I have resolutely avoided discussing that most famous of garden designers, Capability Brown. So many others far better qualified than me have written much. However, there is an interesting conundrum in which he figures.
What connects Yale University, Latimer House, the churches of Flaunden, Latimer and Chenies, the slave trade and Capability Brown?
In the early seventeenth century Lord James Cavendish, third son of William the first Duke of Devonshire, married Anne Yale (d.1734), whose father was Elihu Yale (1649-1721), an American of Welsh origin.
Elihu spent the first three years of his life in Boston, America but thereafter lived in Britain and India. As a young man of twenty three he was sent to work in Madras by the East India Company, there the English had a frontier trading post named Fort St George.
At that time Fort St George was rough and tough, small and rather miserable where heavy drinking and fighting were commonplace amongst the residents, the civilising influence of women non-existent and the Indian Ocean slave trade an immensely profitable business – larger even than the Atlantic slave trade.
The Indian Ocean trade in slaves linked S.E. Asia with the Middle East, the Indonesian archipelago and the African coastline. Yale bought hundreds of slaves and shipped them to St Helena. In one month alone in 1687 at least 665 slaves were exported from Fort St George.
Elihu rose up the ranks and became governor of Fort St George in 1687; he amassed an extremely large fortune from illegal profiteering, dealing in diamonds and of course the slave trade (he enforced the law whereby at least ten slaves had to be carried on every ship bound for Europe). However his underhand dealings were to prove too much even for those days and he was eventually relieved of his post as governor.
Upon his return to England as a very rich man he leased Latimer Manor for his estranged wife Catherine and unmarried daughter Ursula from his son-in-law Lord James Cavendish (Yale had by that time acquired two mistresses, one of whom was a diamond smuggler and several illegitimate children).
In 1718, three years short of his death, Yale was called upon to support a small American educational establishment then known as the Collegiate School of Connecticut. He responded by sending £800 worth of pictures and artefacts, a huge sum in those days. With the money from the sale of some of these the school was re-built and re-named in Elihu’s honour as Yale.
Elihu Yale (centre) with William Cavendish, the second Duke of Devonshire; Lord James Cavendish; Mr. Tunstal; and an Enslaved Servant. Image: Yale University
In 1751 Latimer Court as it was known then, was occupied by Elihu’s grand-daughter Elizabeth Cavendish and her husband Richard Chandler (he became Lord Cavendish by deed of parliament in 1751) and it was they who re-fronted the house and employed Capability Brown to re-design the pleasure gardens.
In the 1750s two lakes known as the Great Water and the Lower Water were formed by damming the River Chess, a cascade known as the Neptune cascade was created with an accompanying folly known as The Tower, the latter demolished in 1763. On the west side of The Grove was another folly, a cave, sadly also no longer extant.
Having gained permission from the Duke of Devonshire to cut some of the trees to the west of Chenies Church, the view of the Church was ‘procurred’ and incorporated into Brown’s design for the pleasure gardens of Latimer. A perimeter belt of trees were planted on the ridge behind the house, thus enclosing the bucolic scene and providing privacy from the public road running behind.
The Cavendishes would have enjoyed riding around their estate and looking upon the serpentine water, a little bridge, strategically placed trees either singly or in clumps, and the church of Chenies in the distance, the little village of Latimer nestling around.
This brings me to the connection between Capability Brown, Sir Gilbert Scott and slavery.
Capability Brown’s wife Bridget nee Wayet, was a direct relation of Sir Gilbert Scott who designed the church of St Mary Magdalen in Flaunden in 1838, describing it as ‘that poor barn designed for my uncle King’ who was rector of Latimer and Flaunden at that time.
Sir Gilbert Scott’s great grandfather was connected by marriage with one Edward Kelsall, vicar of Boston. His wife Mary was a Wayet and the sister of Bridget Brown, who in turn were related to Sir Gilbert Scott’s mother’s family.
His mother was a West Indian, daughter of Dr Lynch of Antigua, Scott’s grandfather. They were a family of rich West Indian planters, owners of the Gilberts Estate and involved with the slave trade.
In 1833 the Slavery Abolition Act was passed and compensation was paid to all who were either directly or indirectly deriving all or part of their fortunes from slavery. One fifth of Victorian society was involved. These were people who were not all of the aristocracy but covering the entire spectrum of society. The government paid out 40 per cent of the treasury’s annual spending equivalent to £16.5 billion in today’s money.
The Rev.Thomas Scott of Wappenham, Scott’s father, claimed for slave compensation on behalf of Elizabeth Gilbert Sir Gilbert’s great aunt.
Sir Gilbert Scott once described the beautiful Chiltern countryside as ‘of a little paradise, The hills, valley, river, trees, flowers, fruits, fossils, all seem encircled in a kind of imaginary halo’.
There are always two sides to the coin, the ugly and the beautiful.
Not one penny of compensation was paid to the slaves.
The Thinking Gardener 