MARK BROWELL'S DIARY.

INTRODUCTION.

Mark Browell of Newcastle, attorney, was a son of George Browell of the same place, butcher. The date of his birth has not been ascertained, but he was educated for the law and was entered at Furnival's Inn before commencing to practice his profession in his native town. On the 20th March, 1686, he married at All Saints, Newcastle, Elizabeth, daughter of Roger Ive, a citizen and stationer of London, afterwards of Newcastle, by whom he had issue a son, Edward, and a daughter, Margaret. She died on the 9th September, 1689; and, after a very short interval he married again, at St. Andrews, 17 June, 1690, Jane Sanderson, spinster, whose eldest son, George Browell, was baptised on the 18th October, 1691. Mark Browell, who was admitted to the freedom of the Butcher's Company on the 24th February, 1688, served as churchwarden of All Saints, in which chapelry he apparently resided, for the year 1695 and 1696. His professional career seems to have been prosperous and before his death, in 1729, he was able to educate his eldest son at St. John's College, Cambridge, and to make adequate provision for his surviving four younger children. He was buried in the south aisle of the old church of All Saints, under a stone the inscription on which has been preserved by Bourne :

MARCUS BROWELLUS GENEROS. ATTORNAT. DE BANCO, SOC. HOSPIT. FURNIVAL LOND. HOC SIBI ET SUIS POSUIT ET CŒLIS PARATA ÆTERNA MANSIO. IPSE OBIIT SECUNDO DIE NOVEMBRIS ANNO DOMINI 1729. He was buried on the 5th November in that year and the entry of his interment in the register of All Saints is marked by a quota

tion in Latin thus: 1729 Nov. 5 Mark Browel, attorney Dies Revelabit.'

The following abridgement of his will is taken from Richardson's edition :

20 October, 1729. Will of Mark Browell of Newcastle, gent., being grown into years, yet of sound mind and memory. If I die in, or within twenty miles of Newcastle, I do order my body to be buried in the church of All Hallows, in my buriall place in the south isle thereof, and that no more than these words be in capitall letters ingraven on the stone, viz., ' Ipse obiit,' adding in figures the date of my death and the year, like as it is done for my wife. Among the sentences collected and writ in the white leaves of my prayer book, I have writ that this verse may be on my grave stone when I am dead, viz.: 'Hæc domus æterna est hic sum situs hic ero semper.' I now forbid the same lest the sence of it should be misconstrued, and I be censured to enervate the belief of the resurrection. And I will that my funeral shall be without state or pomp, and in such like decent manner as my wife's, only I will not have it exceed forty pounds, and I give rings to none. To my daughter Frances Browell £600, to my daughter Julian Browell £600, my daughter Mills £300, having given her £300 at her marriage.

To my son Edward Browell,a Doctor in Divinity, his heirs &c., my messuages, &c., situate without the walls, but within the liberties of the said town of Newcastle, in a certain street or place there called Sidgate. He to pay £200 into my personal estate to make my daughters sure of their several portions, for when I consider that my said son has been much advanced in the world, and through my endeavours and God's blessing only, I cannot but say he has shared well in my little estate, and has had a handsome legacy to remember me by. To my son Edward all the books mencioned in a paper signed by me, bearing the date of this will. To my daughter Frances Browell, all the letters, papers and accounts that have passed between me and my son Edward Browell, to keep by her, and my diaries, confiding in her prudence in the using of them, and that she will not do anything but for the clearing of truth and avoiding all bitterness and wrath.

To my son, Mark Browell, my messuage in the Syde, and one-fifth of a farm or tenement in School Aycliffe, and my rent charge of £6 per annum out of Great Bavington. To my son Mark all my draughts and paper books of pleadings, at law and in equity, and in the Sheriff's offiee, in which last I have laboured abundantly, but I would not have him to part with or dispose of any of them least they should be lost.

To my son Edward, the silver porringer which I had with his mother.

a Edward Browell, eldest son of Mark Browell, by his first wife, Elizabeth Ive, was born at Newcastle and was baptized at All Saints, 11 September, 1689. He was educated at Sedberge under Mr. Dwyer, and at St. John College, Cambridge, where he matriculated 14 June, 1707, being then 17 years of age, B.A., 1710; M.A., 1714; D.D., 1726; rector of Romaldkirk from 1713 to his death 23 December, 1763, when he was laid beside his wife, Elizabeth, who died 2 Jan., 1762/3. His only daughter, Elizabeth, married George Clavering of Greencroft, and died s.p. 19 October, 1763, aged 37.

