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Stoke-by-Clare in 1844, is a large and well-built village, pleasantly
situated on the north bank of the river Stour, 2 1/2 miles W.S.W of Clare, and 7
miles E.S.E. of Haverhill, has in its parish 868 souls.and 2329a. 1R. 22p. of
fertile land. It has a small fair for pedlery, &c, on Whit-Monday. A Benedictine
Priory, which had been founded at Clare Castle, was translated to Stoke ,but
about l415, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, having augmented its revenues,
obtained the king's permission to change the institution into a College,
consisting of a dean and six secular canons. At the dissolution, it was valued
at £324. 4s. Id. per annum, and granted to Sir John Cheke and Walter Mildmay,
from whom it passed to the Triggs. It afterwards passed with the manor to Sir
Gervase Elwes, who was created a baronet in 1660, and died in 1705, but the
title became extinct on the death of his grandson, Sir Hervey Elwes, in 1763.
From this distinguished miser, the estate passed to his worthy successor, John
Elwes, Esq., as afterwards noticed. On the death of the last named miser, in
1789, it passed to the late J. H. T. Elwes, Esq., from whom it came to John
Payne Elwes, Esq., the present lord of the manor of Stoke-with-Chilton, and
owner of the fine old family mansion, called Stoke College, now occupied by
Charles Gonne, Esq. But part of the soil belongs to Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Jardine,
Messrs. J. A. Fitch, W. Walford, and D. Pannell, and a few smaller owners. All
the parish is freehold, except a small farm belonging to Mrs. Payne. The Church
(St. Augustine) is a neat structure, with a tower and six hells, and was
appropriated to Stoke College. The benefice is a perpetual curacy, valued in
1835 at £130, and now having 59a. of glebe, a yearly modus of £117. 18. 6d.,
awarded in 1841, and a yearly rent-charge of £30, left by Sir Gervase Elwes in
1678. Lady Rush is patroness, and the Rev. Henry Griffin, M.A., incumbent. Here
is a small Chapel used by the Baptists and Independents.
In 1681, Mary Barnes left £225 to be laid out in the purchase of land, the rents
and profits thereof to ;be employed in apprenticing poor children of Stoke
parish. The land purchased comprises 10a. 2r. 22p., let for £31. 10s. a year,
which is dispensed by the churchwardens and overseers in apprentice fees. In
1526, Richard Brown directed an Almshouse to be erected at Stoke for six poor
people, to each of whom he left 6s. 8d. yearly, charged on his estate, called
Stowers, at Ashen, in Essex, which he also charged with the expense of repairing
the almshouse. J. P. Elwes, Esq., owns this estate, and pays 40s. to the
almspeople, and 10s. a year for repairs. The poor of Stoke have had from time
immemorial 1a. 1r. 17p. of land in Wixoe, and it is now let for £4. 10s. a year,
which is divided among the almspeople and other poor parishioners, together with
a yearly rent-charge of 20s., left by William Bendlow in the 19th Elizabeth, out
of a farm, called Glyns, in Finchingfield, Essex. A cottage occupied by two aged
parishioners was given by Ralph Turner, who endowed it in 1599 with an annuity
of 6s. 8d., out of Huddes Gap, now belonging to the Rev. M. J. Brunwin, of
Blackwater, Essex, who also pays 20s. a year for the poor out of Tenter Croft,
pursuant to the bequest of Thomas Edwards, in 1653. The yearly sum of 40s. is
paid by ancient custom out of the Town Close, and is distributed among the poor
on Plough Monday. In 1678, Sir Gervase Elwes, to the end that the office of
schoolmaster and perpetual curate of Stoke might continue for ever in some good
Protestant divine, charged his mansion house and estate at Stoke with a yearly
rent-charge of £30, but there is no free school here, except a Sunday School
supported by subscription.
In the annals of avarice, there is not a more celebrated name than that of Elwes.
Sir Gervase Elwes, of Stoke, who died in 1705, involved, as far as they would
go, all his estates, so that his grandson and successor, Sir Hervey Elwes, found
that he was nominally possessed of some thousands a-year, but had really only a
clear income of about £100 per annum. He declared, on his arrival at the family
seat of Stoke, that he would never leave it till he had entirely cleared the
paternal estate, and he lived not only to do that, but to amass above £100,000
in addition. The accumulation of money was the only passion and employment of
the long life of Sir Hervey, who, though given over in his youth for a
consumption, attained to the age of upwards of eighty years. To avoid the
expense of company, he doomed himself, for about sixty years, to the strictest
solitude ; scarcely knew the indulgence of fire and candle, aud resided in a
mansion where the wind entered at every broken casement, and the rain descended
through the roof. His household consisted of one man and two maids ; and such
was the systematic economy which governed his whole establishment, that the
annual expenditure of Sir Harvey, though worth at least £250,000, amounted to
only £110. Among the few acquaintances he had (says Mr. Topham,) was an
occasional club at his own village of Stoke, and there were members of it two
baronets besides himself, Sir Cordell Firebrace and Sir John Barnardiston.
