The Honourable Mrs Charles Hudson
(1805-1884)
5 June 1861

Volume 4, page 28, sitting number 4184.

Born on 30 October 1805 and baptised on 29 November 1805 at All Saints’ Church in Norwich, the Honourable Julia Bosville Macdonald was the daughter of Lieutenant-General Godfrey Bosville Macdonald, later 3rd Baron Macdonald of Slate. Her mother was Louisa Maria la Coast, the illegitimate daughter of William, 1st Duke of Gloucester, a younger brother of King George III.

On 11 October 1838 she married Reverend Charles Walter Hudson, son of Harrington Hudson and his wife, Lady Anne née Townshend, daughter of the 1st Marquess Townshend. Their marriage produced three children, two of whom died in infancy and a son who died in 1865 when he was 19 years old. A memorial window in the church at Saundby, erected in 1866, commemorates their brief lives.

The family appear on the 1851 census living at Saundby in Nottinghamshire, where Charles Hudson was the Rector. Also present on the night of the census were six live-in servants, including a butler and a groom.

By the time the census was taken in 1861, Charles had become the Rector of Trowell, also in Nottinghamshire. In 1881 he was a ‘Clergyman – No Cure of Souls’ at Marton Hall in Yorkshire. Julia was elsewhere the night that census was taken. 

Henry Willoughby Hudson was their only child to reach adulthood. He died, aged 20, on 21 January 1865 at Ashby Cottage, Burringham, Lincolnshire. According to a brief announcement in the Yorkshire Gazette (28 January 1865), ‘the beloved and only surviving son of the Rev. Chas. and Hon. Mrs Hudson of Trowell Rectory, Nottingham’ died ‘after a few days’ illness, of diphtheria.’

The Honourable Mrs Hudson died, aged 78, on 11 July 1884 at Montague House, Bridlington Quay, Yorkshire. She left effects valued at £200.

[From an album possibly compiled by the sitter's sister, the Honourable Marianne Bosville Turnor (née Macdonald), wife of Captain Henry Martin Turnor.]