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The Feoffees for impropriations was an unincorporated organization dedicated to advancing the cause of Puritanism in England. It was formally in existence from 1625 to 1633.

Background

The Elizabethan Religious Settlement established an uneasy truce between Catholics and Protestants that brought the English Reformation to a conclusion and shaped the theology and liturgy of the Church of England. It was a compromise that was not completely satisfactory to either party. During the reign of James I, Puritanism was neither officially tolerated nor actively suppressed. With the succession of Charles I and the increasing power of William Laud, greater prominence was given to the requirement for adherence to the doctrine and liturgy of the established church. Puritans regarded this as a direct attack and responded by various overt and covert moves to resist the increasing Arminianism of the Church of England. In 1626, the York House Conference. chaired by the Duke of Buckingham, was held to discuss theological differences between Puritans and Arminians. Buckingham came down in favour of Laud.

Establishment

Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) served as one of the Feoffees for Impropriations, who were organized in 1625 to support Puritanism in the Church of England.

When John Preston realised that the York House Conference was not likely to favour Puritanism, he encouraged a group of Puritan lawyers, merchants, and clergymen (including Richard Sibbes and John Davenport) to establish an organization known as the Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations. The feoffees would raise funds to purchase lay impropriations and advowsons, which would mean that the feoffees would then have the legal right to appoint their chosen candidates to benefices and lectureships. This would provide a mechanism both for increasing the number of preaching ministers in the country, and a way to ensure that Puritans could receive ecclesiastical appointments.

The group considered obtaining letters patent, or securing an Act of Parliament, but did not pursue this course. Twelve trustees were appointed - four clergymen, four lawyers and four merchants. A chairman was appointed in case the trustee split six - six on an issue. Over the few years that the feoffees were in existence, a number of trustees died and were replaced. The final chairman was Nicholas Rainton, at the time, Lord Mayor of London.

Activities

The feoffees began raising money by donations and using it to support their aims. They also used the donations to purchase the right to tithes which would give them a continuing income. Their primary purpose was to provide a pulpit for Puritan clergymen. They purchased advowsons, established lectureships and provided direct financial support to individual clergymen. However, they were careful to ensure that they only supported those whose opinions they approved of. Purchases were made by individual trustees since the feoffees had no formal corporate existence. Although the trustees purchased advowsons, they had made relatively few presentations before their activities came to the notice of the authorities.

Suppression

In 1629, Peter Heylin, a Magdalen don, preached a sermon in St Mary's denouncing the Feoffees for Impropriations for sowing tares among the wheat. Archbishop Laud believed these activities seemed "a cunning way, under a glorious pretence, to overthrow the Church Government, by getting into their power more dependency of the clergy, than the King, and all the Peers, and all the Bishops in all the kingdom had". As a result of the publicity, William Noy began to prosecute feoffees in the Exchequer court. Their lawyers were William Lenthall, later Speaker of the Long Parliament, and Robert Holborne, later counsel to Hampden and Prynne. The feoffees' defense was that all of the men they had had appointed to office conformed to the Church of England. Nevertheless, in 1632, the Feoffees for Impropriations were dissolved and the group's assets forfeited to the crown: Charles ordered that the money should be used to augment the salary of incumbents and used for other pious uses not controlled by the Puritans. This suppression of the Feoffees, by legal action, was an early move of Laudianism.

Rehabilitation

When the Long Parliament was called following the period of personal rule by Charles I, attempts were made by MPs to overturn the suppression of the feoffees. In 1643, the House of Commons ordered the return of the money that had been taken by the King. In 1648, the surviving trustees secured a formal reversal of the previous court order from the House of Lords. However, the activities of the feoffees were never resumed, perhaps because under the English republic, they were considered unnecessary. John Marshall, one of the trustees bequeathed money and property for the erection of a new church in Southwark, but the feoffees were dissolved before the bequest was acted upon. In the late 17th century, new trustees were established to hold the advowson of the newly built church financed by the bequest - a single remaining legacy of the feoffees.

References

Gipsies around a camp fire is an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. It was the subject of the first episode of the eight series of Fake or Fortune. Around 1753, Gainsborough began to explore the subject of gypsies, producing at least three paintings. A print of Gipsies around a camp fire by Joseph Wood was published in 1759 although this shows the scene in mirror image. The original Gainsborough was believed to be lost. In 1999 Philip Mould identified as the original. This attribution was accepted by John Hayes, author of the then authoritative catalogue raisonne for Gainsborough. The work was subsequently sold at auction for £xxxx

References

Miriam Camp (1916 - 1997) was an economist, author and State Department official.

Family life and education

Miriam Camp was born in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1916. She was educated at Mount Holyoke College (graduated 1937) and Bryn Mawr College (graduated with masters degree in 1928).

In 1954, she married the classicist William Camps.

She was awarded an honorary degree from Mount Holyoke College in 1959 and became a fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

She died of lung cancer in Cambridgeshire on December 30, 1994.

