SOCIETY FOR CONSTITUTIONAL INFORMATION: Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield proposed member 15.2.1782 by John Jebb 2nded Thomas Brand Hollis. See Amendments to Oxford DNB below
GODWIN DIARY: Fell & Oldfield call (not in) 10.9.1798 / 22.9.1799 dine at Fell's with Oldfield, Loveridge &c In Godwin's 1796 list for 1799 / 16.12.1808 Oldfields call (not in) / 24.12.1808 mrs Oldfield, 2 sons & Petman dine / 31.12.1808 Oldfields call (not in) / 2.1.1809 Oldfields call / 25.1.1809 mrs Oldfield calls / 2.2.1813 again
The first two entries, both associated with Fell, must be T H B Oldfield DNB 1755-1822, because John Loveridge was Oldfield's friend and associate, an attorney who got struck off the rolls. See Sheffield Archives WWM/F/82/10 letter from Jane Osbaldistone to Lord Fitzwilliam 3.7.1813 "in this Alchester business [Loveridge] was notorious" (I haven't discovered what that referred to). Mrs Oldfield was Clarissa Indiana dau of John Redhead silk mercer of Ludgate Hill, they married at Lambeth 29.2.1784, she was buried 6.2.1837 at Everton Lancs where her son James was living. In 1808 she had three sons living, Thomas W 1803-1848, Granville Sharp c.1792 -1863/4 and James P c1794-1855+. She ran a school in Margate where the Oldfields lived from before 1798 till around 1808. A promissory note dated 31.12.1808 (maybe in Abinger but in Shelley & his Circle SC 94) for £13 6s to Mes Oldfield & Pettman was endorsed C J Oldfield which given identical capitals for I and J fits Mrs Oldfield's initials.
AMENDMENTS TO OXFORD DNB:
THOMAS HINTON BURLEY OLDFIELD(1755-1822)
NOTES I haven't made suggested changes here, as there is a lot I have discovered but his origins still elude me. I suggest you send what I have written below to the article contributor and see if they want to rewrite it. If not, I'm willing to try and rewrite it myself. Otherwise I will just leave my comments on my website.
CURRENT TEXT "political reformer and historian, was born in Derbyshire."
NOTES That is how the DNB article begins. The source of it is his obituary in the Monthly Magazine 54 p178 "Mr O. was a native of Derbyshire". A Thomas Oldfield son of John was baptised 10.8.1754 at Duffield Derbyshire, and this could have been him. A family tree of the name Wakefield sent me by Helena Coney stated that Ellen Wakefield of Uttoxeter Staffordshire was the aunt of T H B Oldfield. She was apparently born Ellen Oldfield at Uttoxeter in 1700 and married John Wakefield in 1722, dying at Uttoxeter in 1803 "at an advanced age". Her father John Oldfield was called a carpenter in one register entry and she had a brother John who was born in 1706. Duffield is about 15 miles from Uttoxeter, and if this was the same John he would have been 48 when Thomas Oldfield was baptised. T.H.B. Oldfield's mother's name was Sarah, her death was announced in the Morning Herald of 10.3.1798 at Margate "mother of Mr Oldfield, Author of the History of Parliament". Her burial record at Margate gave her age as 80, so she would have been 36 when Thomas Oldfield was born. There was also a James son of John Oldfield born at Duffield in 1759 whose son Jesse Oldfield is mentioned below 13 lines from end. Ellen Wakefield's grandmother was Rebecca Hinton of Lichfield Staffordshire and may have been the source of one of T.H.B.Oldfield's middle names. But more likely they referred to Sir Anthony Oldfield attorney of Spalding, Lincs 1626-1668 created baronet in 1660, whose maternal ancestor was Sir John Hinton of Hinton Trover Somerset knighted by Henry VII on the field after the battle of Bosworth. Sir Anthony Oldfield's family had property at Burghley, Stamford, Lincs (Lincolnshire Pedigrees 736-7). In the DNB article on John Oldfield 1789-1863 it says that his father John Nicholls Oldfield claimed to be the fifth baronet descended from Sir Anthony Oldfield. But in Burke's Landed Gentry of 1855 John Nicholls Oldfield's ancestry had been traced back to Rev Edward Oldfield of Uttoxeter 1655. In fact this Oldfield family had lived in Uttoxeter since about 1600 as had also the ancestors of Ellen Wakefield (T H B Oldfield's supposed aunt), without any sign of a common ancestor between them. The most likely. explanation of all this is that T H B Oldfield either was, or thought he was, related to the family of John Nicholls Oldfield, adopted their belief in descent from the Lincolnshire Oldfield baronets and gave himself two grand middle names. If