The Tickell family

In her autobiography, Chain of Amber, Mary Linley Taylor herself gives virtually no information about her parents' origins, only indicating that her mother was "a descendant of Elizabeth and Mary Linley" who “in Regency Days,” she writes, “were the toast of Bath.” This is not accurate, since the Regency period in England covers the years 1811 – 1820, long after they were dead. She could also not, of course, be descended from both sisters! The story of the Tickell family turns out to be particularly interesting and complex. In fact, Mary was not descended from the Linley sisters at all.

Much of the information below comes from A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Ireland, By Bernard Burke, Ashworth Peter Burke Edition: 9 Published by Harrison & sons, 1899.

1. The first recorded name is that of Thomas Tickell, who made a will on May 23, 1617, leaving his land in Ullock, Cumberland to his eldest son, named Richard Tickell (as so many others were to be).

2. This Richard Tickell married Katherine, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Henry Fairfax (1588-1665), who was fourth son of Thomas Fairfax, the 1st Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1560-1640), soldier, diplomat and politician, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton and Dorothy Gale (this was Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton and Nun Appleton, who had been born in 1521, was high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1571, knighted in 1579, died 28 January 1599, married Dorothy in 1559). They had 3 sons, Thomas being the eldest. Katherine's father had been a close friend of the poet George Herbert, from their Trinity College Cambridge days. As rector of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire from 1650, he resided at Appleton House in Nunappleton, part of his parish, the home of his nephew Thomas Fairfax, the 3rd Lord Fairfax, commander-in-chief of the Parliament army until 1650. Also living in the house at the time was the poet Andrew Marvell. (The Fairfax line can be traced back to the 12th century)

3. Thomas Tickell was baptized at Crosthwaite Church May 6, 1623. He was father to Richard.

4. Richard Tickell became Vicar of Egremont, Cumberland, 7 June 1673. He married Mary Gale, and had 2 sons, Richard and Thomas.

5. Thomas Tickell was born December 17, 1685 and was for a time c.1710 fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. His elder brother sold the family estate to him in 1721. He published a small volume of poems. Until now, the family had had no Irish connection, but In 1725 Thomas Tickell was appointed secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland thanks to the influence of Joseph Addison, his patron; he retained the post until his death in Bath in 1740. He married Clotilda, daughter and co-heir of Sir Maurice Eustace of Harristown, Kildare (Ireland), (who had been made Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Lord Chancellor of Ireland at the Restoration) and inherited his estate and the attached title at Carnolway / Carnalway. Their Irish home was at Glasnevin, now part of Dublin. It and the small estate attached to it were sold in 1790 to the Royal Dublin Society to become the Botanic Garden. They were both buried at Glasnevin. They had 2 sons, John and Thomas.

6. John Tickell (born 23 November 1727, died 1782) a clerk in chancery, and magistrate in Dublin, sold the earlier Cumberland property in 1781. He married a Glasnevin girl, Esther Pierson. They had 2 sons, Thomas (born 1749) and Richard (born 1751).

7a. The younger son, Richard Tickell was a policial writer and playwright, appointed Commissioner of Stamps in 1779. He married Mary Linley (1758-87) in 1780. Mary Linley's sister Elizabeth (1754-92) married the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (born in Ireland but settled in England) in 1772. The sisters' father Thomas Linley (1733-1795) had studied music at Bath, where he settled as a singing-master and conductor of the concerts. From 1774 he was engaged in the management at Drury Lane Theatre, London, composing or compiling the music of many of the pieces produced there, besides songs and madrigals, which rank high among English compositions. Richard Tickell’s opera in three acts, called "The Carnival of Venice", was successfully produced at Drury Lane on 13 December 1781 (with his sister-in-law Elizabeth writing some of the songs, and his wife Mary the music). After Mary Linley's early death in 1787, Richard Tickell remarried in 1789 and finally in 1793 died after falling or jumping from a parapet of the building in Hampton Court where he had lived with Mary, perhaps a suicide with multiple possible causes. The Wikipedia entry says that “Sheridan took the children of Tickell's first marriage into his care, obtaining admission into the navy for Richard (1782–1805), and a writership in India for Samuel (1785–1817).” Richard was killed in action on H.M.S Phoebe off Sardinia in 1805. Captain Samuel Tickell of the 8th regiment of Native Infantry (India) died October 5 1817 near Berhampore "of a severe and lingering illness" (The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India No. 29 Vol 5, 1818). He had married Mary Morris and left 3 sons, including Samuel Richard the eldest (see below).

