Genealogy of the Prideaux Family of Dartmouth and Kingsbridge

Genealogy of the Prideaux Family of Dartmouth and Kingsbridge

Excerpted from: Prideaux - A Westcountry Clan, by R. M. Prideaux, Phillimore & Co., England. 1989. ISBN 0 85033 674 0

R. M. Prideaux’s monumental treatise on the entire history of every branch of the Prideaux family is an epic work of research in its field. The tiny portion of this research that pertains to the line of the family that inhabited Dartmouth in the 18th and early 19th Centuries does not give even a glimpse into the amazing breadth of this clan’s involvement in the history and development of England. Reading this classic genealogical study, I must admit that the television miniseries Blackadder came to mind, because lurking in the background behind more famous names at every important turn in English history since the early 1200s could be found at least one person of the name Prideaux or one of its many variants. R. M. Prideaux had probed through obscure archives in all parts of southern England, especially the southwest, to find evidence of this clan’s exploits and to flesh out, sometimes in remarkable detail, the lives of these historical figures.

Here is the book jacket summary, which gives a capsulated view of the Prideaux family history:

THE EARLIEST KNOWN Prideaux family appears near Fowey in Cornwall in the 12th century. This new, definitive study traces the clan's history to Richard Pridyas of Orcharton, Sheriff of Devon in the 1270s, and its survival through the Black Death and the Wars of the Roses to its profitable participation in the dissolution of the monasteries. By Elizabeth's reign it was connected by marriage with the Edgecumbes, the Aclands and a dozen other wealthy, landed families; and by the outbreak of the Civil War its more than thirty households included prominent royalists and parliamentarians. After 1690, the landowners, clergy, lawyers, sheriffs and members of parliament were increasingly outnumbered by the basket-makers, blacksmiths, carpenters, cordwainers, husbandmen, masons, miners, merchants, shopkeepers and sailors, as the family grew.

By the second half of the 19th century the fifty households existing in 1800 had more than doubled; some had emigrated to America, there to fight in another civil war: while others had gone to Australia with the Royal Navy or to India in military or judicial roles. By 1980 there were more descendants of the little Cornish tribe living overseas than in England - about twelve hundred out of a total of more than two thousand. A core of at least two hundred still live in the Westcountry; a remarkable example of continuous settlement over nearly nine centuries.

This comprehensive account of an expanding network of families with a common origin will be of interest to demographers as well as to family historians. It vividly illustrates the interaction of economic, religious and political factors in the course of a well-written family history for which no less than 20 tables of descent form a skeleton and a scaffolding. There are, in addition, some biographical studies of the more notable Prideaux personalities. All family histories are of interest to the family; a few, and this is certainly one such, have a much wider appeal. Many a reader who is neither a Prideaux nor Cornish will enjoy and be informed by the author's admirable account of his clan.

I fit in the latter category of readers, not being in any way related to the Prideaux clan. My interest in the Prideaux family was much narrower than this broad scope, however. I wanted to know what the author had learned about the family in Dartmouth and Kingsbridge that had played such a significant role in the business dealings of my immigrant ancestor Matthew Morry. His business partner for over thirty years at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th Century was Walter Prideaux, a barrister, solicitor and partner in several banking enterprises in the South Hams area, most notably Kingsbridge. Walter’s son of the same name, also a merchant banker, and his grandsons, Walter Were Prideaux and Robert Were Prideaux, again partners in banking and business, also figured in his business dealings and were all involved in claims and counter claims in court when the business partnership between Walter Prideaux senior and Matthew Morry began to fall apart. These men were almost all Quakers, as were a large proportion of the Prideaux line. The name “Quaker” conjures up ideas of strict rectitude in all things spiritual and earthly, but history has shown that this was never really the case, and so it was with the Prideaux family of Dartmouth and Kingsbridge. They were businessmen, and like all businessmen of their day, they employed guile and shrewdness to make their fortune. Matthew Morry was a simply seafaring man and was no match for these intellects.

