Bishop Thomas Smith was a key figure in the history of Carlisle Cathedral. What isn’t widely known is that he had a sister.

Thomas Smith led quite a life for ‘an Appleby lad’ – teaching at Oxford University; living through the Civil War; serving Charles II as chaplain after the Restoration; becoming tutor to a widow’s childen; marrying her; serving various ecclesiastical posts in Cumbria and Durham; being widowed; marrying again; being elected Bishop of Carlisle; rebuilding Rose Castle, and; donating a library and a lot of silver plate to the cathedral, which visitors can see today.

He also donated large sums of money to the poor, to colleges and chapels, to schools, to Carlisle Library and Register Office, and many more.

The total donations listed in one record amount to £5,226. We’re talking about £1million in today’s values.

Bishop Thomas Smith – background

Thomas Smith was born on December 21, 1614, at Whitewall, Ashby. His father’s name was John; his mother’s isn’t recorded.

Thomas attended Appleby Grammar School and it was from there, aged just 15, that he ‘went up’ to Oxford, graduating with a BA at Queen’s College in 1635, and an MA in 1639.

He taught at the college after, but didn’t like Oxford under Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth. So he returned north to become domestic chaplain to the Fletchers of Hutton-in-the-Forest. Specifically, he served as chaplain to the widowed Lady Catherine Fletcher, whose sons he’d taught at Oxford.

His wives

Lady Catherine Fletcher, née Dalston, was a daughter of Sir George Dalston, sheriff of Cumberland. 

Her first husband, Sir Henry Fletcher raised, chiefly at his own expense, a regiment for the royal service in the Civil War, and fell fighting at the skirmish of Rawton Heath, near Chester, in 1645.

Catherine was said to have been a lady of great resolution and courage, who endured sequestration, imprisonment, plundering etc from the rebels with ‘a brave and masculine spirit’.

Thomas Smith and Lady Catherine were married in 1655. She died on April 16, 1676.

Thomas went on to marry Ann Wrench, née Baddely. She was the widow of Richard Wrench, late prebendary of Durham Cathedral. She died at Rose Castle in 1698.

Thomas Smith had been elected Bishop of Carlisle in 1684. He died on April 12, 1702, at Rose Castle. 

The gravestones of Bishop Thomas Smith and his second wife Ann can be found in the cathedral – under the wooden chairs used by the congregation.

A building in the grounds bears his name above the door: ‘Thomas Carliol. AD 1699’.

His ‘daughter’

There are family trees on Ancestry which assert that Thomas Smith fathered a child in Jamaica, in 1635! Furthermore, they seem to think Lady Catherine was the girl’s mother!

It is interesting to think Thomas might have popped over to the Caribbean on a gap year after graduating. But it’s a huge slur on Lady Catherine, suggesting she’d gone over there with him and had a child, before returning to the UK to marry Sir Henry three years later.

His brother

Thomas had a brother, William Smith, who remained in Appleby, where he was elected mayor in 1673. His will, written in 1677, includes ‘my nephew Thomas Fawell and his brother Richard’ and ‘my niece Elizabeth Caile’. Thomas, along with William’s widow Dorothy, is named as an executor.

His sister

They also had a sister. Her name was Isabel, and when she was buried at Temple Sowerby in 1679, it was recorded:

Isabel Fawell, of Temple Sowerby, widow, sister to Dr Thomas Smyth, dean of Carlisle, was buried Dec 18.

The Fawells were tanners at Temple Sowerby, and moderately prosperous.

At one point, Thomas Smith made a donation to the Guild of Tanners in Carlisle. I’d guess his interest in that, of all guilds, was through his sister.

Isabel Fawell married Thomas Fawell at Newbiggin by Appleby, on November 24, 1647. Thomas Fawell died in 1676 and mentions: ‘my brother William Smith of Appleby’ (ie Thomas Smith’s brother).

The will of Bishop Thomas Smith includes: ‘To Thomas Fawell twenty pounds; To Richard Fawell twenty pounds’. These two were his nephews.

Elizabeth Kaile, in the will, was née Fawell, and Thomas Smith’s niece (sister of Thomas and Richard Fawell)

The wood case

I have reams of paper from the National Archives, and from Kendal Archives: copies of a huge legal row that split the Fleming family of Rydal Hall (etc).

In 1738, four members of the Fawell family (along with three other men from Temple Sowerby) were basically ‘done out of’ £510 (about £97k today), when the then Bishop of Carlisle, George Fleming (2nd baronet) and his son (archdeacon) William Fleming, sold them 400 oak trees at Rydal. 

They only took £16-worth before an injunction stopped them taking any more. The reason being that Dorothy Fleming (widow of George’s brother William, the1st baronet) claimed the wood wasn’t George’s or his son William’s to sell. 

I wonder if the Fawells got involved in a business deal with the Flemings as a kind of handed-down connection from great-uncle Bishop Thomas Smith – who one book says ‘took a great interest’ in George Fleming.