Patrick Comerford
The Comberford Memorial Tercentenary:
a talk on the Comberford family
and rededication of the 1725 plaque
Tamworth and District Civic Society,
Tuesday 1 April 2025,
7 p.m.: Saint George’s Chapel, Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth,
with rededication in the Comberford Chapel
Introduction:
This year marks the 300th anniversary of the erection of a mural in 1725 of the curious tablet on the wall of the Comberford Chapel or North Transept, also known historically as Saint Catherine’s Chapel. It is one of two Comberford family monuments in the chapel, the other being a much worn and damaged effigy.
The monument is on the wall beneath the window depicting Christ the Teacher, erected almost a century and a half later in 1871 recalling two 19th century vicars of Tamworth, Canon Francis Blick (1754-1842) and his son-in-law, the Revd Robert Watkins Lloyd (1783-1860), and their wives.
I spoke here six years ago (2019) on ‘The Comberfords of Comberford and the Moat House, Tamworth’ (9 May 2019). This evening, to mark this 300th anniversary, I want to:
1, look at that particular monument;
2, look at some of the questions the text on it raises;
3, answer some of the questions it has created over the years for local and family historians;
4, identify who erected this monument 300 years ago; and
5, place it within the context of its setting in this church, both before it was erected and in the context of what was happening in Saint Editha’s Church at the time.
1, Looking at the monument:
The marble tablet erected in 1725 in the Comberford Chapel laments the demise of the main male line of the Comberford family that ended with Robert Comberford’s death, saying that line died out in 1671, although, in fact, he died in 1669. Indeed, his widow Catherine, had continued living at Comberford with her daughter, and she died only eight years before the plaque was erected.
The marble mural bears a Latin inscription that declares:
Hic situm est Monumentum diuturnitare vero
temporis et bellis plusquam civilibus dirutum
familiae non ita pridem florentis. Gentis
amplae et honostae Cumberfordiorum
Qui de hoc Municipio cum in alliistum.
In hoc Templo aedificando optime meruerunt.
Domini Cumberfordiae melaruere annis septigentis.
In Roberto autem novissimo stirpis Angliacae
Staffordiensis viro Gentis extinctum pleratur.
Qui obiit A.D. 1671 et hic cum consorte
Domina Catharina Bates filiisque duabus
Maria et Anna suis Haeredibus Tumulo
conditur Nomen adhuc viger in stirpe
Hibernica, quae Regem Jacobum Secundum
in Galliam secuta est; atque ibi Angluniae
In Provincia de Champagne Dominio
insignitur 1725.
Translated, this inscription reads:
‘This place is truly a fitting monument to a family brought low by wars rather than civic affairs, and that no longer flourishes here. The generous and honest family of Cumberfords richly deserve the gratitude of this town in many things, including in the building of this church. The Lords of Cumberford, who survived for seven hundred years, died out with the death of Robert, last scion of the Staffordshire branch in England, when he died in AD 1671, and was buried here with his wife Lady Catherine Bates and their two daughters and heiresses, Mary and Anne. Henceforth, the name lives on in the Irish branch of the family, which followed James II into exile in France, and there they became the Lords of Anglunia in the Province of Champagne. Erected in 1725.’
In addition, two local historians, Stebbing Shaw (1762-1802) and Charles Ferrers Palmer (1819-1900), and one 19th century family historian, James Comerford, noted that above this plaque there was a representation of the Comberford coat-of-arms (gules, a talbot passant argent) impaling those of Bates of Sutton (sable, a fess between three hands erect argent), with the Comberford crest of a ducal coronet and peacock’s head. This detail has since disappeared, but only in the past century and half or less.
2, Some questions raised in the text:
In his pamphlet, The Moat House and the Comberford Family, privately published about 60 years ago (ca 1965-1967), DP Adams, then Senior History Master at the Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, Tamworth, says: ‘Two things about this memorial are strange. When and by whom was it erected since it refers to James II’s exile which occurred from 1690 onwards, and where was Anglunia?’
In fact, he’s asking three, not two questions: when was it erected? Who erected it? And where is Anglunia? And he hints at a fourth question: how was a monument with such obvious Jacobite sympathies erected in a parish church in England within a decade of a Jacobite invasion in a concerted campaign to dethrone the House of Hanover?
The plaque is surprisingly open in its Jacobite sentiments, only a decade after the Vicar of Tamworth was convicted for his Jacobite loyalties.
One of Adams’s questions is already answered in the text, which says clearly the monument was erected in 1725. In addition, by clearing up the identity of ‘Anglunia’ the identity of the monument’s patron is revealed.
But they are at least two typographical errors on this monument, and someone more learned in classical Latin than I am may probably identify more:
(i) The date 1671 should read 1669, when Robert Comerford died;
(ii) Anglunia refers to Anglure in the Champagne area in France.
