Mary Blount, nee Canning, of Cheltenham and her Family

by Philippa Hunter (Copyright)

Mary Blount nee Canning

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Mary Canning was born on 27 March 1754 at Foxcoat or Foxcote, as it later became, on the

borders of Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. Her father was Francis Canning and her mother

Mary Petre. The Cannings had lived at Foxcote for many generations and there are some very

informative memorials in the nearby Illmington parish church. Francis was a descendant of

the Pakingtons of Harvington Hall in Worcestershire, and his wife was a member of the Petre

family from Ingatestone Hall in Essex. The Petres still live there, but the last of the Foxcote

Cannings, Edward, died in 1857 and he is buried at St James’ Catholic Church in Reading. He

was the son of Mary’s younger brother, Thomas.

Joseph Canning

It is believed that Mary Canning was the third child and she married Joseph Blount, the second

son of Michael Blount and Mary Eugenia Strickland of Mapledurham, on 19 February 1776, in

the chapel of the Immaculate Conception attached to Foxcote House. Joseph was born at

Mapledurham, near Reading, on 15th July 1752 and studied Philosophy at Douai College in

France, defending his thesis of 1770 before returning to England. He then became the protege

of Charles Woolfe, a lawyer, of Hasley Court, Oxfordshire. Joseph Blount was also the brother

of Mary Canning’s sister-in-law, Mary Eugenia Blount, the wife of her younger brother,

Thomas Canning.

Thomas Canning (1755-1825)

Mary Eugenia Blount (Later Stonor and then Canning)

Mary Canning’s elder brother, also called Francis, married Catherine Gifford of Chillington.

More will be said about these two brothers later.

Sister Anne-Marie Canning

Mary and Thomas Canning’s sister, Anne, was a nun, and later superioress, of the Convent

“Dames Anglaises” in Rue des Fosses, St Victor, Paris, or, as some books say, Fosse’ St Victor.

The order later became known as English Augustine, but now they are referred to as the

Canonesses Regular of St Augustine. It was the only ‘English’ convent in Paris to survive the

French Revolution as all the other communities were sent back to England.

We do not know (at the moment) where Joseph and Mary Blount first lived, but it is possible

that it was at Mapledurham or Chalgrove (both in Oxfordshire). Their first child, Mary, was

born in late 1776, but she was to die in Paris in 1791. She was a pupil at the convent in the

Fosse St Victor. This Convent school for girls was as well known amongst English Catholics as

Douai was for boys. The second child, Elizabeth, was born at How Hatch, Essex, on 30 April

1778. She later married Ralph Riddell of Felton Park, Northumberland, on 23 April 1801 at

Richmond, Surrey.

The family then moved to Britwell House, near Watlington. This house had been rebuilt by Sir

Edward Simeon of Stone, Staffordshire and he “came to settle at the same on 23 October

1729.”[1] Towards the end of his life he began to build the exterior chapel and the old register

says-

“The new oval chapel was begun on the 30th March 1767. The whole plan both within and

without was contrived by Sir E. Simeon himself, and would have been completely finished this

year, 1767, had it pleased God to have prolonged his life. What he lived to see finished of the

same falls little short of the whole cost not less than a thousand pounds sterling.” (£50,000 in

today’s money)

Britwell House

Sir Edward died on 23 December 1768 and left the estate to his nephew, Thomas Weld, who

added Simeon to his name. He, in turn, left the estate to his nephew, Thomas Simeon Weld,

who lived in the house with his family until 1775, when he succeeded to the Lulworth estate.

At this time Joseph Blount took on the tenancy and the next three children were born there

and christened in the chapel. Joseph was born on 18 June 1779, Frances on 20 June 1780 and

Michael Joseph on 30 March 1783. The twins, Anne and Martha, were born 2 March 1785

but they died within the month. It is possible the family was still residing at Britwell.

The Blounts then moved to France so that the children, especially the boys, could have a

Catholic education. Mary’s husband, Joseph Blount, died at St Cyr near Lyons on New Year’s

Day 1793 and he is buried at the foot of the altar in the church. After his death the two boys,

Michael and Joseph, were entrusted to a reliable tutor and Mary Canning Blount took up

residence in the Convent of the Dames Anglaises where she placed her two daughters. This

was where her sister Anne Marie Canning was a member of the community. During the

progress of the Revolution, this convent was seized, and turned into a prison and terrible

cruelties took place there; Mrs Blount and her daughters found themselves prisoners. The

Duchesses de Biron, her special friend, was cruelly torn from her arms and massacred without

mercy in the precincts of the prison. A great friend of the Papal Envoy, named Blamchet, was

also imprisoned there and she was able to give him, after her release, three hundred francs

which she had earned by washing the linen of the lady prisoners. She was, he writes,

“very skillful, and preferred to work rather than to be supported by the nobles as the patriots

ordered. But she owned to me that she was not at all satisfied with most of these ladies. So

she charged them very highly, and, as she could wash and iron extremely well, the ladies, who

kept their coquetry even in prison, would have no one else for their laundress.”

