The village of SprotbroughSprotbrough is a small village on a crossing of the River Don a couple of miles west of Doncaster. When Scottish beef was driven down the Great North Road to be fattened on the rich grasslands of the Eastern Counties, the drovers would seek to by-pass major towns like Doncaster and would have used Sprotbrough as a convenient crossing point of the River Don. Thus we find references in parish records of the area to burials of Scottish drovers and to more than Fifty pound a Year Eaten by Scotch droaves whereof herbage is due. However the crossing came to be controlled by the local lords of the manor of Sprotbrough, the Copley family. In the turbulent mid-seventeenth century we read, At Sprotbrough Hall lived Sir Godfrey Copley, who had control over who crossed the Don River in the gorge as he owned and ran the ferry. The Ferryboat Inn, now the Boat Inn, stood on the banks and at the boarding point for it. Although Cromwell marched into Doncaster closer to town, where the river was bridged, he could have quite possibly opted to cross the river in Sprotbrough. Because of this possibility, Sir Godfrey received a letter from his brother-in-law Darcy Wentworth along with other friends, urging him to undertake certain measures to ensure his and his family’s safety at this volatile time (1). In the early eighteenth century the manor and Hall of Sprotbrough had been inherited by a cadet branch of the Copley family. The estate also included lands in Brodsworth and the Scawsby estate, both in Yorkshire, which had previously been in the hands of the Adams family. |
This is a revised version of an article first published in CREE NEWS 6 in April 1993 under the title Focus on: the Yorkshire Crees. Substantial new material has been inserted. The original article and this revised version are copyright © Mike Spathaky 1993, 2014. Readers may find it helpful to refer to the family tree chart which accompanied the original article and which was based on charts kindly provided by Mary Knox-Johnston and Peter B Cree. (Clicking on the chart should enlarge it.) |
A marriage break-upBy the 1740s the lord of the manor was Godfrey Copley Esq. He was born on 14th November 1706 the son of Lionel Copley, who inherited the Sprotbrough estate in 1709 from a distant relative under the will of Sir Godfrey Copley, Baronet. Lionel Copley died in debt in 1719 and Godfrey was only 13 when he succeeded. So the estate of his late father ... [was] administered by [Mary Copley of Doncaster, widow] as trustee during his minority. (Godfrey would have been 21 in 1727.) (2). In 1739 Godfrey, now 32, married Anna Maria Brace who was 19. She was born on 20 July 1719 at Aston Sandford, Buckinghamshire, of wealthy parents John Thurloe Brace and his wife, also Anna Maria. It sounds like a useful marriage especially if Godfrey's estate was still in debt. Four years later, Godfrey and Anna still had no children. Amongst the staff of the house at that time were Martha Nicholson, Jane Bray, Sarah Tanner, Elizabeth Tatloe and Mary Allen. We do not know the specific roles of these servants within the household, except that Sarah was definitely a servant to Mrs. Copley. It was quite normal for the daughters of tenant farmers to be placed in service in the households of their landlords. The lord of the manor may have felt a responsibility to give employment to the daughter of a yeoman farmer of the area who had died. Martha Nicholson who was then aged 25 was not a "poor servant" as we might imagine her. Her father John Nicholson, now deceased, had been a yeoman, which implies a moderately prosperous, independent farmer. Deeds indicate that he had held a substantial farm. Another servant of the household was a Scotsman, William Cree, who was employed as a gardener. During that year of 1743 the servants began to notice something amiss with Godfrey Copley's health and some unusual behaviour on the part of his wife, young Anna Maria. A number of familiarities between Mrs Copley and a certain Mr Perkins, some of them very indecent were observed by Jane Bray, Sarah Tanner and Elizabeth Tatloe. Mary Allen heard some indecent familiarities and adulterous conversation between the said Mr Perkins and Mrs Copley and also saw them in bed together. Godfrey Copley's health gave concern to Martha Nicholson and she noted what persons resorted to his wife, and her elopement and not returning. At the end of that year of 1743, perhaps in connection with Christmas merriment, Martha Nicholson found herself in bed with one of Godfrey Copley's gardeners, a handsome Scotsman a few years older than herself. If the mistress can have her bit of fun on the side, why cannot we the servants too? |
(2) Quitclaim and counterpart CD/35-36 30 Jun 1732, Estate papers of the Copley Family, Baronets, of Sprotborough including Nottinghamshire deeds of the Cromwell Family (Lords Cromwell) 1299-1516. Sheffield Archives, CD/35-36. |
