A guest post by Diana Beckett
A portrait of Sir Thomas Hanmer, Speaker of the House of Commons, hangs in Whitmore Hall, Staffordshire. After three hundred years its presence there had become a mystery to the Cavenagh-Mainwaring family who have lived in the Hall for generations. Any connection between Hanmer and the Mainwarings had been entirely forgotten. However, a little research reveals that in the early eighteenth century Thomas Hanmer was closely connected to the Bunbury family. His sister, Susanna, married Sir Henry Bunbury, 3rd Baronet (1676 – 1733) MP. His sister’s, Susanna (Hanmer) Bunbury’s, niece, Sarah Bunbury (c1712 – 1798) who married Edward Mainwaring 7 (1709 – 1794) was the daughter of William Bunbury (1666 – 1748), Attorney General for Chester, the younger brother of this Sir Henry.
There are at least two portraits of Sir Thomas Hanmer. One by Godfrey Kneller is held in the Palace of Westminster Collection and is inscribed in small letters at the bottom “Given by his Descendant Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury Bart 1805.” The Whitmore portrait is not the same and not a copy: the faces and poses are different.
http://www.artuk.org/artworks/sir-thomas-hanmer-213983
Sir Thomas Hanmer, the Speaker, was thus Sarah Bunbury’s uncle’s brother-in-law, which is not so far removed if thinking of family get-togethers. Sarah’s parents could have been quite close.[1] Thomas Hanmer and Sir Henry Bunbury, 3rd Bart, were firm friends, only a year apart in age. They were both newly elected Tory members of parliament as young men in their early twenties in 1701.
The Bunburys and Hanmers were important political families, with MPs both in previous and later generations.
Thomas was born in the house of his grandfather Sir Thomas Hanmer, 2nd Baronet, at Bettisfield Park, near the village of Hanmer, in Flintshire (now Wales) on the Welsh/English border not far from Chester. His mother was from Mildenhall, Suffolk. His father seems to have died early and his mother apparently returned to Suffolk where Thomas went to school in Bury St Edmunds. As an adult, though he had considerable landed property in both Flintshire and Suffolk, he appears to have taken roots in Suffolk. He married a Suffolk heiress, the Dowager Duchess of Grafton, a beauty 10 years older than him, widow of the natural son of King Charles II, the Duke of Grafton, whose family seat was Euston Hall, near Thetford, in Suffolk. Hanmer represented Thetford in Parliament for four years from 1701 and Suffolk for nineteen from 1708 – 1727, with a short inter regnum representing Flintshire.
As a wealthy young man with excellent social connections, Hanmer arrived in Parliament already marked as a “coming man”. An excellent orator and a man of “honour and merit” he soon became respected even by his political enemies. By 1708, aged 31, he was all but leading the opposition in the Commons. When rumours circulated of a possible promotion to Secretary of State after his successful visit to Flanders in 1712[2], Jonathan Swift[3] described him as “the most considerable man in the House”. He nevertheless resisted appointment to high office for fear of losing his independence. He finally accepted the impartial role of Speaker in 1714, the year of Queen Anne’s death. Although a High Church Protestant Tory who had always staunchly supported the Hanoverian succession, the new German King George I preferred the Whigs and Hanmer only remained one year in office. He continued as a backbencher for another twelve years, but his glory days were behind him. He was defeated in the election of 1724 on the death of King George I.[4]
Hanmer devoted his retirement to working on his edition of Shakespeare, published at Oxford in 1743. It was beautifully bound with forty illustrations and was highly thought of at the time, though not so today. He later built a home for the impoverished elderly in Mildenhall, his mother’s home village, in 1722. The home, called “Bunbury Rooms” serves a similar purpose today. He died in 1746 aged 69 and is buried in his ancestral village of Hanmer in Wales.
Thomas Hanmer had no children, although he married twice. He was rumoured to have been impotent. His much younger second wife scandalously ran off with another younger man, lived openly with him for the rest of her days and they had a son. The descendants who donated the portrait would been those of his sister and brother-in-law Sir Henry Bunbury, 3rd Baronet.
