Compassionate Magna Carta

By Richard Murray

False allegations are made against her, so she relishes an opportunity to set the record straight by explaining why she was forced by her family to leave England and make a new life for herself in South Africa.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: May 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524680602

Richard Murray

When I was very young, I can vividly recall staring with fascination at the picture on the cover of a book my father was reading. I asked him what the book was about and he looked at me before saying "If you want to know what it's about, then read it." So I did.That was the start of my fascination with books. While friends would be out playing football, I would be inside reading. I had discovered a rich and varied realm of imagination.Since that very first book I have rarely stopped reading for pleasure, yet as I grew older I realised that I wanted to share my own worlds, my own imagined adventures. I wanted to write my own stories.Which brings me to the present and my very first book, hopefully the first of many. I have always preferred Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror and I intend to take a look at these genres and more while I find my feet and learn more of the art of writing and telling a good story.I live in England with my youngest daughter and a vicious beast of a cat that my children lovingly call "Squeak."

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© 2017 Richard Murray. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/17/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8061-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8060-2 (e)

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

PREFACE

F or many years I have resented the false allegations that were made against me by my family; allegations, they believed would justify what I consider was their unreasonable action in forcing me to leave England and make a new life for myself in South Africa. And, it is primarily for that reason that I have recently relished the opportunity to research my family’s past: In fact, my intention has been to find out whether my immediate family’s unreasonableness was a trait that could be traced to my ancestors, or more particularly to an ancestor, who would appear to have acted as injudiciously as my present family. And, I believe that my objective has now been achieved, because I’m very pleased to say that my research has uncovered the action of a relatively recent forbear whose behaviour appears, at best to have been questionable. Because it was my grandfather, Dr Edward Brietzcke Dean, who disregarded his father’s wishes and those of his Bishop as well as his mother’s family, when he resigned as a Church of England clergyman to become a Roman Catholic layman with no earned income to support his future family. Indeed, by abandoning the career his father had so generously helped him to establish, my grandfather not only failed to respect his father’s wishes, but he also, upset Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, whose own father had valiantly served our nation with his work in abolishing slavery. And that is not all, because I also believe my grandfather’s decision would have upset his forbears, had they still been alive at the time, since the Protestant Church of England played such an important part in their lives: In fact, I can say with a degree of confidence that my paternal ancestors would never have understood why a descendant of theirs had abandoned the faith they shared with the Hanoverian Monarchs they had served so diligently.

Also, it is now clear to me that my grandfather’s decision subjected future generations of his family to relative poverty, because the celibacy demanded of a Roman Catholic priest prevented him from taking on the Roman Catholic Priesthood as the only career path that was available to him. Therefore, in view of Dr. Dean’s decision to resign as a Church of England clergyman, I now ask myself two very important questions: First, why did such a good looking and intellectually brilliant man subject himself to a life of miserable poverty without gainful employment? And secondly, because of what then happened to my family in the mid 19th century, why did my family repeat the mistake in the 20th century by behaving in such an unreasonable way towards me?

Some might say that I should be grateful that I unintentionally aroused the ire of my family; for if I had not done so, I may never have researched six generations of my family dating from their German origins in Lower Saxony, before they secured their place in history by serving Britain’s Georgian Monarchy and subsequently administering, as far as the English Law was concerned, one of Britain’s great country estates.

The catastrophic early deaths of my father from cancer and my eldest brother, whilst fighting on the Somme in World War I, combines with other events, including the loss of a ship on the high seas, and a catastrophic house fire, to make this story a compelling read.

INTRODUCTION

‘I so much resented the false allegations made against me by my family that I relish this opportunity to set the record straight by explaining why I was forced to leave England and make a new life for myself in South Africa.’

I was born in 1909, the second youngest child into a family of nine. I am the last survivor of my generation, and because my childless marriage in South Africa has ended, I have recently arrived in England from South Africa to fulfil a long term ambition to carry out some important ancestral research whilst attending the funeral of my last surviving sibling.

I am very pleased that I now have both the time and a good reason to research my English ancestry so that I can put pen to paper in telling the story of my family history, whilst also explaining why I have suffered considerable anxiety from a shadow that has lain over me ever since I was forced by my family to leave my much loved English homeland.

From my early research I have already learnt that my enterprising German ancestor, Daniel Brietzcke, arrived in England from Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, in the year 1724. I have also learned that my ancestor’s arrival occurred one hundred and forty seven years before the Prussian leader, Otto von Bismarck, united Germany into a single State.

By making these recent discoveries I have now been able to uncover the truth behind my long held suspicion that my ancestors were German Protestants, rather than the Polish Roman Catholics my late mother wanted me to believe. In truth, it appears that my ancestor, Daniel Breitzcke, left his home in Lüneberg Lower Saxony in the year 1724, after being persuaded by his German speaking former compatriot, who was now King George I of England, to travel to London in the company of Thomas Wentworth the 1st Earl of Strafford. It seems that, in spite of Thomas Wentworth having formerly served as British ambassador in Berlin during the reign of Queen Anne, Wentworth was considered so untrustworthy by the Hanoverian Monarchy that my ancestor, Daniel Brietzcke - who spoke excellent English – received a Royal request to accompany Thomas Wentworth on the journey. Apparently Wentworth, a Royalist Aristocrat, wasn’t to be trusted because of his recent plot to restore the hated Stuarts to the British Throne. And, still mindful of the plot, King George was later to arrange for Daniel Brietzcke to become the confidential assistant to Charles FitzRoy, the 2nd Duke of Grafton, whose father had been the illegitimate son of the former Stuart, King, Charles II.

