children who survived him, and an ample provision to his widow. His eldest son and heir, William, who succeeded to the baronetcy, inherited the estate at Ruthin, and afterwards married the daughter of Sir Thomas Harris, Baronet, of Shrewsbury. Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William, married John Grene, of Enfield, clerk to the New River Company, and from her is lineally descended the Rev. Henry Thomas Ellacombe, M.A., rector of Clyst St. George, Devon, who still holds two shares in the New River Company, as trustee for the surviving descendants of Myddelton in his family. Sir Hugh left to his two other sons, Henry and Simon,2 besides what he had already given them, one share each in the New River Company (after the death of his wife) and 4007. a-piece. His five daughters seem to have been equally well provided for. Hester was left 900l., the remainder of her portion of 19007.; Jane having already had the same portion on her marriage to Dr. Chamberlain, of London. Elizabeth and Ann, like Henry and Simon, were left a share each in the New River Company and 500l. a-piece. He bequeathed to his wife, Lady Myddelton, the house at Bush Hill, Edmonton, and the furniture in it, for use during her life, with remainder to his youngest son Simon and his heirs. He also left her all the "chains, rings, jewels, pearls, bracelets, and necessary to point out that it can have no reference whatever to the subject of this memoir. 1 On the 24th June, 1632, Lady Myddelton memorialised the Common Council of London with reference to the loan of 3000l. advanced to Sir Hugh, which does not seem to have been repaid; and more than two years later, on the 10th Oct., 1634, we find the Corporation allowed 10007. of the amount, in consideration of the public benefit conferred on the city by Sir Hugh through the formation of the New River, and for the losses alleged to have been sustained by him through breaches in the water-pipes on the occasion of 66 divers great fires, as well as for the present comfort" of Lady Myddelton. It is to be inferred that the balance of the loan of 30007. was then repaid. Lady Myddelton died at Bush Hill on the 19th July, 1643, aged sixty-three, and was interred in the chancel of Edmonton Church, Middlesex. On her monumental tablet it is stated that she was "the mother of fifteen children.” 2 Simon's son Hugh was created a Baronet, of Hackney, Middlesex, in 1681. He married Dorothy, the daughter of Sir William Oglander, of Nunwell, Baronet. gold buttons, which she hath in her custody and useth to wear at festivals, and the deep silver basin, spout pot, maudlin cup, and small bowl;" as well as "the keeping and wearing of the great jewel given to him by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, and after her decease to such one of his sons as she may think most worthy to wear and enjoy it." By the same will Lady Myddelton was authorised to dispose of her interest in the Cardiganshire mines for her own benefit; and it afterwards appears, from documents in the State Paper Office, that Thomas Bushell, "the great chymist," as he was called, purchased it for 4007. cash down, and 4007. per annum during the continuance of her grant, which had still twenty-five years to run after her husband's death. Besides these bequeathments, and the gifts of land, money, and New River shares, which he had made to his other children during his lifetime, Sir Hugh left numerous other sums to relatives, friends, and clerks; for instance, to Richard Newell and Howell Jones 307. each, "to the end that the former may continue his care in the works in the Mines Royal, and the latter in the New River water-works," where they were then respectively employed. He also left an annuity of 201 to William Lewyn, who had been engaged in the New He 1 Bushell is said to have made a large fortune out of the mines after Sir Hugh Myddelton's death. was authorised under an indenture with Charles I., dated the 30th July, 1637, to erect a mint in the Castle of Aberystwith, where he coined the bullion drawn from the mines into half-crowns, shillings, sixpences, halfgroats, and halfpence. When the civil wars broke out, Bushell was not ungrateful to the King-presenting him with a loan, or rather gratuity, of 40,000l., and raising a regiment for the royal service amongst his miners, which he continued to maintain until a late period in the contest between the King and the Parliament. On the defeat of the former, he took re fuge in the Isle of Lundy. Numerous wild traditions are still related of Bushell by the country people in the neighbourhood of Lodge, where he resided. There is a curious old well in Lodge Park, known as "Bushell's Well," where he is said to have killed and thrown in his wife; and the people still believe that her headless corpse haunts the wood round the well. Fifty or sixty years after Sir Hugh Myddelton's time the mines were worked by Lewis Morris, the well-known Welsh antiquarian writer. Most of them are now abandoned. An advertisement of a new company to reopen those which had ceased to be worked recently appeared, but the design seems to have been abandoned. River undertaking from its commencement. Nor were his men and women servants neglected, for he bequeathed to each of them a gift of money, not forgetting "the boy in the kitchen," to whom he left forty shillings. He remembered also the poor of Henllan, near Denbigh, "the parish in which he was born," leaving to them 207.; a similar sum to the poor of Denbigh, which he had represented in several successive parliaments; and 57. to the parish of Amwell, in Hertfordshire. To the Goldsmiths' Company, of which he had so long been a member, he bequeathed a share in the New River Company, for the benefit of the more necessitous brethren of that guild, "especially to such as shall be of his name, kindred, and county." 1 Such was the life and such the end of Sir Hugh Myddelton, a man full of enterprise and resources, an energetic and untiring worker, a great conqueror of obstacles and difficulties, an honest and truly noble man, and one of the most distinguished benefactors the city of London has ever known. 1 Several of the descendants of Sir Hugh Myddelton, when reduced in circumstances, obtained assistance from this fund. It has been stated, and often repeated, that Lady Myddelton, after her husband's death, became a pensioner of the Goldsmiths' Company, receiving from them 201. a year. But this annuity was paid, not to the widow of the first Sir Hugh, but to the mother of the last Sir Hugh, more than a century later. The last who bore the title was an unworthy scion of this distinguished family. He could raise his mind no higher than the enjoyment of a rummer of ale; and towards the end of his life existed upon a pension granted him by the New River Company. The statements so often published (and which, on more than one occasion, have brought poor persons up to town from Wales to make inquiries) as to an annuity of 1007. said to have been left by Sir Hugh and unclaimed for a century, and of an advertisement calling upon his descendants to apply for the sum of 10,000l. alleged to be lying for them at the Bank of England, are altogether unfounded. No such annuity has been left, no such sum has accrued, and no such advertisement has appeared. |