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Rev Arthur Iredell, Rector of Southover 1791-1804
Arthur Iredell was appointed both rector of Southover and rector of Newhaven in 1791. The advowsons of both rectories were in the hands of the Crown. He retained both livings until his death in Jamaica in 1804. He is also identified as perpetual curate of South Malling at dates between 1788 and 1799, and he was curate at Glynde between 1796 and 1799. Simultaneous possession of more than one Lewes living was quite common because their incomes were small, and Glynde and South Malling were frequently held together in the 18 th century. A clergyman could hold a morning service in one church followed by an afternoon service in another reasonably nearby, but it would not have been possible for one man to serve all these four parishes.
Arthur Iredell was baptised at Bridge Street Independent Chapel, Bristol, on 30 January 1758, so was in his early thirties when appointed to his two Sussex livings. His father Francis Iredell was described as a Bristol merchant at his 1750 marriage, and his paternal grandfather, Rev Francis Iredell, was an Irish Presbyterian minister who merits an entry in the Dictionary of National Biography. His parents had eight children, seven sons and a daughter, baptised at Bridge Street Independent Chapel between 1751 and 1765, though it appears there was also a ninth child. Child mortality was high, and Arthur was the fourth of the five brothers who survived to adulthood.
The career of Arthur’s father, Francis Iredell’s as a Bristol merchant does not appear to have been a very successful one, and when he was laid low by a paralytic stroke, his large family was placed in a desperate situation. In such circumstances the wider family had to step in to help. A common form of help was utilising family ‘interest’ to obtain a government office – if at all possible an office that carried a high salary but required few if any actual duties. Francis Iredell’s father had died in Dublin in 1739. Francis had a bachelor brother, Thomas Iredell, who lived in Jamaica, but he seems to have been unable to help at this stage. However, through his mother Francis Iredell was a relation of Sir George Macartney, an Irishman of ability and seniority in the government’s military establishment, and it was through his interest that a rescue was hoped for. Catching the attention of such a busy and influential man was of course a problem – such men would discover they had many indigent relations seeking their help. Eventually Francis Iredell was found a suitable sinecure, but that income ended when he died following a second stroke in 1773.
An immediate solution to the family’s problems in 1768 was to take advantage of the interest of Frances Iredell’s wife Margaret’s family to place the family’s eldest son in the government service in North Carolina. Margaret Iredell’s uncle, a merchant from Ireland with the gift of the gab, had persuaded the government that it would be to its advantage to grant him a million acres of land in North Carolina, on which he would settle Irish and Scottish Presbyterian families, whose taxes would greatly augment the Crown income. The uncle had placed his own son, Margaret Iredell’s cousin, as collector of government revenue there, and the cousin had in his gift a position in the excise at the North Carolina port of Edenton to which the 17 year old James Iredell was duly appointed. James was assured there was limited work involved in his new position, so that he would be able to use his abilities to develop other opportunities. Perhaps this was true. What was not mentioned was that very soon after James arrived in Edenton his patron returned to England, leaving him with all the duties of his much more senior post as well.
The teenage James Iredell proved an able, ambitious, assiduous and determined young man, who impressed his new neighbours. He impressed especially the chief man of influence in Edenton, with whom he trained in the law, and whose sister he married. Despite being a Crown employee, James joined his patron amongst the leaders of the opposition developing in the American colonies to the imposition of arbitrary taxes such as that on tea, and in the War of Independence he was firmly on the colonists’ side. The impression he made was such that when George Washington became the first president of the independent USA he appointed James Iredell as one of the first justices of the new US Supreme Court. A point of interest is that James Iredell’s entry in the Dictionary of National Biography and his several biographies all give his birthplace as Lewes, despite his baptism being recorded in Bristol. He certainly knew the works of Thomas Paine, and is recorded as having regarded his book ‘Common Sense’ as having merit. However, I have found no evidence to confirm any connection between the future Supreme Court judge and Lewes.
