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 Mardley Bury 
His books include: "A new guide to the Levant". 1840 "Tales of the Braganza", or "Reminicences of a Voyage", 1843. "The Magician Priest of Avignon" or "Popery in the 13th century" a History of the Life and Times of Louis the Eighth; 1851 (2 vols). "Libellus et Censores" 1851 "The Jesuits; their Rise and Progress, Doctrines and Morality". 1851 The “Magician Priest” was not very well reviewed. The Spectator published his long and involved letter in answer to the criticism. This is how the Gentleman Magazine described his book "Tales of the Braganza": "A volume of wild adventures and supernatural histories in which young ladies appear in novel and rather startling characters and situations. Of the two most beautiful, one turns out to be a re-animated corpse and the other a bed-post". |
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With an allowance from his father of £100 a month and £62 a year from his father in law, Thomas never needed to work. He inherited a capital sum of £11,000 when Gilwell House was sold in 1847 on the death of his father. He was a traveler, writer and historian, none of which yielded any significant income. In September 1849 he was studying the geology of the Isle of Wight and gave a lecture on it at the Town Hall, Ryde. The family seem to have a musical bent with a bill for tuning the piano and harp. They were keen members of the Royal Horticultural Society, whose gardens have now been replaced by the Albert Hall. Each year they went to the R.H.S. fete corresponding to the Chelsea Flower Show of today. He was a staunch protestant and violently opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. He was a member of the Parthenon Club. From 1846 he was renting a house called Rosemount at Ryde, Isle of Wight where his two daughters were at school and where he enjoyed sailing and hunting and shooting. The total housekeeping including three ponies and a man came to £870 for a year. In 1853 Thomas invested some of his inheritance and bought the 300 acre Mardley Bury estate in corn country on the border of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire near Royston. He later owned property at Great St Dennis, Staplehurst, Kent. In 1854 he moved from Ryde to a house at 30 Onslow Square, London where they employed three maids. He also bought No.34 Onslow Square which he let to Baron Marochetti @ £150 p.a. The two houses each cost £2,400. Thomas kept a diary between 1843-1867. Emma died, aged 23, two days after the birth of her third child. Their daughter Emma was then just four years old and son Thomas two. There was a lot of ill-health in the family leading to a twelve month separation from Isabel who went for a cure to Antwerp with "some chronic illness (vomiting & hysteria), probably never diagnosed". In January 1843 Thomas was very ill with a “Paratype” attack. He was bled and had calomel every four hours. One night, the doctor put fourteen leaches on his temples. He was in bed a month and had a nurse. It is probable that a lot of Thomas' upsets were the result of eating and drinking too well. They were spending £43.14s a year on wine (£40 a week in 2008). In 1861 he was again on Calomel and Rhubarb. Thomas was quite broken by the harrowing death of Isabel. He moved from Onslow Square to a small house in Percy Terrace. His diary records a sad old man, taken up with religion, spending much time in the church to ease his loneliness. He died in Percy Terrace 15 months after moving there. |