The Bunbury pedigree traces back to the time of the Norman Conquest[5]. In the Middle Ages the family moved their seat from the village of Bunbury in Cheshire to Stanney, in the Wirral, a couple of miles north of Chester, but still had an estate in Bunbury in the 1820s. Bunbury lies between Little Stanney, as it is named today, and Whitmore, 16 miles from the former and 25 miles from the latter.
Thomas’ brother-in-law, Sir Henry Bunbury 3rd Baronet (Sarah’s uncle) 1676 – 1733 was High Sheriff of Cheshire in 1699, aged 23. He was elected MP for Chester in 1701 as a Tory and returned unopposed in 4 subsequent elections. After a short period as Commissioner of the Revenue for Ireland from 1711 he was re-elected as MP in 1713 and again in 1722. Bunbury and Hanmer were recorded as close associates in Parliament,[6] but Hanmer rapidly gained considerable influence while his friend at the outset of his parliamentary career “made only a slight contribution to the business of the House”[7] though he became somewhat more active later. In 1710 Bunbury was listed as a Tory in the ‘Hanover list’, as was Hanmer, and he remained so after the succession.[8]’ However, in May 1715, after the new king’s accession, he was found to be engaged in Jacobite correspondence and in possession of seditious pamphlets. He was removed from his Irish position but remained an MP. He was re-elected in 1722 but was defeated in the election of 1727 as was Hanmer, on the death of George I and the arrival of the new King, George II. He died in 1733 aged 57.
His eldest son, Sir Charles Bunbury, 4th Baronet, (1708 – 1742) Sarah’s first cousin, sat in the House of Commons from 1733 – 1742 as a Tory. He died aged 34.
He was succeeded by Sir Charles’ brother, The Rev Sir William Bunbury, 1710 – 1764 as 5th baronet, (similarly Sarah’s first cousin) who was Vicar of Mildenhall, Suffolk.
The Rev Sir William’s son, Sir (Thomas) Charles Bunbury, 6th Baronet, (1741 – 1821) Sarah’s first cousin once removed, was an MP from 1761 – 1821 and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He still had an estate in the parish of Bunbury in the 1820s.[9]
William Bunbury (c1666 – 1748) Sir Henry Bunbury’s (3rd Bart) brother and Sarah’s father was Attorney General for the county of Cheshire. We can conjecture that they lived in the village of Bunbury, 30 miles from Whitmore, though until records are researched, this may not have been the case. He must have had some sort of residence in or near Chester, perhaps at Stanney Hall.
Whether Sir Henry Bunbury and Hanmer were already friends before they joined Parliament is unknown, but not impossible. Likewise, whether Bunbury married Hanmer’s sister before or after their election to Parliament is open to conjecture, though it seems more likely Hanmer facilitated the introduction in London when the two men were established friends. The continuing close relationship between them is evidenced by the fact that the Rev Sir William Bunbury, 5th Baronet, Sir Henry’s second son and Sarah’s first cousin, was the Vicar of Mildenhall, Suffolk, the hometown of Thomas Hanmer’s mother. The appointment must surely have been facilitated by Hanmer. That Sir Henry Bunbury wrote a biography of Thomas Hanmer also shows how they remained close, as does Hanmer naming the home for the elderly in that village the “Bunbury Rooms”. Since Sir William, just mentioned, was Vicar there, the rooms may well have been named for him.
To return to the portrait of William Hanmer now hanging in Whitmore Hall. Hanmer had no children. We know he gave one portrait to his sister and her husband, his friend and brother-in-law, Sir Henry Bunbury so that it would continue is his bloodline through their son, Hanmer’s nephew. We can suppose Hanmer gave the second to his brother-in-law’s brother William, the Attorney General for Chester, as part of his extended family. Since they had no sons, William or more probably his widow, in turn would have left it to their favoured elder daughter, Sarah Mainwaring, who had a fine house to display it.
