The Story of Sarah DUFFKIN - An Independent Woman of Her Times

The following (my edit) was kindly forwarded to me by the Nuneaton & North Warwickshire FHS; the original author is unknown and therefore cannot be credited here. More detail is included in the downloadable data file:

Sarah DUFFKIN, daughter of Marmaduke DUFFKIN, a small farmer of Nuneaton, Warwickshire, and his wife Sarah, was baptised on 20th April 1699, but lost both parents before her fifth birthday: her mother was buried in March 1701; her father in February 1704. It is not known where she was brought up or by whom. It is likely her uncle Richard DUFFKIN (?1670-1733) and his wife Mary (died 1731) were her early guardians in view of the fact that the only blood relations who received legacies under Sarah's will were the children and grandchildren of Richard & Mary.

Most of what may be learned of Sarah's later life is from two anonymous biographies of Alderman John BARBER (1675-1741), both published in 1741, immediately after his death. The first "The Life and Character of John Barber, Esq., late Lord-Mayor of London, deceased" (LC), is sympathetic to both Barber and Sarah. The second, "An impartial History of the Life, Character, Amours, Travels, and Transactions of Mr. John Barber, City-Printer, Common-Councillor, Alderman, and Lord Mayor of London" (IH), issued from the notorious 'gutter-press' of Edmund Curll, was the work of a political enemy and is very hostile to both people. There is also a full and balanced modern biography: "Tyrant: the Story of John Barber" (1989) by Charles A. Rivington.

These sources agree that, at some uncertain date, probably shortly before 1720, Sarah DUFFKIN was in London as maidservant of the celebrated and scandalous novelist Mary de la Rivière Manley (1663-1724) at a time when Mrs. Manley, running to fat and approaching fifty, was the mistress of John Barber, the printer, Tory, and friend of publisher/writer Jonathan Swift. Barber was a wealthy man, who, as a Tory with well-connected friends such as Swift, Alexander Pope and Viscount Bolingbroke, had enjoyed lucrative contracts in the reign of Queen Anne; also he was able to buy a substantial country estate in East Sheen and a fine town house at Queen Square, Holborn.

Sarah DUFFKIN was 'an ignorant and insolent Country-wench, of as mean an Extraction as [Barber's] own. This Creature he hired in the Country, and brought her up to Town to attend Mrs. Manley in the lowest Degree of Servitude, a common House-Maid at the Wages of four Pounds a Year' (IH, i, 24). On the other hand Sarah 'succeeded at Mrs. Manley's Death to her Place in his House and Affection; who proved an excellent Manager of his Affairs; faithful to her Trust, and to the Confidence reposed in her, and just to him to the last Hour of his Life; all which appears, the Alderman was fully convinced of, by the large Appointment he has made for a Provision for her after Decease; who, during his Life, was Mistress of his House, and lived in a handsome, sumptious Manner, suitable to his opulent Fortune' (LC, 26). However, Sarah's place in John Barber's house and affection must have been earlier than stated here. Mary Manley did not die until 11th July 1724, still in the apartment she had long occupied in Barber's printing office at Lambeth Hill, whereas Sarah was undoubtedly Barber's long established housekeeper by 1722, the year that he was elected alderman. [Note: Barber's Will refers to more than 20 years of faithful service, and she was appointed one of 3 Executors.]

In that year Barber travelled to Italy, by way of France, ostensibly for his health, but also, as was alleged by his enemies at the time, in order to take money and letters from English Jacobites to the Pretender. While abroad, Barber left his fine new house at Queen Square in the charge of Sarah, just turned 23, and according to LC ' the person who had for some Years had the Charge of it' (LC, 43), so if she had ever been the common house-maid sneered at by IH she was one no longer. Her resourcefulness and mature sense of responsibility is evidenced by what followed. 'The gentle woman, whom we have named for the Governess of his House, in his Absense...made some Discovery in Relation to his Affairs' and, wishing to acquaint him of it, travelled to Naples. Rivington conjectures that Sarah had discovered that, despite government suspicions (probably justified) that Barber was engaged in treasonable dealings with the Pretender, a pardon could be arranged for him. Certainly Sarah made the arduous journey to Naples and returned in 1724 with her employer (and, one would guess, lover), who, needless to say, had ever afterwards, a high opinion of her.

