In her autobiography, Chain of Amber, Mary Linley Taylor herself gives virtually no information about her parents' origins, only indicating that her mother was "a descendant of Elizabeth and Mary Linley" who “in Regency Days,” she writes, “were the toast of Bath.” This is not accurate, since the Regency period in England covers the years 1811 – 1820, long after they were dead. She could also not, of course, be descended from both sisters! The story of the Tickell family turns out to be particularly interesting and complex. In fact, Mary was not descended from the Linley sisters at all.
Much of the information below comes from A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Ireland, By Bernard Burke, Ashworth Peter Burke Edition: 9 Published by Harrison & sons, 1899.
2. This Richard Tickell married Katherine, a daughter of the Rev. Dr. Henry Fairfax (1588-1665), who was fourth son of Thomas Fairfax, the 1st Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1560-1640), soldier, diplomat and politician, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton and Dorothy Gale (this was Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton and Nun Appleton, who had been born in 1521, was high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1571, knighted in 1579, died 28 January 1599, married Dorothy in 1559). They had 3 sons, Thomas being the eldest. Katherine's father had been a close friend of the poet George Herbert, from their Trinity College Cambridge days. As rector of Bolton Percy in Yorkshire from 1650, he resided at Appleton House in Nunappleton, part of his parish, the home of his nephew Thomas Fairfax, the 3rd Lord Fairfax, commander-in-chief of the Parliament army until 1650. Also living in the house at the time was the poet Andrew Marvell. (The Fairfax line can be traced back to the 12th century)
3. Thomas Tickell was baptized at Crosthwaite Church May 6, 1623. He was father to Richard.
4. Richard Tickell became Vicar of Egremont, Cumberland, 7 June 1673. He married Mary Gale, and had 2 sons, Richard and Thomas.
5. Thomas Tickell was born December 17, 1685 and was for a time c.1710 fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford. His elder brother sold the family estate to him in 1721. He published a small volume of poems. Until now, the family had had no Irish connection, but In 1725 Thomas Tickell was appointed secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland thanks to the influence of Joseph Addison, his patron; he retained the post until his death in Bath in 1740. He married Clotilda, daughter and co-heir of Sir Maurice Eustace of Harristown, Kildare (Ireland), (who had been made Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Lord Chancellor of Ireland at the Restoration) and inherited his estate and the attached title at Carnolway / Carnalway. Their Irish home was at Glasnevin, now part of Dublin. It and the small estate attached to it were sold in 1790 to the Royal Dublin Society to become the Botanic Garden. They were both buried at Glasnevin. They had 2 sons, John and Thomas.
6. John Tickell (born 23 November 1727, died 1782) a clerk in chancery, and magistrate in Dublin, sold the earlier Cumberland property in 1781. He married a Glasnevin girl, Esther Pierson. They had 2 sons, Thomas (born 1749) and Richard (born 1751).
7a. The younger son, Richard Tickell was a policial writer and playwright, appointed Commissioner of Stamps in 1779. He married Mary Linley (1758-87) in 1780. Mary Linley's sister Elizabeth (1754-92) married the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan (born in Ireland but settled in England) in 1772. The sisters' father Thomas Linley (1733-1795) had studied music at Bath, where he settled as a singing-master and conductor of the concerts. From 1774 he was engaged in the management at Drury Lane Theatre, London, composing or compiling the music of many of the pieces produced there, besides songs and madrigals, which rank high among English compositions. Richard Tickell’s opera in three acts, called "The Carnival of Venice", was successfully produced at Drury Lane on 13 December 1781 (with his sister-in-law Elizabeth writing some of the songs, and his wife Mary the music). After Mary Linley's early death in 1787, Richard Tickell remarried in 1789 and finally in 1793 died after falling or jumping from a parapet of the building in Hampton Court where he had lived with Mary, perhaps a suicide with multiple possible causes. The Wikipedia entry says that “Sheridan took the children of Tickell's first marriage into his care, obtaining admission into the navy for Richard (1782–1805), and a writership in India for Samuel (1785–1817).” Richard was killed in action on H.M.S Phoebe off Sardinia in 1805. Captain Samuel Tickell of the 8th regiment of Native Infantry (India) died October 5 1817 near Berhampore "of a severe and lingering illness" (The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British India No. 29 Vol 5, 1818). He had married Mary Morris and left 3 sons, including Samuel Richard the eldest (see below).
