Your friend to serve you SHADWELL.
Letter sent to Mrs Bancroft signed Shadwell.
| Returning to our tale, while Margaret Bancroft was still 'in hiding' - she was caught and jailed in 1648 - she obviously had contact with several of the participants in the process, directly or through intermediaries. Since Jeremy Aylett had a significant part to play in holding on to the Manor of Santon there would have been reason enough to discuss with Margaret how they would be able to resolve the law suit to their advantage. Certainly one intermediary between Bancroft and Aylett was active: around 1647 a letter was sent to Margaret, presumably living in London at the time, to agree a plan between Jeremy and Margaret. The text is illuminating. | |
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MRS BANCROFT; I came to towne upon your
letter and ( including my own quiet at Santon ) I have indeavoured to
serve you in your business and had brought it to a head as I
conceived. Mr Aylett much desiring a composition according to your
proposals sette down as that packet which I have sent you heere inclosed
and they going out of towne left your business to Mr Lyle to prosecute
according to their order which was to seal upon Wednesday or Thursday last
without fayle, and now it seems your ( time being expired ) there is
nothing done not withstanding many journeys and sollicitings made by your
plaintiffs part: which I desire you would take notice is very foule and
not according to what you professed or ( I conceive ) desire: and
therefore having spent much time and money in thus promoting this business
and bringing of it to this fayre possibility of order. I would desire you
not fayle to send me your mind suddenly and a perremptory answer what you
will do in it for I must speake indifferently if you and your solicitors
now do shuffle as their words are broken in the forming your seale I shall
utterly decline you and shall never more hand or foot in it knowing it to
be quite contrarie to Mr Ayletts desire. That this should not be for me I
so desiring you to let me hear from you. This night going out of towne on
Monday I shall remaine as you shall give me cause.
Your friend to serve you SHADWELL. |
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Letter sent to Mrs Bancroft signed Shadwell. |
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| Who was this Shadwell? Clearly he was an associate of Jeremy Aylett and a go-between with Margaret Bancroft. The letter also makes plain that he was living at Santon Manor, not far from Thetford in Norfolk. On the east side of Thetford there is a place called Brettenham and another called Shadwell, nearby. Between Brettenham and Shadwell is the River Thet which joins the Little Ouse River which for a mile or two provides the boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk, just where Santon Manor is to be found. Shadwell is right on top of a spring called St Chads Well although the Oxford dictionary of place names has the Shadwell in Norfolk meaning a boundary Stream. It seems to be quite likely that some people in the area took Shadwell as their family name and this may be the reason why a local man - going to London to speak with Mrs Bancroft - is called Shadwell. | |
| According to the information board at the Santon leisure area, we find that a Thomas Shadwell was born at Santon in 1642, but he would have been too young to be the letter writer. We suspect that the letter should be dated around 1644 and that the writer was Thomas's father who moved his family to Santon when Aylett made him a good offer to rent the manor so that it would be well looked after. Thomas Shadwell became the poet Laureate in 1688 after the 'glorious revolution' when Dryden's politics excluded him from the post. Shadwell was well regarded as a playright by his peers - apart from Dryden who satirised him as MacFlecknoe after they had fallen out and had taken to insulting each other. His work, humorous, coarse and bawdy, is hardly remembered now but was a great success in his day. Shadwell died after only four years as Laureate in 1692 - it is said of an overdose of laudanum. | |