43.3.2.6.e Lineage of Victoria Devon- The Walpole Family

Horatio Walpole Lineage

The Walpole Relationship to the First British Prime Minister

Robert Walpole, 1 st Earl of Orford, KG, PC (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British politician who is generally regarded as the de facto first Prime Minister of Great Britain.

On 30 July 1700, Walpole married Catherine, daughter of John Shorter of Bybrook in Ashford, Kent. She was described as "a woman of exquisite beauty and accomplished manners". Her £20,000 dowry was, according to her brother-in-law Horatio Walpole, spent on the wedding, christenings and jewels. 

Together they had two daughters and three sons:

·        Robert who married Margaret Rolle (17 January 1709 – 13 January 1781), later the 15th Baroness Clinton, in 1724.  They had one son, George, who died unmarried.

·        Katherine, who died unmarried and without issue^[

·        Mary, who married George Cholmondeley, 3rd Earl of Cholmondeley, on 14 September 1723. They had sons and daughters. She died at Aix-en-Provence in 1731, and was buried at Malpas, Cheshire.

·        Edward who died unmarried but had four illegitimate children with Dorothy Clement, three of whom were daughters. Laura, the eldest, married Bishop Frederick Keppel.

·        Horace, who died unmarried and without issue

Edward’s second daughter, Maria Walpole (d. 1807), married, firstly, 

James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave and, secondly, 

Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, King George III's brother.

His son, Edward, born in 1737, died in 1771 without issue.

The youngest daughter, Charlotte, was wife of Lionel Tollemache, 5th Earl of Dysart.

Walpole's first wife Catherine died on 20 August 1737 and was buried in Henry VII Chapel, Westminster Abbey

Strawberry Hill House

Maria Walpole’s great grandsons eventually became the heirs of Strawberry Hill House.

John James Henry Waldegrave and George Edward Waldegrave both inherited Strawberry Hill and both married Frances Elizabeth Braham.  

 After Walpole's death, Lady Louisa Stuart, in the introduction to the letters of her grandmother, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1837), wrote of rumours that Horace's biological father was not Sir Robert Walpole but Carr, Lord Hervey (1691-1723), elder half-brother of the more famous John Hervey. T.H. White writes: "Catherine Shorter, Sir Robert Walpole's first wife, had five children.

Four of them were born in a sequence after the marriage; the fifth, Horace, was born eleven years later, at a time when she was known to be on bad terms with Sir Robert, and known to be on romantic terms with Carr, Lord Hervey." The lack of physical resemblance between Horace and Sir Robert,^[44] and his close resemblance to members of the Hervey family, encouraged these rumours. Peter Cunningham, in his introduction to the letters of Horace Walpole (1857), vol. 1, p. x, wrote:

"[Lady Louisa Stuart] has related it in print in the Introductory Anecdotes to Lady Mary's Works ; and there is too much reason to believe that what she tells is true. Horace was born eleven years after the birth of any other child that Sir Robert had by his wife; in every respect he was unlike a Walpole, and in every respect, figure and formation of mind, very like a Hervey. Lady Mary Wortley divided mankind into men, women, and Herveys, and the division has been generally accepted. Walpole was certainly of the Hervey class. Lord Hervey's Memoirs and Horace Walpole's Memoires are most remarkably alike, yet Walpole never saw them. [Yet] we have no evidence whatever that a suspicion of spurious parentage ever crossed the mind of Horace Walpole. His writings, from youth to age, breathe the most affectionate love for his mother, and the most unbounded filial regard for Sir Robert Walpole."

When Horace Walpole died in 1797, he left a life interest in Strawberry Hill to Anne. She had the job of recording the contents of Strawberry Hill for the Berry family, who had moved into an adjoining property. Anne used Strawberry Hill as her country house until 1811, which she maintained alongside her central London home in Upper Brook Street. In 1818, she returned to Twickenham, buying York House.

 

After Walpole's death, the house passed first to his cousin Anne Seymour Damer, then in 1797 to John Waldegrave, a grandson of Maria Walpole, the illegitimate daughter of Walpole's older brother Edward. In the first half of the 19th century, two successive owners, brothers John and George Waldegrave, spent most of the family fortune, culminating in a "Great Sale" lasting twenty-four days held in the grounds in 1842 which left the house stripped of virtually all its contents

From 1818, Anne Damer lived at York House, Twickenham. She continued to sculpt until the end of her life. She died, aged 79, in 1828 at her London house, No. 27 Upper Brook Street, Grosvenor Square.  She was buried in the church at Sundridge, Kent.

Lady Anne Seymour-Conway was the daughter of Field Marshall Henry Seymour-Conway and his wife Lady Carolina Campbell. 

Henry was the son of Frances Seymour, 1^st Baron of Conway and his wife Charlotte Shorter.

Charlotte was the sister of Catherine Shorter, who married Robert Walpole, 1^st Earl Orford.

