Welcome to your monthly Parish Paper

Sundays

• 8:00am     Low Mass (In the Lady Chapel, enter by the South Door). 
• 9:00am     All Ages Mass 
• Between & after the services, 'The Bridge': activities for the young
• 10:30am   High Mass (choir at 2nd and 4th Sundays)
• 6:30pm     Solemn Evensong  (1 December is our Advent Carol Service)

• 26 December Stephen, the First Martyr
• 27 December John, the Apostle
• 28 December Holy Innocents
• 29 December  Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1170)
• 31 December  John Wyclif (1384). He championed the translation of the Bible into Middle English, so the common person could understand it when it was read out, even if they couldn't read themselves.  (See how English had changed every 300 years in the extracts below)

Church News

• helping with the organisation and maintenance of our extensive choir library 
• assisting with training younger choristers in the Children's Choir (DBS required for over 18's)
•  experience conducting and playing the organ as well

07843 389 432 or antony.matthews@gmail.com

All Saints School News

From readers and friends

From the Archives

In the summer we wrote about taking the Banns books to the Archive, and Lord Hardwicke's Act for the prevention of clandestine marriages - this is the research we mentioned, reproduced with the kind permission of local historian, Andrew Skelton.  The character of Martha Dicey makes a nice counterpoint to the less patrician but more socially respected (and perhaps respectable) Miss Jane Butterfield, 'wife' and accused murderer of Thomas Scawen's brother William. (See Parish Paper, July 2019, available through our website).
 
Look out for tours of the church and churchyard led by Andrew next year as part of the Museum Heritage Trail programme... 

      Love, duty and respectability in 18th century Society

Martha Dicey was born at the end of the 1720s, and was the eldest surviving child of Thomas Scawen MP, of Carshalton and Tryphena, a granddaughter of the Duke of Bedford. She was probably the daughter baptised at Scawen’s London town house, as recorded in newspapers in March 1729.  

When a child she would have been brought up in a number of houses, including Stone Court, her Father’s house in Carshalton, where they were intimate neighbours of the Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Hardwicke, who lived at nearby Carshalton House at that time. As the child of wealthy and extremely well-connected parents Martha could be assured that, in time, a fine alliance would be made for her amongst the aristocracy or gentry, or the wealthy business class.  This choice would not necessarily be hers, as with her own parents an arranged marriage would be negotiated.  But, as events transpired, it was taken out of their hands by a decision that a close family friend thought would bring much trouble to them all.

Mrs Scawen’s inheritance included Maidwell Hall and Draughton in Northamptonshire, Unfortunately, Martha’s grandmother Lady Russell left many debts when she died in 1736 and the Scawen’s decided to sell, amongst other property, their right to present the next Rector at Draughton.  The buyer in 1737 was William Dicey, a prominent printer of Northampton, whose son Edward, in Holy Orders, also became the next Rector at Maidwell and thus would have had direct contact with the Scawens when they were in residence.

At some point Martha and Edward in his official position must have met and developed a friendship, although her parents would have considered him completely unsuitable for a husband. But at the end of 1747 the couple were secretly married at Maidwell church. Remaining apart, Martha returned to Maidwell Hall under her father’s roof. 

Martha’s  immediate and surprising reaction to the discovery of the marriage by her father Thomas in mid 1748 is hinted at in her letter to the nonconformist minister the Rev. Philip Dodderidge; ‘ . . .for when our affair was discovered, [she wrote] I was resolved to go to my husband before my papa knew of it, & when they were gone to acquaint him with it, I knew no way to escape, but that way, for if I went down stairs, I was afraid of meeting my papa, so took my opportunity when I found myself alone, to make that disparate venture, but as it was in a great fright, I blefs God I received no hurt’.  
It is evident she climbed out of a first floor window and presumably down a drainpipe to avoid her father! 
After exposure, the Diceys then appear to have lived at the Rectory in Maidwell, close to Maidwell Hall while a flurry of letters continued between the Scawen’s and their friends Dodderidge and Lord and Lady Hardwicke, in which the friends attempted in vain to mediate between the parents and daughter.

As Lady Hardwicke wrote to Dodderidge in July 1748  ‘I have seen Mrs Dicey . .; she appeared in health and tolerable spirits, and told me that they were going to settle in Northamptonshire, and that they removed their goods from Maidwell; which, I told her, I was glad of, since it was, I thought, the only expedient that could be thought of, to make her parents happy in their own home.  I wish her well, but fear that this one fatal step will make her unhappy for life.’

There is no indication that the Scawens ever forgave their daughter, who as late as 1750 is hoping for forgiveness.  However, as Dodderidge wrote to his wife in July 1749  "Lady Hardwicke’s letter griev’d me not a little, Poor Mrs Dicey Her Mother will Kill her and then go distracted".
 
Eventually the couple moved away to Walton in Buckinghamshire before Dicey accepted a City of London parish where both are buried. There are few references to them after their marriage but a neighbouring Clergyman at Walton, the Rev William Cole, suggests that Martha Dicey seems to have had the reputation in her neighbourhood of being a bit flighty and thus not particularly popular amongst the Ladies or, as he put it, she ‘appears to be a person of considerable charm, not always kept under control’.

At least one of her male neighbours declined to dine with her when her husband was away, while another neighbour, Mrs Willis, withheld a letter from Mrs Dicey to her son inviting him to go to Walton, after she had found him walking with Martha in the garden early one morning before his mother was up.  

 It is interesting to note that, in the Maidwell parish register against the Dicey marriage entry, a later note states that ‘This marriage is supposed to have laid the foundations of the Marriage Act which was passed in 1753’.  
This Act, also known as Hardwicke’s Marriage Act, was designed to eliminate as far as possible the inconsistencies of existing ecclesiastical marriage law requiring, amongst other things, the parents to give consent to the marriage.  Although it cannot be proved, Lord Hardwicke’s intimacy with his friend Scawen’s situation, and his attempts to negotiate between the parties, must have personally shown him the damage that could be created within one family in such a case, and no doubt had a hand in his forming of the Act which bears his name.

Certainly, the scandal of an elopement resounded within the local social scene both at Maidwell and at Carshalton, so much so that, many years ago, after giving a lecture on the Scawens of Carshalton Park, an old man who was a descendant of the Reynolds family of the Culvers - (who were tenants of Thomas Scawen) - told me that there was a story that the Great Gates of the Park were locked by Scawen to prohibit his daughter to elope.  At that time I didn’t know about the Dicey marriage, but it fell into place immediately I saw the marriage entry in the Maidwell Register. There is no doubt that it was a notable scandal about which legends were made and persisted throughout the years into present times!

                                                                                        Andrew Skelton

Photographs of Carshalton Park Gates and House reproduced by kind permission of Sutton Archive

From past Ripples...

1. If you open it, close it
2. If you turn it on, turn it off
3. If you unlock it, lock it
4. If you break it, repair it
5. If you cannot fix it, report it to the churchwardens
6. If you borrow it, return it
7. If you use it, don't abuse it
8. If you make a mess, clean it up
9. If you move it, put it back
10. If you don't know how to operate it, leave it alone
11. If it belongs to someone else, get permission to use it

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