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On August 26th, being Wednesday at night, Sir John Duck,
Baronet, departed this life at his residence in Silver Street, Durham, and
was buried upon Monday after, being the 31st of August: So runs an entry
in I The Local Historian's Table Book for the Counties of Durham,
Newcastle, and Northumberland,' a curious and instructive antiquarian
work, which was published some forty or fifty years ago, and is well known
to the dwellers in the fair towns and fairer villages along the banks of
the Wear, the Tees, the Tyne, the Coquet, and the Tweed.
And who, it will be asked, is
this Sir John Duck? We have heard of 'Parson
Duck,' the favorite of Queen Anne, and all that he did in the way of
landscape gardening and curious ornamentation in
Richmond Park and elsewhere; but what reader of 'Burke'
or 'Lodge' ever heard of a baronet named Duck?
The answer is that he really had no pedigree, although he must have had a
mother, and probably a father also; and that, as he had no children to
succeed him, his name and his title have long since passed away out of
remembrance, though a paragraph in Sir Richard Burke's work on
'Extinct Baronetcies' records the fact of his having been honored
with the prefix of 'Sir,' and having added the
blood-red baud to his family shield. He is described as being
'of Haswell on the Hill,' and was created a
baronet by, James II in 1687, the year before his abdication
the same year in which the king gave a charter to Newcastle, and in
which the citizens of that town had cast in bronze the statue which next
year they so ungratefully threw into the river Tyne, and out of which the
church bells of Newcastle Cathedral are made. But I am wandering from my
subject.
Though Duck was the
wealthiest burgess in the civic annals of Durham, yet his parentage and
birth have always been, and will always remain a mystery. As to his early
education, all that can be learnt with certainty is that he was bred a
butcher,' being taught his business by one John Heslop, I in defiance of
the trade and mystery of the butchers,' from which it may be, opposed that
he did not serve a regular apprenticeship to the craft. Mr. Richardson
adds that in the books of the trade a record still exists, warning Master
John Heslop I that he do forbeare to sett John Ducke on work in the trade
of a butcher;' but he does not tell us where this record' is to be seen.
Be this, however, as it may, one thing is certain, namely, that he throve
in his craft, and, while still young, grew immensely rich, and that he
married the daughter of his benefactor. Whether he did this as a mark of
gratitude for past favors, or as a stepping-stone to further ones, is a
point on which I can throw no light. Perhaps, like honest John Osborne*
upon London Bridge, who founded the fortunes of the ducal house of Leeds
by just such a marriage, he had saved the young lady from some mishap, and
was rewarded with her hand accordingly.
I have made all possible
inquiries among northern antiquarians, and can find no reason, except his
wealth, for the title which he received from his sovereign. Possibly he
may have lent money to him or to his impecunious brother, Charles II., or
have helped them in some of their many love-makings. John Duck, however,
was born to be rich and to rise to the top of the tree. He built for
himself, in Silver Street, a splendid mansion, in which Mr. Richardson
tells us that there is still to be seen a carved oaken panel recording his
happy rise to fortune. On this panel the baronet, then humble John Duck,
cast out by the guild of butchers, is represented as standing near a
bridge in the attitude of despondency; beneath flow the dark waters of the
Wear; in the air is seen hovering about him a raven, which bears in his
beak a piece of silver, or it may be of gold-a hint, I suppose, that Duck
rhymes with 'luck'.
According to local tradition, this piece of coin fell at the feet of
plain John Duck, and the occurrence made a deep impression on his mind. If
not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, at all events he was not far
off it. He picked up the money, and with it very naturally, anent his
early education, bought a calf; in due course of time-the cattle plague
not being then rife in the north-the calf grew up to be a cow and to breed
calves of her own. These he took to market close by, and with the produce
of their sale he purchased other cattle, and so from slender beginnings
made a handsome fortune. Perhaps he also did on the sly a little business
in the way of money-lending and foreclosing mortgages. On the right hand
of the panel is a view of his mansion in Silver Street; and he seems to be
in the act of pointing to another in the distance, which is presumed to be
the hospital which he endowed at Lumley, near Chester-le-Street, some ten
miles distant from Durham.
Of the rest of his career, though he was the
founder of this hospital, little or nothing is known. He seems to have
lived respected in his native city and county, beyond which he probably
never traveled. He died without 'chick or child'
in 1691, as stated above, and was buried at St. Margaret's Church, where
his wife, 'Pia,
Prudens, et Felix,' lies beside him.
On Duck the butchers shut the door,
But Heslop's daughter Johnny wed;
In mortgage rich, in offspring poor,
Nor son nor
daughter crowned his bed. |
Sir Bernard Burke tells us
that Sir John Duck's large property was divided into several channels, the
greater part of it going to his wife's nieces-namely, Elizabeth Heslop,
who married George Tweddell, an alderman of Durham; and her sister Jane,
who married, firstly, a cordwainer of Durham, named James Nicholson, and,
secondly, Mr. Richard Wharton, Attorney-at-law. The latter lady had, by
her first marriage, a son, James Nicholson, some time M.P. for Durham, who
left at his death three daughters-Mary, who died unmarried; Jane, wife of
Thomas, Earl of Strathmore; and Anne, the wife of the Earl's brother, the
Hon. Patrick Lyon. So it is clear that some portion of Ducks large wealth
passed in due course into patrician hands.
The name of Sir John
Duck, it is to be feared, has no other claim to be remembered than as that
of a man who, rising suddenly, or, at all events, unexpectedly to wealth,
used a part of that wealth in a munificent way to benefit his
fellow-creatures. For the rest, he must be classed under the category of
eccentric characters. To him might well be
applied the words of the Roman satirist, Juvenal:
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Quales
ex humili summa ad fastigia rerum Extollit, quoties voluit Fortuna
jocari. |
* See “Tales of Great Families,' first series, vol i.
Chapters From the Family Chests, 1887
Chapters From the Family Chest |
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