Jenyns and Jennens
A family link to Dickens' Bleak House
I am a ward in Jarndyce. No, don’t worry, you won’t have to send for the doctor; and nor will I become the object of long discussion in the Courts of Chancery (more’s the pity).
What’s true is that I do have a direct family connection to one of the legal cases that inspired Charles Dickens’ famously long-running legal labyrinth in Bleak House, Jarndyce v Jarndyce.
The discovery came about, as usual, with a chance remark. My grandfather would sometimes say, wistfully, that we were related to Winston Churchill; when a young boy, I simply accepted this, without inquiring why or how. As an adult, I dismissed the idea, knowing that we had no connection to the Spencer-Churchills, however remote. My grandfather, though, being a hard-headed man of finance, was not one to lie or fantasise. When first he, and then my grandmother died, I began to look more closely into the family papers, and uncovered something remarkable.
My great-great—great-grandmother was a certain Emma Jenyns. On seeing her name for the first time in decades, I remembered that Sarah Jenyns had married John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, an ancestor of Winston. Perhaps that was my grandfather’s hazy recollection, I thought, and duly followed Emma’s antecedents as far back as I could. This lead to a John Jenyns of Bottisham.
Here the trail went cold, and I would have left it there. Except for the fact that Soame Jenyns, an 18th century writer and cousin of Sarah, lived at Bottisham Hall at exactly the same time. This is where I believe that my grandfather had got muddled: he’d probably remembered that Winston Churchill’s daughter had married a Soames, and Soame and Jenyns had mingled in his memory. But he would, too, have heard his own grandfather talking about Soame Jenyns and the Marlboroughs, for reasons that I’ll explain in a minute. There were, however, no indications, as far as I could make out, that my John Jenyns was related to Soame. Another dead end, I thought, and would have left it at that.
Except that thirty miles from Bottisham Hall (in Cambridgeshire), lies Acton Place in Suffolk, the seat of another Jenyns family. They spelled it Jennens, and they were descended from a Birmingham ironmaster. Here lived William Jennens, a godson of King William III, and son of the aide-de-camp to the Duke of Marlborough (there he is again).
Despite William's connections, or perhaps because of them, he was a hermit. His fortune derived partly from lending money to gamblers at huge interest rates, and partly from inheritance. Eschewing grandeur, he inhabited the basement of his great house, along with his servants and dogs, and became known as the Miser of Acton.
His death, intestate and without children, in 1798, provoked the Jennens v Jennens case. Astonishingly, its final claims were only settled in the early 20th century (they failed). Although there were some complications, William’s property was passed down pretty quickly to his nearest relatives (Lady Andover, and William Lygon, the first Earl of Beauchamp). His fortune, however, was so great, that practically every Jenyns, Jennens and Jennings in the world rushed to claim a piece of the action. This was quite literally so: hundreds of American Jenningses, with entirely spurious connections, set up a fund in order to litigate the case.
That’s where my Jenyns ancestor comes in. In the Cambridge Chronicle in 1859, a letter sets out my John Jenyns’ descendents’ claim to William Jennens' estate. It reads like a Victorian novel. My ancestors had discovered an old notebook, with some of its pages stuck together, alongside a diary, written by John Jenyns. These notes recorded that he had been a servant at Bottisham Hall. So far, so believable.
Crucially, and thus providing the link between the two Jenyns families, John Jenyns said that he had been sent to Bottisham by his uncle Robert Jenyns of Acton, and was William Jennens’ first cousin (although he spells it Jenyns). John’s father had been in reduced circumstances, having apparently sold his property to his brother (gambling debts, perhaps), and the Acton Jennenses kept a close eye on John. Was my John Jenyns initially called Jennens, and did he, on his move to Bottisham, begin spelling his name like that of his employers?
John Jenyns’ diary states that William consistently visited John over the years at Bottisham, and suggested that he would be in line to inherit everything. Could this young servant boy have proved a threat to other, more powerful relatives, who wanted their hands on William’s moolah?
“William Jenyns, my first cousin Acton Hall, Suffolk, called to see me, John Jenyns, at Bottisham, 1745, gave me a present of 5 pounds,” say the notes. Later, “My first cousin called to see me, John Jenyns, Bottisham, 1779; I was verry feeble: we parted in tears, if not to meet no more on earth, I hope to meet in Heaven.” The notes are very clear that William intended his money to go to John. Could the Lygons and the Andovers have suppressed this undesirable connection to an indigent relative, instead cementing the vast estate for themselves? It’s so good, it’s almost too good to be true.
Decades later, in 1875, another article was published about the claim, this time in the York Herald, which adds in a mention of Soame Jenyns at Bottisham, and the Duchess of Marlborough, and reinforces the idea that the descendents of my John Jenyns were the true heirs to William’s untold wealth. This letter was written by someone with the initials CH, who lived in Southwark. It cannot be a coincidence that my ancestor, Emma Jenyns, had a sister called Caroline, who married a man called Thomas Hudd, and lived all her life in that borough. My grandfather would have grown up with this in the background: perhaps he was shown the letters; perhaps he had a distant memory of this connection to the Marlboroughs; perhaps he even saw the little book with the notes in it. This, of course, is the key to the whole thing: and if I could find it, it would make everything clear.
We now come closer to home. My ancestor Emma Jenyns was no ruined suitor, attending court with nothing but a reticule. She had married my ancestor John Martyn, who was a rich man, and a member of the sprawling Cornish Martyn family. Their marriage was not happy. She divorced him ( which was a huge scandal at the time: the court papers are not pretty), and remarried. When she died, she left £6,000, the equivalent of several hundred thousand pounds in today’s money, to her son Henry Martyn, my grandfather’s grandfather. Although wealthy people clearly don’t stop wanting more, I wonder if her family’s motives seem not entirely mercenary.
A document languishes in the Cambridge Archives, labelled “Evidence to prove that John Jenyns who died at Bottisham was first cousin to William Jenyns [sic] who died at Acton, Suffolk, in 1798.” It was written by William Lowden, the husband of one of my Jenyns relatives. He claims that my John was William's cousin, and also reminds us that the Jenynses were of ancient stock, descending, apparently, from a captain of Canute's. The proof is endorsed by various men of good honour, and comes with another document signed by a man who said he lived in Bottisham Hall alongside my John Jenyns.
Is it true? It's a tantalising prospect. Why did all those reverend gentlemen, including a priest, endorse the proof? It’s entirely possible, of course, that my Jenynses had fallen prey to the same fever as every other Jenyns, Jennens and Jennings, in the world, and that the gentlemen who signed the proof were only doing it in the hope of a kickback.
Or, given the strange coincidences, there is a remote possibility that all of it could have been real. Imagine it: in the 18th century the young son of a desitute relative is sent for his keeping to a nearby house, clothed, fed and looked after, before, at the untimely death of his cousin, being disinherited of his rightful dues. "It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations," wrote Dickens in Bleak House. I know which story I prefer.
Whichever way it goes, it’s certainly interesting to fantasise about being the heir to an enormous fortune (albeit, presumably, one of many hundreds now, perhaps even thousands: one of John Jenyns’ descendents went to Australia, whence sprung his descendent, and my distant cousin, Ebeneezer Jenyns, a millionaire manufacturer of corsets; another of those descendents was given the first name Soame) than it is to suspect that my Jenynses were simply being opportunistic.
For the moment, though, having a real link to one the country’s most fascinating cases - and to one of Dickens’ greatest novels - is enough to keep me in literary clover for years.