THE LINLEY'S OF BATH

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Pedigree of the Linley's of Bath

My thanks to John Lindley of North Yorkshire foe supplying me wth this information

Memorials to the family of John Linley of Bath

 Covent Gardenin St Paul's Church  two Linley memorials. They were part of the Linleys of Bath family (famous in music and the theatre - one of the daughters married Sheridan). Although they made their name in Bath and London, the 'grandfather' of the family came from Norton on the Yorkshire-Derbyshire border in south Sheffield. They link in a roundabout way to Lord Linley of Princess Margaret fame.

St Paul's Covent Garden is also known as 'the actors' church'.

'The Linleys of Bath' by Clementina Black. 1971 Edition

 Introduction to the book:

CHAPTER 1. THOMAS LINLEY, MUSICIAN

CERTAIN mysteries of inheritance and of family resemblance seem likely long to elude the researches and the explanations of the scientific inquirer. Instantes occur in which all or nearly all the children of a particular pair of parens will present marked characteristics not conspicuous in the family of either parent, nor perhaps strongly persistent in their own descendants. Generally, indeed, there will be discernible traces of the prevailing qualities in at least one parent and in at least one descendant, but it is to a single generation that the great development-the sudden burst of blossom­ belongs.

With a family group exhibiting this phenomenon the present volume deals. The father, whose own father was a respectable and prosperous craftsman, not at this distance of time remarkable, except as a writer of verses that were not good, was a musician of some distinction; the mother, of whose antecedents nothing has been discovered, was not intellectual, nor refined, nor amiable; both were aboye the average in the matter of good looks, and both more than a little difñcult in the matter of temper. Who would have dared to prophesy, when young Thomas Linley, the harpsi­chordist and singer, married, at nineteen, the somewhat older Mary Johnson, that the children born to them would be lavishly endowed with talent, beauty, individuality and distinction?  Not only did all of them-all, that is to say, who lived to grow up-inherit in a high degree the musical gifts of their father, but at least four were quite unusually handsome, and at least three had some literary talent, while four were notably witty. In the next generation are found a granddaughter who was a paler Linley, a grandson in whom the Sheridan preponderated over the Linley, and in every one of that grandson's children a recurrence of out standing beauty, accompanied in several instances by charm, brillante and talent of various kinds.  Who were the Linleys that their sons and daughters should resemble the magically gifted princes and princesses of a fairy tale ?

Of the remote ancestry of the family whence these wondrous young creatures sprang it is not posible to speak with certainty; a fine field in which to exercise the sport of ancestor hunting lies open to any modern owners of the pretty surname of Linley. That name is probably a terri­torial one, and may be derived from Linley, near Broseley, in Shropshire.  This ancient manor, and modern pariah, was held early in the twelfth century by Richard de Linley, described in an ancient charter as " Richard son of Baldwin de Lintlega."  In other documents down to the year 1200 occur the names of Richard, Ralph, Philip and Sibyl de Linley.  In 1200 the direct male line must have become extinct, for the inheritance passes to the husbands of two co-heiresses.  Of course there may have been collateral branches through which the family name was carried on, and from one or more of which the Linleys of Bath as well as the Linleys of today are descended. There are no Linleys to be found at present in Linley by Broseley, nor at Linley in Wiltshire.

In varying forms-Lynley, Linley, Lindley, Lingley, Lingly, or Linley - the name emerges now and again in various English records from the twelfth century to our own.

Not until about two centuries ago can anything like a settled clan be pointed out. By that time a family group of Linleys was established at Norton, in Derbyshire, near to Sheffield, and from this group came William Linley, who was the father of Thomas Linley, who in his turn was the father of the beautiful Elizabeth Ann Linley, the first wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. William Linley recorded upon the leaf of a family Bible, still preserved, that he was born in 1704 in a parish in Derby, near Sheffield, in Yorkshire.  The name of the parish was read as Waton, and under that name it could not be discovered.  That the true reading was Norton was suggested to me by Mr. Linley Howlden, who himself belongs to the Norton family, about which he has been kind enough to give me a few particulars. One Samuel Linley, was the owner of an early Sheffield trade mark for scythes : the "old O"; and any person still possessing an excellent scythe blade with that mark upon it may look back gratefully to the old craftsman who first tempered and stamped such blades. Another early Linley was a wholesale vendor, and probably a manufacturer, of "Broseley clays," which are, I am informed, churchwarden pipes of superior size and quality. The circumstance suggests that, as late as about 1770, there were still Linleys not quite detached from the place in which I suppose their name to have originated.  The old home of the Norton Linleys is Bole Hill, a stone house of considerable antiquity, which has evidently received additions at various times.  A photograph which is in my possession of this interesting homestead was taken in the year 1901 by the late Linley Sambourne, who was a descendant of the Linleys and was born in the house. It is noteworthy that the Christian names most prevalent among the early Linleys of Norton were Samuel, Thomas, William and Elizabeth Ann, all of which appear among the children of Thomas Linley of Bath.