3, Questions created for local and family historians
As I shall point, the tablet was probably commissioned by an Irish officer and merchant, Joseph Comerford of Clonmel and Dublin, who had recently bought the chateau of Anglure in Marne, France, along with the title of Marquis d’Anglure.
He was keen to establish links between the Comerford family in Ireland and the Comberford family in Tamworth, but makes some clear and perhaps deliberate mistakes, if not representations of the stories of both families.
Let me identify some of those deliberate errors when it comes to the Comberford family of Comberford Hall and the Moat House.
Firstly, The tablet says the Comberford family had been living in Staffordshire for no more than six rather than seven centuries.
Then, as I have said, Robert Comberford (1594-1669) died in 1669, and not in 1671 as the monument claims. Robert furnished Elias Ashmole with many of the details of the Comberford family in Lichfield in 1663, although leaving some curious gaps. His wife Catherine was at least 30 years younger than him, and he died in 1669 at the age of 77, he was buried in the Comberford Chapel and his widow and two daughters continued to live at Comberford Hall until she died in 1718.
Indeed, the family had been impoverished during the Civil War, losing the Moat House on Lichfield Street in Tamworth. The family had recovered Comberford Hall, but it had been heavily mortgaged, and Catherine probably remained there as a tenant of the Skeffingtons of Fisherwick, Robert Comberford’s cousins and neighbours. Her will, written in Latin, was made on 18 January 1716, and probate was granted on 7 November 1718.
Her will shows Catherine still held some property in Wigginton, Hopwas and Tamworth, which she divided between her granddaughters, Catherine Brooke and Mary Grosvenor, wife of Sherrington Grosvenor of Tamworth. Both daughters are more likely to have been buried with their husbands than with their parents here in Tamworth.
Catherine died seven years before this monument was put in place, so there were people around in 1725 who would have remembered the family had continued living in this area long after James II’s exile. The Comberford name continued in the Brooke family through Robert’s grandson, Comberford Brooke.
It is true the name died out, but not the family line. Robert Comberford’s descendants continued through female lines in prominent Midlands families, including the Brooke, Giffard, Grosvenor, Mostyn, Parry, Slaughter and Smitheman families, and their descendants.
Indeed, if Robert Comberford was the last of the line and died in 1669 or 1671, during the reign of Charles II, a branch of the family could not have then followed James II to Ireland and then into exile into France.
Château d’Anglure … it gave Joseph Comerford an estate and a title4, Who erected this monument in 1725?
Joseph Comerford, Marquis d’Anglure, is one of the most enigmatic members of the family. His origins and place in the family tree have been obscured by his own obfuscation:
• The family tree he registered in Dublin was a self-serving and vainglorious exercise, aimed at asserting a nobility that would underpin the French aristocratic title he acquired when he bought a chateau and petit domain in Champagne.
• The plaques he erected in the Comerford chapel in Saint Mary’s Parish Church, Callan, Co Kilkenny, and the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Parish Church in Tamworth, were proud but vain efforts to link the Comerford family in Co Kilkenny with the Comberford family in the Lichfield and Tamworth area of Staffordshire.
Although he claimed on those monuments that his family had been brought low by the ravages of civil wars in Ireland and in England, he appears to have remained in Ireland for some years after the defeat of the Jacobite cause in the 1690s without any obvious social, political or financial disadvantage. And, while he eagerly craved acceptance in French aristocratic circles, the title he acquired has never continued in use in the Comerford family.
Joseph Comerford’s pedigree, registered with the Ulster Office of Arms, the principal heraldic and genealogical office in Ireland, makes extravagantly fanciful and romantic claims for his origins and ancestry. Yet, paradoxically, it is difficult to disentangle truth from fiction, or to be quite certain about Joseph Comerford’s family origins.
However, we can presume that Joseph Comerford knew and was honest about the names of his parents and grandparents. It would appear, therefore, that his grandfather was Peter Comerford, who married Honor Everard, and that his father was Edward Comerford, a merchant, of Clonmel, Co Tipperary. He married Barbara Browne, and died in November or December 1679, while Barbara died in 1719.
Edward and Barbara Comerford were the parents of three or four sons and two daughters, including Joseph Comerford, the subject of our discussions this evening; Bonaventure Comerford, a Jacobite captain in France who died in 1709 and is buried in Douai; Luke Comerford, also a Jacobite captain; and Michael Comerford, who died in Dublin 1724, and who in his will uses the Comberford coat-of-arms.
Joseph Comerford was a freeman of Waterford (1686) and was a captain in the Jacobite army of James II in Ireland.
However, despite the terms of the Treaty of Limerick after the Jacobite defeat, Joseph Comerford was still living in Ireland in 1692, when he bought the ‘Ikerrin Crown,’ an encased gold cap or crown discovered 10 ft underground by turf-cutters in Co Tipperary, and which he saved from being melted down.
