THE HANDSOME MONUMENT to St. John Astry in Henbury Church is of considerable interest. The inscription in flowery, but classically pure, Latin may be thus freely translated:
Here-under lies a young man, as eminent by birth as by his virtues, Saint-John Astry, gentleman, (both ornamented by and the ornamented of his name), of the family of Astry of Woodend in the county of Bedford and descended in the female line from the noble house of St. John of Bletsho, thus rejoicing in a peditree famous for its antiquity.
He was sole survivor of the two sons of Samuel Astry by Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of George Morse, of Henbury, Gentleman. This same Samuel (on whom was bestowed the Order of Knighthood, though greater by his own merits than any title) had filled for nearly 40 continuous years the arduous and honourable office of Clerk to the Crown with the highest trust and skill.
The young man was worthy of the father. He made the numerous family honours his own: illustrious by virtue of these paternal gifts and still most illustrious without them. He was valued for his benign mind and peerlessly candid manners. He was a man of outstanding humanity, upholder of the cause of justice even when justice was by others disregarded. Liberal towards the poor, benevolent towards everyone, he was regarded by all men with love while living and with solicitude when dying.
He died on the 21st November in the year of our salvation 1712 and in the 37th year of his age. This monument, sacred to his memory, was raised by his youngest sister Arabella Astry, the most loving of sisters, the most sorrowful of heiresses.
The father, Samuel Astry, born in 1632 in direct descent from Sir Ralph Astry, Lord Mayor of London in 1493, was a distinguished lawyer, member of Lincoln’s Inn, and appointed in 1677 Clerk of the Crown in the King’s Bench, an office he held with honour until his death.
He was knighted in 1683. By his marriage in 1667 to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of George Morse, Lord of the Manor of Henbury, and by subsequent purchase, he became possessed of large estates in Gloucestershire, including the Manor and Hundred of Henbury, where he rebuilt the Great House, forerunner of the recently demolished Henbury Court, for his residence. He died in 1704, and was buried at Aust.
Of the two sons born to Sir Samuel, the elder, Luke, was sent down from Oxford because of lewd and vicious conduct, which threatened to corrupt the youth of his college. He afterwards, in association with his younger brother, led a very loose life. It is related that one night, when in drink, he struck his father, whereupon he was turned Out of the house and disinherited. He died unmarried at the age of 28 in the lifetime of his father, and was buried at Aust.
The younger son, St. John born in 1675, resembled Luke in want of character and possessed even less intelligence. He was not given a university education, and was apprenticed at an early age to Mr. Gotley, a Bristol lawyer. Having, like his brother Luke, quarrelled with his father and consequently been cut off with a meagre sum in his will, of which his mother was made sole executrix and principal beneficiary, St. John claimed that the will was invalid, and ordered the tenants of the estate to pay their rents to him.
On their refusal, he brought a suit in Chancery against his mother. In her answer, she asserted that his infamous conduct was the reason his father had disinherited him. He had absconded from Mr. Gotley’s office and broken his indentures, and gone to Westerleigh, where his father’s coalmines were situated, and settled himself in a house of ill-fame. Sir Samuel’s manservant testified that St. John had at one period spent three months in Bristol Newgate Prison because of debts, which his father had refused to discharge, saying that ‘according to his way of living, Newgate was the fittest place for him’. He had seldom come to see his father in his old age, and had sold his coals at Westerleigh and kept the money.
The case was heard in June, 1706, and was decided in the widow’s favour, whereupon St. John went into obscurity. His mother married again in July, 1707, and died in December of the same year, leaving all her property to her three surviving daughters.
St. John Astry died unmarried in London on November 21st, 1712; and it is good to know that his devoted sister Arabella was with him at the end, and witnessed his deathbed repentance.
All four daughters of Sir Samuel and Lady Astry married well. Elizabeth, the eldest, born in 1669, became the wife in 1692 of Sir John Smyth, Baronet, of Long Ashton, who by this alliance inherited the Astry property at Henbury on the death without issue of Arabella, the last surviving daughter. Lady Smyth died in 1715, thus mourned by her husband:
She was one of the very best of wives, the best of mothers, the best of friends, and the best of Christians. She has left me and her eight children behind her, who can never condole enough the loss of such a wife and such a mother and one that left such a bright example of piety and virtue and everything that’s praiseworthy for us to follow.’
The second, Anne, born in 1671, was married to Thomas Chester, Esq., of Knole, and died in 1703, in giving birth to her seventh child, buried with her at Almondsbury.
