Jerningham Street in North Adelaide is named after Edmund William Jerningham, a Roman Catholic banker of noble lineage whose family stretched back to the time of Queen Mary and the short-lived Catholic Restoration over which she presided following the death of Henry VIII.
These were the famous Jerninghams of Costessey Hall in Norfolk who defended their Roman Catholic faith for hundreds of years. However, on the streets of Adelaide they were in a distinct minority, there being only three streets named after Roman Catholics, namely Wright Street, Jerningham Street and O’Connell Street. The first two of these men were bankers and directors of the ill-fated banking house of Wright & Co., the family business begun as early as 1699 which went spectacularly bankrupt in 1840. The latter is named after the great Irish liberator.
In 1835, at the point the South Australian Commission began seeking funds for the new colony in South Australia, the directors of Wrights, as it became known, were John Wright, his older brother Anthony George Wright Biddulph (who had changed his name in search of a family peerage), Henry Robinson and Edmund William Jerningham, a younger man and brother-in-law to both the Wrights. They operated out of Covent Garden in London. All the partners were Roman Catholics, related by marriage and described as bankers, dealers and chapmen.
Edmund William Jerningham was the eldest son of William Charles Jerningham, an officer in the Austrian Service who saw distinguished military service and was noted for his great bravery throughout the whole of the first French Revolutionary War. William’s father was Sir William Jerningham, the 6th Baronet at Costessey Hall in Norfolk. Edmund’s mother was baptised Anne Wright and a blood relative of Wrights. Our subject, Edmund William Jerningham had three sisters and three brothers. One younger brother, William Charles Jerningham, died in infancy, five weeks after his birth in 1809.
Edmund was born on 5 September 1805, which puts him at the same age and therefore a potential contemporary of several members of the Street Naming Committee. His name was likely considered by the Committee because of the amount of private money he was prepared to inject into the project, especially in the Gawler Special Survey, where he eventually owned the 252 acres and an estate historically known as Para Para.
Who, then, were the Jerninghams? The family name is derived from the early Danish name of Jernegan, which stems from the time of William the Conqueror. Records from the start of the sixteenth century on the lineage of the Jerninghams of Costessey show clearly how the family first came to prominence during the time of the Catholic Restoration under Queen Mary, following the death of Henry VIII. On Mary’s ascension to the throne she granted Costessey to Sir Henry Jerningham, presumably casting Anne of Cleves out. Henry VIII had earlier given Costessey to his ex-wife in perpetuity. However, Anne of Cleves did not die until after Mary came to the throne, which presupposes that she was either long gone from Costessey or immediately disinherited.
Sir Henry Jerningham, the first in the family to change his name from Jernegan, was also ‘the first to espouse the cause of Princess Mary. He proclaimed her as the rightful Queen at Norwich on 12 July 1553, and with Sir Henry Beddingfield came to her assistance at Framlingham Castle with a hundred and forty men armed cap-a-pie’. Sir Henry was a devout Catholic and faithful servant to the Queen, hence the reason she later granted him the Manor of Costessey with its 22 sub-manors in Norfolk. He was also given manors in both Herefordshire and Gloucestershire.
For the next eight generations the Costessey Jerninghams maintained a close association with the Catholic faith, despite some family members intermittently ‘lapsing’ towards Protestantism.
Edmund Jerningham was born into the midst of armed conflict between Catholic France and Protestant England. His formative years were marked by the successful defeat of Napoleon by Wellington and dotted with many social changes, as England began to shrug off the excesses and exploitation of the industrial revolution. The country began marching resolutely towards electoral and institutional change, best characterised by the Great Reform Bill of 1832.
Roman Catholics in England sensed the changing mood and after centuries of repression let it be known they were tired of being excluded from the halls of power and learning simply because they clung to Rome. With the steady liberalisation of legal and educational opportunities for all English Catholics they became quite outspoken about the restitution of their rights under the law. The rich heritage of intrigue and religious deception had come to an end and those with noble lineage proudly flaunted their beliefs, rightly believing that theirs was a free country where the right to worship was at last a personal matter.
As an eligible young man with noble connections, Edmund Jerningham enjoyed the fruits of polite society and became quite a man about town. Lord Clifford introduced him to King George IV at one of the King’s levees in 1829. His acceptance at court continued when King William IV took the throne in 1830. Much of this largesse can be attributed to the patronage of his aunt, who adored him and who depended on him emotionally after the death of her husband, Lord Richard Bedingfeld, in 1829. Edmund became one of her favourite nephews
On William IV’s accession to the throne Lady Bedingfeld was invited to become the lady-in-waiting to Queen Adelaide, a role then described as ‘woman of the bedchamber’. Whether her religious practices were a consideration is not known, but given that Queen Adelaide was a devout Lutheran and very conservative politically, she was in many ways eminently suitable. Edmund lived close at hand and there are several references in the Jerningham letters where Lady Bedingfeld visits him in his London home. This, in part, accounts for Jerningham’s entree to the Royal Court. He was a guest at Queen Adelaide’s birthday in 1831 along with some distinguished and well-connected politicians and dignitaries. His name appears in quite a lengthy list with Sir Robert Peel, the Duke of Wellington, Charles Dickens and his cousin, Mr Stafford Jerningham.