7b. The elder son, Thomas Tickell, was born in 1749 and became High Sheriff of Kildare in 1803. He married Sarah Sparks in 1771 and died at Bath in 1831. He and his wife were buried at Carnolway. He had 4 sons, Thomas, born 1772, a military man who died childless in Trinidad in 1802. Their third son John, born 1783, went into the church, he also died childless. The family estate passed to the second son, Edward Tickell, who expanded them while serving as chairman of co. Armagh but he died childless in Dublin in 1863 and the title to the Carnolway estate then passed directly to Thomas Tickell (the father of Hilda / Mary Linley Taylor), the oldest surviving son of the fourth son Richard Tickell, by whom the line was perpetuated.

8. Richard Tickell was born 10 September 1785 and served from 1804 to 1839 in the Bengal Engineers. He died as Lieutenant-General Richard Tickell, of the Bengal Engineers in Cheltenham on 3rd August 1855. His grave is at St. Peter's Church, Leckhampton, Cheltenham, Glos - "Here lieth the body of Richard Tickell, Lieut General late of the Bengal Engineers, Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Bath. Born on the 10th September 1805, Died on the 3rd August 1855 at Ravensworth, Cheltenham. Also of Margaret Scott, relict of the said General Tickell, CB. Born on the 2nd July 1815. Died on the 15th February 1882 at Ravensworth, Cheltenham." He entered the artillery in 1803, became major-general in 1841 and lieutenant-general in 1851. He was twice married and left 12 children. The first marriage was at Cawnpore, India, in 1803 to Mary Anne Procter and they had 6 children: 1. Richard Samuel (1809-1860, Major H.E.C.I.S) 2. George (1815-1893, Rev George Tickell SJ having converted from C of E, Rector of Mount St Mary's College, Chesterfield; Prefect of Studies at Stonyhurst College, Blackburn; and for five years a Missionary in Barbados.) 3. Thomas (see below) 4. Edward Arthur (1819-1897, Vicar of Ulrome, Yorks) 5. James (1821-1895, Colonel Bengal Native Infantry, married Sophia Victoria Moseley. Their children included engineers in the India Public Works Department James Robert Tickell, appointed Sept 1878, state railways, exec engnr Aug 1893, and Richard High Tickell, appointed 1881, Posted to Punjab June 1890, exec engnr May 1894) 6. The daughter, Sarah, married Arthur Moffatt Lang, who wrote a journal about his part in the horrors of the Indian Mutiny, they had 6 sons, 3 daughters. The second marriage was at St. George's Bloomsbury in June 1840 to Margaret Scott, daughter of Adam Walker Scott, (she died in Cheltenham February 15, 1882) and they had 7 children, including 5 sons 1. Robert Procter (1841-84, died in India), 2. Arthur Lang (born 1844 Lieutenant-Colonel, 77th Regiment), 3. John Larkins (born 1845 at Cheltenham, served in India), 4, Eustace Ashburner, (born March 8 1851, died 2 July 1877, Captain, 68th Light Infantry) 5. Charles (born 1853, served in India Public Works Department, appointed 1 oct 1875, irrigation in Punjab, services lent to Kashmir 1892-4. Retired 1897). They also had 2 daughters, Eliza Anne (born Cheltenham, 1863, married deputy suregon-general Bengal army) and Fanny Ellen.

