Document Request: The Risbridger Monument in the Old Albury Parish Church
Document Description: The Risbridger Story being the story behind the RISBRIDGER MONUMENT in the OLD PARISH CHURCH, Albury Surrey, and including a plan of the JOHN EVELYN GARDENS, by R. CHARLES WALMSLEY, 1976
Transcription URL: https://risbridger.surnametree.com/library/vdocs/D_541#541
Document Transcription:The Risbridger Story
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The Risbridger Story
High up on the west wall of the nave in the Old Parish Church at Albury, Surrey
there is a large marble tablet, the Risbridger Monument, which records:-
Near this place are intombed the body of Angel Risbridger, widow of William Risbridger, late
of Cooks Place in this Parish, Gentleman, deceased, who departed this life the 4th November
1734, in the 85th year of her age. Also the body of William Risbridger Gentleman their eldest
son, who died possessed thereof on the 12th day of April 1757, in the 74th year of his age.
Which place thro many ages has been the residence of his ancestors.
Also the body of John Risbridger the only brother of the said William Risbridger who died
5th August 1757, aged 64 years.
Apart from the arresting phrase,
Which place thro many ages has been the residence of his ancestors.
there is nothing in the monument’s bald recital of names and dates to suggest there might
be some story behind its erection. There is such a story however, and an unusual one. It is
about a supply of water to the John Evelyn Gardens which form part of the grounds of the
Albury Park mansion standing close to the Old Church. The story is one of litigation,
spanning more than half a century, between two families.
Cooks Place, referred to in the monument, still forms part of today’s scene, being a
fifteenth century house lying less that a quarter of a mile west of the Old Church, and
known now as Cookes Place.
This house and the previous house on the same site, together with various fields, had for
centuries comprised an enclave of freehold land within the manorial lands of Albury. Even
in respect of freehold land it was not uncommon for some free rent to be paid; the free rent
for Cookes Place, payable to the Lord of the Manor, was six broad arrows with barbed
heads called Broad Arrow Heads, worth and so received one shilling and eight
pence; and this rental of twenty pence was paid for hundreds of years. There had been
Cooks at Albury back in the thirteenth century; and late in the fourteenth century a
Christine Cook married a John Risbridger. Thus it was that “Cooks Place” passed into the
hands of the Risbridger family, and it so remained up to the end of this story.
The last few generations of the Risbridgers of Cookes Place had all been christened
William. It will cause less confusion therefore if the call the William Risbridger who died in
1757 “William R”, and if we call his father “Father R”, and his grandfather “Grandfather R”.
The present story really began in about 1655, a hundred years or so before the Risbridger
monument was installed in what was then the parish
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The Risbridger Story
church of Albury. John Evelyn, the diarist, noted on 10th August 1655 “I went to Alburie to
visit Mr. Howard which had begun to build, and alter the gardens much”. This Mr. Howard
was a Mr. Henry Howard later Earl of Arundel and Sixth Duke of Norfolk, who two years
earlier had bought the manor house and estate at Albury from his elder brother Thomas,
grandson of the fourth Duke. In 1655 Howard was a young man of 27 who had spent much
of his life abroad. The Albury estate which he had taken over was heavily mortgaged, but
he had embarked with enthusiasm on his responsibilities and opportunities as a
landowner. He repaid to the Duncombe family the outstanding mortgage moneys, he
continued the enlargement of the manor house which his brother had already put in hand,
and he brought in his neighbour John Evelyn to help with the landscaping of the gardens.
Evelyn’s garden design at Albury Park included provision for two parallel terraces along
the hillside, opposite the mansion and well above the level of the Tillingbourne stream,
each terrace about 400 yards in length. At the back of the upper terrace a broad and high
tunnel (or “crypta”) was to be driven 160 yards through the adjoining sandstone hill. At the
centre of the upper terrace a semi-circular basin with a fountain was planned. On a southfacing slope below the two terraces, there were to be vineyards planted. And, as a
dominant feature, the Tillingbourne stream was to be widened to form two canals each 200
yards and 80 feet wide.
