Category: Bonaparte & Brimstone

'In a masterful achievement of interpretation of old historic documentation and an extensive period of research, Simon Francis Brown has produced a wonderful book in which I have spent many hours totally immersed.'

Mary Ryder was John Monk’s aunt, once-removed. She liked to write verse letters, poems and prayers for her friends and family. Among her most charming poems is a love letter to Neston, Parkgate, and childhood friends. It is full of the vigour of youth and melancholy of distance.

The verse letters of John Monk's aunt, Mary Ryder, included the following touching prayer for the safety of her brothers Stephen and John, who captained privateers and merchant ships, often sailing together from Liverpool to London and further afield.

I uncovered an array of stories while researching Bonaparte & Brimstone, some of which proved to be just a step too far removed from my subject and had to be discarded.

Several generations of the Monk and Matthews families lie under three large, slab headstones opposite the entrance to the church of St Mary and St Helen, Neston. The stones have aged very badly through the years and today reveal very little about those who lie beneath. 

Portraits of the better-known characters in Bonaparte & Brimstone were easy to locate, but beyond naval captains and aristocracy, unearthing portraits of family members is a long game, involving patience and luck.

Set alongside John Monk’s roguish charm, his eldest brother Charles always seemed rather stuffy and uptight to me, unfairly so perhaps. He may not have had John’s exciting stories, but he had a strong sense of civic duty and could regularly be found on committees or supporting local initiatives. Even far into his retirement, Charles remained an influential figure locally. 

Among the directions in which research for Bonaparte & Brimstone took me, one of the most unexpected was into the murky world of Georgian politics. The book includes the story of a riot in the build-up to the 1820 general election, during which John Monk prevented a candidate from being thrown to his death from Chester’s Old Dee Bridge.

One of the most intriguing parts of Bonaparte and Brimstone for me has been the 1824 diary kept by a passenger on board John Monk's brig, the William Black. It is rare to uncover a first-hand account of the man you are describing, and it was satisfying to be able to reproduce an unknown primary source.

The window which John Monk gifted to the church of St Mary and St Helen in 1874 was designed by Henry Holiday, a Pre-Raphaelite artist and one of the leading designers of stained glass in the second half of the 19th century.