9. Thomas Tickell "of Carnolway, co. Kildare" (born 28 February 1817) married Louisa Emily, eldest daughter of the Rev. James T. C. Saunders on January 12, 1860 in Cheltenham. He was already over 40 by then. As noted at 7b above, he inherited the title 'of Carnolway' by default on the death of Edward Tickell in 1863. This link to the Eustace family (see 5 above) was reinforced by his marriage, for (according to Wikipedia) "in 1763 John Stratford was created Baron of Baltinglass. The Eustaces of Castlemartin and Harristown were connected with his family twice. His father had married (as his second wife) Penelope née Eustace, one of the three co-heiresses of Sir Maurice Eustace, the Lord Chancellor. His great-great-granddaughter was Louisa Saunders of Saunders Grove, who married in 1860 Thomas Tickell, descendant and heir of Clotilda, Penelope's sister and another of the co-heiresses." This inherited link to Irish 'nobility' in both her mother's parents might explain why Mary Taylor was remembered by the Grigsbys as being 'Anglo-Irish' so that Faith Norris even thought she spoke with an Irish acent!

After serving in the Royal Navy, Thomas Tickell retired in 1864. They had 3 sons: 1. Edward James (born 9 February 1861, Captain 4th Hussars. 2. Richard Eustace (born 29 April 1864, see below), 3. Henry Maurice (born 14 August 1866, attended Trinity College, Cambridge), and a daughter, Mary Louisa (born 1862) who was to marry Charles E. F. Mouat Biggs in July 1887.

At the 1861 census, Mary Linley Taylor's grandmother, Louisa Emily Tickell (then aged 30) and her husband, Thomas Tickell (aged 44, Lieutenant Royal Navy, half pay) were living with their 2-month-old first child Edward at 2 Bath Villas, Cheltenham, the home of the Rev. James Saunders (aged 64, without care of souls) and his wife Agustale (? 63). The census records that Thomas Tickell and James Saunder's wife were both born in India, Thomas at Allahabad, presumably in 1817, she in 1798. Both James Saunders and his daughter were born in Waterford, Ireland. Thomas Tickell finally died in Cheltenham in June 1898, aged 81.

On the day of the 1871 census, Louisa E. Tickell was living in a house called Simla Lodge in the parish of Charlton Kings in Cheltenham with a son Edward J. (aged 10), a daughter Mary Louisa (aged 8, Mary Linley Taylor's future mother, born in Southampton in 1862) and two other sons, Richard E. (aged 6), and Henry M. (aged 4). She is listed as the wife of an unnamed "Commander R.N. retired list" but Thomas was not at home on that day. The 1881 census finds Thomas, his wife Louisa Emily, their son Edward J (who was by then studying at Cambridge) and Mary Louisa, now 18, together with the Rev. James T. C. Saunders (now 85 and a widower) living at The Lypiatts, Cheltenham.

Richard Eustace Tickell (1864-1931), a younger brother of Mary Taylor's mother, was a surveyor / engineer who worked on the building of dams in the Elan Valley, Wales, in the 1890s and published a volume with drawings of the beautiful scenery that vanished beneath the water. Just before his death he published a collection of poems and other texts by his 18th-century ancestors, "Thomas Tickell and the Eighteenth Century Poets."

