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People

Sir George Oxenden

-->"you haveing for y:e tyme past truely made your life a kinde of á pilgrimage, br
you have seene many of y:e great wonders of y:e Great God, Ocularly, w:ch wee br
have onely by Contemplation, & in y.t I (that have never beene out of my br
native Countrey) have taken great pleasur"<--

-->(Robert Raworth to Sir George Oxenden, 1663)<--

As president of the English East India company in Surat between 1663 and 1669, Sir George Oxenden left a private correspondence with his sister, Elizabeth Dalyson, and with other kin,close friends, commercial partners. The correspondence, now in the British Library, provides a starting point from which to explore their lives. Bound in still bright red Indian leather, the volumes are the work of Oxenden’s copyists, his factory writers, rather than autograph manuscripts. The communication is largely one way, with Oxenden’s own voice often to be inferred from the tone and substance of his correspondents.

A careful reading of the correspondence reveals the existence of two connected joint stock companies formed in in the decade prior to Oxenden’s presidency by Sir George Oxenden and five former colleagues from Surat. Two slightly divergent lists of subscribers to the two ventures were subsequently discovered by this author in the National Archives in chancery papers related to the ventures. In 1655 the English East India company was in disarray, its monopoly had expired, and the eastern markets were up for grabs. Yet, the ventures have little visibility in the historiography, and are the subject of only a brief footnote by Sir William Foster.

Sir George Oxenden, engraving, 1668

Sources

C10/109/102 (1663); C10/82/2 (1664)
IOR/H/MISC/32 Various letters relating to the Williams Venture
Letter from Robert Raworth to Sir George Oxenden, Grays Inn, 9th April 1663, ff. 106-107
The Oxenden papers, Vols. XIII-XVIII, Add. MSS. 40708-40713
William Foster (ed.), XXXX, citing Home Miscellaneous Vol. 26, 10 June 165[8?] (folio 5)

James Master of Yotes Court

James Master of Yotes Court was the cousin of Sir George Oxenden’s sister’s husband, Richard Master, whose son James Master was Sir George Oxenden’s nephew. His expense books, which were published in four parts in Archaeologica Cantiania in the late nineteenth century, provide an insight into the life of a Kent relation of similar age to Sir George Oxenden. He visited East Langdon occasionally and used his cousin James for legal advice in the 1650s and 1660s, as is seen in payments recorded in his expense book. Interestingly, Thomas Stanley inserted a codicil into his will in 166X, which appointed James Master of Yotes Court, his close neighbour, to replace one of his deceased overseers.

James Master built Yotes Court in 1659, pulling down the previous mansion on the site, which had been the property of his step-father Sir Thomas Walsingham. In 1828 the property was described in some detail: “It consists of two stories surmounted by a high roof, with dormer windows, and is built of brick, with stone quoins and dressings: a small Corinthian porch opens to a Hall fifty-eight feet long by nineteen feet wide; having on the right, a Dining-Room, and on the left of the entrance, a Drawing-room. The whole of the grounds comprise about one thousand acres, of which the house, garden, and shrubberies, immediately adjoining, occupy six acres; the water in the park, from whence all the ponds in the neighbourhood are fed, extends over five or six acres, and there are about three hundred acres of cover. From the principal entrance to Yotes Court, in the Mereworth Road to Forge Gate, is a beautiful drive of nearly a mile.” An 1889 Order of the Land Commissioners scheduled the Yotes Court estate, then owned by Viscount Torrington, and described it as comprising nine hundred and forty acres, which the schedule broke into thirteen blocks, with land in both the parishes of Mereworth and West Peckham. However, no information is available on the size of the estate at the time of the construction of Yotes Court.

Yotes Court, built 1659

Sources

‘The expense book of James Master, pt. II, A.D. 1655-57', Mrs. Max Dalison transcribed, Canon Scott Robertson, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 16 (London, 1886)
‘Expense-book of James Master, pt. III, A.D. 1658-1663', Mrs. Max Dalison transcribed, Canon Scott Robertson, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 17 (London, XXXX),
‘Expense-book of James Master, Esq. Pt. IV’, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 18, pp. 114-XXX
‘The life of James Master’, Archaeologica Cantiania, vol. 18, pp.157-168
Mereworth and West Peckham document]: Scheduling of Yotes Court Estate: Official copy of an 1889 Order by the Lands Commissioners scheduling this 940 acre Estate owned by Viscount Torrington
'Yotes Court', in J.P. Neale, Views of the seats of noblemen and gentlemen, in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland,vol. 4 (London., 1828), p. unnumbered

Thomas Stanley

Thomas Stanley (1580/81-1669), Maximilian Dalyson’s future father-in-law, was more than twenty-five years older than Elizabeth Dalyson, Maximilian’s mother. A picture of him was in existence at the Hamptons, West Peckham, in 1858, at the time of the publication of his selected correspondence in the Archaeologica Cantiana. However, it is probable that the portrait was destroyed in a fire which consumed the house in 1883. Born in February 1580/81 in West Peckham, he was in his late sixties when he and Elizabeth entered into discussions about the marriage of their two children, Frances his only daughter and heir apparent, and Maximilian, Elizabeth’s only son. Both children were still minors. The “young couple” were 15 and 17 respectively when they met. Frances was Thomas’ only child by a third, late, marriage, at the age of fifty-two or fifty-three, to (a much younger) widow, Mary Duling. She had been married to William Duling, alderman and former mayor of Rochester, who had run Thomas’ Rochester brewery.