Katherine Evelyn Luard was born in Aveley vicarage on 29th June, 1872. Her father was Bixby Garnham Luard, the vicar of Aveley between 1871 and 1895. Her mother was Clara Isabella Sandford Bramston. She had twelve brothers and sisters, three of whom were born after her. She was educated at Croydon High School where the headmistress, Dorinda Neligan had served as a nurse at the Siege of Metz (1870) during the Franco Prussian War in 1870-71.

Luard served as a nurse in the Boer War and was one of the first nurses to join the British Expeditionary Force at the start of the 1st World War. During the war she was twice mentioned in despatches and was awarded the 1st class Royal Red Cross medal and bar.

Luard is the author of two accounts of her experiences in the war:

• Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, William Blackwood & Sons, 1915 (published anonymously);
• Unknown Warrior, the Letters of Kate Luard, History Press Limited, 2017.

She retired to Wickham Bishops in Essex where she died in 1962.

Career

She joined the United States Department of State during the 2nd World War and subsequently worked in the Board of Economic Warfare at the U.S. Embassy in London, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Economic and Social Affairs, the Policy Planning Staff and the Bureau of European Affairs. She played a major role in the development and implementation of the Marshall Plan. She left the State Department in 1954 following her marriage and began writing a series of books on European economic co-operation and its relationship with the US. She returned to the State Department as a consultant and subsequently had several roles in the office of the Secretary of State.

Publications

• The European Free Trade Association: A preliminary appraisal (Britain and the European Market series;no.4)(1959)
• Britain and the European Community (1964),
• What Kind of Europe? (1965) and
• European Unification in the Sixties (1966)

References

The Lumley inventories are inventories of paintings, books, sculptures, silver and furniture owned by Lord Lumley in 1590. 1596 and 1609. The 1590 inventory also includes some heraldic and genealogical information.

Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register is quoted as saying "Removing something from a skip or a rubbish dump is theft — either from the council or the owner. It should have been brought to the gardai or the local council.”

The Walpole collection was a collection of paintings and other works of art at Houghton Hall.

Portraits by Frans Hals

There are four versions of Hals' portrait of van Heythuysen.

• The Musees Royaux des Beaux-Art version
• The Rothschild version
• Other versions - the Mildmay version and the version in France

The Musees Royaux des Beaux-Art version

Maerten van Sittard commissioned a copy of the famous Frans Hals portrait of Willem van Heythuysen leaning back in his chair, a portrait that hung in the Haarlem hofje for centuries. In August 1653 he made a payment "to Frans Hals for the portrait of Van Heythuysen, 36 Guilders". It was sold by the hofje regents in 1869 by public auction in Paris and was acquired the following year by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels. This version was long considered an original portrait painted from life.

The Rothschild version

The Rothschild version was sold in 2004 when it was described as "studio or follower of Frans Hals. It had been purchased by the Rothschild family in 1865 from a sale of the effects of a Dutch baron. It was sold in 1950 to a New York dealer and was subsequently in Mexico and Austria. It appeared in exhibitions in London in 2006 and The Hague in 2007. It was auctioned again in 2008 when it was described as an autograph work by Hals and sold for more than £7 million.

Other versions

The Mildmay version is an oil on panel work that takes its name from the Mildmay family. The version in France is oil on canvas.

The Mildmay version is painted on a 17th century panel, but the quality of the work does not match Hals.

It was recently, determined that this picture was actually painted after Van Heythuysen died as a copy for the hofje by the artist himself of his earlier 1630s original.

All in all, Hals painted him three times, including the copy. The other full-length portrait is the one hanging in the Liechtenstein gallery where he poses with a sword. That impressive painting may have been intended as a pendant wedding portrait. He was betrothed to Alida Roosterman (c. 1620-1647), the younger sister of Tieleman, but she died before they could be married.

Origin

The collection was put together by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first prime minister and housed at Houghton Hall. It included paintings by Van Dyck, Poussin, Rubens, and Rembrandt, as well as a number of portraits of family members. Many of the portraits and some of the other paintings came from the collection of the Wharton family. Walpole's collection of marble Roman busts was also noteworthy.

Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert, published a catalogue of the collection. In 1777, John Wilkes tried (but failed) to persuade parliament to buy the collection for the nation. Many of the Old Master paintings subsequently went to the Hermitage Museum having been sold to Catherine the Great in 1779.

Some works remained at Houghton after the sale to Catherine including Thomas Gainsborough's oil painting of his own family -- Thomas Gainsborough, with His Wife and Elder Daughter, Mary (circa 1751-1752).

Jean-Baptiste Oudry's The White Duck, which was stolen from Houghton Hall in 1990

Au cafe is a painting by Edouard Vuillard. It was featured in the third series of Fake or Fortune. It was accepted as authentic and added to Vuillard's catalogue raisonné.