After his return Barber became once again one of the leading Tories in London; particularly prominent in his year as Lord Mayor (1732-33) when he coordinated City opposition to Walpole's Excise Bill. During the Lord-mayorship Sarah became acquainted with a young protégée of Swift, Laetitia Pilkington (1712-50) - LP, whose profligate husband Matthew was for a while Barber's chaplain, and who was the probable author of the hostile IH published by Curll. LP writes in her Memoirs (1748-54) of John Barber that he 'was a Batchelor; he had a Gentlewoman who managed his Household affairs, and who, except on public days, did the Honours of his table. Mr. P told me she was violently in love with him, and was ready to run mad upon hearing I was come to London. How true this might be I know not, but as she was very civil to me, and was old enough to be my Mother, I was not in the least disturbed with jealousy on her own Account' (i. 159-60). Sarah was, 13 years older than Laetitia. In the event the two ladies hit it off well enough to go to the theatre together.

In 1734 Mrs. Sarah DUFKIN, a Mr. DUFKIN (perhaps Sarah's brother Jeremiah), and John Barber (five copies) were among the nine hundred subscribers to Poems on Several Occasions by Mary Barber (no relation, c1690-1757), an Irish protégée of Swift, who also subscribed for ten copies. This year Barber stood for parliament, but his Jacobite-Tory past told against him and he was defeated after a customarily expensive campaign. Sarah had advised him not to stand (LC, 55). One can envisage Barber as he grew older depending more upon Sarah. He admitted that she 'was better acquainted with the Nature of his Constitution than any other Person' (IH, p. xxx). Barber was a martyr to gout (LC, 31), that plague of City alderman. Sarah remained with Barber in the ambiguous position of a wife and no wife. LP testifies that Sarah presided over Barber's table except on 'public days'. The hostile biographer notes that when the couple were at Calais in 1724 'she appeared in the Grandeur of the Wife of an Alderman in London', but Barber's French footman observed, when they were back in London, that 'she was the Mistress abroad, the Maid at home' (IH, 24, 26). In Barber's will, made on 28th December 1740, five days before his death at the age of 65, she is called 'Mistress Sarah Dufkin, Spinster' and is thanked 'for her long and faithful services, and extraordinary care of me for upwards of twenty years' (IH, p. xxiii).

Sarah was an executor and the residuary legatee of the will. Pecuniary legacies to a large number of individual persons totalled £5,000, including sums of £100 each to a servant Mary Hammond, who was in Sarah's service when she made her will in 1756, and to the playwright and Tory journalist Charles MOLLOY. As residuary legatee Sarah inherited the houses at East Sheen and Queen Square, with all their contents, together with £20,000 in money. The author of IH sourly alleges that Sarah 'bullied' Barber 'out of the Bulk of his whole estate' and compares the fortune she inherited with the mere £1,000 left by Barber to another of his mistresses, Charlotte Davenant. (These two ladies remained acquainted with one another to the extent that, 15 year later, Sarah bequeathed £50 to Charlotte; whether as an olive branch or a snub is not altogether clear.)

Sarah used some of the £20,000 to purchase an annuity of £400 a year. She sold the house and fifteen acres at East Sheen to a Jeremiah Harman, but retained what was evidently a sizeable tract of land which she leased to her brother Jeremiah DUFFKIN for over £200 p.a., implying surely that he had fared better than his long-dead father Marmaduke, for whom rents of 9s. 6d. or £2 10s. were significant sums. As for Sarah DUFFKIN; now with an ample fortune at her own disposal, she was a highly attractive proposition.

It is reasonable to assume that she met Charles Molloy during John Barber's lifetime; quite possibly at the dinner table over which she presided. He was an Irishman (origins unknown, but born late 1600's, possibly in Birr, part of King's County, and educated in Dublin). By February 1715 he was living in London. Sarah & John were married eighteen months after Barber's death and lived in financial comfort for the rest of their lives. The marriage settlement was dated 16th July 1742.