All these improvement were carried out over the next fifteen to twenty years; but before the
Half Moon Pond and the fountain could be usefully contructed, and before the vineyards
could be safely planted, there was a crucial difficulty to be overcome, namely the lack of
any water supply for filling the pond and priming the fountain and irrigating the vines.
Water was available, in ample volume and at sufficiently high contour, less than half a mile
away at the Sherbourne ponds, which were owned by Henry Howard as part of his
manorial lands and which were served by a strong spring. Intervening between the
Sherbourne and Howard’s planned new garden, however, there lay certain fields which
were in Risbridger ownership being part of the lands held with Cookes Place, as shown on
the plan at the end of this Paper. The owner of Cookes Place in 1655 was Grandfather R.,
and it would appear that he proved unresponsive when invited to give permission for a
watercourse to be constructed across the Cookes Place fields in order to help in the
creation of a pleasure garden for the manor house. At any rate no progress was made to
this end dring Grandfather R’s lifetime. He died in 1661, leaving a widow Joan and a
young son, aged 9. Withi a very short time Henry Howard had persuaded widow Joan to
lease him a strip of the Risbridger land in order that water could be brought from
Sherbourne Pond (now called the Silent Pool), to the upper level of the Albury Park
gardens.
A stiplulation was made by widow Joan, however, that the lease should run
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The Risbridger Story
from 1662 for 11 years only, so that when her son came of age the grant would not be
binding on him. Having secured this lease Howard proceeded to construct his watercourse
as marked on the attached plan. The line taken had to be a tortuous one because of the
necessity to follow very closely the contours of the land. Much of the watercourse remains
to this day, but it is now a dry channel.
By 1670 the contstruction of the Albury Park garden was well-advanced. John Evelyn’s
diary for 23rd September 1670 records: “to Alburie to see how that garden proceeded,
which I found exactly done according to the Designs and Plot I had made, with the Crypts
through the mountains in the park … the canals were now digging, & vineyards planted.“
So far, so good.
But three years later, in 1673, Father R came of age. The lease of the watercourse
therefore elapsed, and it was never renewed. Father R was firmly of the opinion that from
1673 onwards the owner of the mansion no longer had any title to the strip of land forming
the bed of the watercourse. To make his viewpoint quite clear he began to interrupt the
flow of water from time to time. On such occasions Henry Howard would make a request
for the supply to be restored, and would pay some suitable acknowledgment therefor
which, though of small value, was accepted by Father R as sufficient evidence of his own
right to stop the water whenever he wished. It would seem that Howard and Father R.
were on reasonably good terms, or at least that Father R. did not wish to cause
unneccesary anxiety to a neighbour who already had other troubles. It is recorded that
Henry Howard had fallen into a deep melancholy on the death of his first wife.
Four years after Father R. had come of age, Howard succeeded as sixth Duke of Norfolk
on the death of his elder brother; and in the following year, 1678, he married his mistress
Jane, daughter of Robert Bickerton gentleman of the wine-cellar to Charles II. The duke
and his second wife moved thereafter to Arundel where he died in 1684. Two years before
his death the Duke of Norfolk had sold his Albury estate to the Hon. Heneage Finch. For
the next thirteen years from 1682, during Father R.’s lifetime, although there may well
have been friction between him and the new owner of the manor house, there was no
open confrontation. Finch was wont to carry out any necessary repairs to the watercourse,
and Father R. continued to draw water therefrom for supplying a cistern in his house and
for watering his higher fields and for filling a horsepond.
