Richard Gunter has died 1701

Thomas Gunter thought that his memories would overwhelm him as he walked slowly down Cross Street to his old house just below the South Gate. Built by his father, it had been his childhood home, where he had established his legal practice and where he had brought up his nephew, Richard, and his own three children. Richard’s father had named his son after himself but he died at the age of only forty-two years and, in his will, he had made Thomas his son’s guardian. His wishes were that that Richard was to be apprenticed to a brewer and had left land to rent out to provide an income for his daughters.

Thomas remembered Richard as a quiet but stubborn child who showed no curiosity about his guardian’s passion for the Catholic true faith or his legal practice as an attorney. Then his own son Thomas had died young. He had decided to make the house in Cross Street over to Richard so that he could build up his brewery business and bring up his own family. Richard too had died at a young age and, now that the will had been proved, he was here to appraise the house contents.

He greeted the two younger appraisers, William Bradshaw and John Tully, resentfully. Thomas was an experienced appraiser and he felt having two others was a slur as though it was thought that he would not be impartial. One other would have been quite sufficient. He was impatient to get the work over but halfway up the curving stair to the best room he had to pause, he was weary and feeling his age of over seventy.

He remembered showing off the alterations he had been able to do after the wonderful restoration of Charles II forty years ago and the sense of freedom that he had felt then with the fall of that canting Protestant Parliament. His brother and his wife had been so impressed with the new porch and door from the garden, this spiral stair and especially the ornate plaster ceiling.

William Bradshaw and John Tully were ahead of him talking already in the room, so he chided himself and climbed on, stopping again at the top, rubbing his face to conceal his feelings before entering the room with its impressive plaster work ceiling. His clerk, he noticed, was looking towards him, concerned at the delayed appearance, and he nodded to reassure him. The clerk had brought up a portable desk, slung by a wide leather strap around his neck and with a portable inkpot slotted in a corner. He would take notes as they moved from room to room and write it out neatly later for the record.

It was easy enough to value Richard’s extensive range of wearing apparel at ten pounds, and he thought to himself that Richard had done very well for himself over the years he had been master in this house. He wondered what Richard’s widow would do with the clothes now – but pulled himself back to the matter in hand. Here in the best chamber were a feather bed, a bolster and the furniture, including the new-fangled lady’s furniture that had been left to Mary, the eldest daughter, in the will.

They moved into the next room once the clerk had finished making his notes. Here were some fine brass andirons by the iron grate with a fire shovel and tongs, all new since his days of living in this house. He shook himself. He must stop musing about the past and concentrate on the work in hand. The middle chamber must have been the children’s room with two standing beds, a pallet bedstead and two feather beds. It was crowded, containing other furniture too, leaving little floor space. The last room over the kitchen only had one feather bed and was very tidy as befitted a room for visitors. Thomas thought back again to those troubled times more than twenty years ago, when this had been the room slept in by Father David Lewis whenever he stayed. He noticed the other two men looking at him quizzically. He smiled and nodded at them and brought himself back to his present duty, saying that he thought they had finished here.

They went down to the rooms below where he was impressed by the piles of linen set out ready for them. The fine Holland linen sheets, the coarser flaxen sheets, the pillow covers, the napkins and sable cloths, all showed off the wealth accrued in this prosperous house, as did the items in plate with three fine silver tumblers and two silver spoons. Many items of pewter were also laid out ready for enumeration, with seventeen great and small platters and thirty pewter plates, as well as the flagons, candlesticks and pewter chamber pots. He thought, wryly, that he doubted that he possessed so much himself, although this was more the domain of the women.

Faced with Richard’s brewing equipment, he was reminded of the day when Richard had gone off to be apprenticed to a brewer in accordance with the instructions in his brother’s will. He had taken an active interest in his nephew’s business and been intrigued at the way the large vats and boilers had to be managed to ensure the reliable production of beer with hops which kept so much better than the ale which had to be made almost daily.

He was recalled from his memories, once again, to his duties to value the brewing furnace and pots. The sacks of oats in the little chamber were valued by the others at one pound and ten shillings. He could not contribute much to that decision, for although he was an expert in appraisal over many years, his knowledge of the current price of oats was lacking. The clerk was having problems keeping up with counting the brass and copper items collected together for viewing and had to perform much scoring through and rewriting with his quill, enumerating the large number of barrels and hogsheads, wooden vessels, pipes, and a collection of other brewing vessels.

Standing in that kitchen he seemed to hear his mother’s voice chiding him for being too near the Cibi brook and getting his clothes wet and muddy again, warning him that children died in the water there. Then he thought he heard his first wife calling the maid, Betti, to accompany her to market before all the best goods had gone – but it was illusion, he was here now working and enumerating the household goods. He concentrated on helping the other appraisers value the usual iron goods, such as the grates, the large racks in the kitchen, the pots, spits and roasting irons and the nine iron candlesticks. The parlour held a large oval table and he admired the chairs with their twig seats, so much lighter than the solid wooden seated ones that he had himself.

Eventually everything was counted and valued, although there had been sometimes lengthy negotiation between them as to the value of some of the goods. The clerk read back the inventory lists and the valuations, sometimes hesitating over the splattered rapid writing of his recording. He would make a fair copy back at the office where he could rest his pages on a stable surface. Thomas thought that with the ready money already counted – one hundred and forty pounds of it – it would be easy enough to find the two hundred and thirty pounds in total to invest for the children to have once they were old enough and to give the interest of that sum to the widow as laid out in Richard’s will.

“I thank thee, no. I have other duties now.” Thomas declined the suggestion from the other two appraisers to go with them to the inn in the High Street. His adherence to the Catholic Faith was well known and, although tolerated, still made him an outsider who was forbidden any official appointments. He had little in common with the other two men who were becoming prominent with influence and minor official appointments because of their literacy and training. He needed time to think back over Richard’s life as a successful brewer and the part that he, and his first wife Mary, had played in his upbringing.

He had obeyed with reluctance his brother’s wish that he did not impose his own religious beliefs in the Old Faith on his ward, but regretted that Richard had made little effort to understand their own adherence to the Catholic Faith. When Richard gratefully accepted the house, he had agreed to keep hidden the chapel that Thomas himself had made and he had taken away the stair reaching it as the room was small and not needed. The chapel of remembrance to the martyred priests was shut away, hidden and forgotten about up in the attic.

The new chapel he had made in Frogmore Street was gaining in adherents as people of the Catholic Faith became more confident despite the laws against them. He would walk slowly home to Frogmore Street and have a drink or two with his second wife, Catherine, to reminisce about the past and look forward with hope to better times for the Faith.