They were the parents of Horatio Walpole. 

From the Twickenham Museum

Self-portrait bust in the Uffizi gallery of artist self-portraits in the Vasari Corridor. The Greek text reads: ΑΝΝΑ ΣΕΙΜΟΡΙΣ ΔΑΜΕΡ Η ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΒΡΕΤΤΑΝΙΚΗΣ ΑΥΤΗ ΑΥΤΗΝ ΕΠΟΙΕΙ which translates to "Anne Seymour Damer from Britain, made herself"

Anne Seymour Damer, née Conway, (8 November 1748 – 28 May 1828) was an English sculptor. Once described as a 'female genius' by Horace Walpole, she was trained in sculpture by Giuseppe Ceracchi and John Bacon. Influenced by the Enlightenment movement, Anne was an author, traveller, theatrical producer and actress, as well as an acclaimed sculptress.^[2]

She exhibited regularly at The Royal Academy from 1784 to 1818. She was a close friend to members of Georgian high society, including Horace Walpole and the Whig politician Charles James Fox. It is believed that she was a lesbian and was in a relationship with the actress Elizabeth Farren

Anne Conway was born in Sevenoaks into an aristocratic Whig family. She was the only daughter of Field-Marshal Henry Seymour Conway (1721–1795) and his wife Caroline Bruce, born Campbell, Lady Ailesbury (1721–1803). Her father was a nephew of Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister.^[  Walpole's son, Horace Walpole was her godfather, and Anne spent much of her childhood in his home in Strawberry Hill.

Her mother was the daughter of the Duke of Argyll. She was brought up at the family home at Park Place, Remenham, Berkshire. She was highly educated and taught at home.  By the time she was seventeen, she was introduced into society.

In 1766 at the age of 17, she was sketched by Angelica Kaufmann in the character of the goddess Ceres. The work which can be found in St Mary's University Twickenham. In 1800, an unknown artist (possibly Kauffman) completed a painting with the same composition as the sketch. The painting preceded her launch into Society and her entrance onto the marriage market.

In 1767 she married John Damer, the son of Lord Milton, later the 1st Earl of Dorchester. The couple received an income of £5,000 from Lord Milton, and were left large fortunes by Milton and Henry Conway. Damer was described as a poor businessman, who had a taste for expensive clothing. The marriage was not a successful one. The couple had no children and separated after seven years.

In 1775, Anne was included in a painting titled The Three Witches form Macbeth by Daniel Gardner (c.1750–1805), which can be found in The National Portrait Gallery, London. The work shows her next to other ladies of high society: Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne and Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

Anne's husband committed suicide in 1776, leaving considerable debts. As a widow, Anne benefitted from a prenuptial agreement whereby her father-in-law was obliged to pay her £2500 a year. This money allowed her to be financially independent, and continue her artistic career.^[2] Whilst immersing herself in sculpture, she still found time for a full social life, on a more intellectual plane than that of her earlier married years.

Anne was a frequent visitor to Europe. In 1779, she had watched from the deck, a four-hour running gunfight between a French privateer and the cross Channel packet boat on which she was travelling. During one voyage she was captured by a privateer, but released unharmed in Jersey. In 1790–91, she travelled alone through Portugal and Spain and back through revolutionary France. She visited Sir Horace Mann in Florence, and Sir William Hamilton in Naples, where she was introduced to Lord Nelson.

In 1801, she published a novel, Belmour, a book she had written in Lisbon. It ran in three editions and was translated into French.

In 1802, while the Treaty of Amiens was in effect, she visited Paris with the author Mary Berry and was granted an audience with Napoleon.

A fluent French speaker, Anne became friends with Josephine Buonaparte. They corresponded about gardening and plants, mostly in connection to Josephine's garden at Malmaison. Anne had also discussed this with Sir Joseph Banks, one of the founders of the Royal Horticultural Society. A sculptural bust she made of Banks can be found in The British Museum.

In 1815, she travelled to Elba, the island where Napoleon had been exiled. She travelled there despite the ongoing war between France and Britain. The Emperor gifted her a snuffbox featuring his portrait, which is housed in the British Museum.

When Horace Walpole died in 1797, he left a life interest in Strawberry Hill to Anne. She had the job of recording the contents of Strawberry Hill for the Berry family, who had moved into an adjoining property. Anne used Strawberry Hill as her country house until 1811, which she maintained alongside her central London home in Upper Brook Street. In 1818, she returned to Twickenham, buying York House.

From 1818, Anne Damer lived at York House, Twickenham. She continued to sculpt until the end of her life. She died, aged 79, in 1828 at her London house, No. 27 Upper Brook Street, Grosvenor Square. She was buried in the church at Sundridge, Kent.

According to Richard Webb, she directed in her will that her correspondence by destroyed and that she be buried with the bones of her dog and her sculpting tools