In 1696, however, Father R. died and (as had happened with his own father,) he left a
widow and a young son. The widow was called Angel, née Burningham, and her son was
our William R., then aged 10. Angel Risbridger, who is commemorated in the tablet in the
Old Church, was a strong-minded lady who had evidently nursed her own opinion about
the rights and wrongs of this
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water matter. On her husband’s death she lost no time in cutting off the supply of water to
the pond and fountain and the vineyard in the John Evelyn Gardens. Finch took swift legal
action. In Trinity Term 1696 he exhibited a Bill in the Chancery Court claiming his right and
title for the enjoyment of the watercourse, and asking for an injunction to prevent any
interruption of the water supply. On behalf of the infant William R., an Answer to this bill
was filed by his uncle Henry Birningham . In due course, in April 1698, a joint Commission 1
was appointed and many witnesses were examined on both sides. The case was then
brought to a hearing on 20th May 1699 before the Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, who
ordered that there should be a trial at law as to whether there had been any agreement for
the making or continuing of the watercourse. This decision did not suit Finch at all, he
succesfully petitioned the then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal for a re-hearing. The
rehearing took place in the High Court of Chancery on 24th November 1700, and
judgement was given in his favour, but the injunction granted him was not to biding on “the
infant, after his age of 21 years, in case he shall within six months after such age show
good cause to the contrary”.
The official report of the Finch v Risbridger case, covering this 1696-1700 litigation, is
commendably brief. In full it reads as follows:
“The Bill was to quiet the plaintiff in the enjoyment of a watercourse to his house
and garden, through the ground of the defendant. It appeared upon the proof that
there had been a long enjoyment of this watercourse, particularly by the Earl of
Arundel and after him by the Duke of Norfolk, and that the plaintiff had scoured and
repaired it when there was occasion, and that the Duke was in the quiet enjoyment
of it when he sold it to the plaintiff.
For the defendant it was insisted that the Earl of Arundel in 1662, took a long lease
on the lands, now the defendant’s, and that while he held those lands as lessees
he made the watercourse in question; and that after the expiration of the lease he
was many times denied liberty to scour or amend the watercourse, and several
witnesses deposed to that effect; and the defendant insisted it was only upon
sufferance and not founded on any agreement or consideration.
This cause being first heard before the Lord Chancellor Somers, he directed an
issue to be tried at law, whether there was any agreement made between any of
the owners of the plaintiff’s estates respectively, for the making or continuing of the
watercourse in question.
Upon a rehearing before the Lord Keeper Wright, he decreed for the plaintiff,
declaring a quiet enjoyment was the best evidence of right, and would presume on
agreement, and the proof ought to come on the other side to show the special
licence, or that it was to be restrained or limited in point of time.”
It is strange indeed that what could have been a vital document, the original lease for 11
years from 1662, was never at any time produced; the presumption must be that Joan
http://docplayer.net/39936435-Watch-clock-bulletin-index.html mentions FREDERICK HENRY 1
BIRNINGHAM CASE MAKER'S MRK & DATA so maybe another clock maker in the family?
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The Risbridger Story
Risbridger’s agreement with Henry Howard had been on a verbal basis only. Be this as it
may, widow Angel and her brother did not lie down under the judgement of Lord Keeper
Wright. Within a month, on 13th December 1700, Henry Burningham on behalf of William
R, entered a Caveat to prevent the signing and enrolling of the decree, and he exhibited a
Bill in Chancery running to some 10,000 words seeking leave to re-open the whole issue.
The Answer thereto by Heneage Finch, sworn on 14th May 1701, ran to some 5,000
words. The case came up for hearing afresh on 7th July 1701, when the Lord Keeper ruled
that the former Decree should stand confirmed. Nothing more could now be done by the
Risbridger family until William R. came of age five years later. Within the stipulated six
months he then duly presented his petition to the Lord Chancellor, but it was unsuccessful,
and the ruling was again made that the previous decree should stand. A direction was
given, however, that the said watercourse should be kept within the bounds of three or four
feet and that Finch should be obliged at seasonable times upon request to scour it and
amend the banks, and that William R. should at seasonable times enjoy the benefit of the
water for watering his grounds as previously.
That was the end of this first stage of this litigation, with nothing gained by the Risbridger
family, and considerable expense incurred. It is difficult not to feel that the Risbridgers had
started at some disadvantage. They were up against a formidable opponent in Heneage
Finch, who was a national figure. In 1678 he had been appointed solicitor-general to
Charles II, albeit he had been subsequently removed from that position by James II in
1686. In 1688, six years after his purchase of the Albury Estate, Finch had achieved fame
by successfully pleading as leading counsel on the side of the seven bishops whom James
II was suing for the publication of a seditious libel, namely a petition against a Declaration
of Indulgence for Catholics which James had commanded to be read in all churches. The
outcome of that was to prove a mortal blow to James’s desired restoration of Catholicism
in this country. For a period from 1673 Finch had also himself been Lord Chancellor. It is
hardly surprising therefore that, given any scintilla of doubt about the merits of the
Risbridger case, the Chancery Court (which is the Lord Chancellor’s own court), should
have come down in favour of Finch.