The reprehensibly lax manner in which our ancestors too often kept their parish registers renders it a matter of little surprise that no entry appears at Norton of William Linley's baptism, but the omission leaves us in ignorance of his
parentage and connections, and we know of him, up to the time of his son's baptism, only what the page of his family Bible tells. Upon it he gives with great particularity the birthday of hit wife - 19th of October 1701 - and her Christian name - Maria - but omits to mention either her surname or the date of their marriage. His son Thomas is recorded as having been born at Badminton on the 17th of January 1733, and on the 20th of that month his baptism is entered in the church register of that place.  At Badminton also were born Isabella, who was baptised on the 9th of October 1737, and William, baptised on the 29th of July 1744.  The register in each case records the name of the parents as " Lingley."  Whether this spelling was the father's own or was due to the writer of the entries cannot now be ascertained, and it may be a mere coincidence that in the registers of St. James's, Clerkenwell, four entries occur between 1690 and 1696, in all of which the name is spelled "Lingly," whereas in others of 1698 and, 1712 - the latter of which seems to be the marriage of a child baptised in 1690 - the form " Linley " is used.  These facts would appear to indicate that the registrant rather than the possessor of the name was responsible for the variation.

William Linley, or Lingley, is reported to have been a carpenter, and in the early accounts of his son's career is generally said to have belonged to Wells.  That there was some connection with that place, and that some of the family felt the bond very warmly, is certain, but at present the links have not been fitted in. Later in life, probably soon after the birth of his second son, William Linley moved to Bath, where he appears as a builder and where he became a prosperous person, who, after living for twenty years in a good house of his own, died in it at the age of eighty-eight, his wife, who was three years his senior, surviving him but a couple of months.  A tablet to their memory may be seen in Walcot Church, Bath.

Concerning the boyhood and youth of Thomas Linley we have little knowledge, but many stories. That which describes him of having studied in Italy under Paradies, or Paradisi, can be true only on the supposition of his having gone at an extremely early age to that country, and as he could not himself, at that period, have earned enough money to pay for the journey, it would become necessary also to suppose that he was sent at the expense of some one else. It may be remembered that he sent his own son to Italy when the boy was but twelve years old. That a marked talent revealed itself very early, and that he was taught by Chilcot, the organist of Bath Abbey, are accepted facts.  If it is true as I am inclined to believe - that he attracted the attention of Chilcot when the latter was playing at the Duke of Beaufort's at Badminton, the connection must have begun before the settlement of the lad's parents at Bath.  Mr. Emanuel Green, that most industrious of investigators, says that Linley began life as Chilcot's errand-boys; but the "Notes and Notices of Thomas Linley printed during his Life" upon which he bases the statement are by no means very trustworthy, and neither he nor any later writer seems to have asked himself why an organist should want an errand-boy. The services of a boy, Chilcot, like any other eighteenth-century organist, and many a .country organist to-day, would indeed require, not for running errands but for blowing the organ.  I venture to believe, without any scrap of documentary evidence to support me, that the young Thomas Linley blew the bellows of the organ in Bath Abbey, and, unlike most performers of that necessary function, found full compensation for its monotony in listen­ing to his master's music. That he somehow imbibed or developed a genuine and unselfish devotion to music which became and remained the passion of his life is unquestionable, and that somebody taught him extremely well is almost equally certain.  It may reasonably be assumed that he was apprenticed to Chilcot in the same manner as various pupils both male and female were afterwards apprenticed to himself.

The next fact in his history is one for which documentary evidence can be cited.  On the 11th of May 1752 he was married, at Batheaston, to Mary Johnson.  Unfortunately the register of that parish is extremely laconic, and com­municates no particulars beyond the two names and the date. Even this scanty information, however, is partly new, since neither the date nor the place of the marriage was known to the descendants of it until the kindness of the Rev. C. Shickle enabled me to discover these particulars, in the spring of 1910, from the copies made by him of church registers in and around Bath.  The Sheridan family was unacquainted even with the family name of Mrs. Thomas Linley, but this appears in the Tickell pedigree, where, also, her date of birth is given as 1729.  As she herself wrote in June 1819 to one of her grandchildren: " I am now entered into my ninety-first year," that entry is pretty evidently correct. Mr. William Linley - an old gentleman whose accuracy was sometimes but approximate - calls his daughter-in-law Maria, and notes the date of her marriage as the 22nd of August 1752, four months later than its actual celebration. The discrepancy is so considerable as to suggest that the young people may, to use a phrase of their day, have "stolen a wedding," and that the bridegroom delayed confession to his family.

Of Mrs. Linley's antecedents nothing is known.  Her not uncommon surname appears occasionally in the registers of Batheaston and of neighbouring places, but there is no clear indication of any settled family to which she can be assigned.  Michael Kelly says that she belonged to Wells, a statement which he received in all probability from herself or from one of her family, but no register of her birth is to be found either at Wells Abbey or at St. Cuthbert's.  Kelly, who was often at her house, describes her as a " kind, friendly woman and in her youth reckoned beautiful," a cautious phrase from which it seems fair to infer that the writer, who saw her for the first time in March 1787, when she would be fifty-eight years old, did not perceive any traces of beauty remaining.

(Extract from Chapter 1 of 'The Linleys of Bath' by Clementina Black, 1926, London, Martin & Secker, reprinted 1971 with a foreword by Anne, the Countess of Rosse).