Thrale history

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coach. He was responsible for many public monuments, the best known being that of General Wolfe in Westminster Abbey.

Henry's monument bears a shield - the colouring worn off - of a paly of ten or and gules for Thrale, with an escutcheon gules and lion rampant, ducally crowned or between three crescents of the last, for Salusbury.

The Thrale crest was also displayed: out of a ducal coronet an oak tree. Thus Henry had copied his kinsman in adopting the Threele arms. It seems most peculiar that such a man of learning and wealth should have adopted arms without authority, but it is a fact that no grant is recorded. No doubt poor Henry could not drum up sufficient energy or keenness. Had his Harry lived, perhaps many things would have been different.

The well-known story of Hester and her later marriage to Gabriele Piozzi, an accomplished musician, is not part of this chronicle. Hester almost suffered a nervous breakdown, Johnson much mental agony, but finally time healed the scars.

Thrale Place, and all that it meant in terms of cultured and enlightened assembly, dissolved into dust during the next decade or so. Hester went on strongly into great age. Queeney had married Admiral Viscount Keith; Sophia and Cecilia also made fashionable marriages, but many of Hester's children lay asleep in Streatham Church including little Harry. Back in sleepy St. Albans, Henry Smith's brother Ralph died in 1800 aged 73. His mother, Anna Smith, who was the binding link between families, had died there in 1770, leaving a considerable estate. Her daughters had married into the Peyton and Langford families. Her sons inherited a good deal because 'her dear and beloved husband has much more than sufficient'. Anne, widow of her deceased son Richard Smith, who later married Thomas Woodcock, a Yorkshire wine merchant, was left an annuity. Her whole will breathes common sense, love and kindliness.²³ One could well leave the Gentlemen's Magazine to sum up this part of the chronicle in its report upon the death of Ralph Smith's death in 1800. 'At St. Albans, aged 73, Mr. Ralph Smith, an opulent farmer, whose ancestors for a generation or two have been long tenants to the noble family of Grimston, of their manor farm of Kingsbury, adjoining to that town. His mother was sister of Ralph Thrale Esq., formerly M.P. for the borough of Southwark; and he was related also to the family of Halsey of whom Anne - daughter of Edmund Halsey Esq. - Lady Viscountess Cobham who died in 1760 is said to have been his aunt and left considerable legacies to him and his family.'

Footnotes

23. P.C.C. 377 Jenner.↩︎