James Iredell kept an archive of his correspondence from his arrival in North Carolina in 1768 until his death in 1799, including that with his family in England and Jamaica. This included regular letters to and from his parents and his younger siblings, including Arthur, and it is from this source that we learn many of the details of Arthur Iredell’s life. Because of James Iredell’s significant role in the struggle for independence, most of this archive has been published (the first two volumes in 1976 and a third in 2003). The final volume, covering the period when Arthur Iredell held his Southover rectory, unfortunately remains a work in progress. As far as the family material is concerned there is also a long gap between 1776 and 1782, during the War of Independence, when correspondence between James Iredell in America and the rest of his family was impossible.
From this source we learn how the Iredell family managed. In 1769 they moved from Bristol to Bath, where Francis & Margaret Iredell seem to have run a boarding house for fashionable visitors. The second son, promised a cadet role in the Indian Army that failed to materialise, was then found a clerk’s post at £60 p.a. with the Royal African Company. Despatched to West Africa in 1771 aged 19, he was dead within a year. The next son was found a position as a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and gained promotion to Lieutenant before being killed in 1782 in an action against the French fought off the coast of India. The youngest son was also found a position in the Marines, but faced poor prospects after peace was declared in 1782. After an international family discussion, he resigned his commission and emigrated to North Carolina, to study law under his now-established brother James. He was, however, firmly enjoined not to tell anyone in North Carolina that he had been a British army officer – that would not go down well.
Arthur Iredell, however, followed a different route. In 1771, aged 13, he received an offer from serjeant-at-law William Kempe, whose country home was Malling Deanery, to enter his service as a clerk. In this role he would assist the senior barrister in his duties, living with his family, whether they were in their London house or at South Malling, and also be taught Latin and Greek as well as the law. His father was to provide him with clothing, but he would have the opportunity to earn £50 p.a. ‘from briefs’, so would soon be independent. Arthur enjoyed and thrived in his new role, though he expressed with some surprise “ Cheating is esteemed a great quality in the legal profession ”. In 1775, aged 17, his duties included accompanying Mrs Kempe to Bath for a fortnight. In one of his 1775 letters to his brother James Iredell, written throughout in the tone of a facetious teenager, he asks whether James’s wife has joined her sisters in boycotting tea. This letter is very widely quoted in academic accounts of the events that led to American independence as evidence of the British public’s arrogance in the face of American opposition to the new taxation policies.
Arthur’s uncle in Jamaica expressed concern to James Iredell as to how well this apprenticeship was preparing Arthur for a future career. He wrote in 1774: “ I do not know well what footing Arthur is with Sergeant Kemp – I think in a letter I received from home it was said he was to be entered in the Temple – but as bringing up a Lad a barrister who has no Fortune and where the greatest Abilities will hardly procure a support appears to me a scheme too hazardous for prudence to engage in but it may be the Councellor has some dignity in the law and in Consequence thereof place in his Gift which he purposes to qualify Arthur for – however it is should be glad you would explain it to me .” We do not know the answer, but we do know that in 1778 Arthur enrolled at Trinity College, Cambridge, from where he graduated BA in 1782. He was ordained as a deacon in 1781 but did not, as was common, progress to ordination as a priest a year later.
The correspondence between Arthur Iredell and his elder brother in North Carolina resumes with the peace agreement of 1782, but there has been an important change. Their Jamaican uncle Thomas Iredell, who had served as attorney-general there and become president of the island’s governing council, was badly upset by his American nephew, the holder of a Crown office, siding against his native country. His anger led to James being disinherited, so that Arthur as the next surviving son became the heir presumptive to Thomas Iredell’s Jamaican plantations. Arthur’s letters to James, while openly recognising this, remain affectionately fraternal in tone. James’s replies do not survive – he was perhaps too busy with his now-thriving business and his public affairs to maintain an outgoing letter book. Arthur did not stay on at Trinity as a fellow, as a clever man might have done. Instead his first role after graduation, obtained for him by a Macartney relative, was as a tutor to the son of Mr Crewe of Crewe Hall, a Cheshire MP. He was to spend the whole year with the family, who he liked enormously, and he thought it a particular benefit of the post that the lad he was to tutor would be under his care for at most two or three months each year – presumably he was at school the rest of the time.