Here is a synoptic family history of the Dartmouth and Kingsbridge line of the Prideaux family.

The line descends from Hugh Prideaux of Luson (one of the family’s ancestral homes in the South Hams region of Devon), who died on December 6, 1559. He was son and heir to Sybell of Luson who died 1523. We can skip from Hugh several generations through his son John, grandson Thomas, great grandson Arthur and great, great grandson John, all of Ermington, Devon (east of Plymouth) until we arrive at the first of a long line of men named Walter Prideaux. This first Walter was the son of the previously mentioned John of Ermington and thus was a 3rd great grandson of Hugh, whom I have chosen as the starting point of this abbreviated line located in the South Hams region.

The first man named Walter Prideaux was born in Ermington also, on October 19, 1676, but died in Dartmouth and was buried in St. Saviour church (south aisle) on January 24, 1759. Being buried beneath the floor of the church was, of course, a distinction reserved for men and women of prominence in the community. This man earned his prominence, at least initially, as a sea captain, reputedly involved in the East India trade. However, as R. M. Prideaux points out, there is no record of his name in the annals of the East India trade, and it was suspected, or at least hinted, that this was a convenient cover up for a less savoury but equally lucrative trade, that is the trade in slaves from Africa to the West Indies.

Here, in his own words, is how R. M. Prideaux characterizes his assessment of Walter:

Arthur [the first Walter Prideaux’s nephew], baptised 11 February 1708, was the only son to marry and have children. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Shillabeer of Harburton Ford, a parish adjoining Dartington and Totnes. The Luson men were not looking far afield for their wives as yet. The pedigree informs us that Arthur 'took the name and arms of Parnell by will of his maternal uncle, Nicholas Parnell of Lyons, buried at Ermington'. This may have been part of the marriage settlement dated 15 & 16 February 1731. However, the wife died in 1758 and her husband in 1764, and although they had seven, possibly eight, children only John married; his wife Mary died childless in 1812, and he died 22 November 1810 in his 70th year. The property was sold, for there were no near kin to inherit it. Thomas, a captain in the army, had drowned in the East Indies, Arthur died childless in 1765, and his sister Susannah died in January 1764 having married an Arthur Prideaux whom Engledue [Dr. Engledue Prideaux, the first to attempt to compile a comprehensive pedigree of the Luson Prideaux clan in 1889] could not identify.

With the extinction of the family which had for more than 300 years been seated at Luson it proved fortunate that Walter Prideaux, born barely 12 months after his brother Arthur, the grandfather of the last to bear that name in Ermington, was a man of energy and enterprise. The pedigree records him as 'Captain & East India Merchant', but his name does not occur in any of the East India Company registers. It may be no more than a flourish for a man who did much trading overseas, but one's first suspicion is that his main business was between the coast of Africa and the West Indies. A footnote to the Luson pedigree states that 'a book containing the Logs of his Voyages with his arms upon it, and the dates of his children's births, etc., and the memoranda of his grandfather Walter Jago, are in the possession of Annie Paull - Jan. 1 1889'. This original logbook has disappeared, but a copy was made by a Victorian antiquarian for Charles Prideaux-Brune in about 1855. There may have been other copies, and much interesting material from the log has been studied by Nigel Tattersfield and related to port books and other evidence of trading practice and patterns in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The result of these enquiries as they relate to Nicholas of Barbados was a source of illumination in Chapter 12. Here I am again indebted for some fascinating references to Walter of Dartmouth.

