Hitchin – St. Mary’s Church (Ledger Stone of Charles Nicholls)

This is the ledger stone of Charles Nicholls (c.1629-1692) which is located in St. Mary’s Church in Hitchin. I’m not sure why the “Ætatis suæ 63” bit is in Latin (a throw-back to the pre-Reformation maybe), but he died at the age of 63. I can’t find out much about him, but his son is interesting as Bedfordshire Archives have some of the family records in their collection and they’ve added some narrative about them:

“(1) NICHOLLS FAMILY 1664-1746

Charles Nicholls senior was a Hitchin gentleman who built up an estate round the borders of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire over many years. He was survived by his two children, Charles and Mary, and his widow Agnes who had previously been Miss Peake, Mrs Greene and Mrs Rolf. Charles Nicholls junior became an attorney in Hitchin. He inherited his father’s estate in 1692 and added to it, mainly by lending money with property as security and foreclosing on the ‘mortgages’. These properties included a large estate in the Waldens, Hertfordshire, against which John Cripps had borrowed over 2,000 from Nicholls by 1708. When Nicholls foreclosed, Cripps called him a rogue, rascal and villain, and came near to killing him at Bendish, Herts, one November afternoon in 1709. Nicholls fled in fear of his life to London where he made a deposition about what had happened. The deposition has survived almost entirely and gives a fascinating glimpse of the speech, behaviour, manners and dangers of the period. In the end Nicholls’ foreclosure resulted in Cripps’ dying penniless in the Fleet Prison, London soon afterwards, leaving a widow and two infant daughters. Overall, Nicholls loaned at least 3199 which now, in 2003, would be equivalent to over a quarter of a million pounds.

The period around the end of the 1600s and early 1700s was volatile in financial terms. From 1688, Parliament supplied monopoly rights to mercantile ventures including the East India Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company and later the South Sea Company. This led to great speculation in stocks and shares, with companies starting up and often failing very quickly. Before the South Sea Bubble burst in 1720, investors and speculators made fortunes. But fortunes were also lost as these documents show, although the cause is never stated here. Men like Charles Nicholls, who lent money to anyone who had over-reached himself, were the winners because a defaulting borrower seldom reclaimed his property. The estates in this collection acquired by the Nicholls family are : –

1665 Pulloxhill Manor from Pigot and Hale (purchase)
1684 Barton Bridge Closes from Edmund Castell (purchase)
1692 Brotherhood House, Hitchin from Papworth (foreclosure)
1706 Offley from Plummer & Shotbolt (foreclosure)
1709 Stondon from Ansell
1710-19 Hitchin & Ippollitts from Crawley (foreclosure)
1711 Kings Walden & Pauls Walden, Herts from Cripps (foreclosure)
1712 Henlow Grey cottage from Albone (foreclosure)
1715 Pegsden from Ansell (foreclosure)
1722 Pulloxhill leys from Pepyatt (foreclosure)
1723 Foxholes, Hitchin from Draper & Runton (foreclosure)
1729 Chibbley, Pegsdon & Shillington from Tapster & Ansell
1744 Welwyn from Plummer”

It’s an example of how wealth was built up, not necessarily ethically (although nothing changes there with some property owners), during this challenging period, much of it probably still resides in the hands of subsequent generations. Bedfordshire Archives also has this family tree tree for the Nicholls.