Art, the parson, and a doomed passion

IT could have ended so differently . . .

Among the 1,700 lots for last September's stately home auction at Shrubland Hall near Ipswich - among the tapestries and textiles, the ceramics and the silver - were nearly three-dozen watercolours by a 19th Century Suffolk painter, writer and clergyman.

They could so easily have left the country, the fate of so much British art. The word was that there was heavy interest on the other side of the world, thanks to the real-life heroine of the Rev Richard Cobbold's most famous book being transported there as a common criminal in 1801 and becoming something of a legend.

Whispers suggested an art dealer attending the Shrubland sale had been briefed by two Australian bodies backed by public funds, and also by a wealthy private buyer.

Anthony Cobbold, great-great-great-nephew of Richard Cobbold, would have loved to secure the paintings for the family history trust that conserves Cobbold memorabilia. Some had been used as illustrations in the parson's best-seller. But it appeared Anthony was going to be disappointed.

“I heard they had been sold to an Australian buyer. So I drafted a letter asking if the trust could have digital images for its website. It was astonishing to receive a call to say they were still here.” They'd been bought by a dealer planning to sell them on, and were available for the right price. Within 24 hours Anthony had seen the people he needed to see, and the purchase itself was arranged in half-an-hour.

There's one catch. The £12,000 to buy them came from a family benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous. The money needs to be paid back - which is why The Cobbold Family History Trust has launched an appeal for financial help so it can exercise its option.

The thought of failure is not being entertained - even with an offer from Australia, of between £15,000 and £18,000, waiting in the wings.

“We will raise it, even if it takes a year or two,” insists Anthony Cobbold.

He recently displayed the 34 watercolours - all but one painted by his ancestor - in Wortham, near Eye. To the best of his knowledge, they'd never before been on public view; certainly not in the last 50 years.

Wortham is the village where Richard Cobbold was rector. He moved there in the 1820s and remained until his death in 1877, recording the lives of his parishioners in words and pictures. They are a valuable source of information about rural life during that period.

Richard comes from the brewing family synonymous with Suffolk. The enterprise was founded by Thomas Cobbold in Harwich in 1723, before moving to Ipswich. It passed to another Thomas, and then to John, who lived from 1756 to 1835.

John married twice: both times to an Elizabeth. The first, Elizabeth Wilkinson, bore him 15 children in 17 years, before she died. His second marriage, to Elizabeth Knipe, added another seven children - one of whom was Richard.

Elizabeth 2nd, as she has become known, had something of a literary leaning. “She was an Ipswich bluestocking” - an independent-minded female intellectual - “and was keen on the arts and culture. She was friendly with Gainsborough and Constable and wrote poetry,” explains Anthony.

Enter one Margaret Catchpole.

The plucky daughter of a ploughman was born at Nacton, near Ipswich, in the spring of 1762. As a 13-year-old, she's said to have ridden bareback to Ipswich to summon a doctor.

After going into service she fell in love with a ne'er-do-well smuggler type called William Laud, who tried to persuade her to go off with him. Another admirer, John Barry, attempted to intervene but was wounded by Laud, who as a result had a price put upon his head.

In the early summer of 1793, Margaret Catchpole went to work for Elizabeth Cobbold, and saved one of the Cobbold children from drowning.

Laud, meanwhile, had been pushed into the navy and was out of the picture for a lengthy period. But the passion was undimmed. In 1797, Margaret heard he was back in London. The man who told her the news also convinced her to steal a horse from the stables of John Cobbold and ride to London, disguised as a sailor, to see her ex-lover.

She did - and was arrested. An initial death sentence was commuted to seven years' transportation.

Margaret proved something of a model prisoner and there were thoughts she might win an early release; but finding out Laud was also behind bars wrecked those chances. The pair hatched an escape plan from Ipswich jail but were caught. Laud was killed during a confrontation with the authorities.

Margaret was again handed a death sentence. Again, it was commuted to transportation - this time for life - and she arrived in Sydney 10 days before Christmas of 1801.

In Australia she lived life on the straight and narrow, working as a servant, a farm overseer and a midwife. She is said to have died in the summer of 1819 after catching 'flu from a sick shepherd she was caring for.

In 1845 the Rev Richard Cobbold immortalised her in a novel - The History of Margaret Catchpole: A Suffolk girl - although there was a fair bit of controversy about some of the “facts”. The clergyman, for instance, was convinced she married, had children, and died much later. Some commentators disagreed and felt the story had been embellished.

The editor of the Bury Post declined to review the book, dismissing it as “that ingenious Romance which professes to be the history of an unprincipled felon.”

Anthony Cobbold is aware of the criticisms - as was the rector, who fought his corner. The watercolours, measuring about six inches by four, were put into an album in about 1874. Crudely attached between them was an original manuscript commentary by Cobbold, written just three years before he died.

“You can see where his quill pen runs out of ink and splatters,” says Anthony. “A lot of what he is saying is to justify his story. He clearly felt it necessary in this manuscript to counter what people were saying by explaining 'I know this is true because my mother told me and these are the words she used.'”