As soon as the English lady and her four children regained their liberty, they returned home,

accompanied by some Benedictine nuns. This journey home could well have been on board

‘The Providence’ which docked in London on 6 July 1794. This is the ship that was carrying the

nuns who had travelled from Brussels, via Antwerp and Rotterdam, to England. ‘France had

given them shelter when persecution raged in England; it was England’s duty now to return

the compliment, when the devil was let loose in France.’[2]

This community, the English speaking sisters of the Convent of the Glorious Assumption,

settled in Winchester at Fleshmonger Street, now St Peter’s Street, in a house fitted out by

Dr Milner (later to become Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District) and now the site of the

Royal Hotel and these nuns were to play an important role later for one of Mary’s

grandchildren.

Elizabeth Blount was the first of the children to wed. She married Ralph Riddell of Felton Park

and Swinburne Castle, Northumberland, on 3rd July 1801 at St Mary’s Church, Richmond, in

Surrey. After becoming a widow in 1833, she moved to Leamington. She was a major

benefactress of Bishop Ullathorne’s cathedral. Elizabeth died at 7 Euston Place, Leamington

Priors (Spa), in 1849 and she was buried at Kemerton in Gloucestershire. In her will of 1848

she left £100 to her son, Thomas, towards building a Catholic Church at Felton. This was

designed by her nephew, Gilbert Blount, and work began in 1855.

Joseph Blount of Hurstbourne Tarrant

Joseph Blount married Jane Satterthwaite, from Westmorland, in 1807 but she died six

months later. He later married Anne Martin (in 1816), the only child of Richard Martin of

Hurstbourne Tarrant in Hampshire. They had a daughter, Frances Mary (in 1819), who was

left motherless (in 1820); her mother being only twenty-four-years-old when she died.

Frances was placed with the Benedictine nuns in Winchester, the same ones that had

accompanied her grandmother and father on their return from France. Joseph, like his

brother and sisters, had been educated in Paris, and he saw some of the horrors of the French

Revolution and the excesses of the revolutionaries. However, this did not close his eyes to the

root causes of the Revolution and, when he returned to England a confirmed radical, he

became known as the poor man’s friend. When he died, in 1863, he requested to be buried

in the middle of the road, so that all the carriages and carts could drive over him, but this was

not allowed, so he was buried with his wife Anne and his father-in-law, and a large flat top

stone was placed so that all the children could play marbles on top of him! It is still there.

Tablet 18th April 1863

HURSTBOURNE TARRANT

We have this week to record the death of Joseph Blount, Esq., of this place, which event took

place on the 1st of April, in the 84th year of his age, and we feel it a duty, as well as an act of

justice towards a man of sterling honesty, not to suffer his name to pass away without a few

remarks; although in his love of acts rather than words’ he was one of the last who would have

wished his good deeds made known to the world. In referring to the ancestry of the deceased,

we have only to mention the word Blount to call up a host of associations connected with the

great family of that name, originally sprung from the Counts of Guises, which took such a

prominent part in the past events of our country, from the Norman conquest almost to the

present day. To this loyal and sturdy race, we were going to say, he claimed kindred–but he

cared nothing for such distinctions— through that branch of the family now living at

Mapledurham in Oxfordshire. The early part of Mr. Blount’s life was somewhat eventful ‘ • for

being sent to Paris for his education, about the time of the bloody revolution of the Jacobins

in 1793 he was, in common with other Englishmen, detained as a prisoner. Among other

associations worthy of mention, his intimacy with the late Mr. Cobbett should not be omitted,

who spent much of his time at Hurstbourne Tarrant, of which mention is frequently made in

the “Rural Rides,” and many of whose registers and other pamphlets were penned in Mr.

