Daniel Rawlinson (1614/15 -1679)
Written by David Jackson
Occupation: Vintner
Origins and Early Life
Daniel was baptised at Hawkshead in the first three months of 1615. He was the third son of Thomas Rawlinson of Grisedale by his wife Susanna Steinberger. Susanna was a granddaughter of Daniel Hochstetter (1525-1581; qv), leader of the German Mines Royal who were prospecting for copper in Borrowdale and in the fells behind Skiddaw. Thomas Rawlinson was the third generation known to be of Grisedale and he was the son of Robert Rawlinson 1560-1606/9 and his wife Elizabeth Hutton of Thorphinsty, near Cartmel Fell. Robert in turn was the son of Thomas Rawlinson of Grisedale by his wife Margaret Otley.
Richard Rawlinson, who was Daniel’s grandson, made a pedigree of the family which included a Robert Rawlinson as father of the earlier Thomas. Thomas, Margaret and Robert all made wills and there was a marriage settlement between Robert and Elizabeth Hutton of Thorphinsty. Copies of all these documents are extant. There is a possibility that the family was earlier living at Hulleter, near Ulverston. Daniel attended Hawkshead Grammar School and possibly worshipped at the chapel of ease at Satterthwaite, as Grisedale was in this chapelry. Daniel himself paid an assessment for the poor of this chapelry for his land at Grisedale, even when he was living in London.
In London as a Vintner
He went to London and in 1622/3 was apprenticed to a vintner called Ellen Spillman (otherwise unknown). Having served his term he acquired the lease of The Mitre in Fenchurch St in the parish of St Dionis Backchurch in the City of London, in 1642 from the Pewterers Company. Though this was the year of the beginning of the Civil War, he was evidently very successful at The Mitre, serving both food and drink. The frontage on Fenchurch St was significant, measuring 38 feet 6 inches. One of his customers was Samuel Pepys who became a friend and mentions Daniel in his diary on forty occasions. One entry describes how they went to a Jewish Synagogue together.
Daniel married Margaret Paviour at St George the Martyr in Southwark in 1637 and they had seven children all baptised at St Dionis Backchurch: William (1642), Elizabeth (1643-1651), Margaret (1645-1711), (who married John Honour at St Alban's, Hart St 1672 and had one known child Margaret; subsequently Margaret Honour married Joseph Cowslad at St Martin Outchurch in 1696/7), Thomas (1647-1708), (later Sir Thomas Rawlinson (qv), a knight, alderman, master of the Vintners Company (1687) and Lord Mayor of London in 1705), John (1648-c.1689) (also a vintner, whose will was made in 1689 and proved 1696), Maria (1650) (who married Sir John Mazine in 1678, perhaps a son of Sir John Mazine (1607-1677) the master of the horse to the 1st duke of Newcastle and Rawlinson Mazine (d. 1678) was their only child) and Elizabeth (1651).
As a vintner, he had a number of apprentices, including his eldest brother Thomas in 1639, his nephew Thomas Evans in 1644, his own son Thomas and his nephew Robert in 1667. To these could be added a Braithwaite from Sawrey, a Turner from Ambleside, a Knipe from Grisedale, a Chamley from Bethecar, a Wood from Whitehaven, a Roger from Satterthwaite and a Postlethwaite from Satterthwaite. The last of these was the father of Malachy Postlethwaite, or Postlethwayt (1707-1767; ODNB), the economist.
His Philanthropy
As an alumnus of Hawkshead Grammar School, which had been founded in 1585 by Archbishop Edwin Sandys of York (1519-1588; ODNB), Daniel helped with the rebuilding of the school in 1675. He also provided a library for the boys, contributed to the reconstruction of Satterthwaite Chapel of Ease and bought the Grisedale estate from his elder brother Robert.
His Politics, the Plague and the Great Fire
The Mitre was one of the political taverns in the Civil War from 1642-1651. Daniel's grandson Richard Rawlinson reports that on the day of the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Daniel put a mourning cloth over his inn sign, as he was a keen royalist. He was still in his thirties and this would have been a somewhat dangerous gesture at the time. In 1665 the plague struck London with unusual ferocity and Daniel’s house was fastened securely. Nonetheless he lost his wife Margaret and a both a male and a female servant. The following year, in 1666, was the Great Fire of London and The Mitre was one of the casualties. After the Great Fire, Daniel got permission to rebuild the inn and secured a new long lease from 1668-1729. He then employed a contemporary artist, Isaac Fuller (1606-1672; ODNB), to paint an iconographically complex interior of the new Mitre inn where 'over the chimneys there were a Venus, a Satyr, a sleeping child, a boy riding a goat, another fallen off, Saturn devouring a child, Mercury, Minerva, Diana, Apollo, Bacchus, Venus and Ceres embracing a fallen Silenus fallen down and holding a goblet into which a boy was pouring wine. The scenes between the windows showed the seasons and on the ceiling in a large circle two angels (were) supporting a mitre' (Horace Walpole). Very little of Fuller’s work survives, as his production was largely that of murals on walls, since demolished but there are a few portraits extant including his lively self portrait (Queen's College, Oxford). Daniel's trade tokens for the Mitre had a mitre on one side and the initial DMR, for Daniel and Margaret Rawlinson on the other.
His Death, his Memorial and his Posterity
Daniel died by 1679 and a large memorial tablet was erected in St Dionis Backchurch. Both the church and The Mitre inn were subsequently demolished, but the Rawlinson monuments were removed to Hawkshead church in 1878. The name of the Olde Mitre appears today upon a new building in Hatton Garden, which retains the mitre from Daniel Rawlinson's gatehouse cut in stone over the door. At his death Daniel owned property at Wasperton in Warwickshire, Waltham Cross in Essex and Saddlebow, near Kings Lynn, in Norfolk. His son Thomas inherited the remaining portion of the lease of the Mitre.
As his son Sir Thomas Rawlinson (qv) inherited the Grisedale land, Daniel’s elder brother Robert’s family settled in the South of England. Robert had two sons, Daniel, also a vintner and Robert, a distiller. Daniel junior married Elizabeth Billingsley, after having been apprenticed to her father. He had a son also called Daniel who followed his father as a vintner and a son Robert who was later the rector of Charlwood, near Crawley in Surrey, his father having purchased the advowson. Robert married Margaret, the daughter of Richard Ray and niece of Walter Ray the proprietor of the The Three Sugar Loaves and Crown, a grocery business also in Fenchurch St. Their son Thomas Rawlinson (d.1769 ?) married his cousin Dorothy Ray and joined the grocery company, now Ray and Rawlinson. He was also knighted and became Lord Mayor of London in 1753. After Walter Ray’s death he took Monkhouse Davison from Carlisle as a partner and the firm became Rawlinson and Davison. Davison’s cousin Abram Newman joined the company and after Thomas’s death the firm became Davison and Newman. It was their tea that was thrown into the harbour at Boston and they demanded compensation from George III. Thomas and Dorothy had five children of which Sir Walter became an MP and a banker employed by his father-in-law and Susanna married Sir George Wombwell MP 1st Bt. (1734-1780).
Sources
- Edward Callow, Old London Taverns, 1901
- John Matusiak, A History of the Tudors in 100 Objects, 2009, 117
- Samuel Pepys, The Diaries, ed Lord Braybrook, 1st edn, 1825
- Niklaus Pevsner and Matthew Hyde, Buildings of England : Cumbria, 2010, 399
- Horace Walpole (ed.), George Vertue's Notes in Anecdotes of Painting in England (1771)
- Cliffords Inn Fire Decrees
- History of Parliament Website
- deadpubs.co.uk
- pubshistory.com/london pubs