Lady Erskine at Pwllycrochon: Society, Lawsuits and Family Fortunes, 1843–1845

 

Lady Erskine at Pwllycrochon: Society, Lawsuits and Family Fortunes, 1843–1845

Although we know the Erskine family were living at Pwllycrochon by 1842, surviving records of their day-to-day lives are frustratingly scarce for that year. From 1843 onwards, however, Lady Erskine begins to emerge much more clearly from the pages of the north Wales newspapers.

Her name regularly appeared among the patronesses of charitable fundraising balls, subscription events and local benevolent causes, suggesting that she had quickly established herself as a respected figure within Denbighshire and Caernarfonshire society. Her links to Anglesey had now all but diminished with the loss of her Bangor ferry. While her husband had been responsible for managing the family's Welsh estates, it was now Lady Erskine who became the public face of the family in north Wales.

A Family Scattered

While Lady Erskine was building a social life in north Wales, her eldest son, Sir Thomas Erskine, was serving with his Scottish regiment in the West Indies. Little survives to tell us about his military service, other than the sobering fact that many of his fellow officers and soldiers died from the tropical diseases that plagued British garrisons in the Caribbean. Sir Thomas was fortunate enough to survive his posting.

At Pwllycrochon in 1843, Lady Erskine remained with her daughters Harriet, Mary and Caroline, together with her youngest son, Hugh who was only 5.

The whereabouts of her second son, David, are less certain. At fifteen years of age he was almost certainly away at boarding school, probably still in Edinburgh. Although army commissions could not legally be obtained until the age of sixteen, the purchase of a commission required considerable financial resources, and as the second son of a landed family David was expected to prepare for whichever profession circumstances demanded.

For younger sons of the gentry, education was anything but superficial. Public school pupils continued to study Latin, Greek, Horace and Virgil alongside mathematics, law, logic, rhetoric, languages and the sciences. They were educated to become clergymen, barristers, doctors or army officers, rather than future estate owners. Unlike their elder brothers, they were usually spared involvement in estate management.

Yet David's education may have included an introduction to the family's Welsh interests. We know that in 1838 both Thomas and David accompanied their father to Conwyy to hear discussions on the proposed railway. During the visit they attended a luncheon at the Town Hall alongside Welsh landowners and tenants.

It raises an intriguing possibility. Sir David Erskine may have imagined that while his eldest son would eventually inherit responsibility for both the Scottish and Welsh estates, David might one day reside at Pwllycrochon and oversee the Welsh properties on behalf of the family. Many landed families maintained more than one principal residence, and unlike Cambo which would fall absolutely to the eldest son and heir and had a stipulation regarding the landowner reside there for the "greater proprion of the year", the Welsh estates didn't require the attention of a resident proprietor, but it would better serve the town at least. Pwllycrochon had only a handful of cottages and farms, and most of the Conwy estate was well managed by Henry Jones of Bodidda (Lady Erskine's Land Agent) but it would always be more seemly to have a Williams/Erskine present in Wales. Whether this had genuinely been Sir David's intention can never be known, but events would ultimately lead the second son David down a very different path.

The Death of Mary Williams

Late in 1843 brought personal sorrow for Lady Erskine with the death of her mother, Mary Williams, at Pwllycrochon, aged eighty-one.

The 1841 census had recorded Mrs Williams living at nearby Plas Isa, although contemporary evidence suggests that the once-important house was already in significant decline. By her final years she had evidently returned to Pwllycrochon to live with her daughter.

There is a poignant symmetry to her death. It had also been at Pwllycrochon that her husband, the Rev. Hugh Williams, had died in 1809. Yet the house had been transformed in the intervening decades. The Rev. Williams had died in the old red-brick squire's mansion, whereas by 1843 the estate had been extensively rebuilt and remodelled into the house that is more recognisable today.

Mrs Williams was buried beside her husband in the family vault at St Mary's Church, bringing to a close another chapter in the long association between the Williams family and Pwllycrochon.

Erskine v. Williams

The same year also witnessed one of the most significant legal disputes in Lady Erskine's life.

In the Court of Chancery she brought proceedings against the Cambo trustees responsible for administering her late husband's marriage settlement in the case of Erskine v. Williams. Curiously, the action effectively saw her reverting to her maiden name, reflecting the legal structure under which the original settlement had been created.

The case revealed that several important provisions agreed when she married Sir David Erskine in 1821 had never been properly carried out. Investments intended to provide for the younger children had either never been made or had been delayed for many years, leaving substantial sums unpaid.

The trustees argued that declining agricultural rents and a succession of poor harvests meant the Cambo estate no longer generated sufficient income to meet Lady Erskine's full jointure. Simply put, there was not enough money to honour the promises that had been made over twenty years earlier.

Another issue concerned a substantial loan raised by Sir David in 1831. Lady Erskine argued that responsibility for repaying this debt rested with the Cambo estate itself. If she were required to meet the liability personally, she warned that she would have no alternative but to remortgage her Welsh estates.

Following an appeal, the court found in her favour in December 1843.

The Cost of Broken Promises

The legal proceedings exposed just how damaging these failures had become.