Thomas Oldfield's middle names were his own affectation, he was already using them by 1772 when he was (presumably) attending Guildford grammar school with fellow pupil Richard Valpy (DNB 1754-1836) The subscription list to Valpy's Poetical Blossoms (dedication Oct 1772) included a number of relevant names - Mr Thomas Hinton Burley Oldfield, Guildford, 2 copies / Capt & Mrs Wakefield, London / Mr Hinton, Portsmouth / Mr George Newbold Hoyland and Mrs & Miss Hoyland, Higham. These last at Higham, which is in Derbyshire, were the only names in a list of nearly 200 with an address north of Oxford. In Town & Country Magazine August 1772 p440 a poem in the style of Poetical Blossoms was titled "To Mr T H B Oldfield" by Amicus, warning him that Love and Ambition were incompatible. In the April 1772 issue had appeared Oldfield's own verse On Miss M-a D-r praising her for the beauty of her mind and in the September issue appeared another verse of his dated Guildford, Sept 20. To Mr E W Smith at Crabborn near Titchfield, on his sending me a blank Letter. "I send thee again this thy cargo of wit; 'Twas all thou could'st spare, so the biter is bit; No wonder, indeed, thou should'st play this odd prank, Since all men agree, that thy brain is a blank." Titchfield is near Portsmouth where Mr Hinton and a number of other subscribers to Poetical Blossoms lived. G N Hoyland had also tried his hand at poetry, sending a riddle (on the town name Christchurch) to the Lady in 1772. In August 1772 Tho Hinton Burley Oldfield of Guildford subscribed to Frederick Barlow's Complete English Dictionary. Thomas Oldfield DNB 1756-1799, the brother of John Nicholls Oldfield mentioned above, bought an estate at Westbourne near Portsmouth but not till the 1780s. In the War Office list of 24.6.1779 J H B Oldfield was listed as an ensign in the Buckinghamshire militia since 24.10.1778 under Colonel Coulson Skottowe, who resigned in favour of Francis Dashwood DNB 1708-1781 shortly afterwards. (A written T could easily have been mistaken for a J by the printer). In 1780 T H B Oldfield was living in Hoxton Square, London and signed the Protestant Association's mammoth petition which helped fuel the Gordon riots, and in that year he also subscribed to the poetry of Eliza Reeves. In the Public Advertiser of 6.3.1781 the following notice appeared "A few days since died at Gunsbury in Yorkshire, Mrs Hoyland, Widow of the late John Hoyland, Esq; of that Place. The whole of her Estate, Real and Personal, she has bequeathed to her Nephew, Tho. Hinton Burley Oldfield, Esq; of the Inner Temple." Given the earlier mention of G N Hoyland of Higham there must have been some truth in this report, but I went to Sheffield and York to look for the burial and will of such a lady and could not find it. What is more Gunsbury is a place name I couldn't locate in any Gazetteers, it may have been a way of spelling Conisborough as it was pronounced in Yorkshire. There were Hoylands in south Yorkshire, some were Quakers, there was even a widow Hoyland who died at Conisborough in the year after the advert and left a will, but no mention of T.H.B.Oldfield in it. This had me seriously puzzled, but then I tried to research another notice, of 8.8.1782 in both the St James Chronicle and the Whitehall Evening Post: "Thomas Hinton Burly Oldfield, Esq is appointed Surveyor of the Coasts in the Port of London, in the Room of John Calvert, Esq. deceased." It appears from Customs records that there had been a landing waiter named John Calvert (a humble post under the Surveyor of the Coasts) who fell off the list in that year, but Oldfield's name didn't appear in his place. I began to wonder if Oldfield was playing jokes, practising swindles or just testing to see what could be inserted in newspapers. In February 1782 he joined the Society for Constitutional Information, proposed by John Jebb (DNB 1736-1786) and seconded by Thomas Brand Hollis (DNB c1719-1804). Then on 20.2.1783, on the resignation of John Frost (DNB 1750-1842), he was elected secretary to the Westminster Committee, and on 11.3.1783 he was elected Secretary to the Delegates of the Quintuple Alliance, which co-ordinated the supporters of parliamentary reform in the constituencies of Middlesex, Surrey, London, Westminster and Southwark. John Horne Tooke (DNB 1736-1812) made a speech full of accusations against Oldfield but the Earl of Effingham and aldermen Sawbridge, Pickett and