Jacob Garret Downing
Before he died, Sir George Downing III gave sums of money
to his “housekeeper”, Mary Townsend, to put away for his daughter, Elizabeth.
By 16th January 1740 they amounted to such a considerable amount
that he wrote her a document stating
“This is to satisfy
my executors, and all others, that Mrs. Townsend, my house-keeper has, that was
mine, I gave for the use of her daughter, beside what I have given her by the
codicil to my will.”
(Quoted in French, op.cit. p.40)
When she realised he was dying she sent a message to his
cousin and heir, Jacob Garret Downing.
He did not go at once but sent Mr Wingfield, his steward, to Gamlingay
Park. French’s research revealed that Mary went round the house searching all
the desks, drawers and cupboards for any money she could find. There was a
large parcel of banknotes, including six £500 notes which she’d been given
before he signed the above document. When she told his daughter, then aged 23,
that she had found bags containing £14,000 in sovereigns and other coins,
Elizabeth suggested she should admit to holding £10,000 and keep the other
£4,000. She must have been aware that his will stipulated that she was left
£250 a year and Elizabeth £500 a year. Possibly annoyed that she had been left
so little, she gave the £4,000 to William, her brother, to bury in the garden.
When Mr Winfield arrived she told him she had found £10,000 in coins but it’s
not known if she mentioned the notes. He was told that Sir George wanted two
people to witness the opening of his will so Mr Astell of Woodbury Hall and
another neighbour were called. When Sir Jacob arrived he believed what he was
told and Mary dutifully retrieved the £10,000.
He was buried in the same vault in Croydon Church as his
grandfather and grandmother, his father, baby brother James and his uncle
William, but not until the 29th June, an unusual 18th
century custom. He left £100 for the poor of the parishes of Gamlingay, East
Hatley, Tadlow and Clopton and £100 to Mrs Pedley of Tetworth as he had
forgotten to lend her a book she wanted.
In spring 1742 he gave Elizabeth a lump sum of about
£20,000 from her father’s estate when she married John Bagnall. Probably as a
result of her father’s friendship with Mr Astell of Woodbury, director of the
South Sea Company, he had made an investment of £10,000 in the company, which
had paid handsome dividends. She took furniture and other belongings from
Gamlingay Park and moved into 10 Downing Street. On 17th May the
same year Jacob married Margaret Price, thought by some to be George III’s
daughter but by French to be the daughter of the curate of Barrington, in
Somerset. According to Cole, he was assured she would provide him with an heir
but it was not to be. They took over the house when Elizabeth moved out.
Gossip eventually reached him about Mary Townsend having
more money and notes than she’d stated. Mr Wingfield investigated and she admitted
keeping £4,000 because she had so little to live on and her lodgings were so
expensive. Proceedings were taken against her to recover the money but she died
in March 1765 before the final judgment was made. French described Mary as “the erstwhile kitchen maid, the one time
“greasy Joan who keels the pots”, was probably the only woman who gave the
founder of Downing College bodily pleasure, as well as affection and respect.” The Bagnalls had to give up the £4,000, any
notes found to post date the 10th January 1740 as well as pay the
legal costs.
Like Sir George, he spent the summer months in Grey
Friars and, apart from visits to London to attend Parliament, the rest of the
time in Gamlingay enjoying the house and gardens. Unlike his benefactor, he invested
part of the inheritance on renovating his estates. Joseph Cole, a local
surveyor, was instructed to produce detailed plans of his west Cambridgeshire
estates. The large, leather bound book, containing beautifully executed plans
of fields and woods with sketches of the front of each farmhouse, was completed
by 1751 and is lodged in Downing College’s archive. £30,000 was spent on
repairing old buildings, erecting new ones and enclosing open land. According
to French, he begrudged spending money on an estate he held as trustee for the
next heir and, at his wife suggestion, reduced their costs by putting the new
barns and farm buildings on wooden pattens or rollers so that, not physically
attached to the land, they could be removed, used elsewhere or sold.
Downing’s title and “His great Estate, the largest of any Gentleman or
Nobleman in this country,” passed to his cousin,
Jacob Garret Downing. A number of other sources refer to him as John Gerrard
Downing. His father, Charles Downing, was Sir George Downing I’s younger
brother who, like his father, acquired huge sums for public offices. Before
returning to England he was Controller of the Customs at Salem, Massachusetts and then Inward and Outward Controller
in the Port of London. When Charles died in April 1740 he was described in the Gentleman’s Magazine as “vastly rich”. To help him in his career, Downing had Jacob nominated in 1741 for
the second MP’s position at Dunwich and sat with him in the House of Commons
over the next six years.
When Jacob Downing inherited the Dunwich estate in 1749,
it allowed him, like his cousin, to be elected as their MP eight days before
his benefactor was buried. He let it be known that only men he approved of
could represent the other Dunwich seat and entered an agreement with a
prominent local citizen called Chapman whereby he would overlook the fee farm
rent he owed if he agreed to always vote for him and serve him in other ways.
