Some background notes to the families and personalties linked to Almina, Countess of Carnarvon : The Wombwell Family of Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire
Wombwell Skeletons
Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, 1876-1969, is variously recorded as the daughter of Frederick Charles Wombwell ( 1844-1889) of Newburgh Priory, Coxwold.
Wombwell Family Motto
“ In Well Beware”
Cromwell’s Bones at Newburgh Priory, North Yorkshire
The Wombwell’s historic seat at Newburgh, Easingwold, near Coxwold, in North Yorkshire, was originally the site of an Augustinian Priory, which was granted by Henry VIII to Antony Belasyse, from whom Almina Wombwell’s uncle, Sir George Wombwell ( 1832-1913) ( pictured above ) was descended; his grandmother having been the daughter and heiress of the last Lord Fauconberg. Laurence Sterne was once chaplain at Coxwold.[see footnote i]
The Priory is famed for its collection of Cromwellian relics, Mary Cromwell (a daughter of Oliver ) was the wife of the second Lord Fauconberg.[ see footnote ii] Newburgh was also close for entertaining those from London and elsewhere attending at the Doncaster Races. A regular visitor at they Priory was Sir George’s old military gaffer, the Duke of Cambridge, a descendant of George III, who was Colonel in Chief of Sir George’s proud Regiment, the 17th Lancers of Balaclava. Sir George was the last veteran of the “ Gallant Six Hundred” of the Charge of the Light Brigade fame, immortalised by Tennyson. George Wombwell succeeded to the baronetcy on his return from the Crimean.[ see footnote iii] He had married well to Lady Julia Sarah Alice Child-Villiers, daughter of the 6th Earl of Jersey and granddaughter of one time British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel.[see footnote iv]
Sir George had an important legacy to uphold. Oliver Cromwell’s bones were said to lie in a stone vault at Newburgh Priory. According to Sir George Wombwell’s obituary of 1913 there was no record of the vault ever being opened. King Edward VII when once visiting the Priory (no doubt when he was at the Doncaster Races, or just a visitor to enjoy the excellent partridge shooting) remarked to his host:
“ Look here, Sir George, I shall never be satisfied about this until you open the vault. Why not send for the workmen at once and have it opened now? ”
“ No, Sir, ” replied Sir George “ I have been brought up in the belief – I shall die in the belief – and I will not open it for anybody. ” [see footnote v]
The Wombwell Baronetcy
A significant event in Wombwell history was the death from typhoid fever at Meerut, India in January 1889 of George Wombwell, the 23-year-old son of Sir George and Lady Julia, an officer in the Kings Own Rifles.[see footnote vi] Their only other son Stephen perished in the Boer War. [see footnote vii]
Accordingly with no male heir Sir George’s younger brother Captain Harry Wombwell, 1840-1926, inherited the Wombwell title in 1913. [see footnote viii]
Lady Julia Wombwell was amongst the first division of the aristocracy. She was one Society’s fixers. She ensured that in accordance with her late husband, Sir George’s, Will, Newburgh Priory did not fall into the lap of the awaiting Wombwell heir.
This action snubbed George, 5th Baronet and Almina Carnarvon’s nephew Philip (who was born a Wombwell in Sir George’s lifetime), the son of Almina’s deceased brother, Frederick Adolophus Wombwell, (1870-1912)[ see footnote ix], from later inheriting the Yorkshire Estate. On Lady Julia Wombwell’s death in 1921 a grandson of hers, Victor Malcolm Wombwell (whose real surname was actually Menzies, through Julia’s daughter Cecilia who married a Graham Menzies) inherited the family pile. Victor had changed his name by deed poll to Wombwell in 1919.
As Malcolm Menzies, Victor had a chequered past, he was an unsuccessful gambler. He had served in the First World War as an officer then a one point he was a wandering private soldier in India, then a bankrupt, after he married and was divorced by heiress Sybil Neumann, eldest daughter of a South African financier. Sybil sued for divorce and with it a humiliating annulment, on the grounds of non-consummation. [see footnote x]
Lady Julia plot was flawed. But for Victor the legacy arrived at exactly the right time and saved him further disgrace. His cousin, Philip, (Alimina’s nephew), later took the family honours in the shape of the Wombwell baronetcy on the death of Sir George Wombwell, 5th Baronet, in 1926.
