View of Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire
Johannes Kip (Amsterdam c.1653 – Westminster 1722)
Category
Architecture / Drawings
Date
1730
Materials
Engraving on paper
Measurements
370 x 500 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Wimpole, Cambridgeshire
NT 206212
Summary
Johannes Kip (Amsterdam c.1653 – Westminster 1722), plate altered. Bird's-eye view of Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire, 1730, inscribed 'WIMPLE, in the County of CAMBRIDGE, formerly the Seat with a large Estate there of Sr. JOHN CUTLER Bart. who devised the same by his last will to his daughter, Elizabeth COUNTESS OF RADNOR and after her decease without Children, to Edmund Boulter Senr. of the Citty of LONDON Esquire who for want of the same being intailed in his family unhappily gave it to the Right. Hon.ble Charles Bodville Robert Earl of Radnor Husband to the aforesaid Countess; the said Earl sold the same to the most noble John Holles Duke of Newcastle, from whom it descended to ye Right Hon.ble Edward Harley Earl of Oxford & Mortimer, and his Countess the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles Harley, the said Duke's Daughter. This Plate is with great respect dedicated Anno Dom 1730 to John Boulter of Gawthorp Hall and Harwood [sic] in the county of York Esq. r and to his Brother Edmund Boulter Jun.r of Hasely Court , in the County of Oxford, and Harwood aforesaid Esquire the two last heirs male of their name & family by their obliged and most obedient humble servant Joseph Smith near Exeter Exchange in the Strand', engraving (370 x 500mm)
Full description
Kip's 1707 plate was reworked in 1730. Radnor's arms, whose ghost can be seen in the crudely stippled grass, in the foreground, were replaced with a row of smaller armorials (left to right) belonging to: Sir John Cutler; Charles Bodville Robartes, 2nd Earl of Radnor; Boulter, for John and Edmund; and Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford (1689-1741). The gloss below the engraved view only partly explains the circumstances of Wimpole's complicated history of ownership and the reason for the plate's dedication to the Boulter brothers, John and Edmund Junior, the nephews of Edmund Boulter (c.1630-1709). In 1689, without his consent, Sir John Cutler's daughter Elizabeth, by his second wife Alicia (d.1685), married the 2nd Earl of Radnor. Mistrustful of the son-in-law he found himself with, Cutler appointed his nephew Edmund Boulter as his sole executor and residuary legatee. While it was widely reported that Cutler had left his estates in Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and elsewhere, worth about £6,000 p.a., and half his personal estate, worth £60,000, to his daughter, the Countess of Radnor, failure of issue would see the lands remaindered on Boulter. Cutler's dubious reputation as a financier, who 'specialised in lending money to impoverished landowners on the security of their estates' and his disapproval of Radnor - who fully expected Boulter, then aged sixty-four and unmarried, to predecease his wife - are satirised in Alexander Pope's third 'Moral Essay': Cutler saw tenants break, and houses fall; For very want he could not build a wall His only daughter in a stranger's power; For very want he could not pay a dower. When, in January 1696, Elizabeth died without issue exchanges between the Earl of Radnor and Edmund Boulter became increasingly litigious. Wimpole, where Radnor was already resident, was at least secure, for on his deathbed in 1693 Cutler had seen fit to forgive Elizabeth and the Cambridgeshire estate was settled on her. Cutler's wider estate, however, would now devolve on Boulter. Radnor exhibited a bill in Chancery and threatened to sue. ln February 1699 he petitioned the House of Commons, for Boulter, who had conveniently been returned the previous year as MP for Boston, was protected by parliamentary privilege. Boulter set out his counter arguments in a printed bill, The Case of Edmond Boulter, Esq., in Answer to the Petition of the Earl of Radnor. In this Boulter asked that he might be allowed to settle amicably so as to avoid 'a Troublesome and Chargeable Suit in Chancery'. Boulter explained that while he had borne the cost of Cutler's 'Funeral Expenses, Debts and Law-Charges' - the funeral supposedly cost a staggering £7,666 - his adversary had in fact not only received a moiety, or part share of the estate, but had also 'enjoyed the Profits of Lands with his Countess, since her Father's Death, amounting to about £14,000'. A settlement was reached out of court. Boulter inherited the estates at Gawthorpe and Harewood in Yorkshire which Cutler had bought in 1657 from one of his major creditors, the 2nd Lord Strafford, who was then facing bankruptcy. Boulter in turn settled them on his nephew John, one of the dedicatees of this engraved plate and one of his four beneficiaries. A legacy of the Boulters' association with the Wimpole estate which has all but been forgotten, is that the parishioners there had the right to elect one poor man to the almshouses in St. Clement's parish, Oxford, in accordance with the will of Edmund Boulter. Almost opposite the 'Hospital for ye Poor and Sick' on St. Clement's Street, Oxford - founded by the Rev. William Stone in 1700 and now known as Stone's Court - can be found Boulter Street. Catalogue entry from David Adshead, Wimpole Architectural drawings and topographical views, The National Trust, 2007
Provenance
Bequeathed by Elsie Kipling, Mrs George Bambridge (1896 – 1976), daughter of Rudyard Kipling, to the National Trust together with Wimpole Hall, all its contents and an estate of 3000 acres.
Marks and inscriptions
Below picture: WIMPLE, in the County of CAMBRIDGE, formerly the Seat with a large Estate there of Sr. JOHN CUTLER Bart. who devised the same by his last will to his daughter, Elizabeth COUNTESS OF RADNOR/and after her decease without Children, to Edmund Boulter Senr. of the Citty of LONDON Esquire who for want of the same being intailed in his family unhappily gave it to the Right. Hon.ble/ Charles Bodville Robert Earl of Radnor Husband to the aforesaid Countess; the said Earl sold the same to the most noble John Holles Duke of Newcastle, from whom it descended to ye Right Hon.ble/ Edward Harley Earl of Oxford & Mortimer, and his Countess the Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles Harley, the said Duke's Daughter. This Plate is with great respect dedicated Anno Dom 1730/to John Boulter of Gawthorp Hall and Harwood [sic] in the county of York Esq. r and to his Brother Edmund Boulter Jun.r of Hasely Court , in the County of Oxford, and Harwood aforesaid Esquire the two last heirs male of their name & family by their obliged and most obedient humble servant Joseph Smith near Exeter Exchange in the Strand
Makers and roles
Johannes Kip (Amsterdam c.1653 – Westminster 1722), engraver (printmaker)
References
Adshead 2007: David Adshead, Wimpole Architectural drawings and topographical views, The National Trust, 2007, no.5