Eight years after arriving in London from Lower Saxony, Daniel Brietzcke proposed marriage to an English woman named Elizabeth Deane in 1732, and my German forbear and Elizabeth were subsequently married in December of the same year.

It seems Elizabeth’s mother was the Mistress of the Wardrobe at London’s Somerset House Palace, and that, from the time of their marriage, Daniel Brietzcke was to spend the remainder of his years living and working in Somerset House Palace as a courtier to Britain’s Hanoverian Monarchy until he died in 1753 at the age of forty nine.

My early ancestral research has led me to conclude that England’s centuries old Protestant versus Catholic religious dispute strongly affected the future of my forbears. And my research also tells me that Daniel Brietzcke’s son, Charles, kept a very informative diary from the early age of nineteen. For it is from reading the contents of Charles Brietzcke’s diaries that I have been able to discover many more facts about my family’s past: In fact, from reading the entries from 1758 and beyond I now have a fascinating picture of what life was like for a young civil servant employed in the British Foreign Office during the reigns of both King George II & King George III.

Several of Charles Brietzcke’s diaries were written in the 1760s and I have obtained copies of these from the Oxford University Press. However, I have been surprised to discover more recently, others of Charles’s manuscripts buried amongst my family archives (Charles’s inscription on their front pages describes them as Journals). And it is these latest discoveries – written in the years 1758 & 1759 – that have aroused my special interest by providing so much intricate detail of Charles Brietzcke’s everyday life during the middle of the 18th century; and they have also enabled me to learn a great deal about the daily life of a man who was not only my forbear, but was also the son of a Royal courtier.

The diaries cover a particularly interesting period of British history; they encompass the seven years war when two successful Hanoverian male Monarchs were reigning in Britain: they tell, for example, of visits Charles Brietzcke paid to his younger brother Jack, whilst in the company of his mother, at a time when his brother was serving in the British army during that lengthy war where Britain achieved so much success. There are also interesting accounts of the private visits Charles made with his girl friend, Polly Arnold, to the Covent Garden and Drury Lane Playhouses of their day…and there is even a record of London Bridge being vandalised.

Interestingly, whilst working at the Foreign Office, Charles Brietzcke refers to some of his meetings with the man who would later be known as King Frederick the Great of Prussia; these and other entries also refer to the treaties that were later signed by the adversaries in the seven years’ war, whilst other entries include a record of the British Navy’s successful invasion of the Cuban capital Havana, not so many years before Britain’s colonists in America were fighting for their independence. And there is even an entry referring to an informal meeting in London’s Green Park between Charles Brietzcke and William Pitt the elder, the 18th century statesman credited with founding the British Empire…

I have to say that of all these entries, I find Charles Brietzcke’s description of his twenty first birthday party celebrated on 4th June 1759, the most interesting; that is because he places on record that he was not only born on the same date and at precisely the same time of day as the future King George III, but also that his mother, Elizabeth Brietzcke, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, shared the same midwife: from all accounts an eccentric woman who was known as Mrs Cannon, but whom my further research tells me was the well known midwife of her day, much favoured by the Royal family and other English Upper Class families. Surprisingly, it seems her real name was Sidney Kennon.

If there is one thing my ancestral research has taught me, it is just how little I formerly knew about the more recent generations of my family: Because, whilst investigating the life of my great grandfather, Richard Betenson Brietzcke Dean, I have discovered that he attended Charterhouse school in the City of London before going up to Christ Church College Oxford in 1790. After he had graduated from Oxford University, my great grandfather was called to the Bar; he then progressed as a young barrister through the ranks of the civil service to become Under Secretary of State and ultimately the Chairman of Britain’s Board of Customs.

It seems that my great grandfather married Sobieskie Mostyn Owen in 1806. And one of several points of interest I’ve learned from my family’s ties with the Mostyn Owen family, is that my great grandmother’s niece, Fanny Owen, exchanged affectionate correspondence with her family’s Shropshire neighbour, the legendary botanist, Charles Darwin; however, it seems Fanny lost patience and married Robert Myddelton Biddulph a local squire, because she was unwilling to wait for Darwin’s return from his seafaring adventures to the Galapagos islands aboard his famous ship named the Beagle.

I’ve also learned that the Mostyn Owen family were highly respected Shropshire landowners and politicians as well as being pillars of the Church of England Protestant establishment on the English/Welsh border throughout the 19th century. Apparently, the Mostyn Owen family also had such close links with the Church of England, that two of my great grandfather’s in laws were