Blount’s snug library, looking out on the old rookery, and rendered more snug from the

warming it received, from the logs which burnt cheerfully in the stove so well known as bearing

the inventor’s name. There was a similarity of thought and feeling which necessarily united

these men; in both the mind was energetic and the temperament strong; and they resembled

each other in their hatred of everything mean and cowardly, as well as in their unflinching love

of liberty and justice. Mr. Blount was essentially a poor man’s friend; he did more than pity,

he relieved them. It was no uncommon thing twenty years ago to see groups of poor Irish, or

distressed artisans, eating pickled pork and potatoes in front of Mr. Blount’s residence; the

pewter plates arranged in a row on the wall by the road side, which became so well-known as

to receive the name of the “wayfarer’s table.” So proverbial was this charity, that a poor tired

fellow wanting a dinner once asked, ”Is this what is called the victualling office?” For Mr.

Blount’s kindness in this way to the broken down paper-makers who at one time frequented

the road in search of employment, he was offered a gold snuff box by a firm in London; but

which he refused with the words that “he wanted no return of that sort.” Whatever might

have been his virtues or his failings, he was a type of Englishman we should not be willing to

lose; so let us look back on that venerable form, with regret that an honest man. has gone

from among us. — Andover Advertiser.

Grave of Joseph and Anne Blount

Little Frances Blount, Joseph’s daughter, was next taken to Cheltenham under the wing of her

grandmother, Mary Blount, and maiden aunt, Frances. Mary Blount did not stay long in

Cheltenham. Her experiences of the reign of terror did not destroy her love for Paris and she

could not resist its fascination, so, when the storm ceased, she returned to France. However,

with the outbreak of riots in 1830 she quickly returned to England again. Her family and

friends objected to her running any more risks so she settled back at Cheltenham at No 3

Somerset Place; No 1 being the home of the Catholic priest. Both of these properties were

later demolished to make way for the present St Gregory’s Church tower and the new Priory.

No 3 Somerset Place remained Mary’s home and she lived there, with her spinster daughter

and grandchild, until her death on 29th December 1843.

Gravestone of Mary Blount, nee Canning, at Kemerton (2013)

Frances (Fanny) Blount

Reverse of Portrait

Frances (Fanny), Mary’s daughter, then moved to Leamington to be with her widowed

sister, Elizabeth. After Elizabeth’s death she moved to 5, Arlington Place, Clifton, where she

died on 1st October 1861. She was buried next to her mother and sister at Kemerton.

Mary’s grand daughter, Frances, who had been brought up in Cheltenham, married John

Morrogh on 18 March 1841 at the Catholic Chapel in Cheltenham,- “an English Catholic lady

and an Irish landlord came together..“

John Morrogh’s grandmother, Mrs John Bernard, lived at 4 Clarence Parade, Cheltenham, and

he spent some of the school holidays with her, the rest was spent back at Glanmire, Ireland.

He was educated at Prior Park, Bath. Soon after his marriage he inherited the Bernard estate

so added Bernard to his name. Their first child, Agnes Mary, was born in Cheltenham and

baptised at St. Gregory’s Church:

“Agnes Mary Morrogh, daughter of John Morrogh and Frances Morrogh, formally Blount,

lawfully married, born 24th February 1842, was baptised at the said church by W.A. O’Meara,

Ex Prov. O.S.F, the 2nd day of March,1842. Charles Riddell and Mary Morrogh being

godparents” 3.

The family had moved to Ireland by the time that Agnes was four and the famine of “Black

’47” overshadowed her early years and influenced her decision to become an Irish Sister of

Charity in 1863. She was a teacher in Dublin but was moved to Foxford Co Mayo, in 1891.

Here she started the Providence Woollen Mills so as to help relieve the high unemployment

in the area. She died in Foxford on the 21st April 1932.

There is a biography of Mother Margaret Arsenius (Agnes Morrogh Bernard), of 1936, which

contains the following family details:

‘In 1851 Agnes accompanied her mother on a visit to their relatives in England. The journey

was made from Cork to Bristol on a cargo boat (The Sabrina) filled with cattle and pigs. The

novelty of the trip did not succeed in overcoming the nausea of sea-sickness, accentuated as

it was by the foulness of the odours from beneath the hatches. Her painful experiences were

temporarily forgotten in the rush and bustle of London, Mother and daughter were welcomed

by their kinsman Michael Blount, who lived with his family at 1. Montague Place, Montague

Square. The old church known as Spanish Place was within easy distance, and nearer still was

the French chapel where they usually assisted at Mass. It was a quaint old building hidden

away in mews, where, now and then, you might have difficulty in avoiding unwelcome contact

with horses, as they were groomed in the early morning.