William Cree (I)At the Doncater Records Office we can read in the parish register of Sprotbrough under the year 1744, William Cree of this Town & Martha Nicholson both servants to Godfrey Copley, Esq were married July 2d by F Hall Rector by virtue of a Licence from Mr Hollis Pigot, Surrogate. (3) William Cree was Godfrey Copley's Scottish gardener. The date was a Monday and the marriage bond had been sworn on the previous Saturday. It was fairly unusual for servants to be married by licence. The practice was used by the gentry to avoid having banns read out in church to their tenants. But it was almost certainly arranged by Godfrey Copley in this case in order to keep the whole thing quiet, as Martha was already visibly pregnant. The marriage licence is the earliest written reference we have found to a Cree in this area and shows that William Cree was thirty years old and his blushing bride Martha Nicholson twenty-one (4). A couple of months after the marriage Martha gave birth to a daughter and a desire for secrecy is again suggested, as the christening was not at the parish church but at St George's Church in the nearby town of Doncaster: 1744 Sep 21 Elizabeth daughter of William Cree The couple were to have three more children and they were baptised at Sprotbrough parish church:
1745/6 Ann Daughter of William Cree Gardener of Sprotbrough baptised March 9. As so often in earlier times than our own, family life was to be disrupted by death, as we read in the burial register: 1750 July 1 William Cree, Gardiner to Godfrey Copley esq. He was only 36 years old. The following day would have been their sixth wedding anniversary. One has to feel sympathy for poor Martha left with four children aged from 9 months to just under six years. |
(3) Parish register in Doncaster Records Office. |
A divorce case in the House of LordsClearly Godfrey Copley's wife Anna Maria could not hide her affair with Mr Perkins. The servants all knew of it and Godfrey would have known soon enough. Divorce, not an option for most people, could only be obtained by Act of Parliament. The House of Lords Journal for 5 February 1751 reads: Copley's Divorce Bill, Witnesses to attend. Ordered, That Edward Rushworth, William Skelton, William Grey, William Guest, Jane Bray, Martha Cree, Elizabeth Lilley, Sarah Tanner, Allan, and Joseph Banks, do attend this House, on Thursday next, as Witnesses, upon the Second Reading of the Bill, intituled, "An Act to dissolve the Marriage of Godfrey Copley Esquire with Anna Maria Brace his now Wife, and to enable him to marry again, and for other Purposes therein mentioned." So there was quite a party travelling to London the following week presumably in a private carriage. On 14 February 1751 Martha Cree appeared as a witness in the House of Lords. This must have been quite an ordeal for her, less than a year after her husband William Cree had died. Would she have taken at least her youngest son, two-year-old William, with her? And who looked after her other three children? The Order of the Day being read, for the Second Reading of the Bill, intituled, 'An Act to dissolve the Marriage of Godfrey Copley Esquire with Anna Maria Brace his now Wife, and to enable him to marry again, and for other Purposes therein mentioned,' and for hearing Counsel, as well for as against the same... Then Martha Cree was produced, sworn, and examined, as to the Marriage, her knowledge of both the said Persons, the Condition of Mr Copley's Health, what Persons resorted to his Wife, and her Elopement, and not returning. Jane Bray was next produced, sworn, and examined as to any and what Familiarities she had seen or known between one Mr. Perkins and Mrs. Copley, and related certain very indecent ones. Sarah Tanner, Servant to Mrs Copley in the Year 1743, was also called, sworn, and examined in relation to the same Matter, and gave an Account likewise to the House of very indecent Familiarities between the said Mr. Perkins and Mrs Copley... (5) The matter was adjourned for a week when: The Lord Willoughby of Parham (according to Order) reported from the Committee of the whole House to whom the Bill, intituled, "An Act to dissolve the Marriage of Godfrey Copley Esquire with Anna Maria Brace his now Wife, and to enable him to marry again, and for other Purposes therein mentioned," was committed, the Amendments made by the Committee to the said Bill. Which, being read Twice by the Clerk, were agreed to by the House. Ordered, That the said Bill, with the Amendments, be engrossed. (6) So finally, Godrey Copley esq. got his divorce. We do not know who his intended bride was, but he never did remarry. The health issues that Martha Cree hinted at may have been an issue or maybe the lady simply