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A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt—111*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Bernard Elliott
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Extract

WHEN COSMAS NEVILL II died on 1 June 1829 at the ripe old age of 81’ the family were within striking distance of having to quit their traditional home of Nevill Holt in the East Midlands, for only two more generations of Nevills were to reside there. The first of these was Cosmas II'S second son, Charles, the eldest son, Cosmas III, having predeceased him. While his father was alive, Charles Nevill seems to have preferred living in London to residence at Holt. In 1821 he married Lady Georgiana Bingham, youngest daughter of the second Earl of Lucan, and the couple then spent some time in Paris where their first child, Lavinia Elizabeth, was born on 23 January 1824. Subsequently she was conditionally baptised by a Catholic priest at Holt. Their next child, another daughter, Charlotte, was born in London on 10 March 1827 and the Register of Nevill Holt chapel does not mention her baptism. Though Cosmas II died in June 1829, Charles and Georgiana were in no great hurry to settle in the Leicestershire countryside, for their third child and heir, Cosmo George, was born in London on 3 June 1830 and was baptised by the Rev. Mr. Fryer. Their fourth child, Louisa, was also born there, on 21 September 1831, as was their fifth, Richard, on 15 December 1832. Their sixth and last child, William, was likewise born in London, on 21 April 1834.2

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , October 1986 , pp. 220 - 224
Copyright
© 1986 Trustees of the Catholic Record Society and individual contributors

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References

Notes

1 Wall Tablet in Nevill Holt church (V.C.H., p. 245).

2 N.H. Register. ‘Rev. Mr. Fryer’ was doubtless William Victor Fryer, for whom see Anstruther, G. The Seminary Priests, 4 (1977), pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

3 V.C.H., p. 242 (pp. 241–8 contain an account of the Hall and estate).

4 V.C.H., p. 235.

5 Diary.

6 ibid.

7 N.H. Register.

8 Bailey, B. J. Portrait of Leicestershire (1977) p. 68.Google Scholar

9 N.H. Register.

10 ibid.

11 V.C.H., p. 235.

12 ex local information.

13 i.e. Francis Aloysius Dent, O.P., for whom see Gumbley, W. Obituary Notices of the EnglishDominicans, 1555–1952 (1955) pp. 101–2.Google Scholar

14 Broughton, H. E. (ed.), Nevill Holt—Studies of a Leicestershire Estate (1985) p. 32.Google Scholar

15 ibid

16 The purchaser was H. J. Grieveson who in 1876 sold out to Edward Cunard (V.C.H., p. 245).

17 This was Cosmo Nevill Peake, a son of Lavinia Elizabeth (Charles Nevill's eldest daughter, who had married the Rev. John Dawson Peake) and so a nephew of Cosmo George. But before he could complete the arrangements for the purchase of the hall, he was killed in a street accident in 1918 (Broughton, op. cit., p. 34).

18 The present head of the family is Major-General Cosmo Nevill, who lives at Holt, Edwardstone, Suffolk. He is the grandson of Richard Nevill, the fifth child of Charles and Georgiana, who was born in 1832. Major-General Nevill has a daughter, Charmian, who lives within a short distance of Cressing Temple, that village in Essex which the Smyths left in the 16th century to reside in Leicestershire, adopting the surname of Nevill (see Recusant History, 17/2, p. 173). So, the wheel comes almost full circle!