Resisting Silences: Gender and Family Trauma in Eighteenth‐Century England

The Newdigates were happy in the summer of 1683. There were four children under five, including newborn Juliana and six older siblings between five and fifteen.1 Sir Richard Newdigate’s diary presents an idyllic time: eating cherries with his pregnant wife Mary; gorging on orchard fruit with his eldest son Richard; teaching Amphillis accounting; rounding up birds flying in the buttery; visiting friends and family; enjoying family meals and walks.2 Twenty years later, the family disintegrated amid accusations of greed, madness and unspeakable acts. Newdigate’s biographers link the breakdown to Lady Mary’s death in 1692.3 Whatever the cause, the decline of such a contented family was tragic. The explanation Newdigate gave in his pamphlet, The Case of an Old Gentleman, Persecuted by His Own Son (1707), concentrates around four events. The first is a trip to France taken by Newdigate, accompanied by his eldest son, Richard and his sixth daughter, Elizabeth, in 1699. In Newdigate’s absence, second son John looked after the estate and family. The second event was Richard and John’s attempt to have their father committed as a lunatic in May 1701 – although they were initially successful, Newdigate had the committal overturned. The third event was a petition to the House of Lords in February 1702 by four of the daughters (Amphillis, Jane, Elizabeth and Juliana) asking for relief from their father’s cruel severities. The fourth event was the Family Settlement of March 1702, which divided property and money among the children and gave guardianship of Amphillis, Jane, Elizabeth and Juliana to their maternal uncle. In his pamphlet and account books, Newdigate blamed his eldest sons, Richard and John, for the family problems. His published story insisted on his daughters’ innocence, but other records indicate conflicted relationships with Amphillis, Frances, Elizabeth, Juliana and Jane. The remaining children – Mary, Anne, Frank and Gilbert – were faultless through absence (marriage or school) or illness.4 Newdigate’s story is oblique on matters that reflected badly on his patriarchal control. He does not mention that his second-eldest daughter, Frances (Lady Sedley), eloped in 1695 (aged eighteen). Similar evasiveness is evident with regard to Amphillis, committed as a lunatic in 1706 (aged thirty-seven), and the ‘lunacy’ from which Gilbert suffered by 1702 (aged twenty-eight).5 Newdigate discussed these instances only to