Catherine Culpeper1

Female, #8948, (1670 - May 1719)

Parent*Thomas Lord Culpeper 2nd Baron of Thoresway (b 21 Mar 1635 - 27 Jan 1689)
Parent*Margaretta van Hesse (12 Jan 1635 - b 12 May 1710)
Catherine Culpeper|b. 1670\nd. May 1719|p8948.htm|Thomas Lord Culpeper 2nd Baron of Thoresway|b. before 21 Mar 1635\nd. 27 Jan 1689|p8478.htm|Margaretta van Hesse|b. 12 Jan 1635\nd. before 12 May 1710|p8947.htm|John Lord Culpeper 1st Baron of Thoresway|b. 7 Aug 1599\nd. 11 Jul 1660|p8477.htm|Judith Culpeper|b. before 1 Jun 1606\nd. Nov 1691|p8889.htm|Jan van Hesse Seigneur de Persehill and Wena|b. say 1599|p8969.htm|Catharina van Cats|b. say 1601|p8970.htm|

Name Variation  Catherine Culpeper was also known as Culpepper of England. 
Name Variation  Catherine Culpeper was also known as Colepeper. 
Birth*1670 Catherine was born in 1670. 
 She was the daughter of Thomas Lord Culpeper 2nd Baron of Thoresway and Margaretta van Hesse. 
Marriage*circa Oct 1690 She married Thomas Fairfax Fifth Lord Fairfax of Cameron circa Oct 1690. 
Married Namecirca Oct 1690  As of circa Oct 1690, her married name was Fairfax. 
Death*May 1719 She died at Leeds Castle, Leeds, co. Kent, England, in May 1719. 
Burial*1 Jun 1719 Her body was interred on 1 Jun 1719 at Broomfield, co. Kent, England. 
Biography* Catherines married Thomas, 5th Baron Fairfax, of Cameron, in Scotland, and had a daughter Frances, who married Denny Martin, Esq., and conveyed the estate of Leeds Castle, in Kent, to his family, now represented by C. P. Wykeham-Martin, of Leeds Castle. (Source: The Sussex Colepepers-I, page 69)
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Catherine Culpeper (Thomas[14], second Lord Culpeper), 1670?-1719, Lady Fairfax, grew up and spent her life at Leeds Castle; but there being no entry of her baptism in the Bromfield register, which records all her children, it follows that she was born elsewhere. The available evidence, though meagre, is that that event in the history of the Northern Neck of Virginia took place in Holland in the year 1670.
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Diligent search for a baptismal record has been made, without result. It is necessary, therefore, to argue such evidence as is available:
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The family tradition, recorded by Mr. Wykeham-Martin, is that Lord Culpeper separated from his wife soon after marriage, was later reconciled to her and finally left her after the birth of their only child. There is evidence to bear out the first part of this tradition in the record of the issue of a passport in May, 1661 'for the wife of Lord Culpeper to go to Holland with her servants, luggage, coach and six horses' (Cal. State Papers, Domestic, 1660-61, p. 234). That Lady Culpeper refused to return to England because her husband was openly living with another woman, and that, by advice of his friends, he sought to induce her to preside over his household at Carisbrooke Castle in order to quiet the criticism of him in the Isle of Wight which eventually resulted in his having to resign his post there, may be inferred from the record (ibid., 1661-62, p. 69) of a leave of absence granted to Lord Culpeper in February, 1662, with permission to go beyond sea 'on private concerns.' But there the unsatisfactory testimony ends. Parish registers at The Hague, in the Isle of Wight, in Kent and in London have been searched in vain for the baptism of the child whose birth followed the temporary reconciliation, whenever it was. Apart from her baby portrait, which has not been convincingly dated, the first evidence for that child is the mention of her by her father in the letter he wrote to his sister Judith from Massachusetts, October 5, 1680, on his way back to England after his first tour of duty as Governor of Virginia (Va. Hist. Register, iii, 189): 'I shall now marry Cate as soon as I can and then shall reckon myself to be a Free man without clogge or charge.' It may be objected that this is evidence for a birth earlier than 1670, for on that hypothesis she would be only ten when the letter was written; but it may be answered that in the seventeenth century marriages were 'arranged' almost in infancy: e.g., Lord Culpeper's elder brother, Alexander, married a girl of 12. What is persuasive for the date 1670 is that, there being no record of Lord Culpeper during the two years from December, 1668, when he resigned the governorship of the Isle of Wight, until March 1670/1, when he was appointed to the Council for Foreign Plantations, it may be argued that he was absent from England during that period, and that the reconciliation with his wife and the birth of the child occurred on the Continent. This would fit with the family tradition that he left his wife finally immediately after the birth of his daughter; because his first illegitimate daughter by Mrs. Willis was born in 1671.