didn't wait. He died aged 54 on 21 April 1761 with no legitimate issue. William Cree II was now aged eleven. Anna Maria on the other hand was now free to marry the man she had been seen in bed with in 1743. It is reported that the lady married, secondly, William Parkins, esq. of Crainsby (7) Godfrey Copley was succeeded by his brother Lionel who died unmarried in 1766 when William Cree was 17. Lionel bequeathed all his real estate to trustees to the use of Martha Clarke of Sprotbrough, spinster, for her life, and then to Joseph Moyle of Southampton for his life, with remainder to his son and further remainders (8). Joseph Moyle inherited Sprotbrough under an entail of the will of his maternal grandfather Sir Godfrey Copley, 2nd Baronet, of the original line of Copleys of Sprotborough. He changed his name to Copley and on 28 August 1778 became the first Baronet Sprotbrough of the second creation. He in turn died on 11 Apr 1781. Three weeks later young William Cree married Sarah Adams of Brodsworth, near Sprotbrough, at St Marylebone, Middlesex where they set up house and had a family of three sons and three daughters. William's mother, Martha Cree, lived on in Sprotbrough until she died at the age of 70 (in 1793) and was buried as the "widow of William Cree." |
(5) British History Online House of Lords Journal Volume 27, February 1751, 11-20. |
The rise of William Cree (II)You would have said that the life chances of William and Martha's youngest child William Cree following the death of his father were not too good at this stage - nine months old, the youngest of Martha Cree's four children and she a widow at twenty-seven. For her, re-marriage would have been a normal option in order to provide a breadwinner for her children, but perhaps the bonds of obligation between master and servant served young William and his mother as they seem to have done when she first fell pregnant. We know that Martha lived on in Sprotbrough to the age of 70, when she was described at her burial as widow of William Cree. We know nothing of the lives of the first three children - after baptism they disappear from the record. What little we know of the life of the youngest, William Cree II, suggests a surprisingly rapid rise up the relatively rigid social scale of the time. In 1781 at the age of thirty-two he married Sarah Adams. She was twenty-seven and the daughter of Robert and Mary Adams of Brodsworth, a parish not very far from Sprotbrough, who may or may not be connected with the Adams family who had owned the nearby Scawsby Estate. They seem likely to have been moderately well-off as Sarah's elder brother Mark, a staymaker, did make himself a Seat Adjoyning the Font although this was much later, in 1812. They were of the craftsmen class and mixed on more or less equal terms with the small farmers who made up the tenantry of the likes of Godfrey Copley, esquire. They were often of independent character but then the tenant farmers often were too, protected by security of tenure from generation to generation. Such tenant farmers came to be known as yeoman. Independent craftsmen and yeomen were still a long way below the gentry however in the stratified scheme of things in rural eighteenth century England. The evidence of a rise in William's status starts with his marriage to Sarah Adams, which took place at St. Marylebone Church in London. Their six children were to be baptised there and their three sons were to become, respectively, a gentleman (William), and two solicitors (Thomas and David). On 3 March 1812 William was descibed as a carpenter of Carmarthen Street, Tottenham Court Road, when he signed articles of agreement for his younger surviving son David also of Carmarthen Street, to become articled as a clerk to Edward Richard Comyn of Bush Lane in the City of London to serve him in the Profession of an Attorney at Law and Solicitor in Chancery for seven years. The affidavit of service was also sworn by William's elder son Thomas Cree (8a). To achieve this rise in fortune, from losing his father, a gardener, as an infant, to residence in fashionable Marylebone, we have suggested that William Cree II would have had a well-to-do benefactor. This could have been the Copleys. Godfrey Copley, whom we presume was involved in arranging his parents marriage and the baptism of their first child, died in 1761 when William was 11 years old. Godfrey's successor, his brother Lionel, a bachelor who died aged 57, just five years after succeeding to the Sprotbrough estate might have been a prime mover. It might even have been Lionel's successor Joseph Copley who had changed his name from Moyle on succeeding to Sprotbrough in 1766. By this time William Cree junior was aged about sixteen and his widowed mother Martha was 48. However no provision for William Cree or his mother Martha is evident from the wills of Godfrey, Lionel or Joseph Copley and no other evidence of support for the Cree family has come to light. Perhaps William earned enough money as a carpenter to finance his sons' education and their legal careers. |
