All Saints, Hutton Rudby: who were the Cary family?

A short account of the Cary family, for visitors to All Saints' Church, Hutton Rudby who see the memorials on the chancel walls and wonder who these people were.  It includes new material, not before seen!

Sir Arthur Ingram (c1565-1642)

A few years before the outbreak of the Civil War in England, a wealthy man with a shady reputation bought the manor and lands of Rudby.  His name was Sir Arthur Ingram (c1565-1642).  A hundred years after his death, Rudby passed to his descendant Isabella Ingram and her husband George Cary.  For over 150 years, the Cary family owned both Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  They remembered their dead in memorial tablets lining the walls of the chancel of All Saints, Hutton Rudby – but only three of them were buried in the churchyard.

After Mrs Isabella Cary inherited Rudby from her father in 1742, her husband George bought the neighbouring lands and manor of Skutterskelfe.  They didn't make their home close by the river in Rudby Hall opposite the church, but chose to live on the high ground of Skutterskelfe, with views across to the hills.  They called their house Leven Grove.

Soldier
43rd Regt of Foot 

General George Cary was an army officer who served under King George II and King George III.  He became a general in the 64th Regiment of Foot and then, when he was in his fifties, was given the honour of being appointed colonel of the 43rd Regiment either because he had served his king so well or because of his status in society – he was the brother of the 7th Viscount Falkland. 

George died aged 81 in 1792 at the George Inn, the ancient posting inn in Coney Street, York.  The York branch of Next stands on the site today.  He was buried at Hutton Rudby.

The old George Inn in York
reproduced with kind permission
of the family of Joseph Appleyard 

Mrs Isabella Cary died peacefully at Leven Grove and was buried with her husband on 17 April 1799.  

She was 81 years old.  She had lived through eventful times.  She had seen the  reigns of three kings – all called George – the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the early years of Britain's long wars against Revolutionary France and Napoleon Bonaparte.  

When she was a little girl of eight or nine, living with her parents Arthur and Ann Ingram at Barrowby Hall near Leeds, she had kept a pet squirrel called Bun.  He was a great favourite and so, when he died, he was buried in the garden of the Hall and the spot was marked with a gravestone.  The inscription read

The sun that sets

the next morning gets,

But Bunne gone for ever.

The flowers that die

next Spring we espy,

But Bunne we shall never.

The estates of Rudby and Skutterskelfe passed to Isabella's 22 year old grandson.  He was the son of her daughter Catherine, who had married a baronet called Sir John Russell in Hutton Rudby church in 1774.  Sir John's mansion house was Chequers in Buckinghamshire – which is often in the news today because since 1921 it has been the Prime Minister's country home.  

Chequers today (by Cnbrb)

Catherine died young and Sir John died three years later, leaving their two little boys, John and George, to be brought up by relatives.  Then John died at Chequers in 1802 aged 25 after a long illness and George died two years later of tuberculosis in Dorant's Hotel in London, aged 22.

Their mother's sister Elizabeth now inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  When she was 27 years old, she had been married to a 50 year old widower, Jeffery Amherst.  He was famous for his part in the Seven Years' War against France and had been commander in chief of the British forces in North America.  He built himself a large mansion house near Sevenoaks in Kent, where he had been born, and he called it Montreal Park after his most celebrated victory, the capture of Montreal in 1760.  A few years after his marriage to Elizabeth he was given a peerage, becoming Lord Amherst.  But today he is remembered for thinking it a good idea to try to infect the Native American tribes that were opposing the British with a fatal illness, the dreaded smallpox.

Lady Amherst in 1767

Lady Amherst had no children of her own but she was a mother to three – her husband's orphaned nephew and niece, William and Elizabeth Amherst, and a baby girl who was given the name Fanny Williams.  Fanny was the subject of fascinated gossip because nobody knew who her parents were.  People said she was left in a basket on Lady Amherst's doorstep, with a banknote and a letter written by an anonymous lady who appealed to Lady Amherst's great kindness to bring up her baby.  They thought Fanny must be the secret child of a high-born lady and her noble lover.  

Lady Amherst had a kindness for another girl – her cousin's granddaughter Emma Cary.  Emma is praised and her parents are remembered on a memorial tablet which Lady Amherst had placed in Hutton Rudby church after Emma's death in 1827.

Emma was the daughter of a Naval officer, Charles John Cary, 9th Viscount Falkland and his wife Christiana Anton.  Emma was born in 1805, a few months before Admiral Nelson's stunning victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar.  When she was 3 years old, her father was court-martialled and dismissed from the command of his ship because of "drunkenness and unofficer-like behaviour".  His career was beginning to recover when he fell into a violent quarrel with an acquaintance.  Both men had been drinking.  It led to a duel at 11 o'clock on a February morning in 1809 at Chalk Farm on the edge of London, and Lord Falkland was fatally wounded.  He died a few days later, leaving his young widow with little money and four small children – three boys and Emma.  

