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Sir John Vanbrugh and the 1st Duke of Ancaster: newly discovered documents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The friendship between the architect Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) and his distant relative Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby d’Eresby and successively 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Lindsey and 1st Duke of Ancaster (1660–1723), is firmly but sporadically documented. It appears to have developed during the 1680s, well before Vanbrugh turned to architecture and at a time when, having relinquished a post in the Earl of Huntingdon’s Regiment of Foot, he turned to his kinsmen to seek advancement. On Vanbrugh’s own admission he was highly regarded by Bertie for in a letter written 26 August 1692, referring to events of 1688, he stated, ‘I had been at the Hague in my Lord Willoughby’s Company; That I was his relation, and that (as he was pleased to say) I lead all the Bertue [Bertie] family which way I would’. The letter was written whilst Vanbrugh was a prisoner in the Bastille, Paris, to which he had been committed that year. This was consequent on his visit to the Hague and the subsequent limitation of his liberty at Calais and Vincennes, for the reason that he had been speaking something in favour of the enterprise that the king (William III) was then on the point of executing — that is, war between France and Holland. Like Bertie, Vanbrugh was staunchly Whig. The friendship flourished and appears to have strengthened into a high family regard. In 1711 Vanbrugh was a signatory to the marriage contract of Peregrine Bertie, son of Robert and later 2nd Duke of Ancaster; and in 1719 he was appointed a trustee of the 1st Duke’s will drawn up on 23 May that year. In October 1722 that nobleman became godfather to the architect’s second son, John. The friendship naturally extended to another of the Duke’s family: Robert’s brother, Peregrine Bertie (d. 1711), Vice-Chamberlain of the household from 1694, was said to be ‘Mr Vanbrugh’s intimate friend’.
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1991
References
Notes
1 K. Downes, Sir John Vanbrugh, a biography (1987), gives most references, as too Sir John Vanbrugh, Works IV: The Letters, ed. G. Webb (1928).
2 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1987), 1, pp. 58, 59, 61Google Scholar.
3 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1987), 1, p. 61 Google Scholar.
4 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1987), 1, p. 64 Google Scholar.
5 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 5ANC2A/23/1.
6 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 5ANC 2A/23; Downes, K., Vanbrugh (1977), p. 16 Google Scholar.
7 Beard, G., The Work of John Vanbrugh (1986), p. 29, pl. 2Google Scholar.
8 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), pp. 12, 183Google Scholar. This work reprints Sir John Vanbrugh’s Account Book 1715-1726 in which an entry dated 22 March 1715/16 shows that Vanbrugh borrowed from the then late Peregrine Bertie:
Pd the Executors of Mr
Peregrine Bertie In full
Discharge of Principal &
Interest of three Bonds £678 13 8
9 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), pp. 118-21Google Scholar; Colvin, H., ‘Grimsthorpe Castle, the North Front’, The Country Seat (1970), pp. 91–93 Google Scholar.
10 J. Kip made engravings of Grimsthorpe, 1674. In 1686 Ezra Horson and Joseph Warrington may have been employed at Grimsthorpe making windows, cornices, a doorcase and chimney-panels ( Gunnis, R., Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 (1968), p. 211)Google Scholar.
11 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), p. 119 Google Scholar.
12 Beard, , Vanbrugh (1986), p. 159, pl. 117Google Scholar.
13 Differences occur between the preparatory drawing of 1715 and Campbell’s engraving, notably the fenestration of the corner towers which in the earlier version repeat the forms used on the central bays; the omission of rustication to the columns; and the substitution of a Doric doorway for the earlier corbelled arrangement. The 1715 drawing is in the collection of William Proby, Esq.
14 Campbell’s engravings of Vanbrugh’s Eastbury (Vitruvius Britannicus, vol. III (1725)) show a forecourt, thus suggesting the omission was not the engraver’s.
15 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 3ANC 8/2/21.
16 Gunnis, , Dictionary (1968), p. 152 Google Scholar.
17 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 3ANC4/35*.
18 Reduced copies of Bernini’s, Pluto and Proserpina are known ( Wittkower, R., Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1981), p. 178)Google Scholar. The model for Regnaudin’s Abduction of Cybele by Saturn (1678) was exhibited in the Salon of 1699 as Truth unveiled by Time.
19 This work has erroneously been given to Peregrine Bertie (d. 1742) rather than to 1st Duke in the belief that the former, before his succession to 2nd Duke of Ancaster, was Marquess of Lindsey, a title in fact held by his father the 1st Duke.
20 Lincolnshire Archives Office, ANC 10/0/3. Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), n. 7, p. 118 Google Scholar; Whistler, L., The Imagination of Vanbrugh and his Fellow Artists (1954), p. 21, figs 118, 119, 121Google Scholar.
21 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), p. 119, pl. 117Google Scholar; Pevsner, N., Harris, J. and Antram, N., The Buildings of England, Lincolnshire (1989), p. 739 Google Scholar.
22 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 3ANC 8/2/25.
23 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), p. 119, fig. 18Google Scholar.
24 Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain 1530-1830 (1977), pp. 276-77Google Scholar.
25 The scale given by Downes, Vanbrugh (1977), fig. 18 is erroneous. He implies a structure with a façade 100 ft broad, whereas the true scale is 51 ft 6 in.
26 Lincolnshire Archives Office, ANC X/A/12.
27 Lincolnshire Archives Office, 2ANC 6/1.
28 Downes, , Vanbrugh (1977), p. 119 Google Scholar, but he gives no source.
29 Beard, , Vanbrugh (1986), p. 18 Google Scholar.
30 As reprinted in Downes, Vanbrugh (1977).
31 Robert Kidwell became free of the Mason’s Company in 1703 and this is therefore his earliest recorded work. It is perhaps of significance that his father, William Kidwell, with whom Robert was apprenticed, carved two chimney pieces of Irish marble in 1713 for Edward Southwell who was at that time building King’s Weston to Vanbrugh’s designs ( Gunnis, , Dictionary (1968), p. 227)Google Scholar.
32 Lincolnshire Archives Office, ANC/X/A/10. The inventory includes objects in the ‘Summer House’. It also mentions goods at Swinstead belonging to Albemarle Bertie, Robert’s brother. Could it be that he is the ‘AB’ who paid Vanbrugh £57 12s. od. in May 1720?