Over the years the Yearbook has featured articles relating to individual items in the Inn’s silver collection. This year our expert, Richard Parsons, writes about a pair of beautiful silver-gilt dishes hallmarked 1813, engraved in the centre with the Royal cipher of Queen Charlotte and the Garter badge of the Prince of Wales, later George IV, with whom she acted as Regent during her husband George III’s illness. I was curious to know why they came into our possession. The catalogue entry reads simply “Presented by Mrs Hansell 1926”. Bench Table records indicate that the entry is accurate. The then-Treasurer reported that the Inn had received a gift of plate from the wife of a Bencher and would write to her “expressing the thanks of the Bench for her gift”.
Why might the wife of a Bencher make a gift of what was almost certainly her own property? That question started me on a fascinating trail which sadly provided no definite answers. I am most grateful to Celia Pilkington, the Inn’s archivist, for her help and suggestions.
First, her husband: (Edward) William Hansell, born 1857, the eldest son of an Anglican priest, was called to the Bar by The Inner Temple in 1880. He was described in an obituary as a “versatile and distinguished lawyer”, which seems justified. He specialised in both bankruptcy and ecclesiastical law. He worked alongside Vaughan Williams on the latter’s textbook Bankruptcy Practice, later becoming the principal editor. From 1905–27 he acted as standing counsel in bankruptcy matters to the Board of Trade before his appointment as an official Referee in 1927, the same year that he took silk. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 1931.
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On the ecclesiastical side, he was first appointed Chancellor of the Diocese of Oxford in 1912, thereafter serving in that capacity in other Dioceses, including in 1920–21 that of Gloucester and Birmingham. He was knighted in the New Year’s Honours list of 1930 and, having been elected a Bencher of the Inn in 1912, became Treasurer in 1933. He died in 1937. His wife’s gift to the Inn does not coincide with any event in her husband’s career.
Why might the wife of a Bencher make a gift of what was almost certainly her own property? That question started me on a fascinating trail which sadly provided no definite answers.
Interestingly, two further elements of his life came to light in my research – first, he contributed a story to Lord Halifax’s Ghost Book, a collection of stories of haunted houses, published in 1936 but now only available in second-hand editions. The story was called The Butler in the Corridor. It appears to have been given to the author some years earlier.
The second was that he had some considerable correspondence with the third Bishop of Birmingham, a mathematician and scientist called Ernest William Barnes whose first career was as a mathematics lecturer and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1903, he was also ordained and soon built himself a reputation for outspoken and provocative teaching. He left Trinity in 1915 and was installed that year as the Master of the Temple but resigned in 1919. He was then a Canon of Westminster before being consecrated as Bishop of Birmingham in 1924, where his Episcopy was marked by continuous controversy. He was an ardent pacifist and argued in favour of voluntary sterilisation as a means of overcoming the prevalence of ‘mental deficiency’ in society. His scientific approach to Christian dogma also brought him into open conflict with Bishops and Archbishops alike. One wonders what discussions Sir William Hansell KC had in his correspondence with the former Master of the Temple.
William Hansell married Edith Mary Maude Ommanney in 1886 and had a son, Miles, who followed his father into law and was called by The Inner Temple in 1910 but died eight years later. He is not recorded in the Inn’s list of those Inner Templars who served and died in the Great War and there is no other evidence that he had signed up. Celia Pilkington reminded me that there was a pandemic of Spanish Flu which came to England in April that year, and he died in July. No records exist which explain why she made such a generous gift, but one can imagine that it may have been, simply, in memory of their son.
How did the dishes come into Edith Mary Maude Hensall’s possession? Again, I have no definitive answer despite many riveting hours spent studying her family – the Ommanneys. Her branch was a family steeped in British naval history over several generations. Her great grandfather Cornthwaite was a Rear Admiral; her grandfather Sir Francis was a navy agent and MP who had seven sons and three daughters. Two of those sons became Admirals – Sir John Acworth and Sir Henry Manaton; her father Sir Erasmus Ommanney (the seventh of eight sons) also became an Admiral and was recognised as an explorer and scientist by the Royal, the Royal Geographical and the Royal Astronomical Societies, to all of which he was elected a Fellow.
His career was, by any standards, extraordinary. He joined the navy aged 12, serving under his uncle, the then-Captain John Ackworth Ommanney. By the time he was 13 he had been involved in the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence in 1827. He passed his naval examination in 1833 and was commissioned. Thereafter he was involved in rescuing several whaling ships trapped in the ice in Baffin Bay, receiving an Admiralty commendation; protecting British subjects in Morocco during French hostilities against Tangiers; providing relief measures during the Irish Famine; and, in 1850, he was chosen as second-in-command to search for a missing naval explorer, Sir John Franklin. In the course of that expedition, they were able to survey the coast of Prince of Wales Island and Beechey Island and were able to confirm that Franklin had overwintered in that area of the Northwest Passage. During the Crimean War he commanded a small squadron in the White Sea, blockading Archangel and carrying out aggressive operations against Russian gun boats and shore positions.
He had somehow managed to find time to marry in February 1844, but his wife died 13 years later. They had one son, who also joined the Royal Navy before taking holy orders. In 1862 he married again, and Edith Mary was a product of that union (born 1863 in Gibraltar, the daughter of Samuel Smith of HM Dockyard, Malta).
He retired from the navy in 1875 with the rank of Vice Admiral but was promoted to Admiral two years later. He had been appointed a Knight of the Order of the Bath in 1867 and, in 1902, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by the new King, Edward VII, aboard the royal yacht off Cowes during the Coronation Celebrations. He died in 1904.
What an insight into Victorian naval life his career provides, but it is through Edith Mary’s uncles that we get closest to anything connected to the name ‘Queen Charlotte’. Both John Ackworth and Henry Manaton Ommaney served in the naval vessel HMS Queen Charlotte, a 100 gun first rate ship of the line launched at Chatham in April 1790 in the early days of their careers; Henry in 1794 when it was Admiral of the Fleet Lord Howe’s Flagship, and John a year later, when it was involved in the ‘Battle of the Glorious First of June’ against the French ship Montagne.
Were the dishes, crafted in 1813, given to Mrs Hansell’s father, Sir Erasmus, in recognition of his illustrious career, or did he buy them later when he saw them for sale, as a sentimental reminder of his uncles’ naval service under Queen Charlotte and service in the ship named after her?
Were the dishes, crafted in 1813, given to Mrs Hansell’s father, Sir Erasmus, in recognition of his illustrious career, or did he buy them later when he saw them for sale, as a sentimental reminder of his uncles’ naval service under Queen.
Why was she prepared to give away a part of her family’s history, when she had two surviving children? Neither Richard Parsons nor I have been able to answer the questions that arise from such a generous gift from a Bencher’s wife, itself an unusual event. We will never know. We must simply enjoy them and be grateful.
His Honour Michael Lawson
Master of the Silver
