Having located the artist William Wood’s burial place in Bunhill Fields, this post explores the identity of his mother, Bethiah (1732-1805). The timing of this post fits nicely with the recent re-emergence of a wonderful portrait of his mother, painted by Wood in 1798, discovered by Cynthia at Wigs on the Green. I would welcome any comments on this or my other posts, and I’m always keen to learn more.
Bethiah is 66 years old at the time of this portrait. She is shown wearing a white turban and a white dress. The great majority of women painted by William Wood are dressed in white, with smaller, delicate details picked out in colour, perhaps a pink coral necklace or a distinctive brooch. In Bethiah’s case, her lower arms are draped with a red, fur-trimmed opera cloak. Wood never signs or initials his pictures on the front, but this time, on the reverse, between the fee book reference (#5631) and his signature, he adds ‘His mother’.
Wood’s entry for this portrait is reasonably complete, which helps to give insight into its preparation, his treatment of the ivory, his choice of paints and notes on technique. His entry also adds a layer of personal context. We learn that Wood finished the picture on Christmas Day, 1798. It was intended, perhaps, as a special Christmas present for either Bethiah or her husband, William Sr.(1)
Bethiah’s name floats between variant spellings in the historical record. On the occasion of her marriage to William Wood Sr in 1761, a moment of civil and religious importance, she writes her name as Bithiah, but after that it appears more commonly as Bethiah.(2) As is often the case, we know more about Bethiah’s father and brother than we do about Bethiah herself. The closest we can get to her is to examine their stories and portray the context of the family in which she was raised.
Bethiah Townsend was born in 1732 into a religious family with ties to South London, and both her father and brother were pastors in dissenting branches of the church. The nature of worship in Britain was shifting at this time. Divergent attitudes were finding fresh voice, leading to fragmentation among the country’s believers and the rise of new, breakaway churches, each finding different ways to worship the same God.
Bethiah’s father was John Townsend (1685-1766), a Baptist minister in Southwark, and assistant to Edward Wallin, who served between 1703 and 1733 as minister at the Dissenters’ Meeting House in Maze Pond, a ’neat, substantial brick building, with three galleries, and a burial ground adjoining’.(3) The church had come to exist after local congregants disapproved of their minister’s decision to introduce singing in public worship in 1691.(4) Under Wallin and Townsend’s stewardship, singing remained absent from the Maze Pond services for forty years, when the incoming pastor made its introduction a condition of his acceptance in 1736, seemingly without causing such ruptures this time round. More research will hopefully reveal the identity of Bethiah’s mother.
Bethiah’s older brother was the Reverend Meredith Townsend (1715-1801), also the subject of a William Wood portrait, its location unknown. Wood records the picture in typically helpful detail: ‘A portrait of my Uncle Meredith Townsend, of Fairford, & late a dissenting minister at Stoke Newington.’ Although numbered entry #5079, it is one of Wood’s earlier portraits, painted in 1791, most probably around the time he was completing his studies at the Royal Academy schools, which typically lasted six years.
Brother Meredith was a full seventeen years his sister’s senior and followed their father into the ministry. Drama came to the family in 1743, however, when Meredith broke with his father’s congregation and was expelled from the Baptist Board. Bethiah was a girl of eleven at this time and would have witnessed her brother and father’s religious separation.(5)
Bethiah died at the family home in Cork Street, St James’s, on July 11th, 1805, after ‘a few hours illness’. Her funeral was held on Tuesday 16th, at five o’clock in the afternoon. She was interred at Bunhill Fields, London’s dissenters’ burial ground. As the first of the family to die, the location of the family’s burial plot, where husband William Sr and their two children would also be laid to rest, may have been guided by Bethiah’s wishes and by her deeply religious upbringing.(6)
(With thanks to Cynthia at Wigs on the Green).
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Selected sources:
(1) All fee book references relate to V&A. Memorandum of miniatures painted and finished by William Wood, vols. 1-3 (MSL/1944/433-435)
(2) London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; London Church of England Parish Registers; Reference Number: P93/MRY1/028 (via Ancestry)
(3) Walter Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark, Button, London, 1806. (p286)
(4) Walter Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster, and Southwark, Button, London, 1806. (p286)
(5) The Baptist Board Minutes, April 26, 1743 (p225). (Accessed via https://biblicalstudies.org.uk)
(6) LMA. CLC 271 MS01092 Interment Books
