James Tappenden, Town Clerk of Faversham, 1742-1841

JAMES TAPPENDEN, TOWN CLERK OF FAVERSHAM, AT TORNEY, BANKER, INDUST RIALIST AND BANKRUP T, 1742-1841 PETER TANN, M.A. INTRODUCTION James Tappenden, attorney, banker, Town Clerk for thirty-six years and holder of just about every other influential public office in Faversham, was a successful, respected and unpopular figure. He was seen by a local lampoonist in 1791 as a selfish, scheming and vengeful man, whose strutting arrogance was complemented by the haughtiness of his daughter.1 The deed for which he was most disliked was his insensitive order, made in 1789, to remove any projection, bow window or porch which impeded the thoroughfare in the town. He was viewed as public robber rather than public benefactor.2 Tappenden was 'riding for a fall', and a fall was what the lampoonist wished on him: But may sorrow light on thee For the foul unnatural deed Disappointment may'st thou see And thy heart with anguish bleed. His fall came in December 1814. Aged seventy-two, James Tappenden ran away before daybreak to escape the creditors of the Faversham Bank, in which he was senior partner. His son, Charles Octavius, wrote the same morning to a family friend with this explanation: The overponderous weight of that gigantic concern in Wales is the immediate cause of this horrible business ... 1 Serio-comic sketches, Canterbury, 1791, thought to have been the work of John Smith of Eastling, near Faversham. 2 Faversham Institute Monthly Journal, January, 1909. 213 P.TANN and expressed the wish that: ... if it should please the Almighty to spare the lives of my agonised parents, I hope I may be permitted by a compassionate public to exert my abilities and powers in striving to obtain a maintenance for them.3 Notwithstanding his father's disgrace, (he was the first and only member ever to have been summarily dismissed from the Farmers' Club, dining club of Faversham's social elite since 1727), Charles was allowed to succeed to almost all his father's public and private offices.4 These included those of Town Clerk, Clerk to the Vestry and Clerk to the Justices. But in 1818 Charles was convicted for felony and imprisoned in King's Bench Prison.5 His brother, Jenkin, had been committed in the same year to the debtor's prison of the Fleet.6 The reversal in the Tappenden family fortunes was complete, and would have caused great embarrassment in the precincts of Westminster Abbey where sister Emilia was married to Dean Vincent's son, and at Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, where sister Anna was married to Lt.-Col. Currey of the 54th Foot.7 A charitable assessment of James's career was made several years later, presumably by someone who had not suffered personal loss in the bankruptcy: James Tappenden Esq. lawyer and banker, a native of Faversham, died 1840 (sic) at Westminster in the 100th year of his age, a man of indefatigable perseverance, and from his profession and association with most of the public institutions of the town, was connected in some degree with almost every inhabitant of Faversham and its neighbourhood. Few men stood higher in legal knowledge, or was consulted upon more various subjects. In consequence of an unfortunate speculation in an iron mine in Wales, he was necessitated to close his banking concern to the great loss of the public, and retired with his family to Canterbury in 1814 , and ultimately to Westminster. s T his eulogy caught the important function of the man. James Tappenden personified a 'type' of man in the late eighteenth century, a man of influence in the town and its surrounding countryside, a man who combined administration, law and business, and whose wide networks helped create and reinforce the sense of community. It 3 CKS, U 1823/17 Cl. 4 P. Selby, The Faversham Farmers' Club, Faversham, 1927. s PRO, PRIS 4/31. 6 PRO, PRIS 1/32 pps. 295, 307. 7 PRO, Army List. s E. Crow, Historical and various Gleanings, relative to the Town of Faversham and parishes adjoining, 1855 , vol. 2 p. 48 (CKS Fa/Z/41/1 & 2). 214 JAMES TAPPENDEN OF FAVERSHAM, 1742-1841 touched only lightly on James's entrepreneurial investment in the early iron industry in South Wales with his two nephews, James and Francis. This ended in bankruptcy with claims of around £500,000, one of the largest of the period, and was characterised not by honest endeavours gone wrong, but with more than a hint of duplicity and dishonesty over several years. It destroyed a large family which had obtained for itself wealth and high local status. Where did he come from, and why did James Tappenden come to such an ignominious end? FAMILY BACKGROUN D James Tappenden prepared a detailed family pedigree at the request of Hasted in 1782.9 It started with John Tappenden of Sittingboume who died in 1645, and makes it relatively straightforward to trace wills and property deeds, and through these to create a picture of the family's wealth generation. The family made its money as hoymen, in the coastal trade between Milton, near Sittingbourne, and London. The records of Lord Teynham show that in 1684 the Tappendens not only carried grain and hops to London, but brought back luxuries such as 'ye four beds, ye sheets' .10 Although known by their principal trade as 'mariners', they carried money on behalf of Lord Teynham and others, and it is likely that they developed a business involving financial transactions. 11 John Tappenden, described by then as a yeoman, obtained a licence as a corn-dealer in Sittingbourne in 1699, and the Port Book shows him to have been the largest single shipper of grain from Milton in the same year.12 From the mid-eighteenth century, the Tappendens split conveniently into the London and Faversham branches, though marriages between cousins complicated the clarity of this framework. John Tappenden, grandson of the corn-dealer, set up an ironmonger's business in Foster Lane in the City of London in 1750; his branch of the family based itself in those parts of Essex nearest London: West Ham, Ilford and Leyton. James, hoyman son of the corn-dealer, came to Faversham, 9 BM Add.M s 5520 f227/75. 10 CKS, U 498/A2/3. 11 Dennis Baker, Aricultural Prices, Production and Marketing ... north-east Kent, 1680-1760, Garland Publishing, New York, 1985. 12 CKS, QS 1699, quoted in D.C.C oleman, Univ. of London Ph.D thesis, 1951. 215 N ...... O'I MARGARET m JAMES (!heE.lder) JOHN dSl1830 (Fosuruae &Radlns) JOHN(tbeEldcr) b 1726 d 1798 mAmleGIILOW JAMES dt