The Damnation of John Donellan by Elizabeth Cooke Page B

quacking himself’ – in other words, dosing himself up with inappropriate ‘cures’. But Theodosius compounded his problem by contracting another infection and, according to Donellan, ‘had nearly destroyed his Constitution’ by ‘unfortunate Connections with different Women’.
    The ‘unfortunate Connections’, quarrels and scrapes continued at Lawford. In his written defence published after his trial, Donellan gave an example of his care for the boy. One afternoon, Theodosius had asked the vicar of Newbold for the key to the church tower, saying that he wanted to climb to the top. Donellan went with him and, when they reached the top, Theodosius decided to try and turn the weathercock. As he climbed up, his foot slipped and he fell; Donellan reached out to catch him, but Theodosius fell backwards on to Donellan, winding the older man severely. On the way home in the coach, Theodosius told his mother what had happened, adding, as Donellan writes, ‘he must have been killed, if his brother had not saved him.’
    Theodosius Edward Allesley Boughton was a worrying, obstreperous boy. His royal confidant ancestors were a distant memory; even his great-grandfather’s ‘valuable qualitys so effectually recommended to the esteem and favour of the county’ – an inscription on the Rysbrack memorial which Theodosius would have seen in church every Sunday at home – rang hollow now. Theodosius was the son of a father who had broken his wife’s heart, and the grandson of a man who had dropped dead of alcoholic excess aged thirty-three.
    The Boughtons were a family of dramatic opposites, of glorious highs and ignominious lows. Unfortunately, it looked as if Theodosius was set on the latter course.
    While Theodosius was at Eton, his sister Theodosia had continued to live at home with her mother. The future for a sister whose brother was due to inherit the estate on which she lived could be a precarious one. Gertrude Savile, for instance, who lived in nearby Nottinghamshire in the early 1700s, complained of ‘the baseness ofthe dependence on my brother’. Left penniless when her brother had inherited everything, she had been ‘forced to grovel to Sir George for every gown, pair of gloves, every pin and needle’, and complained that ‘If it was possible to get my bread by the meanest and most laborious imployment [
sic
] I would without dispute choose it.’ 12
    Dependent sisters were also a drain on finances. If Theodosius had ever married, Theodosia would have fallen even further down the food chain, behind his wife and their children, an embarrassment and a financial liability. She might have moved out to live with her mother in Brownsover Hall, but even then both women would have looked to Theodosius for money to maintain their family name.
    Anna Maria, therefore, was faced with more than one problem. Not only did she have a son whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to keep bad company – which did not bode well for the Boughton fortune – but she also had a daughter whose reputation she must protect. Theodosia, if married, would at least have a husband to look after her; and Anna Maria no doubt gave some thought to the idea that a full-grown man with some sense of the world could give proper guidance to the fatherless Theodosius as well as – most importantly – provide for her daughter.
    Theodosia would not have had much of an education, but, bearing in mind her brother’s track record at Eton, she was probably better informed than him. Ladies were expected to be proficient in needlework and craftwork (there was a strong fashion at the time for the latter in particular); and they would have been schooled in a little French (but not the classics). Theodosia would have been expected to learn from other society ladies how to deport herself, dance, hold a lively conversation, and to know something of the arts. The aim was to