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| East Newton Hall today [By Roger Smith CC BY-SA 2.0] |
But a very real love grew between him and Alice. She was deeply grieved when he died aged forty-four on 17 September 1668. He was, she wrote,
a most dear and tender, virtuous and loving husband, which took part with me in all my sorrows and sufferings, comforted me in sadnesses. We walked together in dear love and union.
And what happened to the others?
Her widowed brother-in-law Sir Thomas Danby had died aged 50 not long after Alice left Richmondshire. He was in London at the time of his death in August 1660 and he was buried in the north choir aisle of York Minster.
His heir was his eldest son Thomas Danby – he had gone to Dublin with Mrs Wandesford and had to leave in a hurry when the rebellion broke out. Thomas married Margaret Eure in 1659, was MP for Malton and the first Mayor of Leeds. He was killed in a sword fight in a London tavern in 1667. The circumstances were murky. Alice's great-grandson Thomas Comber recorded in his memoir of Lord Deputy Christopher Wandesford that in 1776 he was told by William Danby of Swinton that it was murder, carried out at the instigation of Thomas's wife Margaret.
Thomas and Margaret had two sons. The eldest boy, another Thomas, inherited the estates but died unmarried and was succeeded by his younger brother Christopher. Christopher died a couple of years later from a fall from his horse while out hunting on Watlass moor. Neither boy reached the age of 21.
So the Danby estates passed in 1683 to the boys' 50 year old uncle Christopher. He was the younger of the boys who had been in Dublin with the Wandesfords.
Christopher had gone out to Virginia in his twenties and there he had met and married – without his father's permission – Anne Colepepper. Much later, Anne was to write an account of her marriage for her son Abstrupus and in it she described Christopher unflatteringly as an "imprudent weak husband". Their marriage had caused a family rift and it was because of this, and money disputes with his brother Thomas, and especially because of great ill-feeling between Anne and her sister-in-law Margaret, that Christopher and Anne Danby were often with Alice and William Thornton. This ended badly when Anne turned on Alice and began to spread malicious and unfounded gossip against her – which was the reason why Alice wrote her autobiography to vindicate herself.
When Christopher inherited the estates, he turned them over to his son. Abstrupus made money in the wool trade, sold off the outlying estates including Thorp Perrow and began the building of the mansion house at Swinton Park.
Alice's troubled brother John had died before she was widowed. He was aged 32 and MP for Richmond at the time of his death on 2 December 1666. The poor man was often ill – his mental health had been uncertain ever since the death of his brother George. Alice took comfort in the fact that, although he had been suffering badly with ague and violent fits of the stone, he had had the perfect use of his reason and understanding for the six months before his death. He was buried at the parish church of Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire.
In 1683 Alice lost her beloved Aunt Norton. Her father's sister Anne had always been a great comfort and support to her, going over to East Newton when Alice badly needed her and giving good advice by letter. She died in 1683 at a great age – nearly 90 – and was buried in Richmond, where her husband Maulger had been buried ten years earlier. They had suffered the loss of children in infancy, but the loss of their two eldest sons must have been particularly hard.
Their eldest son Edmund Norton – whose troop of dragoons was encountered by George Wandesford on Marston Moor – died of pleurisy in 1648 in York. He had been married only the year before. He was buried at the church of St Michael le Belfrey. His younger brother William Norton was a barrister. He was killed in an affray in a London tavern in December 1666 aged 39.
When the malicious lies spread by Anne Danby reached the ears of Mrs Anne Norton in Richmond, she went straight to East Newton to support Alice. And when she had to go home – where she made it her business to speak to various people who had believed the gossip and to put them straight – Alice wrote,
she sent my good friend Dafeny to be with me and comfort me, which she did much
Mrs Wandesford relied upon Dafeny Lightfoote, Alice's sister Catherine died in her arms, she was there at Mrs Wandesford's deathbed, and when Alice was so unwell that her mother would not let her breastfeed her new baby Elizabeth, Dafeny took on the duty of wet nurse until she herself fell pregnant.
She had come to Mrs Wandesford's service as an unmarried girl – her surname was Carrall or Cassell (the Surtees edition differs from the Anselment edition). She and George Lightfoote went with the family to Hipswell when they had to leave Kirklington and they married soon afterwards. They were trusted, literate people – George was perhaps Mrs Wandesford's steward. He was a witness to Mrs Wandesford's Will and Dafeny was there when the Will was made and when the inventory of Mrs Wandesford's goods was taken. When Dafeny returned to Richmondshire, she too spoke to people of importance in the neighbourhood and put the record straight for Alice. She was at East Newton in 1668 and was a witness at young Naly's marriage to Thomas Comber. When she left, Alice gave her as a token of gratitude
a young cow and calf to sustain her house, with other good things, which she had deserved for her faith and fidelity to me and my poor children, and sent her husband a bible and a pound of tobacco.
Alice's brother Sir Christopher – he had been one of the many gentlemen of Royalist families to be given a baronetcy in 1662 – died in London on 23 February 1686. He was buried in the Wandesford chapel in the parish church at Kirklington. Alice lived long enough to see her nephew Christopher made Baron Wandesford and Viscount Castlecomer.
Three of Alice's nine children – Naly, Catherine and Robert – survived early childhood. Alice's ninth and last child had been born at East Newton in November 1667 when she was 41. She had suffered terribly in labour in the past and in this one she had never been so near to death. The babe was a fortnight old when he died. She lost her husband a year later when Naly was sixteen, Catherine twelve, and Robert only six.
Alice had such high hopes for Robert's future. She had managed to finance his studies at university – he had taken a degree at University College, Oxford and been a Fellow of Magdalen College. In 1692, when he was rector of the parish of Boldon in County Durham, he died. He was 30 years old and he had proposed and been accepted by a lady with a fortune of £2,800 only two months earlier – a match that his brother-in-law Thomas Comber had found for him. He was buried in front of the second altar in the Chapel of Nine Altars in Durham Cathedral; Naly had a stone with a Latin inscription placed there to commemorate him.
Catherine was married in 1682 to the Revd Thomas Purchase, who was first rector of Langton on Swale and then of Kirkby Wiske. She was widowed in 1696 at the age of 40 after fourteen years of marriage and the birth of six children. Two years later she married Robert Danby of Northallerton.
Naly had been married to the 23 year old Rev Thomas Comber in 1668 when she was a couple of months short of her fifteenth birthday. The marriage wasn't made public for six months, so it may not have been consummated until then. It seems likely that it was the poor health of both Naly's parents, the lack of people on whom Alice could rely for support, and the high opinion both she and William had of this young man that made them so anxious for the match. He was eminent in theology and was made Dean of Durham. He and Naly had four sons and two daughters; he died at the age of 54 in 1699.
Alice lived out her years of impoverished widowhood at East Newton. She died aged nearly 80 in early 1707 and was buried beside her husband in Stonegrave Minster. She was survived by her daughters and left her manuscripts to Naly.
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| Stonegrave Minster |
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