Rev. and Mrs. Henry Tudway
(1827-1866 and 1838-1912)
16 May 1862
Volume 6, page 313, sitting number 8123.
[The sitters are identified in the Silvy daybooks as ‘Mrs H. Tudway / Group with Rev. Henry Tudway.’ The preceding entry in the daybooks is ‘Mrs H. Tudway’ on her own.]
Mary Anne Leckonby Phipps was the daughter of John Lewis Phipps of Leighton House, Wiltshire, a merchant trading with Brazil who was later High Sheriff of Wiltshire (1864) and briefly the Conservative Member of Parliament for Westbury (1868) until the election was declared null and void (his agent was alleged to have intimidated voters).
On 6 November 1856, at Westbury in Wiltshire, she married Reverend Henry Gould Tudway, the Rector of Walton-in-Gordano. His father John Paine Tudway was the third generation of his family to represent Wells in the House of Commons, ‘in an unbroken succession dating back to 1754. [He] had effectively inherited the seat in 1815 from his uncle Clement, along with properties in Somerset and the 1096-acre Parham Hill [sugar] plantation in Antigua’ (The History of Parliament website).
Henry Tudway graduated at Trinity College, Oxford (BA 1851, MA, 1852). He became a Deacon in 1853 and a priest in 1855. He was the Curate of Priddy near Wells and then the Rector of Walton with Weston-in-Gordano. His parish had a population of 428 and the living yielded an income of £380 a year.
The Reverend Henry Tudway ‘late of Walton and Weston-in-Gordano in the County of Somerset’ died on 13 February 1866 at 7 James Terrace, Westbourne Terrace, London.
On 13 October 1870 his widow married secondly Anthony Cope, second son of Sir William Henry Cope, 12st Baronet Cope of Hanwell in the County of Oxford.
The couple appear on the 1881 census living at Ryde in Hampshire with two of Mrs Cope’s children from her first marriage: a daughter named Alice (aged 17) and a son named Evelyn (aged 15). Also present were four more children (the fruit of Mrs Cope’s second marriage), a governess and three (female) servants.
In 1892 Anthony Cope succeeded his father and became the 13th Baronet Cope.
Lady Mary Anne Leckonby Cope died on 14 April 1912 at Bramshill Park, Winchfield, Hampshire.
‘As we stated in our last issue, the death took place with great suddenness on the evening of Sunday, the 14th, of Lady Mary Leckonby Cope, wife to Sir Anthony Cope, thirteenth Baronet, of Bramshill House, Hampshire. […] She was a daughter of Mr J.L. Phipps, of Leighton, Wiltshire, and was first married fifty-six years ago to the Rev. Henry Gould Tudway, a Somersetshire Rector, who left her widow and she was married to Sir Anthony Cope in 1870. There were several sons and daughters by both marriages’ (Banbury Guardian, 25 April 1912).
She was buried according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church.