Charles Tawney (1780–1853)
Mayor of Oxford 1837/8 and 1840/1
Charles Tawney was born in Oxford in 1780 and baptised at St Cross Church on 24 December. His parents were Henry Tawney and Elizabeth Treacher, who were married at Pyrton on 1 October 1772.
Charles's father Henry Tawney, a carpenter and builder of St Peter-in-the-East parish, Oxford who had been matriculated as a privileged person at the University of Oxford on 15 July 1772, and his grandfather Robert Tawney was the brother of the brewer and former Mayor of Oxford Richard Tawney II. His mother Elizabeth Treacher was the first cousin of Sir John Treacher, who was to serve Mayor of Oxford in 1794/5.
Charles's three older siblings were also baptised at St Cross Church: Richard Tawney in 1774, Robert Edward Tawney in 1776, and Mary Tawney in 1778.
Charles's father Henry Tawney died in 1798 at the age of 52 and was buried in St Cross churchyard on 25 June.
Charles's sister Mary Tawney died the following year at the age of 21 and was buried at St Cross on 27 August, and his brother Robert Edward Tawney the year after that at the age of 23 and was buried there on 27 August.
On 21 December 1804 at Holy Trinity Church, Clapham, Surrey Charles Tawney of Holywell (St Cross) parish, Oxford married Ann Copland of Clapham, and the marriage was announced in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 29 December. In 1807 Ann's father Gabriel Copland Esq took over land in Burcot, just to the north of Dorchester in Oxfordshire, and put in Charles Tawney as the tenant on the farm. Charles and Ann had three children there:
- Elizabeth Copland Tawney (born at Burcot on 3 December 1809 and baptised at Dorchester on 8 February 1810)
- Henry Copland Tawney (born at Burcot in 1811 and baptised at Clifton Hampden on 17 November)
- Martha Copland Tawney (born at Burcot on 9 August 1813 and baptised at Dorchester on 7 September).
By 1818 Tawney was a Governor of the Radcliffe Infirmary. He took the role seriously, personally superintending the construction of a machine for rheumatic patients,
Charles Tawney and his family left Burcot around the end of 1820, as this extract from Jackson’s Oxford Journal of 2 September 1820 shows:
Charles Tawney was a partner with Henry Hall in the Swan Brewery in St Thomas’s (Hall & Tawney), and he may have inherited his share in the brewery from his mother’s first cousin, the former Mayor Sir John Treacher, who had died in 1807.
His mother Elizabeth Tawney died in 1821 at the age of 71 and was buried in St Cross churchyard on 16 January.
Charles Tawney was admitted free as a brewer on 28 August 1829 and was elected on to the Common Council on 30 September 1831.
On 21 February 1832 at St Cross Church, his elder daughter Elizabeth Copland Tawney married the Physician of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Charles Joseph Bishop.
Tawney was elected Junior Chamberlain for 1832/3, and then continued serving as Chamberlain to the end of the Old Council in December 1835.
After the passing of the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835, Tawney was elected councillor for the North Ward of the new Council on 26 December 1835 and six days later was elected an Alderman for three years.
In 1837 Tawney was elected Mayor of Oxford (for 1837/8), the fourth of the five members of the Tawney family to hold this office. Queen Victoria was crowned during his mayoral year. Councillor David Talboys described it as “an idle and expensive ceremony”, and Mr Warne said that he would be glad to see such “childish and expensive pageants” done away with altogether. Tawney said that if there were a royal banquet, he would pay all his expenses out of his own pocket, so it is possible that he did attend the ceremony.
In his mayoral year Tawney issued an order for the exclusion of the gipsies from St Giles’ Fair, resulting in a rhyme in the Oxford Herald called, “The gipsies’ humble petition and remonstrance, addressed to the Worshipful Mayor of Oxford”.
In 1840 Tawney was again elected Mayor of Oxford (for 1840/1).
At the time of the 1841 census, Charles Tawney (60), described as a brewer, was living at Paradise Street in St Thomas's parish with his wife, his son Henry (29), his widowed elder daughter Elizabeth Bishop and her four children, and and his younger daughter Martha (27). .