(8a) The UK National Archives, Kew, Court of King's Bench: Plea Side: Affidavits of Due Execution of Articles of Clerkship, Series I; Class: KB 105; Piece: 22 |
An alternative hypothesisAn alternative hypothesis suggests that the rise in the fortunes of William Cree (II) was financed from the sale of lands in the estate of Castle Stewart, Wigtownshire. Castle Stewart lies in the parish of Penninghame near the River Cree in Wigtownshire (now part of Galloway) in South-West Scotland, and was described as a ruin in 1820. Robert Stewart had used part of the fortune he had acquired as an East India merchant to purchase the estate. Robert was related to the Crie line of Perth Glovers who provided Perth with three provosts. The lairdship and estate of Castle Stewart had been in the hands of a junior line of the Stewart Earls of Galloway from 1646 until it was sold in 1783 by Captain William Stewart of a cadet branch of that line. There is some uncertainty about the ownership for a while, but it is clear that in 1783 at the earliest it was bought by Robert Stewart whose mother was Christian Crie, daughter of Patrick Crie, Provost of Perth in the 1740s. Christian had married another Provost of Perth, William Stewart (c1710-1786), who was of the Stewart of Urrard line. This line was lineally descended from John Stewart, progenitor of the Athol Stewarts, who was fourth son of Alexander Lord Badenoch. Earl of Buchan, a younger son of King Robert II (9). The Stewart of Urrard line was not related to the Stewart Earls Galloway who had originally owned and given their name to Castle Stewart. Why was Robert Stewart in Perth attracted to Castle Stewart? Was it the hope that he could buy himself into the landed gentry as so many did after making their fortunes in India at that period? A Castle already bearing his noble surname of Stewart, beside a river bearing his mother's surname of Cree, might well have seduced him into the purchase. The reality of its "encumbrance" with debt, its isolation from the social life of any burgh, perhaps already its ruinous condition, may have changed his mind. Robert Stewart sold Castle Stewart like a hot potato and settled at his other estate of St Fort in Fife. His line became known as Stewart of St Fort. By 1792 Castle Stewart was in the hands of entrepreneur William Douglas. So it seems unlikely that its sale realised any fortune at all, but even if it had, it would not seem likely that Robert would give away parts of the land or the proceeds of its sale to descendants of his Crie cousins. In any case the date is too late for any such largesse to have financed the initial rise in the fortunes of William Cree; he was already married and established in London by 1783, the earliest date by which Robert Stewart in Perth might have purchased it. |
(9) Burke's Commoners Vol 4 p 40, Stewart of St Fort. |
Evidence from DNA testsRobert Stewart in Perth, who bought Castle Stewart after his return from the East Indies, was connected through his mother Christian Crie to the line of the Crie Provosts of Perth. In 2012 to 2013 evidence was obtained from the testing programme of the Cree YDNA Project. Volunteer participants descended from a number of Cree lines were tested, including one who is descended from the Sprotbrough line, one from the line of Perth glovers and provosts and two from a line from Aberdalgie who were thought to be mainly weavers. The YDNA test results have given a very close match (37/37 markers) between a descendant of William Cree of Sprotbrough and a descendant of Thomas Crie in Aberdalgie, Perthshire. Another descendant of the latter line shows a close match (36/37 markers) to a descendant of William Cree of Perth born c 1574 who is also an ancestor of the Cree Provosts of Perth. The exact relationships of these Perthshire Cree branches is still not clear but the fact that it is close is beyond doubt - it is absolutely clear that the Cree line of Sprotbrough is a branch of the Perthshire Crees, closely related to the line of the Cree glovers of Perth from whom the Cree provosts were descended. |
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A Family BibleAs befits a family on the rise, William and Sarah recorded important events in a family Bible inscribed Sarah Adams Oct 21 1770 inside the front cover. This would be the date when Sarah was given the Bible, just after her seventeenth birthday. Inside the back cover is written Willm son of Willm & Martha Cree Baptized September the 17th 1749. The births of William and Sarah's children were proudly and meticulously recorded in the Bible (10).
