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Saint Thomas Vernon mystery resolved.

For sometime now I have been investigating the mystery of Saint Thomas Vernon.   This chap seems to have spent his life appearing in the official record as Thomas Vernon.  When he died in Jun 1846, both his burial certificate and his death certificate read Saint Thomas Vernon.  The mystery was; why?

Trying to solve this mystery took me to a 'Name-of-the-Rose' style Abbey library in Somerset to search for the diaries of Richard Simpson, the vicar who buried him.  It turns out that Richard Simpson became a well known political and religious commentator, and much of his writings had survived.  He began his career in earnest by resigning his Vicar-ship (living) from the pulpit of Mitcham Parish Church in order to convert to Catholicism - and just a few weeks after Thomas' death.  I thought a person with such strong religious conviction, may decide that the burial of a 'Saint' warranted a comment...

Anyway, I did find his diaries, and it turned out that they only began from the time that he was accepted  into the Catholic Church, and made no mention of Thomas' burial.

Another possibility was that Thomas picked up the nick-name due to his own religious conviction and that he was (like the original saint) a carpenter.  Needless to say, I didn't come across anything to verify this theory. 

The final possibility, was that Saint Thomas was simply his given name, but that he didn't like to use the 'Saint' part.  When he died, his wife, dutifully, gave the registrar (and the vicar) his full name, including the Saint.  In November 2000, I discovered evidence that this is indeed the case.  I found out that a Saint Thomas Vernon had married a Jane Jupp, by licence, in Reigate, Surrey, in April of 1803.  Our Saint Thomas Vernon was living in Mitcham in 1811 just 10 miles away - it is highly unlikely there were two different Saint Thomas Vernon's so close to each other.

Incidentally, a copy of the Vicar-General's marriage licence is given below.   Unusually, Jane Jupp appeared to swear for the licence - usually this was done by the groom.

Another Conundrum.

The marriage does, however, pose another conundrum.  We know that Thomas spent most of his years in Mitcham married to an Elizabeth not a Jane.  We thought that we had found the right marriage at Southwark as it was between Thomas Vernon, a bachelor, and Elizabeth West, a spinster.  An Elizabeth West of exactly the right age came from Mitcham, and Thomas didn't appear in the Mitcham record with Elizabeth until after their marriage.  But now it seems like this was his second marriage.  But how could this be so with him recorded as a bachelor at his Southwark wedding? 

The other odd thing about the wedding entry is that the signature of Thomas (Thos) is definitely not the same hand as the signature of Saint Thomas at the Reigate wedding.  One possible explanation is that the Southwark wedding entry was written up by a careless clerk sometime after the event.  I understand that oftentimes the clerk filled in all the details including the 'signatures' of those getting married.  Indeed it looks like that could have been the case at Southwark.  More research is needed to verify this...

Incidentally, I now know there was nothing odd about Thomas and Elizabeth being married by banns on a Sunday.  See here for more information!.

Death of Jane Vernon (nee Jupp)

A quick search of the Burial and Baptism registers of the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, Reigate, Surrey found the following entries.  Amongst other things, confirming that Thomas Vernon married in Southwark is Saint-Thomas Vernon:

Reigate Land Tax

The Land Tax records are often worth investigating for locating people who paid rates.   Certainly Reigate Land Tax should be searched for Jupp.  Fortunately, I have already searched it for Vernon.  There is an entry in virtually every year 1796 - 1831 pertaining to a John Vernon Esq, proprietor. But in 1805 there is one interesting entry for a Thomas Vernon:

This page was last updated on Thursday, 07 February 2002. email me, Copyright © 2000 James Vernon. All rights reserved.