7b. The elder son, Thomas Tickell, was born in
and became High Sheriff of Kildare in 1803. He married Sarah
1771 and died at Bath in 1831. He and his wife were buried at
Carnolway. He had 4 sons, Thomas, born 1772, a military man who
childless in Trinidad in 1802. Their third son John, born 1783,
into the church, he also died childless. The family estate passed
the second son, Edward Tickell, who expanded them while serving as
chairman of co. Armagh but he died childless in Dublin in 1863 and
title to the Carnolway estate then passed directly to Thomas
(the father of Hilda / Mary Linley Taylor), the oldest surviving
the fourth son Richard Tickell, by whom the line was perpetuated.
As the Wikipedia
says, he retired to the Channel Islands and at the 1871
census he was
living (aged 58) at St John Road, Trafalgar Terrace, St.
together with Ada Elizabeth, his younger daughter, still
only 15, born
in Burma in 1856. An older daughter, Mary Louisa Tickell was
Burdwan, West Bengal, India, on 25 September 1845. Perhaps
stayed behind in India? By 1871 he was blind. On the day of
census, his wife, Maria Georgiana, (born in Bengal
27 October 1825) was staying with her father, John W.
Elizabeth his wife, at Bathwick, Bath. Her father had
remarried after the death of her mother, Maria Anne Boileau,
had married in India in 1844. Her father was then 76, his
wife 38, they
had an 11 year-old daughter, Elizabeth. Samuel Richard
only a few years later in 1875, at which time he was
residing at 33,
Montpellier Villas, Cheltenham with Ada his daughter (and
wife, too?). It was Ada ('present at the death') who
death by 'exhaustion' (a curious ) on the same day. His
widow and Ada
(25, still single)
were living at 7, Batshill Terrace, Cheltenham, at the 1881
Ada married Benjamin Charles George Scott in Strand, London, late in 1881. (Benjamin was born in Aylsham, Norfolk 1847, the son of William Henry Scott). Her husband was a vice-consul in China already in 1881 and from 1897-9 he was British Consul-General in Tientsin. In about 1885, their son "Eustace Lindsay Scott" was born in China, but in 1891 Ada was living in a boarding house at 146, Queens Road, Paddington, away from her husband, with another married woman, Mary Cooper, both born in the "East Indies," as well as a boy aged 7, "Templer Scott," born in China. Who was he? Strangely, at the 1891 census Eustace was staying with his grandmother, Maria "Tickale" (a mistake for Tickell) a widow aged 64 born in India, at 43, Conduit Road, St Paul, Bedford. Eustace was a student 1901 in Bradfield College, Bradfield, Berkshire. At the 1901 census, mother and daughter are together, still without Ada's husband, living at 24, Ealing Eaton Rise, Ealing. At last, in 1911, we find them reunited at 74 Madeley Road Ealing, Benjamin (64, pensioned consul-general), Ada (55, born in Burma Moulmain), her mother (84, born in India Calentter) as well as a "son-in-law" (?) of Benjamin, Captain Templer Henry Scott of the Indian army, aged 27, born in Shanghai. No sign of Eustace. If the inscription on the grave of Ada's parents recorded above is correct, and the War Graves record, they must have had another son, Templer Henry Scott, born in India in about 1884.
The obvious conclusion
of all this is that the family of Mary Linley Taylor's mother was
more dynamic and wide-ranging one than that of her father, and
flow of visitors at Cheltenham owed more to her family than to
fact that he went big-game hunting in India is almost certainly
of the many Tickell connections remaining there into the early