To my son Mark, my buriall place in the west end of the north aisle bequeathed to me by my cousin Abraham Corbett,-nephews, Robert Cornforth and George Browell.

To my daughter Frances, my picture and her mother's, drawn by Mr. Stephenson.

To my son Edward, the other picture drawn of me when I was younger, which has my features and likeness att that time, according to my judgment of it, though it is not so much set by as the other picture is.

My daughters, Frances and Julian, executrices. Women not being fit for law-suits; in case of law-suits I appoint my sons Edward and Mark, and John Mills to be executors.

There are nine books of Reports of Lord Coke, all in French, very valuable, and other French books which my son Mark will never take the pains to spell out, therefore I would have him to sell them. Let him have all my letters, books in business, and letters in answer, which must be of great use to him in any business that has happened through me for more than thirty years.

The Diary apparently passed into the possession of the Diarist's son, Mark Browell, also an attorney, who died in the month of April, 1739. After passing through intermediate hands it was acquired by John Bell the younger, the once well-known Newcastle bookseller, antiquary and collector, who in 1847 permitted M. A. Richardson to give it a place in his valuable series of Imprints and Reprints of Rare Tracts. It is not known whether the original MS. is now in existence, and the following pages are reprinted from Mr. Richardson's edition, from which also the Diarist's will, with some of the biographical and personal notices appended, have been borrowed.

Notices of the surrendered charter of the town of Newcastle referred to in Browell's Diary may be found in the Records of the Merchant Adventurers, No. 93 of this series, p. 237; or Brand, History of Newcastle, Vol. ii., p. 195, etc., and are more particularly related in the Memoirs of Ambrose Barnes, No. 50 of this series, p. 176, et seq.

THE DIARY.

[1687/8]. Jan. 1. *J[ohn] Squire, esq.,1 maior, Newcastle.

*Sir William Blackett,2

*Sir Ralph Carr, 3

Nicholas Cole, esq.,4

*Mr. Timothy Davison,5

Aldermen.

*Mr. George Mourton,6

1John Squire, son of Sampson Squire of Thruntoft, Yorkshire, was apprenticed, 1 Mar., 1658/9; to Thomas Sherwood of Newcastle, boothman, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company, 27 Jan., 1669/70. He married, 10 Nov., 1672, at St. Nicholas', Mary Forster, widow; was sheriff of Newcastle, 1681, and mayor, 1687, being removed by mandamus from the king on the 24 Dec. On the 2 May following he was killed by a fall from horseback near Chester-le-Street, and four days later he was buried in St. Nicholas'. His widow on the 7 Nov., 1689, married for her third husband, Nicholas Fenwick, alderman of Newcastle, she being his third wife.

2 Sir William Blackett, baronet, a very important man in Newcastle, of whom a biography_may be found in Mr. Richard Welford's Men of Mark twixt Tyne and Tweed.

3 Sir Ralph Carr, a wealthy burgess of Newcastle, purchased Cocken, co. Durham, in 1665, was knighted, 22 June, 1676; mayor of Newcastle, 1676, 1693, and 1705; M.P. for Newcastle, 1679, 1680, 1688, and 1689. He married, first, Jane, daughter of Sir Francis Anderson of Bradley, and, secondly, Isabella, daughter of the Hon. James Darcy. He died, 5 Mar., 1709/10, having had issue by both marriages. See pedigree of Carr of Cocken, Surtees, Durham, vol. i., p. 209.

4 Nicholas Cole, second son of Sir Ralph Cole, second baronet, of Newcastle, merchant, and of Brancepeth, was born at Kepier and was baptised at St. Giles', Durham, 28 Feb., 1653/4, he was mayor of Newcastle, 1686, and, dying in the month of July, 1701, in his father's lifetime, was buried at Brancepeth.

