refusing in 1791 to sell the Manor of the Borough of Christchurch (and the parliamentary seat that went with it) to Sir George Rose, who was Secretary to the Treasury under Pitt the Younger. It was in order to keep power from the Whigs that Sir Peter Mews had bought the manor in 1708. The editors of Burke's Peerage appear to have been fed some false information about the Tapps family, and one can only speculate about the motives and source of this confusing misinformation. It appeared some time after the publication of the 1824 edition, in which the family's listing was uninformatively brief, but accurate. Family Background: Merchants and Tradesmen Richard Tapps (Sir George's grandfather) was apprenticed to George Jarvis, Merchant Taylor of London. Richard appears to have been an exemplary pupil, for he was granted Freedom of the Merchant Taylors' Company in 1687, and married his former master's daughter, Elizabeth Jarvis, in 1702. Jane Ivison, who somewhat belatedly married their son, George Jarvis Tapps, in 1771, is said by Burke's Peerage to have been the daughter of "J. Ivison of Carlisle". It seems more likely that she was the daughter of Francis Ivison of Stanwix, Carlisle, baptised there in 1722. A brother, John, had been baptised there in 1715. A John Ivison, shoemaker of Charles Street near Grosvenor Square, London, was a witness at the marriage of George Jarvis Tapps and Jane Ivison, and later a legatee and co-executor of George Jarvis Tapps's Will. In 1815, George Ivison Tapps's sister, Jane, died. Her husband, Sir George Buggin, had been knighted in 1791, and within weeks of Jane's death married Lady Cecilia Gore, daughter of the Earl of Arran (Cecilia's reward for marrying this man 25 years her senior was, on his death, to marry a son of King George III). When George Ivison Tapps died some twenty years later, the body of his sister Jane, along with those of his mother and daughter Constantia were all moved from their burial place at Paddington Church and reinterred with him at Christchurch Priory. George Jarvis Tapps was left in King's Langley, Hertfordshire. It might not be thought unusual for a recently created hereditary peer to try to distance himself from his ordinary family background, but George Ivison Tapps appears to have had more reason to do so than most. Not only was George Ivison Tapps spectacularly fortunate in acquiring estates, he was also rather good at disposing of them for profit: read on. |