Sarah had no children by Barber or Molloy. She died in February 1758, having made her will on 7th January 1756 (PCC 47 Hutton [1758]: prob. 14th February 1758). It provides annuities of respectively £40, £20, and £10 per year for her cousins Marmaduke DUFFKIN of Nuneaton and Samuel DUFFKIN of Attleborough and her maid Mary Hammond. It makes no mention of Marmaduke & Samuel's siblings, Grace, Mary & Richard, or of Samuel's children, three of whom would have been in their thirties if still alive. By contrast, Mary & Sarah DUFFKIN, daughters of cousin Marmaduke and his wife Catherine (evidently Sarah's favourites) were to received £1,000 each, together with other requests, when they reached the age of 21. Grace & Richard, two other children of Marmaduke, both apparently over 21, where to have £100 each. All Marmaduke's other children would also receive a hundred pounds each on attaining the age of 21; they are not named in Sarah's will but must include Susanna, Jeremiah and Elizabeth, later mentioned in Charles Molloy's will. (Marmaduke & Catherine had three other children where the author of this article has no records after baptism). £100 each was left to Mary GOWLAND of Nuneaton, Elizabeth TERRY of Southwark, Mary JEFFREYS of Westminster, and Lady Cromarty, but only £50 to 'my Friend Charlotte Davenant, Spinster': Barber's old mistress. It is stipulated that all the legacies to the women are 'for their own separate use and not to be the subject to the debts, control, or management of their respective husbands'. The real estate in East Sheen was to be placed in trust to pay two annuities, of £50 & £20, to John Barber's kin and to provide for the maintenance and education of the favoured second cousins Mary & Sarah DUFFKIN, who were also to receive the testator's rings, jewels, trinkets, and wearing apparel. Charles Molloy was to have use of Sarah's gold repeating watch and best diamond ring, which, after his death, would go to the aforesaid Mary & Sarah. The residue of Sarah's estate 'over and above what was settled upon him at our Marriage', went to her husband, 'hoping that when he comes to dispose of his Fortune, he will bestow some part thereof on such of my Relations as he in his discretion shall think most deserving of it'. When he died nine years later the settlement and residue combined must have totalled well over £10,000. None of Sarah's siblings are mentioned in the will. Her brother Jeremiah was renting her land at East Sheen in the 1740s, but was perhaps dead by 1756. One sister baptised in February 1694, had survived for only 10 months. The fate of another sister, Mary, baptised 1692, is unknown; perhaps also dying young. Their parents had died before Jeremiah was 8 and Sarah was 5. Sarah appears to be the only survivor to her late fifties.

Charles Molloy's will included over £8,000 to be divided between ten members of his late wife's family and their in-laws. A £1,000 each went to Charles HANFORD and Richard HUDDLESTON, both of the parish of St Giles in the Fields, Holborn (the husbands respectively of the favourite second cousins Mary & Sarah, who they themselves were also to receive another £1,000 each, together with all Molloy's trinkets, toys, jewels, gold, silver, and copper medals, and pieces of foreign coin, equally shared.) £1,000 each also went to Jane & Charles HUDDLESTON, the children of Richard & Sarah, when they turned 21. £2,000 was to be divided equally between the other children of Marmaduke DUFFKIN, i.e. the two married daughters, Elizabeth TURNER & Grace LAUGHTON, and the two children still under 21, Jeremiah & Susanna. All legacies to married women followed the same terms as in Sarah's will. Elizabeth DUFFKIN of Edmonton (Jeremiah's widow) received £100. All Molloy's household goods, furniture, plate, china, linen, etc. (books & pictures excepted) were divided between HANFORD & HUDDLESTON, thereby faithfully carrying out his late wife's wishes. The three DUFFKINs who inherited from Sarah, but were absent from Charles' will were her cousin Marmaduke (1707) and Samuel (1696), who were probably dead; Marmaduke's son Richard (1732) probably died young.