| Text |
Summary of article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica on Beau Nash.
Richard Nash was born on 18 October 1674 and died on 3 February 1762, that is he was 88 years old.
He was born at Swansea and his father was a man in straitened circumstances who went into the glass industry. He was educated at Carmarthen Grammar School and Jesus College, Oxford.
He took an army commission but later he exchanged it for a course of law study at The Temple where he mingled with wits and men of pleasure. He won the favour of William III who offered him a knighthood but he refused to accept this honour unless it could be accompanied by a pension.
He took up gaming as a means of securing a livelihood and he followed Capt Webster as Master of Ceremonies at Bath where he drew up a code of rules and became leader of Bath Society. He abolished the wearing of swords in places of public amusement and discouraged duelling. Men were made to wear shoes and stockings instead of boots and a lodging tariff was established. Beau Nash reproved refractory chairman and demanded civility. He himself wore a large white hat with fine dress and drove six greys.
The anti gambling act of 1745 took away most of his livelihood but he persuaded the Bath Corporation to grant him an annual pension of 120 guineas. His rival was Beau Brummell but Nash was a more able and capable character. He supervised balls and dancing in Bath and introduced French dances of politeness which eclipsed the simpler English dances. He also provided the Bath Assembly Rooms and a description of these figures largely in the books of fielding, Smellett, Berney and Dickens.
His brother was Samuel Nash who was an ancestor of Sarah Nash who married John Albert Prall of Matfield, Kent, probably around 1855. John Prall was my grandfather. |
Jennerations