The Remarkable Lushington Family. David Taylor

had a variety of spellings and only developed its present form in the seventeenth century. One of the earliest recorded members of the family was Thomas Lustenton of Standen, Kent who, in 1495, left instructions in his will that he should be buried in the churchyard of Hawkinge, near Folkestone.³

      The Lushingtons were typical of the families that rose by their own enterprise from humble origins to form the growing middle classes of the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century, their social standing had risen indeed and several members of the family became Members of Parliament. Equally as important were the family’s developing links with the East India Company. For a profession, the family usually chose the law or the church. One who chose the latter was Thomas Lushington a controversial seventeenth-century author and theologian of whom it was said he was as “Audacious in the pulpit and unconventional out of it.”⁴ Thomas was accused of being a Socinian—an unorthodox form of nontrinitarianism that was developed around the same time as the Protestant Reformation. The Socinians believed that Jesus was merely human and held a rationalistic approach to Scripture and to faith. Socinianism has many similarities with Unitarian theology that holds that Christ is subordinate to God the father, and “far from being a substitute for the sins of humanity, [he is] the bringer of good news and forgiveness, the exemplar of God’s love for mankind.”⁵ Such a view was similar to that held by Vernon Lushington, two hundred years later after he adopted Auguste Comte’s Religion of Humanity.

      Stephen Lushington was descended from another Stephen Lushington (1675–1718) of Rodmersham, near Sittingbourne, and Norton Court, near Faversham, both in the county of Kent. That Stephen was the son of Thomas Lushington (1628–1688), who was the heir of Thomas the theologian. Stephen of Rodmersham married twice and founded the two lines that produced most, if not all, the Lushingtons of any note. From his first marriage to Catherine Godfrey, there descended the Rt. Hon. Stephen Rumbold Lushington, a close friend and potential suitor of Jane Austen who confided to her sister Cassandra:

      I like him [Lushington] very much. I am sure he is clever & a Man of Taste. He got a vol. of Milton last night & spoke of it with Warmth—He is quite an M.P.—very smiling, with an exceeding good address, & readiness of Language—I am rather in love with him—I dare say he is ambitious & Insincere . . . He has a wide smiling mouth, and very good teeth.⁶

      Other descendants in this line were Edmund Law Lushington, who married Celia, the sister of Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Franklin Lushington, the close friend and executor of Edward Lear.⁷

      Following Catherine’s death in 1700, Stephen Lushington remarried. His new wife was Jane (nee Petty), the widow of Edmond Fowler of Ash, near Sandwich, Kent, and from this marriage came the line from which the Lushingtons who are the subject of this book can trace direct descent. Stephen Lushington of Rodmersham’s son, the Reverend Henry Lushington (1709–1799), married Mary Altham, daughter of the Reverend Dr. Altham, and the couple had three sons who survived into adulthood—Stephen, William, and Henry.

      The youngest son, Henry, on the staff of Robert Clive and survived the Black Hole of Calcutta only to be murdered in India in 1763. His brother William served with HEIC Bengal Service in India until 1773. On returning to England, he became an alderman of the City and Member of Parliament for London. Despite his independent and radical stance in politics, William tended to vote with the government and, although he believed that parliamentary reform was desirable, he felt it was not then practicable. In 1796, having invested heavily in the sugar trade in the West Indies, William spoke against the abolition of the slave trade while maintaining very real concerns about the living conditions of those in slavery. He almost certainly knew the young William Wilberforce, the man with whom his nephew Stephen later worked in the fight against slavery. By coincidence William’s daughter, Mary Elizabeth, married John William Gage who was a cousin of Anne Isabella Milbanke, later Lady Byron of whom more later.

      Unlike his younger brothers, Stephen Lushington did not spend time in India with the East India Company. Instead, he was apprenticed to Roger Altham of Archers Court, Canterbury.⁸ He later married Hester Boldero, daughter of the banker John Boldero of Aspenden Hall, Hertfordshire. This was a wise choice in more ways than one as he subsequently joined his father-in-law’s bank and was taken into partnership. Boldero’s bank was a well-established institution having been founded in 1738 under the name of Thomas Miners. In 1742, it became Miners and Boldero. Stephen was later joined at the bank by his brother Henry.

      Stephen was also a director of the East India Company, which had been created to trade in the Indian Ocean Region, initially with Mughal India and the East Indies. The Company eventually took control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and Stephen served as its Chairman between 1790 and 1800. In 1791, he was created a baronet and, in 1796, following Company practice, he had a ship named after him.

      In and Out of “the House”

      In addition to pursuing his responsibilities within the East India Company, and a career in banking, Stephen still found time to enter Parliament where he represented various constituencies between 1783 and 1807. The two most powerful factions in the British Parliament at this time were the Tories and the Whigs. The Tories tended to support the monarchy and the Anglican Church, while the Whigs, whose origins lay in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when William of Orange was invited to become King, were opposed to absolute monarchy. By the 1780s, the Whigs had become an established party led by Charles James Fox. Reformers and sympathetic to the needs the people, they were considered to be the leaders of the popular party. The historian Henry Hallam said, “the Whigs had a natural tendency to improvement, the Tories an aversion to it.” The Whig political program later encompassed not only the supremacy of Parliament over the monarch but also support for free trade, Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery, and the expansion of the franchise, or right to vote. Stephen found a natural alliance with the Whigs and was befriended by Fox. His attendance record at Parliament was poor, largely due to his ill health.

      Stephen served for a period as one of the Members of Parliament for Hebdon. Later, after losing that seat, he was returned as the Member of Parliament for Helston, Cornwall. This led to an interest in tin mining, an important industry in the county at that time and one mine, close to Wadebridge in the south of the county was known as Wheal Lushington.⁹

      After Stephen joined his father-in-law’s bank, it was renamed Boldero and Lushington which, by this time, had become one of the biggest and best-known banks in London. However, its early success only led to its failure when it overstretched its resources. In 1811, the bank ran short of funds and unsuccessfully applied to the Bank of England for assistance. It was a huge shock to both to investors and customers when, in January 1812, the bank stopped all payments and later applied for bankruptcy. There being no assets, Boldero’s London house and its contents, together with his family’s plantations in the West Indies, were sold to pay off debtors.

      According to some biographical notes compiled by a member of his family, Stephen Lushington was once ordered to go to Oporto for the benefit of his health. He returned on a ship carrying a cargo of port wine that was pursued by French privateers. After ordering the crew to their posts, the captain invited Stephen to come up on deck and encourage them by his presence. Suffering from gout, he was carried up and took a seat on the deck with a drawn sword in his hand. The French ship was eventually chased off by an English Man of War.¹⁰

      Following their marriage, Stephen and his family settled at South Hill Park, a fine Georgian mansion near Bracknell, Berkshire. When traveling between Bracknell and his London home in Harley Street, Stephen found that the roads were often so bad that the family coach, despite being drawn by four horses and attended by two footmen, could not do more than reach Slough by the evening. As a consequence, he developed the habit of walking the distance, about twenty miles, arriving just in time for supper. There is a story of how, on one occasion, he was waiting in his carriage at Slough:

      While his servant went into the tap to get a drink, a highwayman put his head in the window and demanded his purse in which [he] had 100 guineas. He gave him 10 guineas and told him to be off, declining to give up any of his possessions. The highway man then rode off saying “God bless you” and at the same moment the servant came out and asked permission to follow up the highwayman, whereupon [he] declined