However, Arthur Iredell’s mood soon changed. He began to feel life was passing him by. He met and fell in love with a well-connected young woman called Amanda Felton, but he was determined that he could not marry until he had the income to support a family. His widowed mother had also moved from Bath to London, and was in a dire financial position, while his youngest brother had left debts behind in England when he emigrated to North Carolina. Mr Crewe had the patronage of several livings, including one with an income of £1,100 p.a., but they were all occupied by young and healthy clergy. Arthur does not seem to have been considered for Trinity College livings. His mother’s cousin had been ruined when his American estates were confiscated during the war, while the Macartney patronage was restricted to the military. Thomas Iredell in Jamaica promised him £100 p.a., but the remittances rarely came – there were crop failures, floods and droughts – and by the time they did arrive were fully consumed paying off his accumulated debts. As he wrote to his brother in 1786, “ The plain truth is I am as poor as a rat ”.
Arthur knew that you could not live on prospects, and some doubt was thrown on just how good those prospects were. His fiancee’s uncle investigated his potential inheritance and concluded that, by the time Thomas Iredell’s debts and mortgages were repaid, there would not be sixpence left. Arthur took occasional curacies but they were all short term and ill-paid. His tutoring came to an end, and he returned to London, living in poverty and awaiting remittances that didn’t arrive. His mother’s situation went from bad to worse, and while James Iredell was willing to have her live with him, it was up to Arthur to pay for her ticket to America, for which hard cash was required. When she finally reached North Carolina James Iredell was dismayed to discover she was a hopeless alcoholic.
In the end a curacy at Guildford proved Arthur’s salvation. He made good friends there. Miss Felton’s family had insisted that their engagement should be broken off but, as he wrote to his brother in 1789, “ Will you be surprised to hear that I have now formed an attachment to one no less amiable and with a further recommendation of a handsome fortune of about £9,000? ”. He had also rekindled his connections with Sussex – in 1788 he was appointed one of the Freemen of Seaford, who elected the MPs for that rotten borough, and in the same year he was offered the perpetual curacy of South Malling, the patron for that living being Serjeant Kempe. He was then to be ordained priest by the Bishop of Chichester. In 1791, by means I know not, he was given the two Crown rectories of Southover and Newhaven, and finally in 1792 he was able to marry Miss Ann Shrubb. Five children were born over the following seven years, including twins baptised at Ringmer in 1793 (when he was renting the house at Ringmer Park) and two others baptised at Glynde in 1796 & 1799, when he was living in the Vicarage and apparently curate there.
In 1795 he finally inherited the Jamaican estates of his uncle Thomas, which extended to over 800 acres, produced sugar, rum and beef and were worked by over 100 slaves. In 1796 he was a founder and the first worshipful master of the South Saxon Lodge in Lewes, but halfway through his year of office he resigned to pay a visit to Jamaica. He soon returned to Glynde, and served as executor to Serjeant Kempe, selling off his estate as required by his will, with the proceeds to be divided between Kempe’s legitimate and illegitimate children. By 1801 he seems to have left the Lewes area, and by 1802 was serving as a magistrate in Jamaica. He died of a fever in Jamaica in October 1804, aged 46, but the news of his death did not reach his curate at Newhaven until January 1805. His will, written in 1798, was contested in Chancery, apparently successfully, as in 1818 it was finally proved by a relative of the plaintiff in the case, rather than by his nominated executors. His widow lived on for almost 50 years after his death, dying in Cheltenham aged 92. |
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