Turner refuted them (Gazetteer &c 13.3.1783) and the report in the London Courant of 15.3.1783 said Tooke had objected to Oldfield on the grounds of his "want of consequence" and then made fun of Tooke's career in a way that made me wonder if Oldfield had written the paragraph himself in revenge. On the 29th February 1784 at Lambeth, Oldfield married Clarissa Indiana Redhead (1764-1837) daughter of John Redhead, silk mercer of Ludgate Hill. In 1784 when Thomas Yeates was dismissed as secretary of the Society for Constitutional Information Oldfield applied for the post but when told he would have to resign as a member before the ballot he withdrew his application and never attended again. However he was probably entrusted, perhaps by John Jebb, with the materials the Society had collected on various boroughs, on which some sections of his History of the Boroughs are clearly based (see Eugene Charlton Black, The Association pp283-288). In Oldfield's History of the Boroughs vol V p453 he claimed to have introduced Henry Flood (DNB 1732-1791) to the borough of Seaford. Flood first stood for parliament there on 29.3.1785. By 1787 Oldfield was living at Seaford, Sussex when he subscribed to the Works of John Jebb and he was declared bankrupt in May 1789 as a liquor merchant of Seaford. In September 1789 he was involved in a riot at the election of a bailiff in Seaford when he hired a drummer to beat round the town to rouse and collect the forces of Sir Godfrey Webster's party (East Sussex Record Office SEA/338. historyofparliamentonline). The bailiff was in a position to reject votes at the parliamentary election. In 1790 Oldfield voted for Webster and John Tarleton at the Seaford by-election, but when in 1791 he signed himself, in a letter to Christopher Wyvill (DNB 1738-1822), as Secretary to the Quintuple Alliance it was from Spring Gardens, London [Sheffield Archives ZFW7/2/65/2] enclosing proposals for his History of the Boroughs, which was published in 1792 by G Riley 33 Ludgate St, second edition 1794 by B Crosby, 4 Stationers Court, Ludgate St. On 10.11.1792 Oldfield was committed to the Fleet prison for debt, and on 10.4.1793 removed to the King's Bench. On 14.5.1794 an anonymous prisoner in the Fleet wrote to Dundas the Home Secretary reporting on Oldfield's Jacobin views and that he was receiving money from his publisher in Ludgate St (National Archives HO 42/30/35 ff86-7). On 19.6.1794 Oldfield was in the Fleet and applied for a discharge, giving his address as formerly of Camden Town and Kentish Town. In 1797 his History of the Original Constitution of Parliaments was published by G.G and J Robinson of Paternoster Row and by 1798 when his mother died (see above) he was living in Margate where his wife kept a school for young ladies, which moved from Hawley Square to Grotto House, as advertised in the Morning Post 3.1.1801. Some newspaper reports of the Margate theatre in the autumns of 1802 and 1803 mentioned boxes taken by Mrs Oldfield's girls. On 6.6.1801 Mrs Oldfield's daughter Clara was born. The Morning Post of 12.6.1801 said it was her ninth child. She was to have at least one more. Their sons were named after reformers Thomas Paine DNB 1737-1809, Christopher Wyvill DNB 1738-1822, James Martin DNB 1738-1810, Granville Sharp DNB 1735-1813 and Peter Nightingale, a Derbyshire mill-owner and associator of 1780. Three of those children died in infancy and one aged 15 (see below). Oldfield's children were not baptised but the dates of birth and death of those who died young were carved on a gravestone at Bunhill Fields which was transcribed to a notebook now available on microfilm at London Metropolitan Archives. Thomas Pain Oldfield died at Grotto House on 19.7.1804 aged 15 and his obituary said he was a youth of "most extraordinary genius". At the age of five years and a half he had a scarlet fever, which brought on a paralysis of the lower extremities. The article went on to cite his achievements in Mathematics, Philosophy, Astronomy, History, Geography and Painting (Times 6.8.1804 p3). In the Times of 26.9.1804 was an article describing the grotto under Oldfield's house in Margate (this is not the same Margate Grotto house which is currently open to the public, though having similar shell-encrusted walls). On 24.6.1808 their eldest child Ann was baptised age 24 at Christ Church Newgate, London, and on 26.11.1808 she married Robert Trist, a naval officer, at St John