Time went on. In 1714 Heneage Finch was advanced in the peerage, taking the title of
Earl of Aylesford. In 1719 he died and the Dowager Countess of Aylesford became the
Lady of the Manor of Albury. On the Risbridger side, the redoubtable Angel Risbridger died
in 1734 at the age of 84. Then in 1743 Lady Aylesford died, and her son the Earl of
Aylesford came into possession.
There had been a period of comparative calm since 1707, but after 1743 litigation flared
again, sparked off this time by Lord Aylesford and relating to a different watercourse.
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Running southwards from the lower Sherbourne pond there had always been and there
still is a running stream, the Sherbourne Watercourse, as shown on the attached plan. This
watercourse served the lower-lying fields held with Cookes Place, and it had been granted
in the fifteenth century to a John Risbridger by the then Lord of the Manor Sir John
Norbury. The Deed of Grant, dated 10th October 1480, records that Sir John did “give,
grant and confirm to one John Risbridger, son and heir of Henry Risbridger …… one small
watercourse in breadth four feet, rendering to the Lord of the Manor one red rose on the
feast of St John the Baptist if demanded”. It appears that between the upper and lower
ponds at Sherbourne there used to be a board which was readily raised or lowered to
regulate the flow of water. But in 1745 this board was replaced by a penstock, or sluicegate, which Lord Aylesford kept locked, thus cutting off the supply to the lower pond and to
the Sherbourne watercourse; incidentally also causing the water from the upper pond to
run to waste, and inviting retaliatory action on the Howard watercourse.
In 1746 William R. filed in Bill in the Court of Chancery, to which the Earl put in an Answer.
The Earl afterwards filed a Cross-Bill, to which William R. put in his Answer. Legal
proceedings dragged on for another three years without coming to a hearing. Not only was
this litigation lengthy, it was also very costly. By 1749 William R. decided that he had had
enough. This was understandable o his part because he had reached the age of 65; he
was still a bachelor; there was no succeeding generation to follow him at Cookes place;
and he had responsibility for a younger unmarried brother John, then aged 56, who was an
invalid.
What happened was that in October 1749 William R. in consideration of the sum of
£3,000, sold to Lord Aylesford his freehold properties, and at the same time also
surrendered to the Earl about 30 acres of land which he had been holdig as Copyhold
Tenant of the Manor. As part of the bargain it was agreed:-
“ …. that all proceedings be stayed in the two causes now dep[ending on the Court of
Chancery in one of which the said William Risbridger is plaintiff and the said Heneage Earl
of Alesford defendant and in the other the said Heneage Earl of Aylesford is plaintiff and
the said William Risbridger defendant and each party to pay his own costs and for that
purpose either party shall at the request of the other consent that the several Bills filed in
the said cause may be dismissed without costs”.
It was on this basis that the litigation which had started in 1696 was concluded in 1749.
But the story would not be complete if the Paper ended here.
In 1754 William R. made his will. Money was left in trust for his brother John, the interest
on which was to be applied:
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”for the better support and maintenance of my brother, it being my will that the utmost care
be taken of his […] and that he may not be removed to any place but his own house or
where he slall like best. And if a person extraordinary to attend his constantly be
necessary, that such person is provided to take care of him there and that no expense be
spared that may be conducive to his happiness and quiet”.
Under the Will a substantial sum of £400 was to be placed at interest to bring in twelve
pounds and twelve shillings for perpetuating William R’s usual charities. The manner in
which this total annual sum was to be distributed is arved on the monument in the Old
Church, viz:-
1L. 1s. to the Minister of Albury, for preaching a sermon on the first of May in every year.
1s. to the Clerk for performing his office.
