Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    HW
  • Title
    Howe of Aspley Guise
  • Admin/biog history
    In the late 18th and 19th centuries Richard How II (1727-1801) and his descendants took a close interest in their ancestors. Without any apparent evidence Richard claimed William How the physician and botanist (1619-56) as his great-great-grandfather. He examined the Aspley Guise parish registers and found several references to a family with a similar name, Howes, in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, but there is nothing to connect them with the later How family. The name How was so common in Bedfordshire that it is difficult to find any clear evidence about their origin. HW20, a quitclaim to Thomas How junior of Leighton Buzzard in 1678 suggests that the family may have come from that town, where, as the parish registers show, there were many of the name in the 16th & 17th Centuries (see HW99/19). The first definite evidence that we have (HW98/1) shows that Thomas Howe, fellmonger, certainly lived at Leighton Buzzard when he married Ann Cartwright in 1680. This was a marriage into a fairly wealthy Quaker family. Ann's father, Isaac Cartwright (according to the pedigree and account made by Richard How II) had died many years previously in 1666 (see NC1382). He may have been a lawyer, for he was described as "Esquire of the Inner Temple", who afterwards retired to Aspley Guise and built up a small estate there. He had married Mercy "daughter of one of the States of Holland" who "was often carried from meeting to prison in times of persecution". What portion Ann brought with her on her marriage we do not know, but either this or Thomas How's hard work alone as fellmonger in Leighton and Aspley (NC873) & perhaps as draper in Woburn (NC867 - or was this Thomas How II?) enabled him to acquire much if not all of his parents-in-law's property in Aspley and to settle down there as a yeoman (NC859-888). Thomas & Ann had three children, Mercy, Thomas (II) and Richard (I). We hear little of Thomas How II, but what we do hear suggests that he was lively and imprudent, if no worse. Young Richard I wrote to his step-grandfather, Richard King, in February 1706 when he was 16 of his brother 24: "I am sorry to hear my brother is like to miss of Mary Osborn. I wish it may make him more carefull for the time to come. Dear Grandfather, please to favour me with a line or two of what thee thinkst of it and whether thee thinkst it will work any good effect on him or no. Pray God it may". It evidently did not, for in 1718 Richard was writing to his mother: "I am sensibly afflicted with they severall uneasy affairs as to my poor brother. May it please God to encline him to those things as may make for his true peace". Thomas was much talked about in 1723 and 1724 when people were saying that he had spent his fortune and scandals were being put about at Woburn. He was still making considerable purchases of property in Aspley. He followed his father in the wool business, being described as a woolbuyer of Aspley (later a gentleman), and this, with what his father left him helped him to make purchases of over £1100. But on the other hand he did indeed have to sell much of his inheritance, the Cartwright property, and even so he was deeply in debt, chiefly to his brother Richard whom he owed £2000 in 1727. In the autumn of that year Richard presented an ultimatum and negotiated the secret take-over of practically all his property (HW87/50). After this Thomas remained, apparently a gentleman in retirement at Aspley, unmarried, with only the shadow of property until his death in 1750. It was the 2nd son, Richard I, who was the real heir to his father's and grandfather's estates. With great industry he was eventually able to buy back for himself the inheritance which brother Thomas had squandered. His father apprenticed him to a linen draper in London, and eventually set him up as partner of the prominent Quaker, Theodore Eccleston, and his son John, by providing £700 capital: some other relation provided another £300. Richard had to do most of the work in the business since the old man was preoccupied with Quaker affairs, and young Johnn was afflicted with lameness, and, continued Richard a little scornfully "though he has recovered has been careful not to do much work". All this was explained in a long letter to a prospective father-in-law in an attempt to impress his industrious habits. Richard I married in 1718 Susanna Briggins, daughter of Peter Briggins a well-to-do tobacconist of an established Quaker family. There had been some difficulties before the affair was finally settled - Susanna stood out for a marriage settlement, which she eventually got. She died in 1742 leaving Richard I with two young sons, Richard II, who was then 15, and Briggins, 10. Richard I had suffered some financial loss through the bankruptcy of his business partner, john Eccleston, and must have been much grieved by the loss so soon after of his wife. He brought his sister Mercy into his household to take her place, and Mercy's husband, Herman Hingsberg, was Richard I's business partner. Of the two children Richard II was clever and spoilt; Briggins dull and despised by his elder brother. Richard II had no need to learn a trade, for his father's estates in Aspley and the property he received under his mother's settlement provided for him sufficiently. When a young man he went to relations at Altona in Germany, where he worked in the counting house and learnt German and French. Later he stayed at Leipzig, where he studied mathematics and philosophy, and became interested in the new science of agriculture. He travelled on the continent, spending a year or two in Denmark, before returning to Aspley in 1753, where he lived the life of an antiquarian, scholar and pedant, and collected a large library, which remained more or less intact for the next two centuries. Eventually Richard II contemplated marriage, but unfortunately the object of his affections was Silena, the most pious Quaker wife of his friend Robert Ramsay. Ramsay fell into financial difficulties, and after some marital disharmony, was persuaded to have a deed of separation drawn up between himself and Silena, and eventually set off to Africa to try and recover his fortunes by trading on the Gold Coast. As soon as Ramsay was safely out of England, Richard II arranged for Silena and her little boy to come to live near Aspley at Woburn, and for some time they both waited anxiously for news out of Africa. Their patience was rewarded. Before August 1762 Robert Ramsay had died at James Fort, Gambia, and in November Richard II married his widow. Richard II and Silena had 17 years of happiness, and were blessed with five children (Selina Susanna 18/2/1764-27/10/1790, Richard Thomas 24/4/1765-24/12/1835, Maria Bella 27/6/1766 -?, William Briggins 13/3/68-7/1/1804, John Faron 20/11/1769-?). He, surviving his wife, died in 1801.
  • Scope and Content
    The collection consists of three deposits. It consists of title deeds, manorial documents and other documents to do with Aspley Guise. There are also family papers including a large quantity of family correspondence. The collection is an exceedingly good source of information not only on the life of a well-to-do Quaker family of intellectual interests, but also for the general social life of Aspley Guise, a Bedfordshire village, in the 18th century.
  • System of arrangement
    Documents deposited by Dr Edward How White, mainly relating to Aspley Guise, were originally in two portfolios and 3 documents were loose these were renumbered as a continuous sequence at an unknown date.
  • Reference
  • External document

    How of Aspley Guise.pdf - How pedigree

  • Level of description
    fonds
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