What's undeniable is that he had direct knowledge of the saga. “Margaret was on trial before he was born. His mother couldn't go to the assizes because she was pregnant with him, though his father did go. Richard grew up with the story of Margaret Catchpole fresh in his mind.”

Eight of his watercolours were eventually used in later editions of the book. Anthony wryly notes that most don't bear being blown up to a larger size. “The small ones are rather sweet and charming, but he's not a great artist!”

Anyone wanting to help save the paintings can send a cheque, made out to Richard Cobbold Watercolours Appeal, to The Cobbold Family History Trust, 14 Moorfields, Moorhaven, Ivybridge, Devon, PL21 0XQ. The appeal letter and donation form are both on the website www.cobboldfht.com as

downloadable pdfs

ANTHONY Cobbold formed the trust in 2004 and has since been “quietly pulling things together”.

It holds details on about 500 Cobbolds, such as Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who in the 1930s converted to Islam, was the first European woman to complete the Hadj (which she did at the age of 66) and recorded her journey in Pilgrimage to Mecca.

Then there was footballer William “Nuts” Cobbold, who made his England debut in 1883 and scored twice in three minutes.

In the brewery lineage, there are the late brothers John and Patrick Cobbold, best known for their calm, quirky and successful stewardship of Ipswich Town Football Club. Their nephew, Major Philip Hope-Cobbold, currently lives at Glemham Hall, near Saxmundham, and continues the tradition by being a director of the club.

“WHAT tales might be told in my village!” wrote the Rev Richard Cobbold in 1860. “Perhaps some may tell tales of me?” And so they are, more than a century on.

The launch of the watercolours appeal coincides with the publication of a new book honouring and expanding upon the work of the gregarious country parson.

It showcases his narratives that capture the colour of daily life in Wortham. His descriptions of people living there are complemented by little paintings.

Readers meet folk like Nathaniel Barrs and his wife Elizabeth. Nathaniel was, wrote Cobbold, “one of the happiest of human mortals of his class . . . Few worked harder or more honestly in his daily toil . . .” He lived to be 94 and, even in his 80s, could do a better day's work than his grandson.

There was Rebecca Bobby. She had a large family of at least a dozen children. After husband William died in 1841, she ran a successful dame school from her tenement home - despite being in her 70s and 80s. Although the rector thought her ignorant - “like many who teach young children (she) was imposing rather than enlightening” - her job meant locals respected her.

Unfortunate Mary Cock, a dairymaid, put up with extreme pain for decades because she didn't want to have her a toe removed to deal with a tumour. Of course, it only got worse.

“For twenty years the poor woman endured such horrors of pain, dragging her frightful limb about with her, that eventually she agreed to amputation. By then it was one of the most hideous cases of 'elephantiasis' ever seen; by then too chloroform had been discovered and was in general use, so the poor creature consented to have her leg taken off.”

Mary lived on for more than 20 years, walking with the aid of a stick and wooden leg. “Her amputated leg,” says Cobbold, “was sent to London 'as a specimen of extraordinary disease'.”

The new book is called Parson and People in a Suffolk Village - Richard Cobbold's Wortham, 1824-77. It's produced by Wortham Research Group and co-published by the Suffolk Family History Society.

Its genesis lies in work started in 1972-4 at an adult education class. From 1975 the same folk met as an informal research group, but for a number of reasons the book they intended to produce did not happen.

“Over the years some members moved away from the area and others, sadly, have died,” explains Dr David Dymond, editor of the volume that's just been published. “However, we the survivors, with the help of some new blood, now judge that the material assembled is too valuable to be allowed to remain in bulky files, card indexes, disks and print-outs, and deserves wider circulation.”

The team has added much historical detail about 19th Century Wortham, describing the population (remarkably young, with nearly half the parishioners under the age of 20 in 1851), crime and unrest, employment, education, housing, landowning and farming (more than 2,500 acres of land was owned by 76 different people in 1840).

There are also fascinating sections on health and mortality, and poverty. Poverty was Wortham's most pressing social problem, thanks to a rising population, low pay and a lack of work. At about the time Cobbold arrived, a committee had found that sack-making was the last significant industry left in the parish.

Cobbold - ironically, bearing in mind his father was a wealthy brewer - was worried about alcohol and its effects: mainly because it threatened church attendance! In the middle of the 19th Century Wortham had five pubs - one for every 114 people over the age of 15 - and the parson noted many cases of “incorrigible drinking”.

Parson and People in a Suffolk Village - Richard Cobbold's Wortham, 1824-77 costs £19.99 and is available in local bookshops or direct from N. Smith, Honeypot Farm, Wortham, IP22 1PW (tel: 01379 783312).

RICHARD Cobbold was educated at schools in Norfolk and Bury St Edmunds before going to Gonville and Caius in Cambridge. He graduated in 1820, was made a deacon that year, and became a priest the year after. In 1822 he married Mary Ann Waller, from Hollesley, near Woodbridge.

Cobbold was curate at St Mary le Tower in Ipswich for eight years. However, his father had in 1819 bought the patronage of Wortham at a sale in London - for nearly £6,500 - and gave it to his son as a wedding present. The couple and their three young boys moved there in the summer of 1828, from Ipswich, though he had been a non-resident rector for several years before that.