Margate. Oldfield's next publication was A History of the House of Commons, published about November 1812 by subscriptions received at B & R Crosby & Co, Stationers Court. There don't appear to be copies in the Bodleian Library or the British Library which is a shame because if the subscription list was printed I might find it very interesting. On 3.10.1812 Oldfield wrote from Retford to Earl Fitzwilliam (DNB 1748-1833) a few days before the uncontested election at East Retford (Sheffield Archives WWM/F/42/32b) and on 20.1.1813 he wrote again on the subject of East Retford from Mansion House Camberwell (WWM/F/108/24) and on 4.3.1813 from the same address he wrote seeking from Fitzwilliam a position as land steward for his son Granville Sharp Oldfield, now age 20, and recalled "when I had the honor of waiting upon you at Wentworth House" (WWM/F/66/44). There was a vacancy at the time for the position of steward to Fitzwilliam's Irish estates but it went to William Haigh junior of Doncaster, and Oldfield had fallen out with George Osbaldeston DNB 1786-1866 (the member for East Retford that Fitzwilliam had nominated), and was taking him to court over a matter of payment. Osbaldeston had no interest in politics but his mother Jane (d. 1821) did and had ambitions for her son. She wrote letters to Fitzwilliam in July 1813 (WWM/F/83/9-11) giving her side of the squabble. Her solicitor had tried to treat with Oldfield's friend Loveridge "once an attorney now struck off the rolls" and "connected with such an extensive set of villains that he is an object of terror to many". Loveridge appeared with Oldfield in William Godwin's diary in 1799 and appeared in Law Lists from 1802 to 1808 as William Loveridge of Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, and was at that address as a private resident in Holden's 1811 Directory. A John Loveridge attorney supported a charter to extend the franchise at Maldon, Essex in 1802 (historyofparliamentonline) and this was probably William's son John Harrison Loveridge 1774-1830. Oldfield's next letter to Fitzwilliam dated 15.4.1814 sent from Devonshire on his way to London and giving his address as Aldgate Coffee House complained of Osbaldeston's ungenerous treatment of Oldfield and of the Retford electors, and also mentioned that he had spoken disrespectfully of Fitzwilliam, but went on to mention a more important matter of some political information which a person of the highest character could provide Fitzwilliam with (WWM/F/83/12). Fitzwilliam may have ignored this bait, and when Oldfield sent another letter, from 23 Hercules Buildings, on 30.5.1815 offering his further services at East Retford, Fitzwilliam repiled "Sir, Declining any correspondence on the subject of your letter or on any other subject, I have merely to acknowledge its receipt last night, I am Sir your most obed. serv." (WWM/F/83/13) Having lost any chance of patronage from Fitzwilliam Oldfield turned to William Cobbett DNB 1763-1835 and on 25.2.1816 Granville Sharp Oldfield and Cobbett's nephew Henry Cobbett boarded ship for New York where they advertised their office at 19 Wall St as agents for William Cobbett on 27.5.1816. However on 4.3.1817 they announced that their partnership was dissolved. Cobbett's prints hadn't arrived due to their interception by the British Government and Cobbett himself arrived in New York in May 1817. In 1816 Oldfield's Representative History of Great Britain & Ireland was published in six volumes by Robert Baldwin, Charles Cradock and William Joy of 47 Paternoster Row, with a dedication to the Hampden Club, and in 1819 his final work A Key to the House of Commons was published by Thomas Dolby, stationer and rag merchant of 34 Wardour St and 299 Strand. He wrote a letter on 21.12.1821 to the Monthly Magazine which was published in the Jan 1822 issue headed 'Mr Oldfield on the State of the West'. He had recently completed a tour of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset and gave many instances of the distress prevailing there. On 29.7.1822 the Morning Post announced his death at his apartments in Picket Street, saying "He has left a very amiable widow, and several children. Three sons are now rising merchants at New York." and on 31.7.1822 he was buried at St Clement Danes age 67 address 12 Picket Street. His obituary in the Monthly Magazine said he died at his apartments in Skinner Street; the obituary in the Gentleman's Magazine