His daughter would have been attractive to Elizabeth from the practical standpoint of money and property, given her own and her childrens’ financial vulnerabilities. Thomas Stanley was commercially successful, and had substantial wealth from diverse commercial interests, including owning brewery interests in Gravesend and Rochester, and other rent producing assets such as a fulling mill and tenements, together with the lending of money. Fifteen years before the marriage negotiations he assessed his wealth at over £10,000, and reported owning considerable property.

He had London connections, and may himself have been apprenticed in London. One brother, John Stanley, was a Cheapside goldsmith, and his nephew, William Stanley, gent., was a Middle Temple lawyer. This nephew was one of three sons of a Maidstone based brother, the eponymous William Stanley. Thomas had property dealings with his nephew. Dying relatively young the nephew noted in an addendum to his will of 1648 that he was “much oblidged and engaged unto my loving uncle.” In addition the nephew noted owning property himself in West Peckham.

However, Thomas’ strongest commercial links were in Kent. He appears to spent the early part of his commercial life in Gravesend, before moving subsequently to Maidstone, and then to West Peckham. As Portreve of Gravesend in 1611 (later again in 1616), he had drawn up a list of the 181 freemen of that town for that year. He had strong Maidstone connections, where he was a Jurat and mayor. He had been mayor of Maidstone (1625-1626, 1641-1642), in which town he owned property. He had clear commercial influence in both Gravesend and Rochester. His second brother, William Stanley, was a relatively wealthy mercer in Maidstone, who died in 1621. Thomas was his sole executor. By the time of the marriage negotiations he had moved his main residence from Maidstone to the Hamptons in West Peckham, which he had he inherited from his father, John Stanley, when in his late thirties (in March 1616-17).

His brother William Stanley’s widow, Adrie or Awdrey Stanley, went on to marry another commercial associate of Thomas Stanley, the brewer and alderman of Rochester, Barnabas Walsall. Barnabas became a commercial partner of Thomas Stanley, though there was some friction betwen them. Though a step-nephew, Barnabas was addressed by Thomas Stanley as “son,”whilst the same Barnabas was addressed as “father-in-law” by Thomas’ nephew, the lawyer William Stanley, who named him one of two executors.

It was Barnabas who effected the introduction between Thomas Stanley and Elizabeth Dalyson, as is mentioned in Thomas Stanley’s answer to the complaint of Sir Henry and Sir George Oxenden. A letter survives from Thomas to Barnabas Walsall in which he expresses obligation to Mrs Dalyson for her affections towards his daughter, but disapproves of his daughter meeting with her son “especially here at my house, until all other matters are in some measure agreed.” It is clear from this letter that Thomas Stanley’s wife was inclined towards another for their daughter, but that Stanley himself sees the advantages of a link with the Dalyson family. He instructed Walsall to arrange for Mrs. Dalyson to accompany Walsall on a casual visit to the Hamptons whilst noting “I am not p’vided for her enterteymn:t according to her worth.” After this visit “I may take occassion to see her son & soe p’ceed on or of as the cause shall requier.” A further letter from Thomas Stanley to Walsall, of the same date, states “Touching M:rs Dalyson I know not how to treat untill I can know the strength of my estate,” having reproved Walsall for neglecting Stanley’s business interests.

What of the practicalities? The two families lived just eight miles linked by the Rochester - Tonbridge road; Frances Stanley at the Hamptons in West Peckham, equidistant between Tonbridge and Maidstone, and Maximilian in Halling just outside Rochester.

What can we tell from the size and configuration of Thomas Stanley’s Plaxtol home, as inventoried in 1669? There were ten rooms in the main building, four chambers being upstairs, one chamber down in the kitchin, and five rooms on the groundfloor (parlour, hall, study, kitchen and buttery). Probably separate from the main building were several buildings connected with food processing – the milk house, the brewhouse and washhouse, together with a brewhouse chamber, and a mill house. For agricultural purposes there were barns, a stable, yards, pastures, and a hop ground. This is a very different building and estate to Yotes Court in Mereworth, or the Stonepitts manor house in Seal, both owned by neighbours with whom Thomas Stanley had contact.

Sources

C 9/49/48 Dalison v. Oxenden 1667
C 9/40/57 Oxenden v. Dallison and Stanley 1668
C 9/240/194 Stanley v. Walsall 1650
C 10/14/38 William Cane v Barnabas Walsall and Thomas Stanley: Rochester, Kent 1651
C 22/58/39 Dalyson v. Oxinden. Between 1558 and 1714
Inventory of Thomas Stanley, VH 96/6226

Sir Maximilian Dallison

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William Dallison

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Elizabeth Dallison

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Maximilian Dallison

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