However rich they were, the reckoning was always an object of their
investigation. As they were one day settling this difficult point, an odd
fellow, who was a member, called out to a friend who was passing, "For Heaven's
sake, step up stairs and assist the poor! Here are three baronets, worth a
million of money, quarrelling about a farthing!" On the death of Sir Hervey, in
1763, he lay in state, such as it was, at Stoke; and some of his tenants
observed with more humour than decency, that it was well he could not see it.
His immense property devolved to his nephew, John Meggot, who, by his will, was
ordered to assume the name and arms of Elwes. This was the celebrated John Elwes,
Esq., whose mother had been left a widow by a rich brewer, with a fortune of one
hundred thousand pounds, and starved herself to death. He proved himself a
worthy heir to her and Sir Hervey. During the life of his miserly uncle, he
often visited him at Stoke, and ingratiated himself into his favour by always
changing his dress for one of a humbler description before he reached the
mansion. After his uncle's death, he settled at Stoke, and for some time kept a
pack of hounds and a few hunters, at the cost of about £300 a-year. After a
residence of nearlv 14 years at Stoke, he was chosen to represent Berkshire in
Parliament, on which occasion he removed to his seat at Marcham, in that county.
He now relinquished the keeping of horses and dogs; and no man could be more
attentive to his senatorial duties than Mr. Elwes. In travelling, he rode on
horseback, avoiding all turnpikes and public-houses, carrying in his pockets
crusts of bread, hard boiled eggs, &c, for his own refreshment, and allowing his
horse to feast on the grass which fringed the sides of the roads. On his
retirement from public life, to avoid the expense of a contested election, he
was desirous of visiting his seat at Stoke, where he had not been for some
years. "When he reached this place, once the seat of more active scenes,
somewhat resembling hospitality, and where his fox-hounds had diffused something
like vivacity around, he remarked that he had formerly expended a great deal of
money very foolishly, but that a man grows wiser in time. Daring his last
residence at Stoke, the mansion was suffered to fall into decay for want of
repairs. If a window was broken, there was to be no repair but that of a little
brown paper, or piecing in a bit of broken glass, which had at length been done
so frequently, and in so many shapes, that it would have puzzled a mathematician
to say what figure they described. To save fire, he would walk about the remains
of an old greenhouse, or sit with a servant in the kitchen. During the harvest,
he would amuse himself with going into the fields to glean the corn on the
grounds of his own tenants; and they used to leave a little more than common, to
please the old gentleman, who was as eager after it as any pauper in the parish.
In the advance of the season, his morning employment was to pick up any stray
chips, bones, and other things to carry to the fire, in his pocket; and he was
one day surprised by a neigbouring gentleman in the act of pulling down a crow's
nest, for that purpose. On the gentleman wondering why he gave himself this
trouble, " Oh, Sir! replied old Elwes, " it is really a shame that these
creatures should do so - do but see what waste they make 1 they don't care how
extravagant they are." His food and dress were of the meanest description. He
once eat a moor hen,
that had heen brought out of the river by a rat; and he wore a wig that had been
picked up in the rut of a lane. But with all his meanness, he sometimes
displayed a real generosity of spirit,'and occasionally became the dupe of
artful adventurers. He once embarked and sacrificed £25,000 in an iron work in
America, of which he knew nothing. He was also an occasional gambler, strict in
the payment of his losses, but never asking for his winnings if they were
withheld; and several instances are recorded of bis voluntarily advancing large
sums to assist his friends in their difficulties. He died in 1789, and
bequeathed his real and personal estates, to the value of half a million, to his
two natural sons, George and John, the latter of whom succeeded to the Stoke
estate.
STOKE-BY-CLARE.
Bard John, wheelwright
Bridge Thomas Little, gentleman
Bruster Thomas, miller & schoolmaster
Chapman John, tailor
Crown John, surgeon
Doe Robert, shoemaker
Dyke Rev. William, curate
Eldred Daniel D. joiner and victualler, Red Lion
Emberson Cornelius. baker & beer house
Farrant Thomas, baker & beer house
Fitch Joshua A. corn miller
Gonne Chas. Esq. S<o£e College
Gowers Mary, bricklayer
Hale Elizabeth, shopkeeper
Jardine John Hy. solicitor, & clerk & supt. registrar of Risbridge Union
Ling David, butcher
Reeve William, tailor
Rogers Hannah, baker & shopkeeper
Rogers William, parish clerk
Sparks William, blacksmith
Stribling John, blacksmith
Tatum William, lime burner
Turner John, beerhouse & shopkeeper
Turner Samuel, gardener
Wright Ebenz. joiner & victualler, George
FARMERS.
Andrews Robert
Canham Abm (& brickmaker)
Deeks charles
Farrant Thomas
Pannell Daniel, Beyton End
Tattersall Edm
Turner ann
Viall King, Chapel street
Walford Walter, Moor Hall