Charlton House

Last Friday, at the end of S's final half-term break in England, we travelled to one of Greenwich's lesser known attractions.

Built between 1607-1612 on the orders of King James I for Sir Adam Newton, Charlton House is a fine example of a Jacobean country house. The draw for us, however, was not the architecture or the relative absence of people, but the place of Charlton House in two notable scenes in the life and autobiography of Lady Anne (Murray) Halkett.

The "oldest" Mulberry tree in England

As at Dunfermline, we found that our lady’s reputation preceded us, which made for another interesting experience in oral history: This time we were treated to two different highly-romanticized accounts of Anne Murray’s clandestine engagement with a love-struck Thomas Howard. (More on the less-romanticized version in scene 1 below.)

Anne's father, Sir Thomas Murray, may have known Sir Adam Newton well because both men came to England from Scotland with King James, and served in the royal courts as tutors to the king’s two sons, Henry and Charles.

Original Chapel Door

We don’t know anything more about the relationship between the Murray and Newton families, but in 1640 Sir Adam’s son Henry Newton married Sir Thomas’s daughter and Anne’s sister, Elizabeth. By this time, Sir Thomas (d. 1623) and Sir Adam (d. 1630) were long gone, and the English civil war was on the horizon.

Scene 1: Blind Date in the Cellars

Fast forward to 1644 and the setting of our scene 1: King Charles has retreated to Oxford; Anne’s brother-in-law, Henry Newton, is in hiding for supporting the Royalist cause; and twenty-two-year-old Anne, her sister, Elizabeth, and their mother, Jane Murray, are living together at Charlton House. They are joined by Anne Murray’s good friend, Anne Howard, daughter of Baron Edward Howard of Escrick, a Parliamentarian who was instrumental in helping the Murray women get permission to keep living at Charlton House after the Newton property had been claimed by Parliament.

Long Hall Fireplace

To make a long story short, Baron Howard’s son, Thomas, falls in love with Anne, proposes, is rebuffed, threatens to convert to Catholicism and join a monastery, which arouses Anne’s sympathy. Anne eventually promises not to marry anyone before Thomas does. Thomas takes Anne’s “maybe” as a “yes,” but when Anne’s mother hears about it she is NOT PLEASED, apparently because Anne was not well enough off to make a good match for the son of her benefactor. Anne’s mother threatens to cut off all ties with Anne if ever she sets eyes on Thomas again. Not to be deterred, Thomas makes a final visit to Charlton house before sailing to France. He is mistaken for Henry Newton, beaten and left unconscious, which again arouses Anne’s sympathy. She agrees to meet Thomas—not in the summer house, as he proposed ...

Inigo Jones designed Summer House, until recently re-purposed as a public toilet

... but in the cellars. And, to keep her word to her mother, she insists on meeting him blindfolded. (For more detail, see pp. 3-19 in Anne Halkett’s autobiography.)

In the summer of 1646, two years after Thomas professed his undying love, Anne is again at Charlton House when she learns that Thomas has married someone else.

Since Anne was concerned about the summer house’s proximity to her mother’s rooms, we speculated that they were located on the second floor, below the long hall:

The Long Hall, rebuilt after the north side of the house was damaged by a bomb in WWII

Because the north wing of the second floor is now used as offices, we didn't get to view its rooms, but the staff at Charlton House kindly offered to let us see the cellars:

Scene 2: A Wedding “in my brother Newton’s Closet”

Original Staircase

Anne Murray’s friendship with Anne Howard apparently suffered little from the one Anne’s engagement to the other Anne’s brother. Anne Howard invited Anne Murray to Naworth Castle in September 1649, where she stayed until June 1650. There she had another courtship experience, this time involving a scheming Anglican clergyman-in-exile who was chaplain to the Naworth household. (See pp. 31 and following in the Autobiography.)

In June 1650 Anne Murray went to Scotland, where she met and became engaged to a widower from Dunfermline by the name of Sir James Halkett. In September 1654, she returned to London to set her financial affairs in order so that she could get married. This took almost two years. The wedding finally took place on 2 March 1656, outside London in Charlton House. This is how Halkett described the event:

“Upon Satturday the first of March, 1655-6, Sr James and I wentt to Charleton, and tooke with us Mr. Gaile, who was chaplaine to the Countese of Devonshire, who preached (as hee some times used to doe) att the church the next day, and affter super hee maried us in my brother Newton’s closett, none knowing of itt in the family or beeing presentt butt my brother and sister and Mr. Neale.” (p. 137)

Salon Fireplace Carving

The reason the marriage took place at Charlton House is probably because Anne wanted to be married by a proper Anglican clergyman. Religious marriages were forbidden during the Interregnum, so getting Mr. Gaile would have involved a certain amount of string-pulling and privacy, as he could have gotten in trouble for performing marriages. Mr. Gaile was chaplain to Halkett’s godmother, the Countess of Devonshire, the façade of whose house we saw at Leicester. Halkett says that a sermon preached by Mr. Gaile at St. James Palace in 1644 was what first led her to make prayer for the king a special part of her daily devotional routine, so he seems to have been a significant figure for her.

Of course, we went looking for Henry Newton’s closet. I took a photo of the fireplace in the office now identified as the Newton Room:

Unfortunately, the interior rooms of the house have been changed since Halkett’s day:

And no one seems to know who slept where in the mid-17th century.

Charlton House from the East, with Ha-ha

Credits: As you can probably tell, some of the wording as well as much of the detail comes from our resident Halkett expert. The mistakes and over-simplifications are my own.