Thrale/Thrall history

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Christian names were the traditional ones of the Lomax family, with whose political, religious, estate and social affairs the Thrale family were so deeply involved, right up to the nineteenth century, when one of the Thrales was guardian to a later Joshua Lomax.

Before telling of the Lomax family more fully it would be well to complete the tale of the non-conformists. For ninety six years, the Chapel in Dagnall Lane was to be used by these early Dissenters, during which time one of the members was Dr. Nathaniel Cotton who was principal of a college for the mentally disturbed in Spicer Street. One of the patients was William Cowper, the poet, and Cotton was also visited by his friend Sir Isaac Newton. A little later, however, a splinter group broke away from these Congregationalists, Presbyterians and Independents, influenced by a sort of Unitarianism, and for a time there was another Chapel in the old Cotton Mill. By wheel of fortune this was but a very short distance from William Aylward's home and the early furtive meeting place. Thereafter other Chapels were built in St. Albans.

No Thrale chronicle would be complete without an account of the Lomax family, whose destinies interwove with the Thrales generation by generation. The first Joshua Lomax was in partnership with Stephen Ewer, both successful attorneys and great speculators in land. When William Preston of Childwickbury, St. Albans, died in 1666, his son sold Childwickbury to Joshua who came from Bolton in Lancashire. The same year Joshua also purchased the manor of Shenleybury from Sir Clipsby Crewe's son. When Joshua Lomax died in 1685, he desired to be buried at St. Michaels, but spoke of Bolton where he was born and schooled. He left an extraordinary amount of manors and properties, and mentions his partner's family, the Ewers, and also the Appletons and Toombes. His son Joshua was the main inheritor, including Childwickbury¹⁹ and became M.P. for St: Albans in 1708. His will of 1720²⁰ shows something amiss, for his only surviving son Caleb was to receive £200 only per annum whilst Graves Martin was to have Childwickbury and Shenleybury. Also mentioned were the Tyrrells and Holmdens. Shortly after in 1725 his wife Ruth died and she left much to Caleb but with reversion in default of issue of Caleb, and he had power to settle his estate upon any wife he may marry 'except Mary Rose who pretends herself to be his wife'.²¹ What had Mary Rose done to deserve such enmity? Poor Caleb died in 1729, possessor however of both Childwickbury and Shenleybury (which John Thrale was farming, and a deposition tells us that he was twenty four years old at that time)²²

Footnotes

19. P.C.C. 60 Lloyd.↩︎
20. P.C.C. 274 Bolton.↩︎
21. P.C.C. 66 Farrant.↩︎
22. C. 24/1462/25.↩︎