The ‘Comerford Crown’ or ‘Ikerrin Crown’ … bought by Joseph Comerford in 1692 and later kept in his château in AnglureSoon after, Joseph moved to France, and as Joseph de Comerford of Clonmel, he received letters of naturalisation in France in January 1711. In exile in France, he was made a Chevalier of St Louis, bought the Anglure estate on the banks of the River Aule in Champagne, including Château d’Anglure, and claimed the title of Marquis d’Anglure.
However, he returned to Ireland at the beginning of the 18th century, when he was living in Cork, and in Dublin in April 1724, he registered a fanciful family pedigree at the Ulster Office of Arms in Dublin Castle.
At this time, or soon after, he probably also erected the monument in Saint Mary’s Church, Callan, Co Kilkenny, to Thomas Comerford, who may have been his great-grandfather and who died in 1627 or in 1629. That monument also uses florid Latin and the coat-of-arms of the Comberford family of Comberford rather than that of the Comerfords of Co Kilkenny.
Joseph Comerford returned to France after registering his pretentious pedigree and erecting plaques in Callan and Tamworth that may have been intended to support and substantiate his genealogical claims.
On 28 November 1725, as Joseph de Comerford, he gave the Anglure estate, including ‘the grounds and seigniories of Mesnil and Granges,’ 3 km west of Anglure, to his nephew, Louis Luc de Comerford.
When he died in 1729, Joseph Comerford’s will was proved in Paris. Another will was dated 19 May 1729 and went to probate in Dublin that year. He was buried in the chapel at Château d’Anglure not under the title of Marquis d’Anglure but as Baron d’Anglure et Dangermore.
Although he had an only daughter, Jane Barbara, there was no male heir to inherit his claims and titles. Instead, he had designated his brother Captain Luc (Luke) Comerford as his heir. In default of male heirs, Joseph Comerford settled his estates in Champagne on the heirs male of his brother, Captain Luke Comerford, and in default of such heirs male on his kinsman, Major-General John Comerford, and his male issue.
Captain Louis-Luc Comerford of Sézanne, north of Anglure, became Seigneur d’Anglure as heir to his uncle Joseph. He was financially ruined, sold the Anglure title and estate in 1752, and retired to Sézanne, north of Anglure, where he lived in extreme poverty.
Louis-Luc Comerford’s next brother, Captain Pierre-Edouard Comerford, used the title of Baron Dangermore, but he made no pretensions to the Anglure titles. This branch of the Comerford family died out in 1813 with the death of Captain Joseph-Alexandre-Antoine Comerford (1757-1813). Since then, the French titles have never been assumed or claimed by any member of the family. As for the crown rescued by Joseph Comerford, its fate remains a mystery, though it has inspired various works of art in Ireland.
5, The monument and its contexts
The destiny of Joseph Comerford’s crown, title, chateau, and his many pretentious claims are interesting chapters in the story of the decline of a family, and help to explain why he erected the monument in the Comberford chapel.
When Joseph Comberford bought his chateau in Anglure, it came with a title – but with the caveat that the owner had to be what passed in France as noble birth. And that explains the very confusing family tree he registered in Dublin in 1724. Erecting this monument in Tamworth, without using his own name, bolstered that claim – we could accuse him of creating ‘facts on the ground.’
But there were other, more understandable reasons – perhaps more honourable reasons – for his wanting to erect this monument. The Comberford family lost the Moat House on Lichfield Street during the English civil war in the mid-17th century. I have inherited some papers and correspondence that show how successive owners of the house went to great lengths to find out whether the house brought with it rights of burial in the Comberford Chapel: in other words, was the right of burial inherited in the Comberford family, or was it associated with the Moat House.
Of course, the Comberford Chapel predates the family’s ownership of the Moat House. So, we may probably accept, Joseph Comerford, in some way, was probably trying to keep the Comberford Chapel ‘in the family’ – albeit through a very distant and questionable genealogical link – rather than alienate those rights to the owners of the day at the Moat House.
His action was bold, for, as Adams points out, the plaque is surprisingly open in its Jacobite sentiments, only a decade after a local vicar was executed for his Jacobite loyalties. The Revd William Paul (1678–1716) had been a teacher in Tamworth before becoming Vicar of Orton, six or seven miles east of Tamworth, in 1709. He became a nonjuror, joined the Jacobite rebels in 1715, was arrested and convicted of treasons, and was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 13 July 1716.
It remained a political and social risk to openly espouse Jacobite sympathies in Tamworth in 1725. But of course, who with the name Comberford or Comerford, would not want to keep, whatever the implied risks, whatever links it was possible to maintain with the Moat House, Comberford Hall and the Comberford Chapel in Tamworth?