One especially notable Tickell, the son of Samuel Tickell (7a above), Mary Linley's son, was Colonel Samuel Richard Tickell (born in Cuttack, August 19, 1811 - April 20, 1875), a British army officer, artist and famous ornithologist in India and Burma. He was for a while assistant commissioner of Tenasserim, Burma. Mary Taylor mentions in her biography that her family had connections in Burma.Samuel Richard played an important part in the setting up and consolidating of the Kolhan Government Estate in present day West Singhbhum District of Jharkhand State in India. Samuel Richard mastered the Ho language to a great extent and wrote the first grammar of a Mundari language in 1840. That was a sequel to his “Memoir of the Hodesum, improperly called the Colehan’of the same year, which is the first extensive account of the Hos for a general public. He was commander of the escort to the Resident in Nepal in 1840. The Resident was Brian Houghton Hodgson, one of the founding fathers of Buddhist studies. The eight months’ stay in Kathmandu turned out to be an intermission between two stints in the Kolhan Government Estate, which Samuel Richard Tickell left in 1843. For decades afterwards he was remebered by the Hos of ‘Tickan sahib’. (much information on Samuel Richard T has been provided by Paulus W. Streumer). After retiring to the Channel Islands, he died 20th April 1875, having served in the 31st Native Infantry. His grave is also at St. Peter's Church, Leckhampton, Cheltenham, Glos. - "In loving memory of Colonel Samuel Richard Tickell, Bengal Army. Born 1811. Died at Cheltenham 20 April 1875. And of Maria Georgiana, his wife, born 1825. Died at Ealing 23 June 1918. Also to the memory of their grandson Captain Templer Henry Scott, 87 Punjabis, who fell in action on 26 April 1915 near Ypres and was buried on the field of battle, aged 31 years."

As the Wikipedia entry says, he retired to the Channel Islands and at the 1871 census he was living (aged 58) at St John Road, Trafalgar Terrace, St. Helier, Jersey together with Ada Elizabeth, his younger daughter, still only 15, born in Burma in 1856. An older daughter, Mary Louisa Tickell was born in Burdwan, West Bengal, India, on 25 September 1845. Perhaps she had stayed behind in India? By 1871 he was blind. On the day of the 1871 census, his wife, Maria Georgiana, (born in Bengal Presidency, India 27 October 1825) was staying with her father, John W. Templer and Elizabeth his wife, at Bathwick, Bath. Her father had obviously remarried after the death of her mother, Maria Anne Boileau, whom he had married in India in 1844. Her father was then 76, his wife 38, they had an 11 year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Samuel Richard Tickell died only a few years later in 1875, at which time he was residing at 33, Montpellier Villas, Cheltenham with Ada his daughter (and perhaps his wife, too?). It was Ada ('present at the death') who registered his death by 'exhaustion' (a curious ) on the same day. His widow and Ada (25, still single) were living at 7, Batshill Terrace, Cheltenham, at the 1881 census.
Ada married Benjamin Charles George Scott in Strand, London, late in 1881. (Benjamin was born in Aylsham, Norfolk 1847, the son of William Henry Scott). Her husband was a vice-consul in China already in 1881 and from 1897-9 he was British Consul-General in Tientsin. In about 1885, their son "Eustace Lindsay Scott" was born in China, but in 1891 Ada was living in a boarding house at 146, Queens Road, Paddington, away from her husband, with another married woman, Mary Cooper, both born in the "East Indies," as well as a boy aged 7, "Templer Scott," born in China. Who was he? Strangely, at the 1891 census Eustace was staying with his grandmother, Maria "Tickale" (a mistake for Tickell) a widow aged 64 born in India, at 43, Conduit Road, St Paul, Bedford. Eustace was a student 1901 in Bradfield College, Bradfield, Berkshire. At the 1901 census, mother and daughter are together, still without Ada's husband, living at 24, Ealing Eaton Rise, Ealing. At last, in 1911, we find them reunited at 74 Madeley Road Ealing, Benjamin (64, pensioned consul-general), Ada (55, born in Burma Moulmain), her mother (84, born in India Calentter) as well as a "son-in-law" (?) of Benjamin, Captain Templer Henry Scott of the Indian army, aged 27, born in Shanghai. No sign of Eustace. If the inscription on the grave of Ada's parents recorded above is correct, and the War Graves record, they must have had another son, Templer Henry Scott, born in India in about 1884.

The obvious conclusion of all this is that the family of Mary Linley Taylor's mother was a far more dynamic and wide-ranging one than that of her father, and that the flow of visitors at Cheltenham owed more to her family than to his. The fact that he went big-game hunting in India is almost certainly because of the many Tickell connections remaining there into the early 20th century.