The wills of William Bunbury and later his wife Sarah, née Eyton, are recorded in detail in J. Gordon Cavenagh-Mainwaring’s “The Mainwarings of Whitmore.” These establish that William and Sarah only had 2 daughters and no sons (or none that survived to the end of the parents’ lives). Their daughter Sarah married Edward Mainwaring 7 and the other daughter, Ellen, married George Wilson. William died in 1748. He was apparently a man of some means who left his daughters well provided for and the residue of his estate to son-in-law George.
Sarah’s mother, also Sarah (née Eyton) died 22 years later in 1770. She appears to have been in possession of a considerable estate valued at £27,000, which is about £6,000,000 in today’s money. The bulk of this was left in trust to her daughter Sarah with provision for her children. She, the mother, expressly stated that “in no case was her son-in-law, George Wilson, to receive or take any benefit from her estate, but that her daughter Sarah should and might make some provision for her sister Ellen, wife of the said George Wilson.” From this we can deduce that in the intervening years since his father-in-law’s death George had got through all the money he had inherited and was considered unworthy to be in possession of anything further. He may well have left Ellen in reduced circumstances since Sarah was asked to look after her.
A story has come down through the generations in our family that a Bunbury (now known to be the 6th Baronet) and the Earl of Derby, both wealthy horse breeders and important figures in the racing world, planned together a new prestigious race. In order to decide whether this race should be called the Bunbury or the Derby they tossed a coin. Derby won and named the race after himself. Had the coin gone the other way it could have been called the Bunbury.[10]
(The Derby is the UK most prestigious flat race, as is the Melbourne Cup in Australia. The Kentucky Derby is named after it.)
The portrait of Sir Charles Bunbury hangs in Chester Town Hall.
[1] as Anne shows in her page on Pepys’ connection to Anne Wright, a Mainwaring ancestor.
[2] To sound out the possibility of peace negotiations for the ongoing war of the Spanish Succession.
[3] The renowned author, political commentator and propagandist (writer) for the Earl of Oxford, Lord Treasurer.
[4] Most of the information in these two paragraphs comes from his Wikipedia page and Hayton, D. W.(2002) HANMER, Thomas II (1677-1746), of Pall Mall, Westminster; Bettisfield Park, Flints.; and Mildenhall, Suff., The History of Parliament. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/hanmer-thomas-ii-1677-1746
[5] Bunbury, Turtle. “Bunburys in the Medieval Age.” Turtle Bunbury Histories, https://turtlebunbury.com/document/medieval-bunburys/ and https://turtlebunbury.com/document/baron-de-st-pierre/
[6] Suffolk Records Office
[7] Harrison, R. (2002) BUNBURY, Sir Henry, 3rd Bt. (1676-1733), of Bunbury and Stanney, nr. Chester, History of Parliament Online. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/bunbury-sir-henry-1676-1733
[8] History of Parliament online as in 4 above.
[9] Turtlebunbury.com medieval Bunburys as above.
[10] This is confirmed on the website of Knowsley Hall, the seat of the Earls of Derby https://knowsleyhallvenue.co.uk/
Wikitree:
- Sir Thomas “4th Baronet Hanmer of Hanmer” Bt MP (1677 – 1746)
- Susanna (Hanmer) Bunbury (1676 – 1744), sister of Sir Thomas
- Sir Henry “3rd Baronet Bunbury of Stanney Hall” (abt. 1676 – 1733), husband of Susanna
- Rev. Sir William “5th Baronet Bunbury of Stanney Hall” (1710 – 1764), Henry and Susanna’s son
- William Bunbury (abt. 1680 – 1748), brother of Sir Henry Bunbury, brother-in-law of Susanna
- Sarah (Eyton) Bunbury (abt. 1685 – 1770), wife of William
- Sarah (Bunbury) Mainwaring (1709 – 1798), daughter of William and Sarah Bunbury, wife of Edward Mainwaring 7 of Whitmore Hall
- Sir Thomas Charles (Charles) Bunbury 6th Bt (1740 – 1821)