At 25, Jerningham was newly married and deeply committed to his immediate and extended family. He was facing an exciting if not privileged future. There was no way he could have foreseen the debilitating and devastating financial circumstances he was to face ten years later. He married Matilda Waterton, the daughter of Christopher Waterton of Woodlands, Doncaster on 25 June 1829. Together they had six surviving daughters, but unfortunately their only son, William Charles (b. 1809), died as a newborn after only one month.
By the time Jerningham was in his mid-30s he had become well known in business circles throughout the country and indeed the empire, even though he was still a junior partner at Wrights. He became a member of the newly formed Reform Club in Pall Mall, an auditor for the Protector Fire Insurance Company, and a management committee member for the proposal to launch the London and Southhampton Railway Company. John Wright also had an interest in this venture and together they had their hands in many more railway companies, including the Portsmouth Junction Railway and the South London Union Railway, where Edmund was on the provisional committee.
There were many overseas mining ventures too, and myriad colonial experiments in places like the Swan River colony in Western Australia in 1829, South Australia in 1836, and a financial commitment associated with the Plymouth Company in New Plymouth, New Zealand in 1839. Wrights banking house was doing excellent business at this time on behalf of England’s wider community. There was hardly a Catholic institution, charity, school or congregation which did not make use of the bank’s services. It was not averse to projects like Wakefield’s grand scheme, either. However, the biggest ‘train wreck’ for some time was about to hit Wrights & Co. In December 1840 the bank went spectacularly bankrupt to the tune of at least £1,000,000.
Documents from the bank reveal that the greater part of the culpability rested with John Wright who was the most senior of the active directors, and that Jerningham was not completely familiar with how Wright was illegally using monies until it was too late. John Wright had effectively used monies which had been set aside in trust as collateral for more investments when there was an interest rate differential operating in the marketplace. It wasn’t until it was too late for the banking house to redress the imbalance that they became aware of the problem. The revelations of bankruptcy must have been both galling and devastating to Jerningham. Many of the investments he had in his name were immediately prejudiced.
There are sufficient references in the press of the day to suggest that after the crash Jerningham (who had strong family support) slowly resumed business activity. In February 1840 he joined the newly formed South Australian Society, whose members continued to hold more than a passing interest in the health of the colony. His other banking-related activities included election to several business organisations like the Catholic Law and General Life Assurance Company, and the Royal Santiago Mining Company which repeatedly called on his auditing skills until July 1855.
For some reason, possibly the bankruptcy, Jerningham resettled at Rutland Gate, Hyde Park, in the middle of the century. He was still, however, cited as a banker and auditor at 6 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. The Morning Chronicle of Saturday 5 February 1859 continued to refer to him as a banker, but perhaps the more important role he had been drawn into was a commitment to the revival of Roman Catholicism on English soil.
In February 1844 several leading Roman Catholics in Britain, including Jerningham and the Right Honourable Lord Camoys, were part of a delegation to Ireland specifically to address matters in law which were not being interpreted according to the conditions of the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829. Many Catholics had felt that the intentions within the Act were not being properly interpreted, especially when it came to the compulsion that Roman Catholics had to endure in swearing an oath to the Crown when facing trial by jury.
On the face of it, this would seem to be a somewhat pedantic issue, but it was heartfelt by many. However, there were other consequences to come from the Roman Catholic Relief Act that evoked an even more excitable response. In 1846 one of Britain’s leading Anglican High Churchmen, John Henry Newman, turned against his own and was ordained a priest of the Catholic Church. Until then he had been a harsh critic of the power of Rome. This reversal of allegiance caused an outcry from the more passionate Protestant dissenters in the community, especially when it essentially gave entree, or at least the confidence, for the Pope to seek to reinstate Catholic dioceses throughout England and Wales. It had been 300 years since there was any papal authority in the land. The Pope’s emissary on this matter, Cardinal Wiseman, caused a public outcry when he visited London in 1850. He was graciously and warmly received by a high-level Roman Catholic deputation including Edmund Jerningham, but the outcry in the press against him and his message was bitter. The excitement and indignation eventually passed.
Edmund Jerningham’s family continued to enjoy support among the nobility and it would appear he was one of the more public faces of the Jerningham/Stafford family of Costessey. His own family continued to thrive.
There seems to be few public references to Jerningham in his later years, but he was occasionally haunted by the bankruptcy. Edmund William Jerningham died on 2 November 1860. He was 55 years old.
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