William Cree the son of William & Sarah Cree born Jenewary y 14th be twixt twelve & one O clock in the morning 1782. William Cree lived to the age of 88, the St Pancras Registrar recording his death in 1838. |
(10) I am grateful to Tom Cree of Harrogate for sending these details. |
A Gentleman and Two LawyersWilliam's eldest son, also William Cree, pre-deceased him, dying at the age of 29. He was described as a gentleman of Carmarthen Street... St Pancras. So the second son, Thomas, became the heir. A third son, David, also became a solicitor, survived to his seventies and is thought to have died unmarried as did two daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth. Thomas Cree was the first of many members of the family to enter the law, founding the family firm of Cree & Son of 13 Grays Inn. At the age of thirty-five, he went back to his mother's home village of Brodsworth to marry Hannah Adams. The parish register shows:
1790 (baptisms) Hannah was Thomas's first cousin and was twenty-eight. They were married by licence on 6th January 1819 at Brodsworth. The couple kept up their Yorkshire connection by baptising two of their five children there. All five were boys but two died as children. The eldest, Thomas, became a solicitor while the other two went to Oxford and then into the Church. Thomas and Hannah Cree lived at Mornington Close, St Pancras, where Hannah died in 1848 aged fifty-eight. Some time after this Thomas moved to Lower Tulse Hill where he died in 1870 aged eighty-six.
More Crees at OxfordWe will deal with the eldest son Thomas later. Thomas and Hannah's second surviving son John Adams Cree was elected Yorkshire Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford, eventually gaining a doctorate of divinity in 1856. After appointments as curate in Streatham, Dover and Upton (Slough) he became vicar of Great Marlow from 1867 to 1881 and then for nearly twenty years at Sunningdale. In 1857 he married Mary Lucy, second daughter of John Joseph Lloyd of Shrewsbury (11). It appears that they had no children. John died in 1904 and Mary in 1922. The next son, Edward David Cree was born in 1826 and went to Oriel College, Oxford, graduating in 1849. In 1855 he married Augusta Plater in Newark. She was almost certainly related to Rev. Herbert Plater, Master of the Magnus Grammar School there, who was of a Kent family. Perhaps they met while Edward's brother John was curate at Dover. It appears that Edward and Augusta had no children and she died in 1864 at Wandsworth. He then married Isabel Taylor and the births of their six children were registered at Wandsworth, so he probably had a curacy there. In 1877 he was appointed vicar of Benenden in Kent and in 1898 became rector of Brightling, Sussex. Edward died in 1914 at Eastbourne at the age of 87. Although he had three sons (as well as three daughters) as far as we know the sons only produced daughters, apart from Edgar Cree's son Jack. Edward's son Ernest married Mary Holt in 1913 and they had a daughter Nora Cree who died unmarried at age 96 in 2011. Nora appears again later in this story. Edward's only possible living Cree descendant is Jack's daughter June Cree who lives in Hampshire. The last child of Thomas and Hannah, Henry Dixon Cree, died at the age of three, but his middle name served to prove beyond doubt that we had the right Adams family, Dixon being his maternal grandmother's maiden name. We now come back to Thomas and Hannah's eldest son Thomas Cree. Born at Brodsworth in 1819 he kept a Yorkshire connection, marrying Maria Bishop Walker at her home parish of St George's, Doncaster in 1844, where his great-grandparents had baptised their first-born a hundred years earlier (give or take a couple of months). |
(11) Register of Magdalen Coll. Oxford Vol VI. Details supplied by Julian Higman. |
The Victorian GenerationThomas and Maria Cree lived at Tulse Hill in London, though they later moved to a house they named Brodsworth in Beckenham, Kent. He entered Grays Inn and became a solicitor like his father and uncle. Their first child Catherine (or Harriet Katherine) was born in 1845 and died in her teens. They also had four sons. The first three were sent as boarders to the Magnus School in Newark on Trent, Nottinghamshire. The Master there, Herbert Plater, was an authoritarian and sometimes brutal High Church Anglican, who was determined to convert the school into a major public school, or at least a fee-paying prep school. This brought him into fierce opposition from the leading citizens of Newark for whose sons the school had been endowed, and the dispute raged acrimoniously for decades (12). However Plater only flogged the day boys, never the boarders, so perhaps Thomas George, Charles Edward and Arthur Walker Cree (13) enjoyed their school-days before entering Oxford, where they were joined by their youngest brother William who had been to Winchester. A familiar career pattern now emerges with two sons entering the church and two the law. |
