This month’s blog post was written by our Museum Attendant, Sarah.
Many notable Lichfield people have enriched the life of both the city and the nation as a whole, including:
Elias Ashmole, 1617 – 1692, founder of the Ashmolean, Britain’s first public museum
David Garrick, 1717 – 1779, foremost actor of his generation, whose death in Samuel Johnson’s words “eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure”
Anna Seward, 1742 – 1809, Queen Muse of Britain, who tapped into the contemporary patriotic zeitgeist with her poems on Major Andre and Captain Cook
and of course, the most famous and important of them all,
Samuel Johnson, 1709 – 1784, lexicographer supreme, whose reputation draws an ever-increasing stream of both local and international visitors to his birthplace.
All of those mentioned (and many more) are celebrated by a grateful city in the form of statues, plaques or buildings named in their honour. Yet Hector Beane, who has neither statue, plaque nor any other form of public recognition, was, I shall contend, Lichfield’s greatest public benefactor without whose foresight in setting up the Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust Samuel Johnson could not possibly have become the man he did, and, remarkably, considering that he lived in the mid-sixteenth century, is one whose legacy is still a positive force for good in contemporary Lichfield.
As is well known from many history books, novels and TV series Henry VIII’s determination to have a male heir, and Pope Clement VII’s refusal to grant him a divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, led to the upheaval of the Reformation, in which the nation’s official religion changed from Catholic to Protestant. One of the useful practical consequences of this from Henry’s point of view was that it gave him carte blanche to take over a lot of church property, which both enriched the crown estate and enabled him to reward loyal followers. Another unintended consequence of the Reformation, which I hope to explore in a future blog, was a great boost to national literacy, but our present focus needs to remain on the crown’s seizure of religious assets.
Henry ordered the dissolution of the Franciscan Friary in Lichfield in 1538. The friars were pensioned off and most of the buildings demolished. It’s important to remember that a lot of the social support available to people at this time, in terms of medical care and poor relief, came from institutions such as the Friary, so when it ceased to exist life became worse for some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in Lichfield.
The Bishop of Lichfield was forced to give up many of his estates to the Crown, including the manors of Longdon, Cannock and Rugeley in 1546, and the Guild of St Mary and St John, of which Hector Beane was Master at the time, was next in line to be dissolved and have its assets seized. This actually happened in 1547 (the same year that Henry VIII died) but by foresight and creative thinking, Hector Beane managed to set up a trust which saved a significant part of the Guild’s estate for the sole benefit of Lichfield.
The first deed that set up the Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust is dated 3 January 1545 and written in Latin. The purpose of this deed, in the name of Hector Beane, last Master of the Guild, ‘with the unanimous assent and consent of the brethren of the said guild’, was to give the land and houses that the guild owned at Wryley, Norton and Wall into the trusteeship of eight stewards. The deed was to be renewed every 21 years and the object of the revenues raised was chiefly to supply Lichfield with water. Any surplus was ‘to be applied to the commonwealth of the said towne’. The stewards had to choose 2 ‘substantial men of the city’ to be Wardens – it was their job to collect rents, maintain the conduit and pipes and to account for their income and expenditure at the end of the year.
The immediate effect of the Conduit Lands Trust was that Lichfield was much less impoverished by the Crown’s seizure of church property than would otherwise have been the case – to put this in modern terms, the Trust secured the city’s infrastructure and enhanced its social capital. At this stage it’s important to be clear what a “conduit” was – basically a pump set in a stone housing connected to an underground water pipe with a handle to pump up the water. All the water that every household needed for washing, drinking, cooking and cleaning had to be fetched in buckets from the conduit and carried home, so clearly very labour intensive and it’s not at all likely that the water then available in town would meet our current hygiene standards. However, it’s significant that Lichfield had public conduits before urban centres such as the City of London, Coventry, Chester or Manchester.
You can still see a conduit, called “Moses”, in the Cathedral Close.
Another stand out feature of the Conduit Lands Trust, established centuries before the financial checks and balances that secure the probity of modern charities, is that all the Trustees and Wardens entrusted with collecting the Conduit Lands Trust’s funds, using them for the purposes intended and safeguarding surpluses for the future, appear to have done so diligently and honestly, and luckily avoided the fate of at least one other Lichfield charity, which was wiped out by a private bank collapse in the nineteenth century.
Besides securing the town’s water supply the Trust’s wider objectives included anything that could reasonably be thought to promote good outcomes for people in the town, and that included charitable support for the poor and funding education for children whose parents couldn’t have afforded to pay for it. Samuel Johnson’s grandparents settled in Lichfield after the Reformation and were very poor. William Johnson died in 1672 leaving his widow, Katherine, with 3 boys. It would have been impossible for her to find the money to pay for their apprenticeships, and at that time an apprenticeship was the only route to become a craftsman able to earn a decent independent living. Michael Johnson, her eldest son, was apprenticed to a London stationer for 8 years in in April 1673 and the Lands Trust also later paid for his brothers’ apprenticeships.
Michael Johnson returned to Lichfield after the term of his apprenticeship was over and set up his shop. He was a bookbinder, also selling books and stationery. Michael played an active part in Lichfield civic life, taking his turn as a Warden of the Conduit Lands Trust, and in 1709, the year Samuel was born, he was Sheriff of Lichfield. Unfortunately, Michael did not prove successful in business in the longer term, and in 1731, the year Samuel spent a year at Pembroke College, Oxford, the Conduit Lands Trust made Michael, “a decayed tradesman”, a grant of 10 guineas.
Had Samuel Johnson not been born into a house that was full of books, giving him free access to read widely at a time when books were much more of a luxury item than they are now, and when there were no public libraries*, it is most unlikely that he would have become Doctor Samuel Johnson, of first really useful English dictionary fame.
In conclusion, Hector Beane, last Master of the Guild of St Mary and St John, has no statue, plaque or any formal recognition in Lichfield, but possibly his contribution was so great he doesn’t need one. Sir Christopher Wren’s grave in St Paul’s is marked with a plain stone slab engraved with a Latin text, including these words:
“Si monumentum requires, circumspice”, translated as, “If you seek his memorial, look around you.”
If you seek Hector Beane’s memorial, look around Lichfield.
Postscript
Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust is now governed by a Charity Commission Scheme dated 30 July 1982, amended by Resolutions dated 24 January 2011 and 11 December 2013. The Charity is an unincorporated association. The Charity does not actively fundraise and seeks to continue its philanthropic work through the careful stewardship of its existing resources. The Charity is dedicated to assisting individuals and organisations within the boundaries of the City of Lichfield who qualify for assistance under the terms of its Governing Document.
References
The History of the Lichfield Conduit Lands Trust by Percy Laithwaite, first published 1947, The Lichfield Press
Italic type in the text are quotes from the translation of the original 1545 deed in the above text.
*Not in the modern sense, and not in Lichfield, although the first public library is generally thought to have been the library associated with the Free Grammar School in Coventry, set up in 1601. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/public-library/historical-development-of-public-libraries-in-the-uk/