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Named for her maternal grandmother, 'Cate' makes her first appearance on the public record in January, 1689/90, a year after her father's death, when 'Lord Culpeper's bill' in the House of Lords described her as 'his only cliild, Mrs. Katherine Culpeper' (Historical MSS. Commission, House of Lords MS. 1689-90, p. 434).
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It was during the following spring that Philip Ludwell left England to return to Virginia with a commission to open a proprietary land office in the Northern Neck; and in the earliest land grants recorded in the books he then opened, she is recorded as the proprietor under the same designation, 'the Honourable Mistress Katherine Culpeper.' This status lasted, however, only a few months, for in the autumn of 1690 she married. Thenceforth, during twenty years until her husband's death, she disappears, as a wife of her time was wont to do: her husband had become the proprietor of the Northern Neck in her right and took personal charge of that business in the attempt to solve its problems. She, herself, is silent: even in the Northern Neck land grants she is recited during this period simply as 'Katherine, his wife.'
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That her husband had his imagination stirred by the Virginia estate appears from the diligent and conservative attention he gave it. It was the fifth Lord Fairfax who prevented the liquidation of the proprietary. When, in the autumn of 1690, Lord Howard suggested to him that the charter of 1688 was tainted, he declined to sell out to the colony at the nominal price proposed (Va. Mag., ix, 32), just as he declined later to exchange the proprietary with the Crown for the 'lott and cope, and office of Bergmaster in the Wapentake of Wicksworth,' co. Derby (Acts P. C., Colonial, vi, 95). When the Assembly proceeded to hostilities (Journals 11. B., 1660-93, p. 371) he met the innuendo against his wife's father squarely and countered effectively. It was he who went before William III's Privy Council with the petition dated May 21, 1691, praying that the circumstances of the sealing of the charter of 1688 be examined by the law officers of the Crown, and that the title thereto be specifically confirmed to the representatives of Lord Culpeper who should be found entitled thereto. In all this he was entirely successful. The petition was referred to the Attorney General (Sir John Somers) who, having examined the record and heard counsel for Virginia as well as Lord Fairfax, reported that there was no ground 'for vacating the said Letters Patents by scire facias or otherwise.' Whereupon an Order in Council was entered on January 11, 1693/4 (Acts P. C., Colonial, ii, 188), adjudging that the
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..."said grant did Pass in all the usual Methods of Grants of that Nature' and that 'the Petitioners Margaret Lady Culpeper, Thomas Lord Fairfax, Katherine his wife and Alexander Culpeper, Esqr. be permitted to enjoy the benefit of the said Letters Patents according to Law, so as they keep strictly to the Tenor thereof, in Execution of the several powers and authorities thereby granted; of which all Persons whom it may concern are to take notice."
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It was the fifth Lord Fairfax again who procured the second Richard Lee to attorn to the proprietors for his Westmoreland lands and so break the ice of local resistence; who enlisted Robert Carter as the proprietary agent in 1702; and who backed Carter up in his claim of 1708 that the proprietary boundary was the south fork (Rapidan) and not the north fork (Hedgman's) of the Rappahannock. It was thus during Catherine Culpeper's coverture and by her husband's efforts that her doubtful title to the Northern Neck was established beyond all future cavil; and an estate which had been practically without value when she inherited it was nursed to the point of producing for her an income of £500 per annum and, by its subsequent growth, of assuring her children of the means to support their place in the world.
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While the dowager Lady Culpeper seems consistently to have supported Lord Fairfax in these proceedings, his wife did not appreciate them. She wanted to be quit of Virginia. When her husband died, in January, 1709/10, leaving his own estate in great disorder, and was followed to the grave in a few months by her mother, Lady Fairfax's anger against her husband blazed. She listened to dark counsels of land agents (Fairfax Correspondence, ed. Bell, 1849, iv, 242), and peremtorily removed Robert Carter from the agency in Virginia, appointing in his place Edmund Jenings and his youthful nephew, Thomas Lee. Her state of mind after having taken these measures, which were to prove costly, is reflected in a letter she wrote contemporaneously to her eldest son, then at Oxford (Fairfax MSS. Bodleian Library, Oxford).