It helped ensure that Soames Jenyns of Bottisham Hall was returned as the other
member in 1754, an action that so pleased the Duke of Newcastle that Downing
was promised a peerage. It didn’t happen. That year Chapman’s debt had amounted
to £13,391. 1s. 3d. It was only when Lady Downing sued him for it, that her
husband’s corruption was exposed. During his years in politics he was closely
associated with Lord Hardwicke of Wimpole Hall and the Duke of Newcastle’s
party. Between 1761 and 1763 he was too ill to stand as MP but managed to
replace Jenyns as MP with Henry Fox, described as one of the most disliked men
in England. When Fox became a peer Jacob Downing became Dunwich’s MP once more
but not for long. He died on February 6th 1764 at his town house on
Hill Street, Berkeley Square in London when he was 48. More details about Sir
Jacob Downing and his wife’s political intrigues can be found in O.G. Pickard’s
Dunwich
– the Rotten Borough. Once again French provides his epitaph.
“In an
undistinguished way the last of the Downing baronets seems to have been a
better man than his cousin, the third Sir George. He was certainly a much
better landlord than the latter was in his later years. He took a pride in the
estates and did his best, as far as he though it reasonable to do so as a trustee
who could legally have no influence on the future of the property after his
death. As a member of parliament he was conscientious and enjoyed the
friendship of leading politicians. As a husband he was undoubtedly loyal and
devoted, and extended the affection he had for his wife to her nephew and
nieces. To Sir George’s mistress and illegitimate daughter he behaved honourably, treating the former
with respect and trust until her lack of integrity was exposed, and ensuring
that Elizabeth regularly received the annuity under her father’s will by
himself becoming a trustee for its payment and directing that it was to
continue after his death.
The one smirch on his
character which we know of is the flagrant act of political corruption in
respect of Chapman of Dunwich which he perpetrated soon after he came into the
inheritance, but that seems muck blacker to posterity than it appeared to many
of his contemporaries, for whom bribery was an essential and venial ingredient
of politics.
So also was the
toadyism which is apparent in Sir Jacob’s letters to the Duke of Newcastle
about a peerage; patronage and sycophancy were the oils which kept the
political machine functioning smoothly. In fact, the eagerness of the last of
his line to go to the House of Lords was probably an expression of his wife’s
wishes than of his own.”
(Francis, op.cit. pp.47-48)
When he died childless, the last male heir of the family, the title became extinct.
Thomas Barnardiston had died in 1762 and the two Peters some time earlier. He was
said to own £100,000 in cash and stocks.
The value of
the Downing properties and estates would have been more than that. Their rents
in 1765 were £4,858 9s. 2½d. Margaret, his wife, insisted that she was entitled
to inherit the Downing fortune and that the trust to establish and expensive in
those days as today, the details of which are included in French’s History of Downing College. She argued
that it contained “Manifold Errors,
Incertaintys and Insufficiencys.” She later married Sir George Bowyer and
lived as a very wealthy woman endow a college was void. The case went to court,
as lengthy and on the revenue from the Downing estates. In her will of December
1772 she left her estate to her nephew, Captain Jacob Whittington. It included
£176,000 in cash and stocks as well as real estate her husband had inherited
and the valuable development of Downing Street. This was contrary to Sir George
Downing’s will and caused quite a controversy. Downing College website states
that she
“refused to give up the estates and the
various relatives who were Sir George's legal heirs had to take costly and
prolonged action in the Court of Chancery to compel her to do so. She died in
1778 but her second husband and the son of her sister continued to resist the
heirs-at-laws' action until 1800 when the Court decided in favour of Sir George's will and George III granted Downing a
Royal Charter.
By then the fortune which should have been
used to found and maintain the college had been gravely eroded and the estates
were so neglected and unprofitable that Downing began life poverty-stricken and
with poor prospects.”
(http://www.dow.cam.ac.uk/~do/Archive/main%20page.html)
After
50 years of litigation, on 22nd September 1800, the great seal
was put on the charter and £150,000 was made available for the construction of Downing
College. They acquired the Tadlow and East Hatley estates with the right to
appoint the vicar. It later acquired a shared patronage with the Bishop of Ely,
Pembroke and Clare Colleges, Cambridge and Balliol College, Oxford in Gamlingay
and Everton. It still has these rights in the 21st century. As the
Downing family had been buried in a vault under the chancel floor in Croydon
Church with no memorials, the college paid for a memorial plaque to the family
to be erected in the Church in 1961.
There
is nothing remaining of the Downing’s magnificent mansion, moats, lakes, maze,
gardens and serpentine path. The vistas are there but not quite so dramatic.
Jacob Downing’s wife spent nothing on the estate after her husband died and it
fell into the same state of neglect and disrepair as at the time of Sir George
III’s death. It was pulled down in October 1776 on the instructions of Margaret
Downing and her nephew Captain Whittington to stop Downing College getting
their hands on it. She came up with the idea of selling the stone, brick and
timber in such large lots that no one would buy them and she’d be able to use
them to build a new house nearby. This she was advised was collusion so she had
to let them go under the auctioneer’s hammer for whatever was bid. The sale was
over in three hours and it did not realise more than £800. Who it was sold to
is unknown but possibly local landowners used them to build other properties in
the neighbourhood. Although some say that the iron railings from Gamlingay Park
were taken to Downing Street to be reassembled, Stevens and French state that
they went to Mount Prospect, Margaret’s property on Putney Heath in London.