The third, Diana, married in 1708, Richard Orlebar, Esq., of Hinwick, Bedfordshire, and died in 1716, leaving several children. Her pen has preserved for us a charming description of a dinner-party at Henbury on June 10th, 1703, to which she and Arabella were hostesses.
Guests were ‘Mr. Rolles, Sir John Smyth and my sister, my sister Chester and Captain Price. We bad for dinner — A Supe; A couple of Green Gease; A leg of Mutton Rosted; A dish of Cherry and Gooseberry Tarts; A Dish of Whip Sulebubs, A Custard Pudding’.
Arabella, the youngest by several years, born in 1684, made the most brilliant match by marrying in 1715 Charles William Howard, who succeeded his father as 7th Earl of Suffolk and 2nd Earl of Bindon in 1718.
She and her husband lived in the Great House at Henbury in the lavish style demanded by their rank. The marriage was childless; and on the Earl’s death at the early age of 29 in 1722 the earldom of Suffolk reverted to his uncle, while that of Bindon, which had originated with his father, became extinct. Arabella, the most loving of wives as well as of sisters, survived her husband by barely four months, her burial being registered at Henbury on June 23rd, 1722. With her ended the family of Astry of Henbury.
No monument marks the resting-place of the Earl and his Countess. Indeed, his name appears in only two places in Henbury: on the tenor bell, which he gave to the Church. and on the grave in the churchyard of his negro servant, Scipio Africanus.
The headstone of this grave erroneously gives the Earl’s second title as ‘Bradon’, evidently restored by someone unfamiliar with the correct ‘Bindon’, which is remembered (with the tilde symbol for the letter ‘n’ over the first vowel) from first seeing the stone some fifty years ago or more, and confirmed by the historian of Henbury, already cited.
Incidentally, it is satisfactory to note that both headstone and footstone have recently been intelligently cleaned, though the two lower cherubs of the headstone, at present obliterated, call for the same restorative treatment as has been accorded their fellows.
Scipio’s tomb is often cited in support of the foolish, but widely held, notion that in the 18th and early 19th centuries negro slaves abounded in the seaports of Liverpool and Bristol, brought here from West Africa by shipowners engaged in the slave trade.
The cellars where they were confined, and the chains which bound them, are occasionally pointed out by the gullible to the gullible. A moment’s thought will show the absurdity of this theory.
In the first place, in the words of Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, who by his verdict on the famous James Somersett case of 1772 based upon the age-old custom and traditional practice of the country, established the doctrine once and for all: ‘The air of England has long been too pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. Let the negro be discharged’.
In the second place, the slave trade was for the ships engaged in it a triangular affair: Out from Bristol to the Gold and Ivory Coasts of Africa with merchandise to be bartered for the slaves rounded up by the Spanish and Portuguese traders; then over to New Orleans or the West Indies with the wretched slaves as fast as the ships could sail; then back to Bristol with the precious tobacco, rum and sugar, the sale of which on the English markets constituted the sweet profits of the trade.
Even as it was, on the direct crossing from West Africa to the Caribbean with the slaves having often to be kept under hatches for days on end in foul weather with scarcely room to breathe, the loss among the human cargo by death was enormous.
Think what the loss would have been had the voyage been doubled in distance and trebled or more in time by a totally unnecessary detour to England; few, if any, of the slaves could have survived.
A few, a very few — every authentic reference indicates their rarity —negroes were to be seen our streets, but these were usually cabin-boys and sailors or, like Scipio Africanus and Dr. Johnson’s Francis Barber, personal servants to gentlemen, and all were free men.
Scipio’s deeply moving epitaph is not without humble relevance to the history of slavery and its aftermath, to which Time’s whirligig is bringing in now before our very eyes such disturbing revenges; and its repetition may fittingly conclude these observations written in a country churchyard.
HERE LIETH THE BODY OF SCIPIO AFRICANUS, NEGRO SERVANT TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE CHARLES WILLIAM, EARL OF SUFFOLK AND BINDON, WHO DIED THE 21ST DECEMBER, 1720, AGED 18 YEARS.
I who was born a pagan and a slave - Now sweetly sleep a Christian in my grave.
What tho’ my hue was dark! My Saviour’s Sight Shall change this darkness into radiant Light.
Such grace to me my Lord on earth hath hath given.
To recommend me to my Lord in Heaven, Whose glorious second coming here I wait With Saints and Angels Him to celebrate.