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I have done all I can in business in London now, but it is all very bad. Your father hath destroyed all that can be for you and me both; but I will do all that is in my power to get something again, and I do hope you will deserve it of me in time.
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This is the only record Catherine Culpeper has left to speak for her on the surviving record, until eight years later she dictated her will. That her sentiment had meanwhile hardened rather than softened is apparent in the disposition of her estate she then made. She had become suspicious even of her heir and instead of turning her estate over to him, then a man of twenty-six, she sought to tie his hands indefinitely by vesting her property in her neighbours and kinsmen, William Cage of Milgate, and Edward Filmer of East Sutton, in fee on trust' upon an elaborate entail.
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She died at Leeds Castle at the end of May, 1719, and was buried, beside her mother, in the vault she had built in Bromfield Church, June 1, 1719, as 'the Rt. Honble. Catherine Lady Fairfax, Dowager.' That her eldest son resented her lack of confidence in him appears in the fact that he erected no MI. over her tomb.
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She m., 1690, Thomas Fairfax (1657-1710), fifth Lord Fairfax of Cameron. As in the case of her birth, primary evidence of the date and place of the marriage is lacking. It seems likely, therefore, that, like her birth, that marriage was celebrated in Holland. The lack is, however, supplied, nearly contemporaneously, by a dispatch of November 6, 1690, from Lord Howard of Effingham to the Virginia Council (Va. Mag., ix, 32): '1 have already spoken to my Ld. Fairfax, who married Mrs. Culpeper who administered (sic) to my Lord Culpeper, abt. the Northern Neck.' It thus appears that Catherine Culpeper was married in the autumn of 1690.
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Her will follows:
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P. C. C. Browning, 105
Will dated April 21, 1719
Proved June 23, 1719.
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Catherine Lady Fairfax, Baroness Dowager of Cameron, in the Kingdom of Scotland. To be bur. in psh. church of Broniefield near my late mother Margaret Lady Culpeper. To my eldest son Thomas Lord F. the reversion of the manor of Greenway Court, to which I am entitled at end of a term of years, for life: & to the heirs male of his body; in default to the heirs of his body; in default to my youngest son Robert F. in fee. To sd. son Robert F. £1,000 out of sd. manor, at 21; also £3,000. To my son Henry Culpeper F. £100 only,'having already advanced for him about £1,400 in buying him a Commission in the Army. To my eldest daur. Margaret £500. To my daur. Frances £2,500 at 21 or marriage with consent of my exer; also £100 a year for maintenance meanwhile. To my daur. Mary £2,000, at 21 or marriage with exer's consent; also £80 a year meanwhile. To William Cage of Milgate in prsh. of Bersted, Kent, esq., & Edward Filmer of East Sutton, Kent, esq. all my manors etc. in Isle of Wight, co. Southampton & in co. Kent & all lands in Virginia in fee on trust for payment of legacies etc., & then for my eldest son Thomas Lord F. for life; remr. to sd. Trustees as Contingent Remainder Trustees; remr. to his sons successively in tail male; in default to my son Henry Culpeper F. & his sons similarly; in default to my son Robert F. & his sons similarly; in default to my daurs. in common, in tail; in default to my right heirs. Rest of personal estate among my sons & daurs. equally. Sd. William Cage to be sole exer. Whereas in lifetime of my late daur. Catherine F. I entered into a Bond to George Sayer esq. Dec for payment of £800 to her, which I intended as a legacy; who dying intestate I have taken out Admon. to her goods, but she left no personal estate; and whereas all my children are entitled to part of the moneys due on the Bond; such children as shall not have released their claim in my lifetime shall release same to my exer. Witns. D. Fuller, Jno. Mason, E. Finch. Prob. by William Cage esq., exer.
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Source: Fairfax Harrison, "Proprietors of the Northern Neck."

 

Family

Thomas Fairfax Fifth Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1657 - 6 Jan 1710)
Children

Charts Descendants of William Culpeper of Hunton and Wigsell, from 1509: 7 generations
The Culpepers of Hollingbourne, from 1539 to present? (Possibly extinct)
Last Edited 25 Nov 2002

Citations

  1. Col. F.W.T. Attree R.E./F.S.A. & Rev. J.H.L. Booker M.A., "The Sussex Colepepers, Part I", Sussex Archaeological Collections, XLVII, 47-81, (1904) http://gen.culpepper.com/historical/sussex/default.htm.