John Aubrey 6th Bt (1739 - 1826)

Born 4 Jun 1739 in Boarstall, England

Ancestors

Husband of Mary (Colebrooke) Aubrey — married 9 Mar 1771 in St George, Hanover Square, London,

Husband of Martha Catherine (Carter) Aubrey — married 26 May 1783 in St George, Hanover Square, London

Descendants

Died 14 Mar 1826 at age 86 in Boarstall, England

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Biography

John Aubrey 6th Bt has Welsh ancestors.

John Aubrey 6th Bt is Notable.

This profile is part of the Awbrey Name Study.

John born June 4, 1739 is the 2nd son of Sir Thomas Aubrey, 5th Baronet and Martha Catherine, daughter of Richard Carter of Chilton (Bucks), Chief Justice of South Wales.

Educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford (matriculated, 1758; DCL 1763)

He took a Grand Tour in 1764-65, visiting Turin, Florence, Rome and Paris.

John succeeded his father as 6th baronet, 4 September 1786. ^[1]

Political Career

He began an unusually long Parliamentary career as a Tory but in 1790 transferred his allegiance to the Whigs, reputedly after Pitt refused him a peerage, but more probably in consequence of a disagreement with the administration over the Regency Bill in 1788-89.

He was briefly in Government as Lord of the Admiralty, 1782-83 and Lord of the Treasury, 1783-89.^[2]

Marriages and Children

First

There are two versions regarding the parentage of John's daughter Mary Aubrey - see Research Notes.

a. According to Mary's son, John married her mother. After returning to Wales he had the marriage to a Roman Catholic annulled due to pressured by family and others. If correct Mary is not illegitimate.^[3]

b. Mary, alias Villars, is described as an illegitimate daughter by a discreditable affair with a young French aristocrat, said to be a daughter of the 'Duc de Guiche' but perhaps of Jean Roger de La Guiche (1719-1770), Comte de Sévignon. Mary, born at Paris, c.1765, was apparently brought to England after 1771 and lived at Boarstall with her father and his first wife.

Regardless of the relationship between John and Mary's mother, it is certain she came to live in John's household at Boarstall and married Samuel Whitcombe.

Second

On March 9, 1771 John married Mary Colebrooke (1750-81) at St George, Hanover Square, London. She was the elder daughter and co-heir of Sir James Colebrooke, 1st baronet of Gatton Park (Surrey).

Their child was John Aubrey, born December 6, 1771. He died young from an accidental poisoning on January 2, 1777. There is more than one version of the incident. This one seems most plausible: "When his son (John) was about five years old, he refused to eat his gruel, saying it tasted bad. Thinking he was being difficult, his nurse added what she thought was sugar and made him eat it. By mistake she had used a mixture of oatmeal and arsenic meant for killing the rats. The boy died and his mother never got over the shock, dying a year later, and Sir John demolished the house."^[4]

Third

On May 26, 1783 John next married Martha Catherine Carter (1764-1815) (same given names as his mother), his orphaned first cousin and his father's ward, at St George, Hanover Square, London. She was the daughter and heir of George Richard Carter of Chilton (Bucks).

Deaths and Will

John died on March 1, 1826. His will was proved on April 15, 1826 (effects under £50,000).

By the time of his death, Sir John seems to have taken a dislike of his nephew, Sir Thomas Digby Aubrey, 7th Baronet, and only left him the entailed estates of dilapidated Llantrithyd and the remaining tower at Boarstall, along with the baronetcy.

The Dorton and Oakley estates were left to his niece Elizabeth Sophia Aubrey Ricketts. Chilton was left to the Hon. Grey Bennet (1777-1836), his nephew by his first marriage, who had already been granted a lease of it, but who lived in exile from 1826 onwards having been publicly exposed as a homosexual.

Mary Colebrook Aubrey died on June 14, 1781. Martha Catherine Aubrey died at Bath, after an illness of only a few hours, on September 3, 1815.

All are buried at Boarstall, where John ,and wives Mary and Martha are commemorated by a monument.

Properties

Boarstall - His father settled the Boarstall estate on him, probably in the 1760s.

Chilton House - He leased the Chilton House estate from at least 1773 and acquired the freehold in 1783 through his marriage to Martha Catherine Carter.

Dorton House - John purchased the different moieties of the Dorton House estate in Buckinghamshire between 1774 and 1784.

Llantrithyd Estate - He inherited the Llantrithyd estate from his father in 1786.

He seems to have lived in London until 1771; then at Chilton until 1776, when he removed to Boarstall. Following the death of his son in 1777 at Boarstall, he pulled down the house at Boarstall due to his grief and moved to Dorton. The unusually large gatehouse remains at Boarstall.

At some point in time he expanded the Buckingham estates by purchasing Oakley.

In later life, he had a town house at 4 Upper Brook St., London.

Research Notes

There are two very different accounts of John's relationship with the mother of his daughter Mary.

See 1.a. above:

Note this source was written by the grandson of the unknown mother of Mary.

Additional items of interest:

- no surname is provided for his maternal grandmother

- it is suggested the unknown mother subsequently married "Baron de Vouter"

- Sir John's wife Mary is referred to as charming and beautiful

- their son John was the idol and hope of both parents

- many years later as the first Lady Wolverton recalled, Sir John was a hard, forbidding looking old man who usually drove a coach and six and was universally known as "The Bad Baronet."

See 1.b. above: The source Landed Families of Britain and Ireland – Aubrey, later Aubrey-Fletcher, of Llantrithyd, Boarstall, Dorton and Chilton seems to be using the following as a source John's relationship with Mary's mother - Family and Society in Early Stuart Glamorgan: the household accounts of Sir Thomas Aubrey of Llantrithyd, c.1565-1641, South Wales Record Society, 2006

Sources

1. ↑ Landed Families of Britain and Ireland – Aubrey, later Aubrey-Fletcher, of Llantrithyd, Boarstall, Dorton and Chilton.
2. ↑ Wikipedia – Sir John Aubrey, 6th Baronet
3. ↑ Google Books - Campaign of the Falieri and Piraeus in the Year 1827 or Journal of a Volunteer Being the Personal Account of Captain Thomas Douglas Whitcombe edited by C.W.J. Eliot, 1992, pages 204-5. Previous page(s) that begin this story are not available to view.
4. ↑ British Folklore - Boarstall Tower