Martindale, Henry

Submitted by edpope on

f 46r of Vol VII of Godwin's diary: £25 per night, Martindale to mrs Strutt or Lady Bucks. F R

See Oracle 13.3.1797 where Lady Buckinghamshire (see Albinia nee Bertie 1737/8-1816 in her husband George Hobart DNB 1731-1804) & Mrs Sturt (probably will PCC 1808 widow of Humphrey Sturt 1725? - 1786 History of Parliament and later mother-in-law of Augustus Butler Danvers) were fined £50 each for playing Faro and Henry Martindale was fined £200 for keeping the Faro table. The Faro bank was stolen 30.1.1797 and servants were dismissed who then laid information against their former employers. Martindale was alleged to have kept the table from November till January. F R was clearly Frederick Reynolds DNB 1764-1841 as the F R in the next line also ending F R was a tale about his own youth (see Reynolds, Frederick) but according to the diary Godwin had only met him three times at miss Mansel's (his future wife's) in the spring of 1796 and then not again till 1799, so that either this note is much later than the start of the 1796 list, or Reynolds knew about Martindale's faro at Lady Buckinghamshire's much earlier than what emerged in the Magistrate's Court and Godwin had remembered it until September 1796 before noting it down. Because the ink colour changes at this point in the page I suspect that this note and those below it date from 1799 or later and I judge that since this was gossip Godwin could have easily mixed up Sturt and Strutt. A Henry Martindale was appointed messenger to the Lord Chancellor on 19.2.1792. John and Benjamin Martindale had both been owners of White's famous gambling club in St James but both went bankrupt in the 1790s.