said he died at Exeter on his way to the Cornwall assizes, perhaps a muddle with his tour there six months before. The three sons in New York were Granville Sharp Oldfield, James Peter Oldfield and Thomas William Oldfield. Granville Sharp settled in Baltimore and two sons with his wife Ann, George Chance and Granville Sharp were baptised there in 1822. Their daughter Isabella born about 1823 married 9.9.1840 John S Wright of Rio de Janeiro whose obituary was in the New York Times 25.1.1883. In 1844 "The venerable erudite and noble old codger" G S Oldfield was on a visit to Washington, (US newspapers had a more relaxed reporting style than English ones). Granville Sharp junior married 15.9.1852 Mary Virginia, daughter of late Commander Thomas H Stevens of the US Navy, and died 25.1.1858 at New Orleans on his return from Havana where he had been convalescing from a serious illness. In 1855 G S Oldfield senior's picture collection was put up for sale and he died about 1863. James Peter Oldfield was born about 1794 and may have originally been named like four brothers before him and one afterwards, from some radical figure (James Perry perhaps?); the earliest record I found giving his middle name as Peter rather than just P was from 1834. There is a record of James P Oldfield arriving in the US in Maryland aged 22 in 1816. According to a US paper James P Oldfield died suddenly on 16.8.1822 on his way from New York to Boston. Was this a different person or maybe just in his father's tradition of wrong newspaper reports, for James P Oldfield was in the England 1851 census at 4 Salisbury Street, Liverpool aged 57 born Margate commission agent, with his wife Margaret age 48 born Glasgow, his sister Clara unmarried age 49 born Margate and his neice Ann Trist unmarried age 36 born Margate, as well as 3 daughters, 4 sons and 3 female servants. James Oldfield and his wife Margaret had also appeared in the 1841 census at Hans Place Chelsea, while at Yew Tree House, Blackley Manchester in 1841 were Clara Oldfield age 40, Caroline Trist age 25 and five of James and Margaret's children. Clarissa the widow of T H B Oldfield was buried 6.2.1837 at Everton Lancs. Thomas William Oldfield was born 7.4.1803 at Margate, married on 18.10.1827 Catherine daughter of Major William Barney of Baltimore, was appointed US consul at Lyons, France 21.3.1836 and died 1.8.1848 at Staten Island. Jesse Oldfield (see beginning of these notes on Oldfield) was baptised at the Unitarian chapel at Belper, Derbyshire in 1795, son of James Oldfield and his wife Hannah (nee Glew) who had married at Duffield 3.7.1781. In his will of 1853 he described himself as a native of Belper in the parish of Duffield, having lived at Sheffield from 1828 to 1833, now occupying 12 & 13 Bolt Court, Fleet St, London, publisher, but now residing generally at the Red Lion, Smitham Bottom, Coulsdon, Surrey, victualler. In 1834 and again in 1843 he was involved in a Chancery suit against the sons of William Cobbett (National Archives C13/2277/22, C13/129/04) and in the Boston Investigator of 28.7.1847 this suit was mentioned and Jesse Oldfield was called Cobbett junior's shopman. He was insured (Sun Fire) as a printer of Bolt Court from 1836, and a US newspaper of 19.10.1842 stated that he had stood bail for Feargus O'Connor DNB 1796?-1855 the Chartist leader. I haven't examined the Chancery records but his connection with the Cobbetts, added to the baptism records that suggest he could have been T H B Oldfield's nephew, make my tentative identification of T H B Oldfield's origins slightly stronger. See Lewis Namier, Structure of Politics pp74-5 for a discussion of whether Oldfield was a borough-monger, that is a person who arranged for parliamentary seats to be bought and sold. My impression is that he was not above dodgy dealings but that he was always on the side of an extension of the franchise and was never very well off. I'm fairly sure he was never an attorney though his obituary in Gentlemans Magazine said he was. He was certainly an election agent for Sir Godfrey Webster at Seaford and for Earl Fitzwilliam at East Retford, and he seems to have had reasons to travel to the south west of England, in 1814 and 1821, and presumably there was some reason for the Gentlemans Magazine believing he died in Exeter. He probably acted as agent for other Whig grandees, and he may have had some family sources of income at some stages of his life