Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/561

 10 s. vm. DEC. 14, 1907.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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" Lying midway between Hamstead and Sand- well, those two outlying collieries which almost link-up the Black Country with Birmingham, the farm is beginning to wear the smoke-blighted appearance characteristic of the locality ; and some ot its land is threatened with appropriation by the Handsworth Council for the purpose of a cemetery."

Mr. Hackwood says that " there seems to be no date, initial, or other inscription on the building." Mr. Duignan, who also was good enough to visit the Manwoods, says that there is nothing of interest about it except the gateway and the horseblock : he thinks the date of the house would be about 1680, the year I suggested to him. I wrote to Lord Dartmouth, who made some in- quiries, and found that the Manwoods estate was part of a purchase made by his ancestor about the middle of the eighteenth century ; but he could trace nothing to throw light on its early history or on Henry Ford. Lord Dartmouth, however, has kindly promised to let me know if he does discover anything. It is, of course, quite possible that Dr. John- son himself may have visited his relatives at the Manwoods, which is only about four miles from Birmingham, where he had uncles and often stayed.

Mr. Bickley called my attention to a suit in 1690 (41st Report on Public Re- cords, p. 21 : Depositions by Commission), in which Henry Ford was plaintiff, and Eleanor Grevis, widow, and Benjamin Grevis, defendants. It appears, however, that the depositions relate only to the affairs of Grevis, and show, as regards Henry Ford, merely that he acted as attorney for Richard Grevis, late of Moseley Hall, King's Norton, Esq., some fifteen years before, in a suit in the Chancery Court between the said Richard and Ann Grevis, plaintiffs, and one George Hill (or Hall), in reference to lands at Yardley.

In my pedigree of the Fords I showed that one of Henry Ford's grandsons, Robert Abnet a second cousin of Dr. Johnson's was an apothecary at Stafford, and that he died intestate in 1733, leaving a widow, Elizabeth. Joseph Wight, of Arley, War- wicks., clerk, and Ann Wight, of Arley, spinster, were sureties to the administration bond. Mr. Bickley has made it quite clear that Robert Abnet's wife, Elizabeth, was a sister of the Rev. Joseph Wight, and a daughter of the Rev. William Wight, also of Arley, who married Ursula, daughter of Sir Francis Wolryche, second bart., by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Walter Wrottes- ley, first bart. The Rev. William Wight had a younger son, another Rev. William

Wight, and in the papers of William Priest,, the attorney, in Mr. Bickley's possession, William and Joseph Wight are mentioned as brothers of Mrs. Abnet. One of the- Priest documents shows that William and Joseph Wight had another sister, Ursula, who married John Watkins ; and alludes to their parents, William and Ursula Wight,, and their aunt, Margaret Wolryche. Mrs. Robert Abnet's aunt, Mary Wolryche, married the Hon. John Grey, of Enville Hall, Salop, third son of Henry, first Earl of Stamford, and had an only daughter, Mary Grey, who married William Ward, M.P. for Staffs, becoming mother of John, first Vis- count Dudley and Ward. The Hon. John Grey married, as his second wife, Catherine, eldest daughter of Edward, second Baron Ward, and had a son, Harry Grey, who suc- ceeded as third Earl of Stamford ; so that the relationship between the Greys and the Wards is rather confusing. Some of the Priest papers, dealing with the affairs of the Wights, refer to " Mr. Ward," the future Viscount Ward; and a note by Priest himself refers to his mother, Mary Ward, widow, as " the only daughter of Mary, who was one of the sisters of the said Margaret Wol- ryche."

In Nichols's 'Literary Illustrations of the Eighteenth Century' (vol. V. p. 163), I find a letter, dated July, 1738, from Thomas Carte to Corbet Kynaston, in which he says :

" This last set went away in October to London, and then a grave widow gentlewoman (the daughter of a Warwickshire clergyman, Mr. Wight, of Arley, who married a sister of Sir J. Woolrich of your county), being in distress, came and staid there* till now."

The "grave widow gentlewoman" must have been Mrs. Abnet, the widow of Johnson's second cousin, who, I showed, was alive in 1743, or her sister. Corbet Kynas- ton, who was M.P. for Shrewsbury in 1714 and 1724, died in 1740, and left his large estates in Shropshire to his kinsman Andrew Corbet, the young gentleman of Pembroke College who is supposed to have helped, or promised to help, Johnson at Oxford,, and who is also named as one of the- Doctor's schoolfellows.

ALEYN LYEI/L READE.

Park Corner, Blundellsands, near Liverpool. (To be continued.)

It is not impossible that the Johnsons from whom the Doctor was descended came originally from Yorkshire. A Mr.


 * Tarriers, near Wycombe.