The poet Lord Byron was a good friend of Lord Falkland.  He wrote, "He was a gallant and successful officer; his faults were the faults of a sailor, and as such Britons will forgive them" and he did his best to help the family.  Unfortunately, Lady Falkland became quite obsessed with him, believing – as did other women who read his poetry – that she was the woman he adored.  The poor lady finally died in 1822 when Emma was 17.  Lady Amherst felt a good deal of responsibility for Emma and her brothers, as the eldest of them was her heir.  She bought him a commission in the Army and provided for them all, but Emma died at the age of 21 after four days of painful illness.  

Lady Amherst had a London townhouse in Mayfair, but her country house at Skutterskelfe and her estates in Cleveland were very dear to her.  She cherished her gardens and valued her gardener Arthur Douglas highly.  He worked for her and her family for over fifty years.  She liked her tenants to know their place – she will have expected a great deal of deference – but she made sure that her cottages were rented out with a plot of land attached to each.  It made a great difference to poor villagers if they could grow food and keep an animal or two.

Lady Amherst died at the age of 92 on 22 May 1830.  She had asked to be buried at Hutton Rudby but – we don't know why – she was buried instead in Kent with her husband.  Rudby and Skutterskelfe had belonged to a very old lady.  Now they would belong to a young man, the 26 year old Lucius Bentinck Cary, 10th Viscount Falkland.

Amelia Fitzclarence

A few months after Lady Amherst's death, Lucius married Amelia Fitzclarence in the Brighton Pavilion.  Her father was King William IV, who had come to the throne that year after the death of his brother George IV.  But Amelia was not a princess – her parents weren't married.  Her mother was the famous and much-loved actress Dora Jordan.  Actors were not socially acceptable and Dora had led a colourful life – she was not a suitable royal bride.

Soon after the wedding, Lord Falkland came north to mortgage his new estates and arrange for the old house at Skutterskelfe to be demolished and a new hall built.  This is the hall – now called Rudby Hall – that we see today.  In 1840, Lucius was appointed governor of Nova Scotia.  His three years in Canada were not successful, although he certainly looked the part of the representative of Queen Victoria – he had been described as intemperate and unforgiving, "a tall, distinguished-looking man with a stately bearing and a severe, disdainful countenance which mirrored his aristocratic conceit and sensitive self-esteem".  After Canada, he was appointed governor of Bombay and he and Amelia went out to India.

Amelia wrote a lively account of her travels in the East.  In 1858, the year after her book came out, she died in London at the age of 55 after a short illness. 

She had particularly wished to be buried in the churchyard in Hutton Rudby.  Her body was brought north by special train and on 10 July 1858 she was buried in the Falkland vault on the south side of the churchyard.  A great many people came to the funeral and many were in tears as the vicar Mr Barlow spoke of her generosity to those in need and her readiness to speak to everybody  – "no one was too lowly for her to address, no one was too much despised by the world for her to stoop to and think of."  She left one child, a son called Lucius.

Lord Falkland died in the south of France in 1884 aged 80.  He and his second wife had no children, and his son Lucius had died childless, so it was his younger brother who came into the title and inherited Rudby and Skutterskelfe.  

By this time, Plantagenet Pierrepont Cary, 11th Viscount Falkland was already an old man.  He had served in the Navy from the age of 14, and became an Admiral at the age of 64 through promotions on the retired list after many years on half-pay.  But he had married a very wealthy woman, so he had no need of money.  He died childless in 1886 at the age of 80. 

His nephew Byron Plantagenet Cary became 12th Viscount Falkland.  He had served 20 years in the Army, retiring in 1883 with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.  In 1879 he had married a petite and energetic American heiress, Mary Reade, and for a few years in the 1890s he and his young family lived at Skutterskelfe Hall.  During that time they were generous and active in village life.  They set up a cottage hospital in Enterpen, Lord Falkland was a churchwarden and Lady Falkland was involved in all the village charities.  

But there is no memorial to either of them in the church because they were the last of the Cary family to live here.  Lord Falkland had to sell his northern estates in about 1895 because of financial difficulties caused by the business failure of his father-in-law Robert Reade.  Rudby and Skutterskelfe were bought by Sir Robert Ropner, whose family owned them for the next 50 years.

The sketch of the Old George Inn in York is reproduced with kind permission 

of the family of Joseph Appleyard