Dorothy Williamson

Dame Dorothy Williamson Neé Fenwick

Born 4th November 1644, Connecticut, America.

Died 4th November 1699, Monkwearmouth Hall

 

Married Sir Thomas Williamson

Born 3rd May 1636, East Markham, Nottinghamshire

Died 23rd April 1703, Monkwearmouth Hall

 

Dorothy was the younger daughter of Colonel George Fenwick and his wife, Alice.  Colonel Fenwick was a wealthy property owner, who owned lands at Brinkburn in Northumberland and in the fledging colony of America.  Dorothy was born there, in Connecticut, but moved to England to live with married sister, Elizabeth, at Noseley Hall, Leicestershire.  Meanwhile, her father had bought a large area of the shore at Monkwearmouth.  This land in Monkwearmouth had been seized from the Pudsey family following the Battle of Naseby and were sold off in 1652, which is when Fenwick acquired them.  Fenwick was a committed Parliamentarian, and so during the Commonwealth was able to amass great fortune through such land transactions (he was also engaged as Sequestrator for the Commonwealth). On his death in 1657, his estate was divided equally between Dorothy and her older sister, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth had marred another great Parliamentarian, Sir Thomas Hesilrige, who was active in the ‘Long Parliament’ where he championed the case for parliamentary supremacy (he was one of five MPs whom Charles 1 had tried to have arrested in 1642).

 

Sir Thomas Williamson was the elder son of Sir Thomas Williamson of East Markham, Notts. His father had been ennobled in 1642 following his actions at the Siege of Newark, where he was fighting for the Royalist cause.  Sir Thomas had been very active in the court of Charles 1, and spent a huge amount of money on this lifestyle (some estimates put it at £30,000, which would be several million in modern comparisons).  On his death in 1657, the estate went to his eldest son, Thomas.  The vast debts he inherited were wiped out on his marriage to Dorothy, whose own inheritance from her father more than compensated the Williamson family for their losses.  The Restoration meant that the Williamsons were in the ascendency whilst Parliamentarians were at risk of retribution.  In this context, Sir Thomas’s wife, Dorothy, was able to purchase from Sir Thomas Haslerigg the parcel of land her sister had inherited for the sum of (£1,800).  Dorothy and Thomas had no children of their own, so she settled her portion of the fortune in trust to her husband, and then passed it on to her nephew on the Williamson side, where Sir William Williamson became 3rd Baron.  So, the fortunes of the impoverished Royalists, the Williamsons, were restored as a result of the intermarriage of Parliamentarians and Royalists.

 

The Williamsons lived in Monkwearmouth Hall, which was one of the buildings Dorothy had inherited on the land her father left her.  The Hall was part of the old Monastic buildings around St Peter’s.  It was later used as a parsonage, but burnt to the ground in a fire 1790.

 

In her will, dated 28th October 1699, Dorothy left large sums of money as bequests to the poor of nearby parishes.  One such bequest was a property on Low Row, on Fenwick’s Anchorage and Beaconage, which came to be called ‘Lady Williamson’s Gift to Poor House Keepers’.  The poor of Monkwearmouth, Hylton, Southwick, Bishopwearmouth, Fulwell and Southwick were also benefactors as she left £10 per annum to be divided between each of these parishes.  The intention was for the money to be doled out (as a ‘dole’) on Good Friday, although some time in the mid 19th century this changed to Maundy Thursday.  Unfortunately, there was no consistency in how the dole money was distributed.  In 1903, a Charities Commission report explored the ancient charities of Sunderland, Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth.  The found random payments made at irregular intervals, and that by that time, Sir Hedworth Williamson’s agent, a Mr Bolam, was making the payment annually from Sir Hedworth’s estate.  The Charity Commission concluded that the instructions from Dame Dorothy’s will had been improperly carried out, but the relevant parishes assured the Charity Commission that they would distribute the charity to the poor with greater care in future.  The Charity Commissioners also reported that there was no record in the Williamson family of the ‘Lady Williamson’s Gift to Poor House Keepers’ property after 1799.

 

Despite the lack of organisation in the administration of her Will, Dorothy was undoubtedly an influential woman whose life covered the extraordinary period of English history where families could and did find themselves on opposing sides during the Civil War.  Dorothy’s family is one such, and the quirk of history that meant she and her husband benefited from both the Commonwealth and the Restoration led to her becoming one of the great benefactors of Sunderland.