It belonged originally to the French Embassy. Your neighbour in a pew would probably be a

member of the old Noblesse or an emigre, who was glad to escape from his native country

alive. Agnes had her attention called to a quiet old lady constantly to be seen there, the famous

Madame Toussaud, originator of the Wax works. The new St. James’s church did not leave a

trace of the historic French chapel.

During their visit to London they were presented to the Catholic Archbishop. It was a red-letter

day in their lives. At a Consistory held on the 30th September in the year previous to their visit

to London, Nicholas Wiseman was named a Cardinal Priest…

…After a month spent in Hurstbourne Tarrant with the grand old philanthropist, Joseph Blount

(her grandfather), the friend of tramps and of waifs, Agnes returned home.’

Michael Joseph Blount, Mary’s second son, married Catherine Wright on 26 February 1816.

The Wrights were bankers but their bank collapsed during the 1830’s. Their second son was

Gilbert Robert Blount, an architect. He was educated at Downside with his brother Alfred He

began his professional life as a civil engineer with Isambard Kingdom Brunel but after a few

years changed to architecture. While serving his apprenticeship with Anthony Salvin he

worked on buildings at Woodchester and Hartpury, both in Gloucestershire. He designed

cottages and house alterations for many of the Catholic gentry, as well as some of the

Cambridge colleges. His major work in Gloucestershire was St Peter’s Church in Gloucester

which was started in 1858 and finished 1868. When his grandmother, Mary Blount, died in

1845, she was the first person to be buried at St Benet’s, Kemerton, Gilbert designed her

tombstone. Mary’s daughters Elizabeth (d 1849) and Frances (d 1861) were also buried at

Kemerton. The tombstones are still there, but sadly only the headstones are in the original

places.

Returning to Mary (1754-1845), her eldest brother, Francis Canning spent much of his time in

France but died at Foxcote in 1806, aged 63 years, and he is buried at Ilmington with wife who

died eight years earlier. They had three sons. The eldest, also Francis (born in 1772), married

Jane Huddleston from Sawston Hall in Cambridgeshire, inherited Foxcote in 1806, but died

without issue in 1831.

Foxcote

Foxcote then passed to his brother Robert (1773-1843)

See ‘Robert Canning of Hartpury’: https://wp.me/p4BX9P-3jZ

Mary’s younger brother, Thomas Canning (1755-1825), a lawyer, married Mary Eugenia

Blount. He was her second husband as her first husband, Charles Stonor (1737-1781), had

died. They had six children and, after spending nine years at Stonor, moved to Bath. They

were there when the Catholic Chapel was burnt down during the Gordon Riots of 1780. Their

youngest son, Henry, who was six at the time, wrote in later life-

“I can remember how in the dead of night I was obliged to get up hastily and was led by my

father to York House, where we all passed the remainder of the night, and early the next

morning we set off for Stonor, leaving the Catholic Chapel in flames.”

Not only were the archives of the Western District destroyed, but also the books and

manuscripts of the Vicar Apostolic, the Benedictine, Bishop Walmesley.[4]. Charles Stonor died

during the following year in Gravelines, Normandy, and so Mary Eugenia married Thomas

Canning two years later. There was very little legal work open to Catholics and Thomas was

soon heavily in debt in spite of his wife being able to claim all the furniture and pictures from

Stonor and selling them! She has been described as ‘a hard and selfish woman’ and Charles

Stonor had left no will. The Cannings moved from house to house, the favourite place being

Bath. They had two sons Thomas and Edward Canning. In 1832 this Edward Joseph Canning

(1788-1857) married Louisa Georgiana Catherine Spencer (1792-1834), the grand daughter of

John, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, at the British Embassy Chapel in Paris. Edward, being the last

of the male Cannings of Foxcote, was buried at St James’ Catholic church at Reading almost

beside his cousins, Michael Joseph Blount and Gilbert, the architect.

Mary’s portrait depicts a rather formidable and determined character, we now know why.

Bibliography [1]Oxfordshire Post-Reformation Catholic Missions from 1603-1905 by Mrs Bryan

Stapleton (1906) [2]Mother M. Arsenius of Foxford by Rev Denis Gildea, B.D.(1936) [3] Mother M. Arsenius of Foxford by Rev Denis Gildea, B.D. (1936) [4]Stonor by Robert Stonor O.S.B. (1948)