In 1842 Tawney inherited Headington Lodge,* a mansion in five acres of garden in the present Osler Road in Headington. Although his main residence was at Brewery House in Paradise Street, he must have used Headington Lodge as his country retreat, as the Headington rate-book shows him as both owner and occupier. He certainly did good works in Headington, including buying the land on which Headington National School (now St Andrew’s Primary School) was built in 1847/8.
On 26 July 1842 his widowed daughter Mrs Elizabeth Copland Bishop married her second husband, the surgeon Thomas Richard Fisher.
On 9 February 1843 his daughter Martha Copland Tawney of Paradise Street married John Tannard of Frampton House, Lincolnshire.
At the time of the 1851 census Tawney was still living in Paradise Street at the age of 70 with his wife and his son Henry, who at 39 was unmarried and described simply as a “gentleman”.
† Charles Tawney died at St Thomas's parish on 13 June 1853 at the age of 72. His funeral was held at St Cross Church, and he was buried in Holywell Cemetery on 18 June (Plot A72).
His wife Ann Tawney died at the age of 74 just over a year later on 27 February 1854 and was buried in Holywell Cemetery on 2 March 1854 (Plot A74).
Their grave marker right) is inscribed
SACRED
TO THE MEMORY OF
CHARLES TAWNEY ESQ.
WHO DIED JUNE XIII
MDCCCLIII
AGED LXXII YEARS
ALSO OF
ANN HIS BELOVED WIFE
WHO DIED FEBRUARY XXVII
MDCCCLIV /
AGED LXXIV YEARS
ALSO OF
HENRY COPLAND TAWNEY
SON OF THE ABOVE
WHO DIED NOV. XIII. MDCCCLXXVIII
AGED LXX YEARS
* Charles Tawney’s inheritance in Headington had come to him by a complicated route. Richard Tawney the brewer had one daughter, Jane, by his first marriage and two sons, Richard and Edward (both also Mayors), by his second. Neither Richard nor Edward had any children to whom they could pass on the family brewing firm, but Jane’s daughter (also called Jane) had married her cousin Robert Tawney, so that her daughter Ann was doubly related. When Edward died in 1800, he left everything to Ann Tawney (who in 1777 had married the apothecary Theophilus Wharton) for her lifetime, and to her eldest son Theophilus Wharton junior (born 1778) after her death. Theophilus junior had no children, and so his sister Jane, who married the brewer James Morrell, inherited everything, and it passed on to their son Mark Theophilus Morrell He died in 1842 at the age of 29, leaving Headington Lodge, a mansion built by his uncle, to his cousin Charles Tawney.
The three children of Charles Tawney
- Mrs Elizabeth Copland Fisher, formerly Mrs Bishop, née Tawney (born 1809) had seven children by her first husband: Ann Bessy Bishop (1833), Charles William Bishop (1834), Mary Ellen Bishop (1835), and Martha Grace MacLean Bishop (1839) by her first husband. She had another three children by her second husband: Arthur Thomas Fisher (1843), Emily Bishop Fisher (1845), and Frances Tawney Fisher (1846/7). Mrs Fisher died on 20 February 1898, aged 89.
- Henry Copland Tawney (born 1811) died on 13 November 1878 and was buried with his parents.
- Mrs Martha Copland Tunnard, née Tawney (born 1813) died on 12 December 1886.
See also:
- Richard Tawney I, his great-great uncle (Mayor in 1748)
- Richard Tawney II, his first cousin twice removed (Mayor in 1764/5, 1778/9, and 1790)
- Edward Tawney, his first cousin twice removed (Mayor in 1772, 1784, and 1798)
- Lily Sophia Tawney
- Brigid Allen, Morrells of Oxford. The Family and their Brewery 1743–1993 (Oxfordshire Books, 1994), esp. Tawney family tree on p. 6 and pp. xix, 41, and 46
- PCC Will PROB 11/2176/139 (Will of Charles Tawney of Oxford, proved 15 July 1853)
- (his father), PCC Will PROB 11/1315 (Will of Henry Tawney, Carpenter of Holywell Oxford, proved 16 November 1798)
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 29 December 1804: Announcement of Tawney’s marriage
- Martin K. Thompson, Tawney of Oxford and their Relatives (2022)
- 1841 Census: Oxford (St Thomas), 891/17/18]
- 1851 Census: Oxford (St Thomas), 1728/350
- Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 18 June 1853: Charles Tawney’s obituary