15s. to 30 such poor people thereof as shall not have received alms thereof, as will
attend that service equally.
15s. to be that day laid out in a dinner for such poor people.
5L. annually to be paid out in bread, and equally distributed in the said Parish Church,
on every Sunday, immediately after the Divine Service and Sermon, amongst such
poor people of this Parish as shall not have received alms thereof.
5L. yearly to be applied to putting to School poor men’s sons of this Parish.
In April 1757 William R. died. It will be recollected that the Risbridger Monument, after
referring to “Angel Risbridger, widow of William Risbridger, late of Cooks Place,” goes on
to say:
“Also the body of William Risbridger, Gentleman their eldest son, who died possessed
thereof - - -. Which place thro’ many ages had been the residence of his ancestors.”
Whilst the closing phrase above is arresting; the opening phrase is something of a riddle
because William R. had sold his freehold lands to the Earl of Aylesford eight years
previously. In order to discover the answer to this riddle it is necessary to look at a
document which had been entered into between William R. and Lord Aylesford earlier in
1749, entitled Articles of Agreement for Purchase. In addition to setting out the
arrangements which have already been described, this earlier Deed of 20th June 1749
contains two unusual provisions. One relates to Cookes Place, and it runs:-
“EXCEPT and to be reserved out of such conveyance unto the said William Risbridger - - -
for and during the term of his natural life ALL the said messuage or tenement called Cooks
Place in the occupation of the said William Risbridger with all the gardens thereto
belonging - - - the Hogstys, the vine by the Hogstys, the horsepond to keep the fish in and
take out at his free will and pleasure by drawing the pond or otherwise, the lead cistern
and pipes and sufficient water to run thereto, the fourteen apple trees standing nearest the
said pond etc., etc, - - - “.
It is in the light of the above provision that the declaration in the monument, that William
Risbridger had “died possessed of Cooks Place” is seen
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The Risbridger Story
to be poignantly accurate.
The second unusual provision in this Deed of 1749, and a strange clause indeed to find
among “Articles of Purchase”, has a similar poignancy.
It runs:-
“WITH liberty for him the said William Risbridger and his brother John Risbridger to be
buried in the same vault in Albury Church where their mother was buried.”
The year 1757 marks the end of the story. William R. had died in the April. His invalid
younger brother was to die in the August. And meanwhile, in June of that same year, there
was to come the death of the new owner of Cookes Place, the second Earl of Aylesford.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
(by R. Charles Walmsley, F.R.I.C.S.)
The compiler of this Paper acknowledges, with gratitude, assistance derived from many sources,
and in particular from:-
1. Typescript entitled “The Risbridger Family of Cookes Place, Albury”, undated and unsigned
but undoubtedly attributed to the late Miss O.M. Heath. Held by Mr. Ernest Risbridger of
Albury.
2. Manuscripts left by the late Miss O.M.Heath. Held in the library of the Surrey Archaelogical
Society, Guildford. (Box 93/1).
3. The Dictionary of National Biography. 22 vols. O.U.P.
4. “The Diary of John Evelyn”. Edited by E.S. de Beer. (O.U.P. 1959)
5. Bills and Answers relating to the Finch v Risbridger litigation 1696-1701. Held in the Public
Record Office, London. (Bundle C9. 163/87).
6. The judgement in the case of Finch v Risbridger. High Court of Chancery, 24 November
1700. Held in the library of Lincoln’s Inn. (Vernon\’s Reports 1828. Vol. II. p 390).
7. Plan of the Manor of Albury, drawn by Abr. Walter and dated 1701. Held in the Estates
Office, Albury.
8. Articles of Agreement of Purchase of freehold lands at Albury by the Rt. Hon. Heneage Earl
of Aylesford from Wm. Risbridger, 20 June 1749. Also Deed of Surrender of Copyhold lands
by Wm. Risbridger to the said Earl, 6 October 1749. Held in the muniment room, Syon
House. (Bundle D.XXII. 1. C(2)).
___________________________
The drawing of the Old Parish Church of Albury on the front of this paper is by Mr. John L. Baker
and is now in the ownership of Dr. Maurice Burton.
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