Carnell, Rachel

English

EngagedScholarship @ Cleveland State University

Delarivier Manley\u27s Possible Children by John Tilly

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law

Cleveland State UniversityEngagedScholarship@CSUEnglish Faculty Publications English Department12-1-2007Delarivier Manley's Possible Children by John TillyRachel CarnellCleveland State University, r.carnell@csuohio.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cleng_facpubPart of the Literature in English, British Isles CommonsHow does access to this work benefit you? Let us know!Publisher's StatementThis is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Notes &Queries following peer review. The version of record "Delarivier Manley's Possible Children by JohnTilly." Notes and Queries (N&Q) 2007 Dec; 54 (252) (4): 447-48. is available online at:http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/54/4/446.extract .This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English Department at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion inEnglish Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contactlibrary.es@csuohio.edu.Recommended CitationCarnell, Rachel, "Delarivier Manley's Possible Children by John Tilly" (2007). English Faculty Publications. 14.https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cleng_facpub/14Haynes. In the document Haynes acknowl-edges that ‘John Tilly Esq. has given out[missing word(s)] for the said thirty pounds’.The missing portion of this line presumablyrefers to either payment or security that Tillypromised for the debt. Haynes then asserts:‘I Doe therefore give over to the sd Mr Tilly allmy Demands of this to Mrs Manley & Dopromise to give [missing word(s)] to Mr Tillyany sure[?] power[?] as he shall [illegible andpossibly missing word(s)]. . .Enabling him toobtain ye same fr[om?] the sd Mrs Manley . . .’(ibid.). Although Haynes is assigning Tillythe legal power to be reimbursed by Manley,the fact that Tilly apparently took at leastsome temporary responsibility for this debtprovides some circumstantial evidence of hispaternity for the children being raised byHaynes.Further circumstantial evidence for suchchildren is offered by a document in LadyCowper’s Papers in the Hertfordshire Archives,which suggests that Manley may have hadthree children by Tilly. Lady Cowper wouldhave had reason to resent Manley, sinceManley had mercilessly satirized the Cowperfamily in The New Atalantis (1709) by recount-ing scandalous gossip about an alleged extra-marital affair by Lady Cowper’s husband,William Lord Cowper, Lord High Chancellorof Great Britain 1707–10, and about themurder trial of Spencer Cowper, William’sbrother, who was a suspect in the death ofa young Quaker woman with whom he isbelieved to have had an affair. Despite LadyCowper’s probable bias against Manley, how-ever, there may be some truth to her account ofManley’s children.In a note, not addressed to anyone, butsimply dated 14 February (in a file of docu-ments dated by the archive as being from1714–18) Lady Cowper (i.e. Mary, ne´eClavering (1685–1724), William Cowper’ssecond wife) relates what she heard aboutManley, by way of explaining Manley’smotives for maligning the Cowpers:A Clergy man told me thisDe la Riviere Manley Authoress of yeAtalantis was ye Daughter of an applewoman in St. Andrews Holbourn [.] Shegave herself ye name for the beauty.She married John Manley Esq, at ye timehis first wife was alive in Cornwall (tho yefirst was an old woman). She had a son byhim. By ye means of her husband she gotacquainted with Tilly of ye fleet & was privyto their clipping for wch Manley would havehanged Tilly but that Tilly having taken herfor his mistress by her kept Manley in awe,for by her means he could have hanged himfor having 2 wives: She had 3 bastards byTilly wch he put out to Nurse to a Fellow ythad outlived all his Creditors & got out ofye fleet & they now are all 3 alive in a Cellarin fetter lane, they are 3 red haird boys & yeman begs wth ym. After Tilly she was kept byye Cook yt Tilly had given her credit uponfor wn she wanted to eat. Ye Cook sued Tillyin ye Ct of Ch: for her board after he had lefther & had forbid ye Cook to trust her.Mr Frances Cowper was Tillys Council &ye Cook and Mrs. Manley were cast. Wch wsye reason of her spight to ye family of yeCowpers.5This note is inaccurate in its description ofManley’s parentage: she in fact was thedaughter of a royalist military officer (SirRoger Manley) and his wife (Marie-Catherine), a native of the SpanishNetherlands.6 Nor is Lady Cowper correct inher assertion that Manley took the nameDelarivier ‘for the beauty’ of it; in fact, it wasthe name of the wife of one of her father’scommanding officers. The description ofManley’s first marriage to her bigamous firstcousin may or may not be accurate, but it isclearly drawn from Manley’s own account of itin The New Atalantis, in which Manleydescribes Ann Manley (ne´e Grosse) as an ‘olduneasie Lady’.7What truth there may be in the rest isdifficult to ascertain. That ‘children’ arementioned in the plural is consistent with theinformation in Haynes’s reassignment of the30£ debt, as is the detail about their nursebeing male. Manley’s being ‘cast’ at law byTilly seems somewhat inconsistent with hergenerally positive depictions of him in Rivella.5 DE P F211.6 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Manley.7 Selected Works, II, 255.However, another document in the LondonMetropolitan Archives, indicates that inDecember of 1705 Manley was ‘A Prisoner inthe Fleet’.8 The note is short on legible details,but it refers to Manley having done somethingin November ‘in Disregard of Her baile at thesuit of our [illegible word]’. The 1705 impris-onment could possibly be related to theChancery trial to which Lady Cowper’ssource is referring.Whether or not Manley was ultimately castat law by Tilly, it does seem reasonable toassume that she probably bore him severalchildren during their four- to five-year liaison.Attempts at finding birth records for any suchchildren fathered by Tilly, however, have thusfar proved unsuccessful.RACHEL CARNELLCleveland State University

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Delarivier Manley\u27s Possible Children by John Tilly

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