Dame Dorothy Williamson Ne\u00e9 Fenwick<\/p>\n
Born 4th<\/sup> November 1644, Connecticut, America.<\/p>\n Died 4th<\/sup> November 1699, Monkwearmouth Hall<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Married Sir Thomas Williamson<\/p>\n Born 3rd<\/sup> May 1636, East Markham, Nottinghamshire<\/p>\n Died 23rd<\/sup> April 1703, Monkwearmouth Hall<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dorothy was the younger daughter of Colonel George Fenwick and his wife, Alice.\u00a0 Colonel Fenwick was a wealthy property owner, who owned lands at Brinkburn in Northumberland and in the fledging colony of America.\u00a0 Dorothy was born there, in Connecticut, but moved to England to live with married sister, Elizabeth, at Noseley Hall, Leicestershire.\u00a0 Meanwhile, her father had bought a large area of the shore at Monkwearmouth.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Elizabeth had marred another great Parliamentarian, Sir Thomas Hesilrige, who was active in the \u2018Long Parliament\u2019 where he championed the case for parliamentary supremacy (he was one of five MPs whom Charles 1 had tried to have arrested in 1642).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 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 \u00a330,000, which would be several million in modern comparisons).\u00a0 On his death in 1657, the estate went to his eldest son, Thomas.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The Restoration meant that the Williamsons were in the ascendency whilst Parliamentarians were at risk of retribution.\u00a0 In this context, Sir Thomas\u2019s wife, Dorothy, was able to purchase from Sir Thomas Haslerigg the parcel of land her sister had inherited for the sum of (\u00a31,800).\u00a0 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<\/sup> Baron.\u00a0 So, the fortunes of the impoverished Royalists, the Williamsons, were restored as a result of the intermarriage of Parliamentarians and Royalists.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Williamsons lived in Monkwearmouth Hall, which was one of the buildings Dorothy had inherited on the land her father left her.\u00a0 The Hall was part of the old Monastic buildings around St Peter\u2019s.\u00a0 It was later used as a parsonage, but burnt to the ground in a fire 1790.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In her will, dated 28th<\/sup> October 1699, Dorothy left large sums of money as bequests to the poor of nearby parishes.\u00a0 One such bequest was a property on Low Row, on Fenwick\u2019s Anchorage and Beaconage, which came to be called \u2018Lady Williamson\u2019s Gift to Poor House Keepers\u2019.\u00a0 The poor of Monkwearmouth, Hylton, Southwick, Bishopwearmouth, Fulwell and Southwick were also benefactors as she left \u00a310 per annum to be divided between each of these parishes.\u00a0 The intention was for the money to be doled out (as a \u2018dole\u2019) on Good Friday, although some time in the mid 19th<\/sup> century this changed to Maundy Thursday.\u00a0 Unfortunately, there was no consistency in how the dole money was distributed.\u00a0 In 1903, a Charities Commission report explored the ancient charities of Sunderland, Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth.\u00a0 The found random payments made at irregular intervals, and that by that time, Sir Hedworth Williamson\u2019s agent, a Mr Bolam, was making the payment annually from Sir Hedworth\u2019s estate.\u00a0 The Charity Commission concluded that the instructions from Dame Dorothy\u2019s 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.\u00a0 The Charity Commissioners also reported that there was no record in the Williamson family of the \u2018Lady Williamson\u2019s Gift to Poor House Keepers\u2019 property after 1799.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Dorothy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dame Dorothy Williamson Ne\u00e9 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.\u00a0 Colonel Fenwick was a wealthy property […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1713","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1793,"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1713\/revisions\/1793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.sunderland.ac.uk\/seagullcity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}