(12) Newark Magnus by N G Jackson, pub by J & H Bell, Nottingham 1964. |
Children of Thomas and Maria CreeThomas George Cree became rector of Cosheston near Pembroke. He must have later moved to Kingston, however, as his son Thomas James Keating Cree was born there in 1918. He became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Artillery, researched much of the family's history and compiled a family tree chart on which much of this article is based. His son and grandson, fifth and sixth named Thomas Cree in direct line, continue the Cree line. Charles Edward Cree kept a diary during his time at Oxford University and was called to the Bar in 1874. In 1878 he married Clara Holt. They had five children of whom the eldest Donald Cree was also a barrister. The third son, Eustace, was the father of Commander Charles Eustace Cree DSC RN who married in Australia and eventually settled there. The tradition of Crees of this line attending Oxford University continues to this day. Arthur Walker Cree became a solicitor and lived in Stockton on Tees where he married Elizabeth Newby. They moved to Bromley, Kent and had six children. The eldest, Arthur Thomas Crawford Cree married Ivy Williams and had three daughters. We have been in touch with two of them, Mrs Mary (Cree) Knox-Johnston and Mrs Eleanor (Cree) Irving. Mary's son Sir Robin Knox-Johnston CBE is the well-known sailor and the first man to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe. In his book A World of my Own he wrote: Mother's family, the Crees, although Scots in name, were a family of lawyers from Stockton-on-Tees, who somehow came south to Beckenham, in Kent, and in Captain T Cree, RN., my godfather, there is a strong naval link... (14) The youngest son of Thomas and Maria Cree was William Cree, born in 1854 and known as Dick to the family. William was educated at Winchester and Exeter College, Oxford, before entering the church. Like his brother Charles, Dick married a Holt, namely Edith Holt. Edith died in 1888 when their second child Arthur Stanley Cree was just a year old. In 1895 Dick married Ruth Southgate in Bromley and had five more children. Two of their sons entered the Navy. The youngest Douglas Cree, (James Douglas Becket Cree) also a priest, was killed in action in 1939 when the HMS Royal Oak, on which serving as chaplain, was torpedoed in Scapa Flow, Orkney, by a U-boat. The elder brother was Thomas Norman Becket Cree, the godfather referred to by Robin Knox-Johnston above, and father of Peter and David Cree. David's widow Mrs Mary Cree wrote to me as follows: Recently a friend showed me an old newspaper cutting describing the wedding on 6th July 1926 of a certain Captain Edward Holt to Miss P D Williams. A Nora Cree was one of the bridesmaids and Mrs Cree is noted as one of the guests. My husband's uncle the Reverend Stanley Cree emigrated to Leamington, Ontario. His eldest son who has the Christian name of Holt came over and stayed here last summer. I think there may well a connection. We can identify Nora Cree as the daughter of Ernest Cree, son of Edward David Cree (1826-1914) mentioned above. Ernest married a Mary Holt at Eastbourne in 1913. No doubt the bridegroom of the newspaper article was a relative. The Holt Cree who visited Mary from Canada was the grandson of William and Edith (Holt) Cree so there may be no connection. The question is complicated by the fact of three Cree-Holt marriages and it would be interesting to find out the relationship between the three Holt brides who married Cree bridegrooms. It is difficult to believe there is none. |
(14) pub Cassell 1969. |
Watch this spaceWe still need to establish and document the line of the descent of the Cree branch of Sprotbrough from the Perthshire Cree line. The first stage is to locate a William Cree who was born in about 1714 and who who disappears from Scotland by 1744, from amongst these Perthshire Cree branches. |