The year is 1718, and a wealthy Portsmouth merchant by the name of John Carter decided to contribute a large amount of money towards the building of the planned new Unitarian Chapel in Portsmouth High Street, but was there more than piety behind this generosity?
John Carter certainly had plenty of money - his father, Roger, had married Sarah Ridge, whose father, Sir Thomas Ridge was the then owner of the Ridge Brewery Company, which had the contract to supply beer to the navy from the mid-1600s onwards ... and we all know how sailors are supposed to be able to drink!
However, since the overthrow of Charles I, there had existed a very strong puritanical streak throughout certain elements of English society, which even the restoration of Charles II did not entirely moderate. And when the strongly Protestant William and Mary, followed by Queen Anne, ascended the throne, there were snobbish elements in the authorities that regarded brewers as glorified tradesmen, regardless of how much money they could boast.
Of course, one major influence on Carter's religious "position" would have been that of his father-in-law, James White, a staunch Presbyterian and influential local businessman and Alderman, and he apparently had not needed much persuasion to convert from the established Protestant religion. But marriages in those days were often about more than love, and there were advantages to be had in this world, whatever the position might be in the next ...
Unitarians were Dissenters, or Presbyterians, which meant that they refused to join the established Church of England, but they did not suffer some of the political restrictions placed upon Roman Catholics; indeed, seen by many as the natural successors to the pious Puritans who had been at the heart of Parliament's successful attempt to overturn the monarchy just 70 years earlier, they were possibly trusted more than their conformist counterparts when it came to politics and business, and were regarded as pillars of the community, when it came to moral standing.
Which meant they - jointly, especially - had a lot of money; and in 1718, more or less much the same as it is now, money meant power ... and power, ultimately, has forever had a habit of generating more money, then more power again, and influence, and so on and on ...
However, despite the amount of money, influence and potential power that lay in the hands of Unitarians in Portsmouth, they were still very much a minority group overall, and in order to preserve his position, once elected to the town council, and even moreso when he was elected a Burgess, John Carter I was required to demonstrate what was called "occasional conformity", by which the establishment was prepared to accept the Unitarians among the local ruling classes.
This "occasional uniformity" entailed turning up at the Church of England parish church at least once a year, sitting through the service and then obtaining a certificate from the vicar to prove that he - Carter - had done so. Some of Portsmouth's Unitarians initially viewed this performance with distaste, but many of their fellows, notably in Norwich and in the West Country, had adopted this practise already and, in the name of expediency, let their objections drift away on the political tide.
Not only that, but as Mayor, Carter decided he should do more than pay token homage to conformity, but also demonstrate his true religious nature, and was frequently seen, together with most of the other Unitarian members of the corporation, all in full state regalia, at the new High Street chapel to which he had earlier so generously contributed.
Sadly, like so many other fine historic buildings from Portsmouth's past, the original Unitarian Chapel was destroyed by wartime bombs, but it is well documented that in front of the seats usually occupied by Carter and his fellow council members, was a socket, into which he could place the heavy mace of office during the service.
John Carter's son, the second John Carter, had been born in 1715, three years before Carter's magnanamous gesture towards the new Unitarian chapel funding, and it's possible that the thought of propogating a "power dynasty" may have influenced his actions - in those days, even more than now, a father wanted to see his children, and especially his sons, rise in the world and follow in his footsteps.
If Roger Carter had done well in marrying Sarah Ridge, which eventually secured the Ridge family fortune for the Carters, John Carter II didn't do too bad for himself, either, marrying Susannah Pike, one of the two daughters of William Pike, founder of the Pike (sometimes spelt Pyke) brewery and himself a Dissenter.
When William Pike died in 1777, his estate, including the brewery and more than 5,000 acres of Portsea Island land, passed to Susannah and her sister Ann, who had married Thomas Bonham, a member of the Bonham family of Meon and Petersfield, respected landowners in Hampshire for many, many years.
The Pike estate at the time was reckoned to be worth in excess of £100,000 - now I don't know how to calculate that precisely in terms of today's money, but the two sisters would have been worth anything up to a cool £50 million each by comparison now!
So John Carter III, when he inherited from his own father eventually, in the 1780s, was almost certainly the wealthiest man for many miles around, and he was determined to build upon the financial and political gains of his father, but more of that a little later on.
John Carter II, as we have seen, was wealthy in his own right and eager to preserve his family's hold on local economics and politics - which more or less amounted to the same thing anyway.
In the early and mid 1700s, the navy always nominated the two MPs who would represent Portsmouth in Parliament. Theoretically, the Corporation didn't have to accept these nominations, which guaranteed the nominees went to Westminster, regardless, but for years they had acceded to the Admiralty, mainly because they were all local businessmen who stood to gain from the naval contracts being handed out around the town.
Although there is little doubt that John Carter II himself benefited in this way, he was very much a fish who wanted to rule his own pond, and he resented this London-based meddling in what he saw as purely local political matters, and he decided to do something about it, forming a group that split the Corporation down the middle.
On one hand were the Admiralty "Ministerialists", on the other the reform group, headed by Carter, unsurprisingly; to describe the ensuing state of affairs as acrimonious would be a bit like saying that there were a few bullets flying around during the American Revolution - and this state of affairs was to drag on for thirty years.
