Clophill House

'I had rather my children should inherit an honourable poverty, than an ample patrimony, which caused the giver of it one moment of regret.'
Richard Chambers, 1779

By 1760 Decimus and Mary Reynolds had retired to Clophill House, leaving Chalfont St Giles in the care of a curate. He was aged 50 and she 40. A document dated 1769 is signed by Decimus Reynolds of Clophill, clerk. Another document dated 1759 lists Decimus Reynolds, late of Chalfont St Giles now of Clophill, and begins the process of selling off Thomas White's various estates.

Their marriage was childless and by all acccounts loveless also, though the document of 1759 mentions the possibility of children as heirs where future documents do not, so it may be that the bitterness that characterised their latter years was related to the failure to produce heirs. Decimus never held the living at Clophill but he occasionally helped out the neighbouring clergy with services in the adjoining villages. He seems to have acquired quite a reputation as a strange and eccentric person and was generally disliked. A letter in Clophill Church safe written by Gustavus Bosanquet (Rector 1869 - 1900) mentions that several stories were still being told of him in Clophill a century after his death, but doesn't say what they were.

There is a reference to the Reynolds' in the Williamson letters, who were friends of the family over at Millbrook. Decimus is recorded as having christened various of the Williamson children. In 1773 Mary Reynolds wrote to Mrs Williamson asking her to take a silver salver to London so that it could be turned into a flat candlestick, and to beg her to dine if ever she was in the neighbourhood. 'Mr [Reynolds] stirs not these short days, so that I shall not have the pleasure of seeing Mrs Russell before she goes unless you go this road & then I hope to see you both.' Five years later Margaret Cater reports to Mrs Williamson in London: 'Mrs Russell . . . , one day this week is to go to dine with Mr and Mrs Reynolds at Clophill.'

Amabel Countess of Kent, the redoubdable lady who built up the Wrest Park estate by buying the manors of Clophill and Beadlow in 1654 and was known locally as "the Good Countess" because of her concern for the poor of the parish, died in 1698 aged 93 and was succeeded by her son Anthony. His son Henry, 12th Earl de Grey, was created Duke of Kent in 1710. He had planned to rebuild Wrest Park but abandoned this plan when he lost much of his wealth in a rash speculation. Hentry fathered many children but almost all predeceased him and he was left with his grand-daughter Jemima, created Marchioness de Grey in order to preserve the family title, as his heir. She was married, aged just 17, to Philip Yorke just weeks before Henry's death in 1740. Jemima and Philip sold off the Herefordshire properties of the impoverished estate she had inherited and took up residence in the somewhat scaled-back household at Wrest from where they took a lively interest in local affairs. Jemima ensured that her domestic chaplain, Ezekiel Rouse, was appointed to the incumbancy of Clophill when that became vacant in 1753.

We are fortunate in that much of the almost daily correspondance between the Jemima, her eldest daughter Amabel (who succeeded her at Wrest Park) and the Rouses survive, preserved within the Lucas Archive at Bedford County Records Office, and offer a detailed glimpse into Clophill society at that time. The family derived some mild amusement from the eccentricities of the elderly Decimus Reynolds.

Amabel, staying with her husband at Wrest in November 1776 writes,

'In the meantime I have called on the Rouses and found Mrs Rouse has not been by any means well with a pain in her side. Her family wish her to go to London for the sake of better advice. They tell me our strange neighbour Mr. Reynolds has taken the strangest fancy of leaving Clophill and going to board somewhere or other, is continually advertising his home in the papers and poor Mrs. Reynolds, who considers it her home, is very unhappy about it.'

A week later Amabel continues,

'Mr. Rouse let me into the secret about Reynolds who he says does not want to leave the house, but only worries his wife she may give over to him an estate lately fallen in to her, that he may dispose of it as strangely as the rest. What a brute. Mr. Rouse I believe does all he can to spirit her up to resistance and in doing so just a cause I wish his rebellion success. The poor woman has been long ill with a pain in her side and really looks very ill. I met the poor invalids taking their walk together as I went yesterday to Mrs. Pawsey.'

Jemima then writes back,

'I am sorry the two Clophill neighbours are so indifferent in their health. I wished poor Mrs. Reynolds to outlive that strange wretch and have some comfort afterwards (tho' I doubt but with little income and I hope she will never give up any more of that little) but he seems stronger and abler to hold out than she is.'

