The Ring of the Barhams

By Roger Cockett

Nicholas Barham, Queen’s Serjeant-at-Law, MP for Maidstone and the owner of Chillington Manor House, had a ring made of gold. It was a signet ring bearing his coat of arms and Nicholas used it to seal documents with wax, though he often signed them as well. His branch of the Barhams came from Wadhurst in Sussex, but they were distant relatives of the arms-bearing Barhams of Teston near Maidstone. In 1574 the herald Robert Cooke, Clarenceux King of Arms visited Chillington and granted the Barham arms to Nicholas Barham. He and his son Arthur could now bear the ancient family arms of three muzzled bears, two martlets and a fleur-de-lis. It was probably Nicholas who had the ring made - his son was more inclined to sell his old rings than to have new ones made.

Then Nicholas Barham had two misfortunes. First, he lost his gold ring. It slipped somewhere out of sight and he never saw it again. Second, in 1577 he died of gaol fever in Oxford, immediately after sending a Roman Catholic to the pillory to have his ears cut off. Maidstone grieved, all except for the devout, who thought it was a judgement upon him.

For nearly 300 years the ring lay quiet. It was in Chillington House, but the house had become a warehouse and then a factory and then the Maidstone Museum. The first curator started work there in 1858 but after only seven years he died. A second curator, one William Lightfoot arrived. He was a man of action and keen to restore the old building. He was vexed that the east wing of Chillington House remained a coal and straw store and in 1868 he raised funds and began its rebuilding. And then somebody found the ring.

Humphry Woolrych recorded the finding of a signet ring with the Barham arms in his book of 1869. At that date, the only building it could have been found in was the east wing. One account says that the ring was found in a hearth or mantelpiece. A later story says it was found when moving an altar stone in the chapel at Chillington house, but that cannot be right as the house had no chapel until one was built in 1874. Edward Hughes, a family friend, had a third story that a silversmith showed William Lightfoot a ring which he had received from Tunbridge Wells and which had “been dug up not far off” - which could mean anything but was probably the find from the fireplace again. All accounts agree that William Lightfoot was now convinced it was Nicholas Barham’s ring and he wore the ring until his death in 1875.

Edward Hughes persuaded William’s sister Mary Ann to give the ring to her brother’s old sponsor, the Revd. Edward Muriel, rector of Rucking, on condition he returned it to her in his will.

Meanwhile Sir George Barham, a descendant of the Wadhurst Barhams, must have read Woolrych’s book. In a letter of 1879, probably responding to Sir George, Edward Hughes expressed second thoughts and suggested the ring ought to pass back to the Barhams.

Sir George made another approach in 1890, this time to the Revd. Muriel, who now had the ring. Muriel insisted that Mary Ann Lightfoot, then in Canada, should first be consulted. Nothing seems to have happened before the Revd. Muriel died in 1895. Mary Ann remained unmarried and died in 1908, leaving the ring to Constance the daughter of her friend Edward Hughes. Sir George Barham wrote to Constance Hughes that year and again in 1910, asking if she would agree to sell him the ring.

An historian Fitzgerald Uniacke, who was writing a Barham family history, wrote to Constance three times in April 1910. Each time he asked to buy the ring or to borrow it or to have a photograph or a drawing of it. Constance agreed to the drawing, but she kept the ring.

Time passed. Edward Hughes and Sir George Barham died in 1913. The Great War came and went, as did the 1920s, the 1930s and World War II. In 1961 an American descendant Robert Young Barham, read about the ring in Woolrych’s book and visited the Barhams, only to be told that they did not have it.

But, in 1965 the ring appeared again. A Mr and Mrs Relph wrote to the grandson of Sir George Barham. They told of an elderly widow of 88 named Connie Ringham living in an old people’s home in Heathfield, who wished to return a gold signet ring to the Barham family. The widow was none other than Constance Hughes, who had married a Mr Steuart Ringham in 1915; the Relphs had been in her service ever since. Connie had worn the ring herself for 57 years and now she wanted to make sure it did not get lost. The ring was duly despatched back to its family, though the Relphs feared at one stage that Mrs Ringham was going to change her mind and keep it.

The story continues in the dull days between Christmas 2015 and New Year 2016. Ben Barham, another of the American Barhams who lives in Little Rock Arkansas, emailed the Kent Archaeological Society’s website to enquire the whereabouts of the ring described by Humphry Woolrych in 1869. Some rapid researches revealed that it was now in Kent again with the rightful owners, who at that very same moment were looking into the history of the ring themselves.

Just at the moment, the ring seems to have disappeared again. But, it has not gone for ever and it will make itself known when the time is right.

I am most grateful to the Barham family for letting me see their family papers on this subject.

LEFT: William Lightfoot photo from painting courtesy of Maidstone Museum