Because the agreed investments had not been established when the marriage settlement was drawn up in 1821, around a decade's worth of interest had been lost. The consequences were profound. The Trustees of Jane Silence Williams as she had been, sued Sir David Erskine for this failure to maintain the agreed marriage settlement stipulations. He was forced to take out a £10,000 loan to invest the requisite sums. He then had to continue to invest £1000 per annum until the sum of £20,000 had been reached, as well as service the loan, which was secured against the Cambo estate. Whilst the investments had been maintained at the point of his death in 1841, the loan was as yet still unpaid in full. 

Lady Erskine's daughters were left without the dowries originally intended for them, reducing their financial prospects in an era when marriage settlements remained socially important. David, meanwhile, could no longer expect an independent income to support him as these investments had not accrued the hoped for interest over the 20 year period and instead would need to establish a profession of his own. Ultimately, that profession would be the army.

Lady Erskine did secure payment of her jointure, but it came with an important limitation: it was payable only during her widowhood and would cease should she remarry.

Declining Fortunes

By the mid-1840s the family's finances had altered dramatically.

The £26,000 compensation received many years earlier had evidently long since been exhausted. The annual allowance of £1,500 that the Erskine's had received from the Earl of Kellie ended upon his death. Meanwhile, the Cambo estate itself, once producing an income of around £7,000 a year, suffered from the widespread decline in agricultural rents that affected much of Britain during the period.

The Welsh estates had fared little better. The loss of the lucrative Bangor Ferry in 1826, together with land and property sales undertaken during Sir David's lifetime, had substantially reduced an income that had once approached £5,000 annually from rents and ferry tolls. 

The Welsh estates had a debt of £7333 upon the marriage of Sir David Erskine and Jane Silence Williams in 1821, and at this point it was unknown why this had not been been cleared/paid off, for it was specified in 1790 under a Deed of Receivership appointing Rowland Williams receiver of all rents arising from the messuage called Borthaethwy, the ferry over the River Menai, and other properties in the township of Llwydcoed in the parish of Llandrillo-yn-Rhos. May 1790 ( Bangor University Archive: TYN/671). One would have imagined that when the compensation was awarded by the British government for the loss of the ferry, that this debt would have been serviced. 

Until Mrs Williams death, she received out of the Welsh estates £1000 per annum as her jointure and all rents from Bodlondeb house and associated farm and cottages. Servants including Mrs Elizabeth Roberts were also to receive an annuities from the Welsh estates amounting to £226.

Although the family remained members of the landed gentry, the wealth that had once sustained two substantial estates was steadily diminishing.

A Mysterious Continental Journey

One brief newspaper reference records that Lady Erskine and her family travelled on the Continent during 1844.

Unfortunately, nothing more is known. Whether the journey was undertaken for health, recreation, or to provide her daughters with the sort of continental education Lady Erskine herself had enjoyed in her youth remains uncertain.

It is equally possible that David accompanied the family, using the opportunity as something akin to a traditional Grand Tour before embarking upon his military career.

Beyond notices recording their departure and return to north Wales in 1845, the historical record falls silent.

Looking Towards the Future

Despite the family's financial anxieties, the successful outcome of the Chancery case appears to have given Lady Erskine a degree of stability between 1843 and 1845. Her eldest daughter was still only seventeen, leaving time to secure suitable marriages for her daughters, despite the uncertainty surrounding their diminished dowries.

Yet one question must surely have weighed upon her mind.

Sir Thomas would soon come of age, assuming full control of the Cambo estate and, in time, establishing a household of his own. Although Lady Erskine had secured her jointure through the courts, her family's financial future remained far from certain. Four of her five children were still financially dependent upon her (Sir Thomas came of age in 1845) and would remain so until they reached the age of twenty-one, when they could begin drawing their annuities under the marriage settlement. It was therefore essential that her Welsh estates remained financially independent and capable of supporting both herself and her younger children, whatever changes might occur once Sir Thomas assumed responsibility for the Scottish estate.

The family returned from Europe in 1845 in time to celebrate Sir Thomas's twenty-first birthday. The young baronet was honoured in Scotland at a dinner attended by tenants, neighbouring gentlemen and many of his late father's friends, where loyal toasts were enthusiastically offered to the new laird - for this was his Scottish courtesy title. [A "laird" is a traditional Scottish courtesy title for the owner of a large, long-established landed estate. It is not a title of nobility, but rather a descriptor of a proprietor—roughly equivalent in status and function to a squire].

Yet the celebrations perhaps concealed unresolved tensions. Although Cambo was now legally his family seat, Sir Thomas did not choose to establish himself there permanently until the 1850s. That delay may simply have reflected the demands of military service, but it may also hint that the financial and legal difficulties surrounding the estate had not disappeared as neatly as the court's judgment might have suggested.

For Lady Erskine, the years after 1843 marked a period of resilience. She successfully defended her financial rights, maintained her family's social standing in north Wales, and navigated the increasingly complex responsibilities of widowhood. Beneath the outward appearance of charity balls and respectable society, however, lay a family adapting to a world in which inherited wealth could no longer be taken for granted. At her son's Coming of Age she was yet only 43.