Early Life
John Lonsdale was born on the 17
th of January 1788 at
Newmillerdam near Wakefield in Yorkshire West Riding, the eldest child of
Rev. John Lonsdale (vicar of
Darfield) and
Elizabeth Steer.
John's schooling was at
Eton; his daughter
Sophia Anna Lonsdale writes this
1 about his early life:
Of all the agreeable communicative old people I have known, none have cared as little to talk of their early life as my dear Father. The present and the future seemed to interest him much more. I have heard him speak very rarely of Newmillerdam where his father was Vicar, and only rarely of Eton; tho’ his love of the great school was sort of minor patriotism; and not many minutes before his death he was asking me what Clem [Sophia's son] was reading there, and when I said “Greek Play” he said “We did not read “Greek Play” in that form when I was at Eton”. I remember his saying that he had seen Lord Nelson with Lady Hamilton visit Eton. I asked him whether rejoicing at the victory of Trafalgar or sorrow at Nelson’s death was the uppermost feeling in England. He said he thought mourning was uppermost. He said when he was a boy in Yorkshire everyone made bread at home, so that till he came to Eton he wondered what was meant by a Baker in the Bible.
My Lonsdale grandfather [i.e. John's father] was well off, so I do not know why he sent his promising son as a Colleger and not an Oppidan to Eton. He was an early scholar, and I have heard that when his mother made him read to one of the parishioners at three years old, the remark made was, after hearing him read the whole of the 139th Psalm, “How much better he reads than his father”.
From Eton he got “Kings”, i.e. went as a scholar to King’s Cambridge [in 1806] where at that time the Kingsmen did not go into the schools with the other men for their degrees.
She then goes on to say:
His father died while he was at Cambridge and he came in for rather a good fortune, partly I think from Sunk Island2. His ancestor on his mother’s side had had a gift or lease of this from Charles 2nd renewable on lives. One of my ancestors Lovelace Gylby lost the King’s letter with the gift in a drunken bout. Ultimately the Crown would not renew on favourable terms, so it was allowed to lapse sixty or seventy years ago.
Career
John Lonsdale was admitted to
Lincoln's Inn in 1811, but was ordained in the Church of England in October 1815. In the next month he married, and was shortly afterwards appointed chaplain to Archbishop Charles Manners-Sutton and assistant preacher at the Temple Church. Sophia Lonsdale recalls
1:
My father [John Lonsdale] began clerical work I believe as Chaplain to Archbishop Manners Sutton, and afterwards to Archbishop Howley. My mother [Sophia Bolland] a young wife then, paid, I fancy, rather shy visits to Lambeth Palace where the many daughters [of Charles Manners Sutton] were brought up in the strict old-fashioned style. They never spoke of their father without adding “Dear Sir.”. “Yes Dear Sir” “No Dear Sir”. A married one came back to visit her parents. My mother found her with a bad cold. She said “My dear father was so very kind as to ask me to walk with him and of course I could not tell I had only thin shoes”. My father generally had to stop to dine at Lambeth and used to pass through a sort of open passage and see the Miss Manners Sutton making the salad every evening.
In 1822, the archbishop gave him the rectory of Mersham in Kent, which he left in 1827 for a prebendal stall at Lincoln Cathedral. With further preferment, Lonsdale passed in 1828 to the precentorship of the diocese of Lichfield, later exchanged for a prebend at St Paul's Cathedral. In the same year he became rector of St George's, Bloomsbury, where he remained until 1834. In 1836 he was chosen preacher of Lincoln's Inn, and obtained the rectory of Southfleet, near Gravesend.
In 1839, Lonsdale was elected Principal of King's College, London: the post on its creation had been offered to him. The college prospered under his administration, and the hospital was chiefly founded by him. In 1840 he was elected Provost of Eton, but declined the appointment in favour of Francis Hodgson, who had been nominated by the Crown, but refused by the Fellows on the ground of insufficient academic qualification. In 1842 he was made archdeacon of Middlesex, and in October 1843 was raised to the see of Lichfield, and consecrated on 3 December. He was unwilling to accept the offer, but on consulting the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London found it had been made on the recommendation of them both. His episcopate was mostly uneventful except as regards church extension, on a large scale. There was controversy attending the establishment of Lichfield Theological College, which was settled by him. His sympathies were High Church; but he protested against the removal of F. D. Maurice from his professorship, and condemned the existing law on marriage with a deceased wife's sister, though he did not vote for its repeal
Family Life
John married
Sophia Bolland at
Holy Trinity, Clapham in London, on the 25
th of November 1815. The
Bollands were close acquaintances of the
Lonsdales as they both originated from
Masham in Yorkshire North Riding. John and Sophia had five children:
- James Gylby, born 1816
- Lucy Maria, born c. 1820
- John Gylby, born c. 1821
- Fanny Catherine, born 1823 and who married Edmund Beckett (later 1st Baron Grimthorpe)
- Sophia Anna, born 1825 and who married William Bryans, at the time a curate in Windermere, later the vicar of Tarvin in Cheshire for many years
Sophia Lonsdale recalls
1:
When my father came to London he used to call at the Bolland’s house in Clapham Rise. The Lonsdales at one time lived near Masham (their tombs are in Masham Church) so knew the Bollands, but were I imagine in a higher position than the Bollands, who could hardly have been considered gentlefolk, as my great grandfather [John Bolland] kept a shop in the quiet Market Place of quiet little Masham.
