SHIRBURNS of Stoneyhurst.pdf - Ingilby History

terms of the settlement of both her original marriage contract and the terms of her late husband’s
will – effectively removed her, as the last of the Shireburne dynasty, from the arena of national and
regional politics, and conceivably even resulted in a last desperate and divisive breach between her
and her elderly mother 62 .
Widdrington, though the brother of an attainted peer, had lost his estates as punishment for
his part in the 1715 rising, and was never considered the social equal by either the widowed
Duchess or wider county society. Far more seriously, the failure of the couple to acknowledge, or to
deny, their relationship caused a serious breach with their erstwhile supporters within the Society of
Jesus. Father Thomas Lawson S.J., the Duchess’ personal chaplain and spiritual director, had
attempted to reach a compromise with them whereby they would have publicly acknowledged a
morganatic marriage. However, both declined and the priest suddenly fell into disfavour, being
dismissed from the Duchess’ service, on 1 January 1734, and returning to his duties as Rector of
Watten. This breach also served to distance the Duchess from the Jesuit Order, and damaged the
traditional image – fostered by generations of Shireburnes – which explicitly associated the
activities of the family with high moral sensibilities, and identified them as close adherents to the
Church of Rome, in general, and to the Society of Jesus, in particular 63 . Though her subsequent
attachments to both Roman Catholicism and Jacobitism remained undiminished, after 1734, they
were henceforth manifested only in terms of display - through the raising of memorials – and
through limited financial support – via charitable endowments and gifts to the supporters of the Old
Pretender - rather than in terms of forceful concrete action. The potentially scandalous nature of her
62 It is notable that, with her last sickness pressing upon her, Lady Katherine Shireburne chose to make a new – verbal –
will on 16 January 1727-8, in which she left “to Gilbert Talbot, of Cork Street, in the p[arish] of St. James, my whole
personal estate, and declare him my executor”. Her daughter, it would seem, was excluded from this final settlement.
See: Payne, op.cit. p.26.