When named in his brother Arthur's will of 1728 as his sons' and daughters' guardian Walter is described as a maltster. This suggests that overseas trade was not his main preoccupation by the time he was 50. But as a young man he certainly seized the opportunity provided by his connection with his maternal grandparents, the Jagos and Dottins. By the time he was 21 Thomas Jago was Controller of Customs for the port of Dartmouth, and Walter's uncle George Dottin of Ley was one of the most industrious merchants in the period 1699-1701. Two years of peace made it possible to find skilled tradesmen recently discharged from the naval dockyards, and Roger Mathew, the second husband of his aunt Elizabeth Jago, was given the command of a trading vessel, the Daniel and Henry, whose owners had decided to venture some capital on the triangular trade. Walter was taken on as supercargo; as he was as industrious as his uncle the log contains an unusually complete breakdown of goods exchanged for slaves, loading invoices, prices of goods on the Guinea Coast inventories of dead sailors' possessions, and pages of memoranda that might be found useful on future expeditions. A ship has to be maintained in seaworthy condition for the year or two that it may be away from its home port, so there are many ship's stores to be inventoried in addition to victuals and cargo.

On the evidence of the Dartmouth port books Walter made only occasional voyages after his initiation under Roger Mathew. He went to Jersey with lime in 1701, to Newfoundland in 1710, San Sebastian in 1713, and to the Cape Verde Islands and Barbados in 1717-18. The Dottins were plantation owners and had been acquainted with Nicholas Prideaux. But in general westcountry merchants were not eager to engage in slaving. Vast numbers of slaves were transported in English ships in 1701, but none were carried in the 98 ships which left Exeter for overseas ports that year, if their recorded destinations can be accepted. There were Devon gentlemen engaged in this trade via Bristol and London, as we saw in the last chapter, but they were not small businessmen. The majority of traders in the South Hams probably found it more profitable and less risky to deal directly with the plantations in serge and other woollen goods. It was not a question of principle, not even for the Quakers until much later, and Walter did not join the Society of Friends. But he saw that the Daniel and Henry returned to Dartmouth with very little sugar, in spite of a stay in Jamaica from December 1700 to early June 1701. This venture was not a commercial success, and the vessel did not again try to associate slaving with serge and sugar.

Walter had four daughters and nine sons born to his wife between June 1707 and December 1724. He had married her on Boxing Day 1705 at Stoke Fleming, Dorothy daughter and coheir of William Ball of Dartmouth, merchant. She was buried at Dartmouth in 1768, but five other children died before they were one year old. This is less surprising when one sees how rapidly they followed each other. Humphry, the eighth child, in spite of the learned Dean of Norwich being his godfather, died 23 November 1724, 12 days before his birthday. Thomas the ninth and last boy, was born 4 December 1724 and died the following September. Dorothy, the last girl, was born 27 December 1726, and lived to marry William Cole of Kingsbridge. The fourth son, William, was born 29 October 1715, a year and six days after John who died in infancy, and survived to marry four wives in succession. His first, Susanna Vicary, had no children and was followed in 1745 by Ann Downing of Churchstow who died in December the following year. The third wife, Mary Davis, bore William seven children of whom two, William and Walter, both married; but Walter had no grandsons, while William was the founder of a large family by his second wife. Mary Davis came from Painswick in Gloucestershire and died in Penzance in 1775, being buried in Marazion. Her husband was described on the pedigree, like his father, as 'Capt. & East India Merchant of Dartmouth'. It is clear that he travelled around, for his fourth wife was Deborah the daughter of Joseph Morris of Ringwood in Hampshire; when he married her in his 60s she was the widow of Josiah Wilkey of Plymouth. We have no information about his career and no reason to doubt that he was a merchant involved in overseas trade.

Whereas their father Walter was buried at the age of 82 in the south aisle of St. Saviour's, the seamen's church at the edge of the harbour, both William and his eldest brother George were laid to rest in the Friends' burial ground at Kingsbridge. George was christened at St. Saviour's 6 June 1707, and at some point was moved to join the Society of Friends. In doing so this Kingsbridge solicitor took a momentous step for the large branch of the family which henceforth formed an important nucleus of the South Devon Quarterly Meeting. It will be convenient to return to this part of our story after we have traced the descent of William and Mary through their son named William and born 28 September 1754 at Dodbrooke, a parish on the outskirts of Kingsbridge.