Sophia's snootiness about the
Bollands is misplaced here as the
Lonsdale family originates in the early 1700s from a John Lonsdale of Masham who was a grocer and draper
3.
Death
John died suddenly at his home in
Eccleshall Castle on the 19
th October 1867 of the rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain, aged 79. The
North Wales Chronicle4 reported the proving of his will as follows (boldings are mine):
Will of the Late Bishop of Lichfield
The will of the late Dr Lonsdale has been proved in the District Registry of the Court of Probate at Lichfield by the Rev. James Gylby Lonsdale and the Rev. John Gylby Lonsdale, sons and executors of the deceased. The personalty was sworn under £90,000. The whole of the real estate of the deceased is bequeated to his son James. The sum of £18,333 6s 8d and all other moneys invested in Government stocks and other securities are to be divided equally between his two sons and his three daughters, Lucy Maria Lonsdale, Fanny Catherine Denison, and Sophia Anna Bryans. Legacies of £8,000 are left to his two sons, and two legacies of £500 and £10,000 respectively are left to Miss Lonsdale, and legacies of £2,000 are left to Mrs Denison and Mrs Bryans respectively. The residuary of the personal estate is to be divided equally between the deceased's sons and daughters. The silver plate presented to the deceased when he left St. George's Bloomsbury, and King's College, London, is bequeathed to his son James. The will is dated the 17th of March, 1864.
Pedigree
Lucy Lonsdale (1820-1915, one of John's daughters) wrote of a route to the early 1100s through the Gylby family, in the following
5:
The lost pedigree began in the reign of Edward the 3rd [i.e. in the 1330s]. It professed to trace the descent of my Father John Lonsdale (Bishop of Lichfield) through his mother, Elizabeth Lonsdale, born Steer.
In the course of the pedigree the names Fitzwilliam, Clarell and Gylby appear, and the arms of these three families with Lonsdale, appear as Quarterings on the coat of arms and seal. I do not know at what date Fitzwilliam and Clarell came in. Fitzwilliam is the Ld. F.W. family. The first Clarell came over with William the Conqueror and had estates given him by the Conqueror in Yorkshire. I believe the family of Clarell is extinct. My grandmother Elizabeth Steer inherited Sunk Island (or part of it) through her mother, whose maiden name I do not know [it was Fretwell], from the Gylbys. A Colonel (or Sir) Anthony Gylby held the Castle of Kingston upon Hull for the Royalists during the Civil War; after the Restoration Charles the 2nd gave him the property of Sunk Island under a very long lease, and wrote him an autograph letter with the gift. This letter was much prized by the Gylbys. But at a merry (drunken) party of friends, a certain Lovelace Gylby showed it, and it was stolen from him and never heard of again. My great grandmother, Mrs Steer, had an only child, my grandmother , who therefore was the heiress of the Sunk Island property. Her father married again and had several sons and daughters, whom she [my grandmother, Elizabeth Steer] looked down upon, I suppose because their mother had no particular pedigree. When my Father and Mother used to stay at Wakefield with his mother, my mother used to go and see them, and my Grandmother used to say “I can’t think, my dear, why you go to see my brothers and sisters, but you may ‘give them my compliments’”.
The advantageous lease of Sunk Island came to an end about 1800 I believe. My grandfather, Rev. John Lonsdale, acting for his wife, came to London and with difficulty got the lease renewed for a few years. It came to an end, and the property ceased to belong to our family, I should think somewhere between 1820 and 1830. I remember hearing the loss of Sunk Island talked about when I was very young. I thought it had sunk in to the sea.
My grandmother used to talk about the Gylbys etc. to my mother, her daughter-in-law, and my mother repeated to me what she remembered.
I have written this for any of my relations who may care to read it, as I have several times been asked about our connection with the Gylbys. Of course, being only hearsay it may be somewhat incorrect.
Lucy Lonsdale [aged 78]
April 1898
Sunk Island
A great summary of the involvement of the Gylby family at
Sunk Island is available at the
visitoruk.com site. In brief, the island came into the Gylby family through
Anthony Gylby, Lieutenant of Hull Fort. It passed down through the sons until eventually reaching Lovelace Gylby, as mentioned in
Lucy Lonsdale's note above. He is described on this site as having temporarily lost the lease in a card game. Lovelace's widow Margaret Midgeley died in 1790 and bequeathed the island in the form of shares to "a bewildering number of relatives", with the main beneficiary being
John Lonsdale, the father of the
John Lonsdale of this profile.
- This book
https://boydellandbrewer.com/9780854440078/lonsdale-documents/ provides much interesting information on John and his efforts to save the ownership of Sunk Island, as well as confirming the ancestry of the Lonsdale and Gylby lines.
Footnotes
[1]
F_Unknown_SophiaLonsdale_Reminiscences, Family Archive
[2] This is outside Hull.
[3]
The History and Antiquities of Masham, John Fisher, publ 1865, page 306
[4]
North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 28
th December 1867, page 5, last column near bottom
[5]
F_1898_04_Lonsdale_Recollections_1, Family Archive
1788 - 1867 (79 years)
[1] 
