Dame Margaret Thorold's Charity

Margaret Waterer’s first husband was the Hon Francis Coventry, a son of the first Lord Coventry and a brother-in-law of the first Earl of Shaftesbury, both of whom were active in Civil War, Commonwealth and Restoration government.  It is with him that she was eventually buried in Mortlake in 1732, many years after his death.  There is a board in the church there recording her endowment of a charity for the support of the poor in Barnes.  The board says it was restored in 1811 by the then Earl of Coventry, a successor of her father-in-law.

In 1701, she married again, this time Sir John Thorold, the 4^th Baronet Thorold of Marston.  The wedding was in Westminster Abbey; he was an MP at the time.  Following his death fifteen years later, she founded a school in Marston in his memory.  It still exists and it is still supported by an educational charity she founded.  Sir John’s hatchment hangs in Marston church, where he (but not she) is buried.  A further still extant charity was established by her will to support local apprentices. 

She and Sir John had no children, and the baronetcy was inherited by a cousin of his, and then by that cousin’s son, each of them dying soon after succeeding.  So in 1731 the 7^th Baronet Thorold of Marston had for the last ten years been a further cousin of Dame Margaret’s husband, also a Sir John Thorold.  His heir was another John Thorold.  It is these last two John Thorolds who are named on a board in the north east transept of Lincoln Cathedral.  It records their being entrusted with the establishment of yet another of her charities.

In the Year 1731, DAME MARGARET THOROLD WIDOW, and relict of Sir JOHN THOROLD late of MARISTO N in this County BARRT, Transferred to Sir JOHN THOROLD of this County BARRT and JOHN THOROLD Esqr his Eldest Son; One Thousand Five Hundred POUNDS, South Sea Annuities in trust, to lay out the Money arisieing by the Sale thereof in the Purchase of Lands of Inheritance in this County, and the Rents and Profits of which, and the Produce of the Annuities till Sold, to be Equally Divided Between Six Poor Old Men of the CITY and Minster of LINCOLN that are past their Labour and do not Receive Alms of the parishes as more fully appears by a Deed bearing Date the 13^th Day of January.  Registered in LINCOLN Minster. the lands are att Sturton in the Parish of Stow, in this County.

The annuities were not investments in the South Sea Bubble which had burst eleven years earlier, but in the South Sea Company which had survived that crash.  The deed specified three old men from below the hill and three from uphill, as nominated by Sir John.  An indenture three years later agreed that the income would come from a £60 p.a. rent charge on land owned by Sir John at ‘Sturton in the Street, in the parish of Stow’.  This would have been the equivalent of 4% interest on the original £1500 investment.  Payment was made half yearly, on Lady Day and at Michaelmas, the beginning and the half way point of the financial year.  

Lincolnshire Archive holds a report made in 1837 which records those details of the 1731 deed and the 1734 indenture, a century on [WG/7/2/4/1].  It names Thomas Forby as the the person then paying the rent charge, and a farmer aged around 75 named Thomas Fourby is recorded at Sturton in the 1841 census.  It observes that only freemen had been beneficiaries of the charity, although neither the deed nor indenture required this, and it recommends that this restriction on beneficiaries be ended.

The bulk of the small set of relevant documents in the Archive are dated 1889, by which time inflation would have almost halved the value of the original rent charge.  It was being paid by the executors of an E. Hyde (which is not a name which shows up in Sturton in censuses in either 1871 or 1881).  It names those who were receiving £10 each year, perhaps a quarter of what an agricultural labourer would have been paid [WG/8/2/4/5].

John Thurger of 8 Rasen Lane

Thomas Johnson of 12 Princess Street

James Ward of 13 Flaxen Gate

John Cousins of 12 Thorngate

- Goffin of 22 Church Lane

Joseph Linn of 4 St Paul’s Lane

Three are from down the hill and three from uphill.  Census returns do not easily identify them all, but Johnson was a labourer aged 76 and Cousins a cabinet maker aged 79, while Thurger was a fitter aged only 53 and with a young family.

A new scheme for the charity was being made at this time, handing responsibility to the shared trustees of the Lincoln Municipal Charities, alongside the then Sir John Thorold (the family’s lack of originality in forenames persisted) and his successors [WG/8/2/4/19].  The Archive also hold a public notice that year jointly advertising vacancies for beneficiaries in six other local charities, naming the deceased recipient in each case, into whose place a potential fresh beneficiary might apply or be recommended [WG/8/4/2/29].

At which point the trail runs cold for me, at least for the moment.  Inflation will have made the £60 a year of 1734 or 1889 worth only a few pence today.  There is an extant Lincoln Municipal Relief in Need Charity which makes grants worth about £45 000 a year for white goods.  Is this the successor of the Lincoln Municipal Charities which took over running Dame Margaret’s Charity?  Might a few pence of one of those grants each year arise from it?  Or, perhaps the pittance of the rent charge was either bought out or allowed to lapse during the twentieth century, and her endowment has run its course?

The Usher Gallery has a Joshua Reynolds portrait of Isabella Thorold, a granddaughter of the Sir John Trollope to whom Dame Margaret entrusted her South Sea annuities.  One of her grandchildren was the Bishop Edward Trollope in whose honour the pulpit in the Cathedral’s St Hugh’s Choir was dedicated.  So it is possible to stand in the transept and look one way at the charity board bearing her grandfather’s name and look the other way at the pulpit bearing her grandson’s.

Her father, the John Thorold Esq of the charity board (and later, in his turn, a Sir John Thorold), is also worth serious attention.  He was an exact contemporary of John Wesley (they were born ten weeks and ten miles apart), preceded him in the same Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, and was a leading collaborator in the early stages of the Methodist movement, including being part of the religious societies meeting in London in one of which Wesley had his decisive heart warming experience in 1738.  But his is a story for another day.