John Carter II had already gone one better than his father, when he was elected as an Alderman, and now he sought to use his influence (and wealth) to wrest local power away from the navy.
In 1750 he convened a meeting at his house, when 62 new Burgesses, the majority nominated by the Carter faction, were elected, including his own sons, John III and William, aged eight and five respectively (oh my!)
Sixteen other sons and grandsons of serving Aldermen, all minors, were also elected and although this situation seems farcical to us today, the Ministerialists took it all very seriously, and responded by threatening to withdraw all the naval contracts from the town.
That may seem to us like cutting off one's nose to spite the face, but it seems to have worked, because for another eleven yearsm until 1851, Portsmouth continued to be represented in Parliament by Admiral Lord Edward Hawke and Admiral Sir Joshua Rowley.
In 1770, the "government" faction on the corporation applied to Westminster to have all the minors who had been elected whilst under age, and who still served as Burgesses, removed from office - this was a battle that would last a further five years, whilst both factions slowly lost support from the middle ground.
Eventually, in 1775, there were only five Aldermen left in the fight - John Carter II and two of his relatives on one side, and Messrs Philip Varlo and Edward Linzee on the other, but these surviviors weren't about to give in. Over the next few years, even the office of Mayor was affected, with three incumbents removed whilst still in office, and at one stage the position went unfilled for four months.
By 1782, though, the battle was all-but over, Carter money and political muscle carrying the "field", and now Portsmouth entered a lengthy period when it was virtually ruled over by the carter family and their friends and associates. However, John Carter haad died in 1782 and did not live to see the family triumph - instead, the reins of power had passed into the hands of his son, John Carter III, by now a knight of the realm.
John Carter III had already served two brief terms as Lord Mayor, having twice been removed from that office in the political in-fighting that dominated Portsmouth's Town Hall of the time, and it was during one of those brief interludes that he received his knighthood - from a grateful King George III, who had found himself better welcomed in Portsmouth than he had anticipated before his royal visit in 1773. |
Southsea Lodge is the first known dwelling to have been built in Southsea, some time around 1750, but little else happened there before the end of the eighteenth century, as much of the land in the area was owned by the Carter family - which meant John Carter.
Pressure for additional housing was growing more than ever before, and not just for cheap housing. As Portsmouth developed, there was a steady influx of middle and lower middle class professionals, and land was needed in order to provide suitable living areas for these people and their families.
Whether Sir John Carter suspected his life might be coming to an end, and whether the fact that his own son showed little interest in taking on the family's extensive business affairs played any part in his decidion, he eventually sold many acres to a man named Thomas Croxton, not long before his (Carter's) death in 1808. Croxton then began selling the land in smaller parcels, to local speculators.
In 1809, the development of the area began in earnest, the first houses being in Hambrook Row, and designed with a definite "up market" feel, but very soon smaller dwellings were being built for skilled workers, in what are nicknamed the "mineral" streets, ie Gold Street, Silver Street, Copper Street, etcetera.
Initially, this new development was called Croxton Town, after Thomas Croxton, but it wasn't long before the name was changed to Southsea, after the castle, but there is still an electoral ward named in memory of Croxton.
In the late 1820s and 1830s, some slightly more "middle class" houses began appearing in the area we know as Landport Terrace and Hampshire Terrace, but until about 1835, this new suburb remained surprisingly small. Further industrial expansion, additional naval contracts and the steady march of progress would soon put a stop to that.
Southsea simply just continued growing, until it could grow no more, at which point it spread over what was left vacant of Eastney land, and then that in turn spread northwards, swallowing Milton and the southern part of Copnor. Eventually, of course, there would be no more land left, apart from what was reclaimed in the twentieth century, or cleared for redevelopment - but then that's another story. |
Sir John Carter and his wife Dorothy had six children in total, but five of these were daughters and, as we have already said, the one son, named after his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, was not interested in brewing, distilling, or any other business, it would seem.
The family money had ensured that he had received an education far superior to that of any of his predecessors, but his main interest lay in the field of politics and he was interested in looking further afield than just his home town.
Whilst his cousins, Williams and James Carter, concentrated on local politics - both served as Lord Mayors, John Carter IV took a more global view, although he did serve as a local Justice of the Peace and was Deputy Lieutenant for a while, before being appointed High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1829.
He was also one of Portsmouth's two MPs from 1816 until his death in 1838, but perhaps he is best remembered as the first person to carry the name Bonham-Carter, and as the "father" of generations a family of that name, who would feature strongly in the politics of the nation for years and years still to come.
And why did he change his name to Bonham-Carter? Simple, really - it was all about money, the money that was left to him by his great uncle, Thomas Bonham, who had married Ann Pike, sister of Susannah (John Iv's grandmother) and inherited the other half of the massive Pike fortune.
Thomas and Ann did plenty of begatting, but incredibly survived all their offspring, so that they had no natural heir. John Carter IV was their nearest living relative, but Thomas wanted his family name to survive and, in order to inherit what would have been an almost unimaginable amount of additional money back then, John had to agree to add the Bonham name to his own - which, of course, he did!
The last Carter to appear on the Portsmouth Mayoral Roll of Honour is Edward, nephew of Sir John, the last of his several terms being in 1836, but a Carter influence remained - although it will take us a good trawl through the family trees and marriages and birth records to demonstrate that fully ... which is why we will, for the moment, leave that until another day. |