In March the following year Amabel writes,

'Poor Mrs Reynolds they think will never recover. . . . The strange creature says he'll remove as soon as she is dead (though he does not know where) and give up the place to Cumberland, a great improvement to the "Bel Esprit" of the neighbourhood.'

The reference is to Richard Cumberland, the 18th century dramatist, a cousin of Reynolds on his mother'd side. He tells the story in his memoirs of how Reynolds, whom he had never before met, suddenly arrived without warning in 1772 at his house in Queen Anne Street in London.

'A more uncouth person, habit and address was hardly to be met with. He advanced, stopped, and stood staring with his eyes fixed upon me, when, putting his hand into a pocket in the lining of the breast of his coat he drew out an old packet of papers, rolled up tied with whipcord and very ceremoniously desired me to peruse it.'

Cumberland begged him to explain and he replied,

'My will . . . look at the date . . . left it to you twenty years ago. My whole estate, real and personal - came to town on purpose - sign a deed of gift, and make them over to you hard and fast.'

He explained that he himself owed nothing to his father's family, having inherited nothing from them, 'being the founder of his own fortune which by marriage he had acquired and by economy improved.'

Cumberland consented to the gift but, being aware that Reynolds had other nephews with better claim than he, insisted on a clause being inserted that would allow Reynolds to revoke the gift if he later changed his mind. He then rented a house at nearby Tetbury from which he could ride over and visit his elderly cousin until he came into his inheritance.

He was wise to insert the revocation clause as the other Reynolds nephews, the children of Decimus's older brothers, were unlikely to let their inheritance pass without a fight. Cumberland records in his memoirs,
'It was not till after nearly ten years of uninterrupted cordiality, that, weak and wearied by importunity, he capitulated with his beseigers, and sending his nephew into my house in Queen Anne Street unexpectedly one morning, surprised me with a demand that I would render back the whole of his title deads. I delivered them up exactly as I had recieved them.'

He then wrote to Decimus on January 13th, 1779, saying, 'I had rather my children should inherit an honourable poverty, than an ample patrimony, which caused the giver of it one moment of regret.' Chalmers Biographical Dictionary, in the entry of Cumberland, describes this incident and offers the verdict that the episode 'evinced in a striking manner his disinterested generosity and high sense of honour.'

The story, however has a further twist in that Decimus soon changed his mind again. In his will, dated October 1789, the old man refers to a new deed of February 9th, 1779, in which he restores Clophill House to Cumberland (less than a month after he had revoked the gift), though he leaves other properties in Thurleigh, Clapham and Houghton Conquest to his other nephews - so they did not lose out completely.

He further explains the cause of the friction between him and Mary to give his side of the story referred to by Amabel in her letters,

'Whereas my wife having disposal of her own estates at Flitwick and Steppingley without my having any interest therein and which I do consider as a slight to me I do therefore mention this circumstance to palliate for my disposing of my own estates in manner hereafter mentioned.'

He left his wife the use of his furniture for life and afterwards to two of his nephews.

There is one final incident concerning Reynolds that gives some further insight into his character, recorded in a letter from Ezekiel Rouse to the Duke of Kent in January 1788 in which he writes,

'A few weeks ago we had like to have lost our neighbour Mr. Reynolds, who was thought to have been past hopes of recovery, but it was not so. He had swallowed so many doses of physic that they would certainly have laid him sprawling (it is his own expression) if he had not resolved to take no more. He therefore dismissed in wrath his old 'Potecary, and sent for a young man of the same profession in Ampthill. A very sensible man 'Fore George, for instead of a cargo of physick he brought with him a bottle of good old Madeira wine, quite to his taste. This, or something else, had set him up, and he is not at all disposed to leave behind him a weeking widow as Yet.'

Decimus died on December 7th, 1790, aged 80 and was buried in the old church. It is said that the marble dog over his tomb was stolen. Mary Reynolds survived until 1798 and lived out her days at Clophill House through the kindness of Richard Cumberland. Her will mentions her chariot, three horses, four sheep and a cow, also a flat silver candlestick - almost certainly the one referred to in her letter to Mrs Williamson so many years before. Her jewellery went to the wives of the Reynolds nephews and she also left small legacies to her servants Mary Robins, William Maddams and Elizabeth Whittamore. She was buried up at the old church next to her infant sister Elizabeth away from her husband's tomb.