The Much Married Mrs Minshull

 

As I entered Bath Abbey last week, I noticed a plaque high on the porch wall that mentioned the name Craven - twice! I had known that members of the Craven family were said to be buried in the Abbey, the first being Sir Robert Craven, master of the horse to Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the other a sister of the 6th Baron Craven. I had never been able to trace a memorial for Sir Robert and when I asked a verger their records contained no reference of a plaque to him, although they did tell me that some early burials such as his (he died in 1672) had been moved and subsequently lost. The plaque that I did see, however, is the one on the left here. Apologies for the poor quality of the picture: It was high up and the light was shining directly on it, making it difficult to photograph.

The wording is as follows: "Jane, the wife of John Minshull Esq of Swansea, sister to the late Lord Craven and aunt to the present Earl departed this life Dec. 2nd 1807. Aged 64 years. Abi Lector et Aeternitatem animo contemplare. (Roughly translated as let the reader go and contemplate eternity with his mind.)

This intriguing plaque certainly made me contemplate. I have a fairly comprehensive Craven family tree on Ancestry as part of my research and although it has gaps it is accurate and supported by documentary evidence from many sources. (You can see it here.) However the name John Minshull did not feature on it. 

Therefore I did some reverse genealogy from the plaque itself. I knew from the name, date and wording that the Jane referred to had to be the sister of the 6th Baron Craven since she was the only "Jane" to be sister to one baron and aunt to his son, the first earl of the second creation. In fact William, 6th Baron Craven had three sisters: Maria Rebecca, who was his elder by a year, Jane who was born in 1743 and Anna Rebecca, the youngest. All of them had been baptised at Stanton Lacy in Shropshire, where their father the Rev. John Craven was appointed vicar in 1736.

Jane Craven's first marriage took place at St Bartholomew's church Binley, the parish church for Coombe Abbey, in September 1769 when she was 26 years old. Her brother William had inherited the Craven barony earlier the same year. Perhaps it was this social promotion that led to her becoming a more attractive marriageable prospect as the sister of the baron rather than the daughter of a country rector. Her husband was the Rev. John Shuckburgh who, at sixty five was a widower almost forty years her senior. He came from a family of landowners that had risen to prominence in the Tudor period and his home was at Bourton Hall, Bourton on Dunsmore in Warwickshire. Less than a year later, John was dead and Jane a widow.

Within a year, Jane had married again this time at St George's Hanover Square in London. Her second

husband was William Stratton Liddiard whose estate at Rockley near Marlborough in Wiltshire was close to Craven Berkshire estates. (Rockley House is pictured on the right.) William and Jane went on to have five children. William was also a vicar and in 1776 he succeeded to the living of Stanton Lacy that had been Jane's father's earlier in the century. It is perhaps no surprise that this living was in the gift of Lord Craven.

Two years later, in 1778, William Liddiard died leaving Jane a widow for a second time at the age of  thirty five and with her youngest child only a year old. It was a full ten years before Jane remarried to John Minshull and at the time of their nuptials she was living in Walcot, a suburb of Bath. Although William Liddiard was buried in Wiltshire and had been an (absentee) vicar of Stanton Lacy in Shropshire, documents suggest that the family already had a home in Walcot during his lifetime which was inherited by his son, also William.

I have not yet been able to discover much about John Minshull Esq. of Swansea. He was living in the St James area of Bath and was a bachelor when he and Jane married. Evidently he took on her young children as well, for Jane's youngest daughter Louisa was married in Swansea in January 1800. There is still much to discover about Jane Craven's life and about her third husband. Curiously there is a Minshull/Craven connection in earlier generations of the family when some Craven relations married into the Minshull family of Cheshire. It may be that this connection, several generations earlier, had been maintained and was the catalyst for Jane's introduction to John.