CHAPTER IV

THE NOTTINGHAM COLCLOUGHS.

In Nottingham and the adjacent counties there are today about forty Colclough households but with their mobility and widely varying origins the tracing of their ancestry raises almost insuperable difficulties. A few of them may be descended from the twelfth and thirteenth century Lincolnshire Colcloughs; the majority are probably descendants of Bartholomew of Cheadle; there may even be amongst them 19th Century 'Colecluffs' from Stoke. A study of their genealogy has yet to be made.

The first Colclough recorded in Nottinghamshire was Thomas who in 1686 married Nora Green at Kirkby in Ashfield. Thirty-one years later another Thomas married Ruth Boot there. There is no record of the origins of these two Thomases but they may have been descendants of one Zouch Colclough whose grandfather, a younger son of the Cheadle family, had married the daughter of Lord Zouch of Harringwqorth in Northampton. Zouch settled in Kirklington, a couple of miles from Newark, which in later years was the home of some of the younger sons of the Beaconsfield family.

In 1719 William Colclough, from whom some of the later Nottingham family reluctantly trace their descent, was whipped through the streets of Kirkby in Ashfield at the tail of a cart for sheep-stealing. His son Christopher made a living as a common informer though not very successfully, for in 1759 for instance it was recorded that a couple of informations which he laid against Nottingham farmers for forestalling and regrating were dismissed. The next generation became cobblers, one going to London where he became a liveryman of the Cordwainers Company. Christopher's grandson, Moses, set up a pottery which seems to have been highly successful although the only product of it which which is known to have survived is a 'tea-poy' bearing his mark 'M.C.'and the date 1771. When Moses became a Burgess of Nottingham in 1786 his address was Beck Barn; by 1802 it had become Beck Court, he having meanwhile become an alderman.

Christopher's other grandson, Sampson Christopher, who was born in 1760 and died in February 1805, seems to have made a considerable fortune, though how is not recorded. In 1784 he married Anne, grand-daughter of Henry Gladwyn, Steward of the Duke of Portland's Welbeck estates, and hyphenated Gladwyn to his name. He was at various times Mayor of Nottingham and High Sheriff of the County and acquired a magnificent house, Beaconsfield, at Newark, which remained the home of his descendants for over a century. His wife Anne died in 1814 having had five sons and two (or possibly three) daughters. Their eldest son, John, having joined the navy served throughout the Napoleonic wars, but at the age of 37 was still only a lieutenant. He resigned his commission and joined the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry, being given command of the Newark Troop with the rank of captain. Not long afterwards he was promoted to the rank of major, but almost immediately he died; on his tombstone in Codrington graveyard, however, is carved 'CAPTAIN JOHN COLCLOUGH, R.N.'

With his rise in social status Sampson decided to adopt the Tintern Colcloughs as his ancestors and named his second son Caesar but with loyalty to the memory of his grandfather added Christopher as a second name as he did also with his fourth son Sampson. His other two sons were named Christopher and Gladwyn respectively. John was the only one to survive the Napoleonic wars. Christopher who had been a cornet in the Nottinghamshire Yeomanry was killed in 1805. Caesar, a captain in the 82nd foot and ADC to General Brent Spencer, C.B., was killed at the age of 25 in 1810, as also was his 18-year old brother Gladwyn who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the same regiment. Their youngest brother, Sampson Christopher, a midshipman serving in H.M.S. Melpomene had been killed in action off the coast of Norway in the previous year at the age of 18. With all their militia colonels and the rest and the dizzily high ranks attained by 'Sir' Vesey's bastards and their descendants no other branch of the family has ever made such a devastating contribution to national defence.

Of the daughters, Mary Anne married first of all at St. James, Clerkenwell, John Blenkarne by whom she had a daughter named Georgina, and secondly James Boucher of Epsom. She died at Logie House in Morayhshire in 1819. Her younger sister Catherine married the Rev. J. M. Peters. There is, though, a puzzling notice in the "Gentlemans Magazine" that in January 1810 Miss Colclough, daughter of the late Samson Colclough of Beaconsfield, Newark, married John Blakesome, Member of the Council of Port Tanam in Africa.

John who had married Anne, daughter of William Lee of Newark, had three daughters who died unmarried and a posthumous son John Gladwyn. Of John Gladwyn all that is known is that he had five sons and two daughters and that he spent most of his life and vast sums of money in pursuit of a completely unsupportable claim to the extinct earldom of Newburgh. Nearly half a century after John Glawdyn's death one of his grandsons also spent a great deal of time and money in the in the equally unsuccessful pursuit of that and of another extinct peerage. Of John Gladwyn's four sons and three daughters Herbert Wynyard acquired some fame as a classical scholar but the rest spent their lives in comfortably affluent nonentity in the suburbs of Nottingham.


Chapter V
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