Welsh Journals

CATHERINE CHICHESTER AND CARDIGANSHIRE, 1705-1735 On a wintry day in December 1735, the vicar of Llanbadarn Fawr in Cardiganshire recorded in his burial register: 'Honourable Mrs. Catherine Chichester Impropriatrix of ye Tythes Buried'. Who was she, and what was she doing so far from her home at Arlington Court in Devonshire? What had caused her to journey to Wales along the road which had led to her death? Among the Chichester family papers at the North Devon Record Office in Barnstaple lie some of the answers. The story begins in London in 1659, when Roger Palmer married Barbara Villiers, soon to become the mistress of King Charles II. By 1662 Barbara had left her husband, whom Charles created Earl of Castlemaine in compensation. Deprived of sons of his own, Roger, Earl of Castlemaine, chose his brother James Palmer as heir of his two Welsh estates. One was a small estate in Montgomeryshire, the other the impropriated tithes of most of north Cardiganshire, yielding an annual income of £ 1,046 in 1660. When James Palmer married Catherine, a grand-daughter of William Herbert, first Lord Powis, in 1675, their marriage settlement included the 500-year term of tithes belonging to the Earl of Castlemaine. In default of male heirs, the tithes were to provide marriage portions for their daughters, with a life-interest assured to Catherine Palmer. James Palmer died in 1687, followed in 1695 by their only son Roger, still a minor. Their surviving daughter, Catherine, now became sole heiress to her uncle's estates. On her marriage in 1699 to Giles Chichester of Arlington Court in Devonshire, the Cardiganshire tithes went with her. This union of two great Catholic families came at an inauspicious time. Oaths of allegiance had first been imposed on Catholic recusants under the penal laws of 1606 and 1610, but they had only been required to take them at times of political tension. The Popish Plot of 1678 had caused the political temperature to rise and there was widespread consternation at the possibility that a Catholic might succeed to the throne. By 1701 this was accentuated because neither William and Mary, nor Anne, had any surviving children. This resulted in the Act of Settlement which effectively debarred King James II's son from the throne. In the turbulent period which followed, with abortive Jacobite invasions in 1708 and 1719, and the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, Catholics were viewed with suspicion, and faced fines and the possible forfeit of their property. Fearful for the safety of his lands and family, Giles Chichester embarked on a complex legal manoeuvre in 1702. He instigated a Bill in Chancery against the heirs of