5 Timothy Davison was made free of the Merchant Adventurers Company by patrimony, 13 Jan., 1663/4, being son of Thomas Davison, merchant, by his wife, Anne, daughter of Ralph Cock, sometime alderman of Newcastle. He was sheriff in 1666 and mayor in 1673. He married, 4 Jan., 1663/4, at St. Nicholas', Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Blackett, and died 28th Dec., 1696, aged 54, and was buried in St. Nicholas'. He purchased the estate of Beamish, co. Durham, and transmitted it to his descendants.

"George Morton was sheriff of Newcastle in 1673 and mayor in 1679 and alderman at the date of the Diary. He was buried in the north aisle of the old church of All Saints, where was the following epitaph: 'Here lieth interr'd the body of George Morton, draper, alderman and twice mayor of this town he departed this life the 26th of November, anno Dom. 1693.

:

7 Matthew Jefferson, son of Richard Jefferson of Elton in the county of Durham was apprenticed 1 April, 1645, to Richard Thursby (a kinsman of the Yorkshire antiquary) of Newcastle, boothman, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company 5 October, 1655. He was sheriff of Newcastle in 1671 and mayor in 1678. He married 13 December, 1664, at St. Nicholas', Mary Barker, widow, by whom he had issue nine children, of whom six survived him. He died 1 Mar., 1687, having by his will dated 16 Oct., 1685, given his property at Bingfield in the parish of St. John Lee to his son, John Jefferson; the latter died 4 Mar., 1700/1, leaving his three sisters, Anne, wife first of William Shafto of Carrycoats and secondly of John Cotesworth of the Hermitage, Elizabeth, wife of Brumell, and Mary, wife of Vernol, his co-heirs.

8

Timothy Robson, son of William Robson of Newcastle, cordwainer, was apprenticed 29 Sept., 1646, to George Errington of Newcastle, boothman, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company 15 Oct., 1656. He was sheriff of Newcastle in 1677 and mayor in 1681 and 1695. He married first, in or about the year 1659, Elizabeth Jefferson, spinster, his banns, after the Commonwealth custom, being published in Newcastle market place in September of that year. He married secondly, before the expiration of the year of his shrievalty on the 30 Sept., 1678, at St. Nicholas', Jane Scurfield, widow. In 1682 he purchased together with (his brother-in-law) Matthew Jefferson, property in Bingfield, and dying 30 Dec., 1700, was buried in St. Nicholas'. He left surviving him, the issue of his first marriage, an only daughter, Mary, wife of John Milbank of Thorp Perrow.

He

9 Nicholas Fenwick, son of Robert Fenwick of Brenkley, was apprenticed 20 May, 1648, to Ralph Heron of Newcastle, boothman, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company 4 June, 1658. He was sheriff of Newcastle in 1678 and mayor in 1682 and 1697, and died circa 1707. was married three times : his first wife being Margaret, daughter of Robert Young, alderman, the second Elizabeth Bonner, and the third, as already mentioned, Mary, widow of John Squire; the latter corrects the name given as Symon in the pedigree of Fenwick of Lemington in the new History of Northumberland, vol. vii., p. 174.

10 William Aubone, son of Thomas Aubone of Newcastle, master and mariner, was apprenticed 25 April, 1655, to George Dobson, boothman, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company, 16 Aug., 1665. He was sheriff of Newcastle in 1679 and mayor in 1684. He married Catherine, daughter of Christopher Sanderson of Barnard Castle (whose Diary is printed in the first series of North Country Diaries), the bond of marriage being dated 22 Jan., 1665/6, by whom he had (perhaps with other) issue three daughters, viz., Frances, wife of Edward Surtees of Woodhead, Phillis, wife of Robert Greenwell of Kibblesworth, and Jane, wife of John Greenwell of Newcastle. The said Robert and John Greenwell were sons of William Greenwell of Greenwell Ford. William Aubone died 29 Sept.,

1700.

11 Nicholas Ridley, son of John Ridley of Willimoteswick was apprenticed 8 Aug., 1661, to Robert Fenwick, mercer, and was admitted free of the Merchants' Company, 2 Nov., 1671. He was sheriff of Newcastle in 1682, and mayor in 1706. He married 26 Feb., 1673/4, Martha, daughter of Richard March of Newcastle, merchant, and died 22 Jan., 1710, leaving issue. He was ancestor of Viscount Ridley.