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A Research Challenge

After writing the account of John Adolphus Wright, his wife and his son for Occasional Paper 7 on stories behind the gravestones in St Mary’s churchyard, Donald Thorpe was faced with several questions which his initial research had prompted. Recorded in the church Burial Register is John Adolphus Wright’s burial on  20 June 1881: the officiating minister signed the entry ‘A G Campbell, Rector of Knipton.’ As Knipton was, and still is, a small village in the Vale of Belvoir in the north-east corner of Leicestershire, a number of questions immediately sprang to mind:

  • Who was A G Campbell?
  • Why did someone from Knipton come north to Tickhill for this funeral, a distance of more than 50 miles?
  • Did he have some connection with the Wright family, and if so, what?

To answer these questions, various sources of information have been used: Crockford’s Clerical Directories, the alumni lists of Oxford University, and Burke’s Peerage.

In 1796, George III raised John Campbell (1753-1821) to the peerage as Baron Cawdor. This 1st Lord Cawdor was married to Caroline Howard, the eldest daughter of Frederick, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748-1825), and when he died in 1821, his son, John Frederick Campbell (1790-1860) succeeded as the 2nd Baron. Six years later, in 1827, the 2nd Baron was advanced to an earldom and became the 1st Earl Cawdor. The 1st Earl Cawdor had two sons. The elder was John Frederick Vaughan Campbell (1817-1898) who succeeded his father as the 2nd Earl in 1860, and who married Sarah Mary Cavendish. The younger son was Archibald George Campbell (1827-1902) whose name appears in the St Mary’s Tickhill Burial Register.

The Hon and Revd Archibald George Campbell (referred to from now on as ‘Archibald’) went to Balliol College, Oxford. He became BA in 1848, MA in 1850, was made deacon in 1850 and ordained priest in 1851. He was appointed Rector of Knipton in 1853 where he remained for 30 years. John Henry Manners, the 5th Duke of Rutland (1778-1857), who lived in Belvoir Castle less than two miles’ distance from the village of Knipton, appointed the Rectors of Knipton. In 1853, the Duke had been a widower for 28 years: his wife had been Elizabeth Howard, another daughter of Frederick the 5th Earl of Carlisle.

In 1853, as well as becoming the Rector of Knipton, Archibald married. His wife was Charlotte Henrietta Howard, a granddaughter of Frederick, 5th Earl of Carlisle. Charlotte’s parents were the Hon and Very Revd Henry Edward Howard, Dean of Lichfield (1795-1868), and Henrietta Elizabeth Wright, the sister of John Adolphus Wright.

Archibald and Charlotte had an only child, a son, David Campbell (1860-1923) who married in 1888. His wife, Edith Mary Wright, was the daughter of Henry Smith Wright MP and the step-daughter of Josephine Henrietta Wright, John Adolphus Wright’s daughter. Josephine had married Henry, her first cousin, as his second wife. Henry was the son of John Adolphus Wright’s eldest brother, Ichabod Charles Wright. Edith’s mother had died soon after her birth in 1866. Henry and Josephine had seven children, all of them grandchildren of John Adolphus Wright and all of them half brothers and half sisters to Edith.

So are revealed some family connections, not only those of the Wrights and the Campbells, but also connections with the Howards and the Cavendishes and through them, with none other than Cecil George Savile Foljambe, widower of Louisa Blanche Foljambe (see The Beloved Wife by Donald Thorpe – Ed.)

  • Archibald married a niece of John Adolphus Wright, and their son married John Adolphus Wright’s step-granddaughter.
  • Archibald was the great-grandson and his wife the granddaughter of the 5th Earl of Carlisle
  • Louisa Blanche Foljambe, CGSF’s first wife, was a great-granddaughter of the 5th Earl of Carlisle.
  • Archibald’s sister-in-law, the wife of the 2nd Earl Cawdor, was the aunt of Susan Louisa Foljambe, CGSF’s second wife.
  • Frederick John Howard, Louisa Blanche Foljambe’s father, was the nephew of the Dean of Lichfield and first cousin of Archibald’s wife.

None of this detail sheds any light on another question ‘How and why did the Wrights move into Tickhill Castle in 1874?’ However, in 1851 the occupants of the Castle were Richard George Lumley (1813-1884), his wife, Frederica Mary Adeliza Drummond, and their children. In 1856, Richard Lumley succeeded as the 9th Earl of Scarbrough. Frederica, his wife, was a granddaughter of John Henry Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland, and of Elizabeth Howard, cousin to both Archibald and Charlotte, and niece to John Adolphus Wright’s sister. Is this the beginning of an answer to the persistent question?

A further question arises from a name on a 1931 map of Tickhill which shows the house at the junction of Wong Lane and Rotherham Road called ‘Knipton Cottage’. Did this name imply some connection with Archibald?