Admin/biog history
The deeds are of Mr Stephen Price's (depositor) mother's family, the Lords, first of Salehurst, Sussex, then of Dunstable and Toddington, then of Drayton Parslow, Buckinghamshire. They intermarried with the Crawleys and the Alstons.
Notes on the Lord Family of Toddington:
Origin of family.
This family was clerical for many generations. Thomas Lord, A.M. was ordained 1595, and instituted Vicar of Saleshurst, Sussex, 1597, having married the daughter of the previous vicar. He also held the living of Warbleton 1604-40. Died 1640
His son John Lord, 1614-81, M.A., Oxon., succeeded his father as Vicar of Salehurst, and also became Rector of Brightling. He kept a tithe-book, 1648-60, much quoted in the work cited below, and of which Mr S Price of Tewkesbury has a nearly complete transcript, lent to the Acting Clerk of Records in June 1945 temporarily.
[L J Hodson, History of Salehurst, published by the author at Robertsbridge , Sussex, 1914].
(pp .4, 57, 59, 65-6, 71, 83-4, 94, 100).
Pedigree of the Lord Family.
Note: There is a copy of the pedigree of the Lord family in the X125 catalogue, it was taken from an MS. book compiled by C Price, 1926, and lent to the County Record Office by the depositor in 1945. Additions to pedigree were made July 1947 and May 1948 on information of S Price. The book contains many more details of the ramifications of the two pedigree.
X125/76 a copy of the Crawley family showing the connection with Lord and Symcotts.
L J Hodson, History of Salehurst, published by the author at Robertsbridge , Sussex, 1914, contains particulars of the two Lords who were vicars of Salehurst, and gives details of the title deeds, 1648-60, kept by one of them
(pp. 4, 57, 59, 65-6, 71, 83-4, 94, 100).
The Blecheley Diary of the Reverend William Cole, edited F C Stokes, introduction by R Waddell, especially p.43: "… to Dinner at Drayton at Mr Lord's … Mr and Mrs Lord of Mursley, their Son, dined there, as also Mrs Banson of Newport Pagnell, who had been under Mr Lord's Care for Lunacy, he taking in many in that way. Poor man, he is now in the same way himself and practising Physic, having many or all of his Cousin Dr Crawley of Dunstable his Pacients, (who died young, of too much Drinking), and left his Estate in Bedfordshire to Mr Lord, who has Occasion enough for it, as he has 12 Children grown up, and hanging upon him, with a small living, (where he overbuilt himself a too good House, on Dr Crawley's first leaving him his Estate), with an encumbered Estate, and his Sons not doing the Best for themselves: the eldest he put to New College Schole, and entered him of a College, but he had an Aversion for the Church and his Father's Living of Drayton, to which he might have succeeded; but taking to sporting and the Occupation of a Poacher, he lived idly with his Father and Mother, (of the Alston Family and a very fine Woman and a proper Parson's Wife, visiting no where and taking Care of her Family Concerns), with whom this eldest Son John is no small Favourite, being a tall, handsome, good-tempered young Fellow, 'till he was suffered to marry my neighbour.
Thomas Crawley M.B. and his 'Lunatick' Asylum in Dunstable :-
Dr Thomas Crawley, grandson of Dr Robert Crawley, was born at Priory House, Dunstable, in 1713. As a young man he was admitted to St. John's College, Cambridge and matriculated for the first time in 1830. He then moved to Christ College, Oxford, and matriculated there for the second time in 1831, going on to become a B.A. in 1734, an M.A. in 1737 and, finally, an M.B. in 1742 or 1743.
By this time his parents had died and he had inherited Priory House , it was probably soon after he qualified as a doctor that he bought the house next door, where Nehemiah Brandreth had previously lived. Having been greatly interested in the treatment of madness he set up an establishment there for 'the receipt and custody of Lunaticks', as the Manor Court records describe it after his death in 1752.
He was first cousin to the Reverend John Lord, Vicar of Drayton Parslow, who also took in patients suffering from mental illness and who, it is said, took in some of Thomas Crawley's patients after he had died, at the early age of 39. It is also said that some of his patients were moved to the asylum kept by Nathaniel Cotton, in St. Albans.
So is it not likely that this was the Thomas Crawley who wrote the treatise on the treatment of madness of which there is a copy in the Record Office? What would have been more likely than that of his own cousin should have made a copy of the treatise?
Unfortunately the house next to the Priory House, which would appear to have been the asylum and which was left, with most of the rest of Thomas Crawley's estate, to the Reverend John Lord, was demolished in the 1930's. Today a Kentucky Fried Chicken takeaway occupies the site, though one or two of the town's oldest residents remember the grocery shop which the old house later became. They recall the house being 'very old', but it has not been possible to trace the history of its ownership between it being sold by Reverend Lord to Thomas Vaux, in 1753, and the 19th century, when it was owned by the Robinson and Fowler families.
Doctor Crawley was High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1748. He never married.