Sir Philip Wombwell married Elizabeth Leitch in 1936, he was the 6th Baronet, and he died in 1977. Victor had remarried in 1942 and survived as incumbent at Newburgh Priory to the grand old age of 93.
Philip’s son George, born 1949, succeeded the title in 1977 by which time his stream of the Wombwells had recovered the historic family seat and returned to Newburgh Priory.
NOTES
[i] Laurence Sterne, 1717-1768, Novelist & Clergyman, was for many years Rector of Coxwold, a parish within the Newburgh Priory Estate. Sir George Wombwell carefully restored Sterne's residence, Shandy Hall.
[ii] Pall Mall Gazette 16 September 1898 records “After the restoration, Charles II avenged his father by causing the body of Oliver Cromwell to be exhumed from Westminster Abbey and sending- it to Tyburn,'to be first hanged and then decapitated and quartered at the foot of the gallows. Cromwell's daughter, Lady Fauconberg, whose husband at that time owned Newburgh Priory, is asserted, by means of bribing the guards, to have succeeded in substituting another corpse for that of her father, and to have obtained possession of his remains, which she conveyed to the priory. At any rate, in the uppermost story of Newburgh Priory, at the end of a small chamber, there is a massive stone built into the wall, with an inscription, setting forth that the lord protector's body lies behind it.”
[iii] The Era - 28 January 1855.
[iv] On Lady Julia Wombwell’s father's side her great grandmother was Frances Twysden, Countess of Jersey, 1753-1821, (Mistress of King George IV), her grandmother was Sarah Sophia Fane, 1785-1859, who founded Almacks (a London Club), and who was for 40 years one of the acknowledged leaders of English society, which accepted her autocratic rule and is immortalized as Zenobia in Benjamin Disraeli's novel Endymion.
[v] The Times 18 October 1913.
[vi] A memorial to George Wombwell at Coxwold Church (unveiled September 1889 was attended by the Duke of Cambridge, “the members of the House of Fauconberg” and Christopher Sykes MP (friend of the Prince of Wales and Alfred de Rothschild).
[vii] See also “Records of the Athenaeum Club : Lithograph portrait of Captain Stephen Frederick Wombwell, J.P REF : SOC.II.30. Capt. Wombwell, of Trinity Hall, gained his B.A. in 1892 and died of enteric fever on active service in South Africa in 1901. University of Cambridge Archives.
[viii] Sir Henry Herbert Wombwell 5th Baronet died on 1 February 1926 at Cannes and was buried at Brompton Cemetery on 8 February 1926. His widow Myrtle (it was a late marriage) lived at 85 Vincent Square, SW1. She died on 26 March 1956 and was also buried Brompton Cemetery. (See The Times 27 March 1956) Harry was a theatre impresario in Liverpool and sometime Chairman of Boodles Club.
[ix] On 6 July 1909, Almina’s brother, Frederick Adolphus Wombwell of the 16th Lancers married Miss May Harrison Smith of Carlton Hall near Worksop at Carlton in Lindrick. Then tragedy struck Frederick died aged only 42, on 17 February 1912, at 6, Victoria Crescent, Doncaster, and was buried at Carlton, Worksop. He left a son, Frederick Philip Alfred William Wombwell, (known as Philip) who had been born in July 1910. Frederick’s widow later remarried. At the time of Philip Wombwell’s wedding in 1936 (by which time he had succeeded to his uncle’s baronetcy) she was a Mrs Thomas Stamford Booth of Leam, Ringwood, again a widow. Her second husband Thomas Stamford Booth had died aged 62 on 11 July 1928 and was buried at St Catherine’s, Savernake. (See St Katherine’s Burial Register 1861-1949 lists the burial on 14 July 1928).
[x] See Divorce Papers at National Archives, Kew ref J 77/1683/2364. See also Marquise De Fontenoy in Washington Post, 11 November 1921. Victor’s bankruptcy papers are held at National Archives, Kew ref B 9/909.