Author: Brerewood, Thomas
Biography:
BREREWOOD, Thomas (d 1748: ODNB)
During his lifetime he published some occasional verse in GM; the reasons for publishing Galfred and Juetta in 1772, twenty-four years after his death, likely relate to his brother Francis (d 1781) who inherited from Thomas when he died intestate with no other heirs. Many sources, including family trees on Ancestry and some printed books, contain inaccurate and misleading information about Brerewood. The most comprehensive and reliable information is from Kadens who touches on biographical facts in her detailed analysis of a financial scam developed by Brerewood’s father. Thomas Brerewood Sr. (1670-1746) was the grandson of Sir Robert Brerewood, alderman and recorder for the city of Chester, Cheshire (ODNB). He and his wife Frances Hales (married 1691) had two sons—Thomas and Francis—and a daughter, Henrietta. No birth records have been located. In the early 1700s Brerewood Sr., a prosperous London cloth merchant, became infamous for masterminding “the Pitkin affair” where he and Thomas Pitkin connived to profit by exploiting a weakness in the existing bankruptcy laws. At the time Brerewood Jr. was a cornet in the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards. He married Letitia Cross in 1712 only to discover that she was already married. On 25 Jan. 1716 he married again, this time to the Honourable Charlotte Calvert, daughter of the 4th Baron Baltimore and twin sister of the 5th Baron, in a clandestine ceremony in the Fleet prison when she was just sixteen. They had children—possibly two sons, Francis and Charles—who died in infancy. Brerewood Jr. had extensive debts which marriage promised to resolve. On the death in 1731 of her grandmother, Margaret Calvert, Baroness Baltimore, Charlotte inherited ten thousand acres known as “My Lady’s Manor” in Maryland. By a deed of trust the property was conveyed to Brerewood Sr. who over time used portions of it to pay off his son’s creditors; he also travelled to Maryland to manage the property and died there on 22 Dec. 1746. His son lived at Place House, Horton, Buckinghamshire, and died there in 1748, predeceased in 1744 by his wife. What remained of “My Lady’s Manor” was inherited by his brother and, on his death in London in 1781, by his wife Mary (Halfpenny) Brerewood. Her ownership was contested by Henry Harford, an illegitimate son of Frederick Calvert, the 6th and last Baron Baltimore. (ODNB 23 Feb. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 23 Feb. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 23 Feb. 2023; Boston News-Letter 8 July 1717; GM 61.2 [1791] 713-16; W. W. Preston, The History of Harford County, Maryland [1901]; Ronald Hoffman, The Princes of Ireland [2002]; P. W. Coldham, American Migrations, 1765-1799 [2000]; Emily Kadens, “The Pitkin Affair: a Study of Fraud in Early English Bankruptcy,” American Bankruptcy Law Journal 84 [2010] 483-570)