The Minor Family of Somerset

Name Suffix:<NSFX> III
Name Prefix:<NPFX> Mayor
Eliza's father John was a banker and mayor of Cambridge, his ban
k was one of the founding banks of Barclays Bank in England. He
r Brother was Sir John Cheetham Mortlock. 1784 John Mortlock II
I Local Banker, became M.P. for Cambridge, he was later Mayor o
f Cambridge 13 times in the following two decades.
1784 John Mortlock III, localmerchant and banker, became M.P. f
or Cambridge. He was later mayor of Cambridge 13 times in the f
ollowing two decades.
Aged 19, John Mortlock III foundhimself Head of his family an
d master of the accumulated Mortlock assets. Hehad inherite
d a sizeable estate - the drapery busines, and land in Pampisfor
d and Whittlesford, which had been Mortlock patrimony for genera
tions ( although the estate was not cleared until 1777, by whic
h time John had obtainedh is majority). As an only son it wa
s all his, and his sister's dowries werein his gift. As a rich
, handsome bachelor he was quite a catch. In 1776 hemaried Eli
zabeth Mary Harrison, sole heiress of a wealthy retired Presbyte
rian grocer, Stepehn Harrison, and his wife Mary.
This is not the end of the cornucopia of acres descending to Joh
n Mortlock from his marriage. Already landed -"unto him that ha
th"-Richard Rose V had come into land at Great Everdenvia his w
ife Mary, who was the daughter and heiress of John Day, 1693,175
1, who with his wife Elizabeth (1697-1782) is remembered in a wa
ll plaque on the south wall of the chancel of Great Eversden chu
rch whence, presumably, hekeeps an eye on his son-in-law. Joh
n Day was heir to the Rectory Manor of Great Eversden which ha
d been left to another Elizabeth, wife of an earlier John Da
y - probably his grandmother - by her kinswoman Mrs. Anne Baron
, to whom she was a servant. Anne had inherited this estate i
n 1639 from a Charles Baron, who was High Sheriff in 1643.......
...
We might pause here to look atJohn Mortlock's character. Man
y ayoung man with his inheritance, newly married and with socia
l aspirations, would have retired to a country seat and lived co
mfortably for the rest of his Days as a country s quire, and tim
e wouldhave effaced the memory of his origins behind the draper
y counter. Anotherwould have merely looked at all that money a
nd set about spending it. Neither as we shall see was the Mortl
ock style at all. On the one hand he was mature and of good jud
gement, beyond his years. He had the knack of concentrating o
n essentials - for instance, on coming of age he bought his wa
y out of Vestry service for his parish, and something drove hi
m on from indise; he fiercely desired to control people; his ass
ets were a means to this end, not an end in themselves. Moneyed
, established, and celarly highly intelligent, he was about to h
it Cambridge with a very large bang.
....
By 1811 Mortlock wasseriously troubled by gout, which, he wrot
e to James Thomas, "is always theconsequence of uneasiness an
d anxiety, which I am sure to experience when I come here (to Ca
mbridge)" Whether this is a reference to family or politicalpr
oblems is not clear. The population of Cambridge had doubled i
n his lifetime, and the complexity and number of municipal probl
ems requiring his attention will have both increased commensurab
ly. Unable because of the war to obtain his favourite French me
dicine, he fought gout with calomel and salts. The mercury in t
he calomel will of course hardly have helped either his physica
l state or his mental grasp of affairs. If he had found Frenc
h medicine efficacious, this may suggest that he was already a s
uffere by 1801 - rather young for that affliction. He seems als
o to have suffered from rheumatism; one hopes his liniment of tw
o eggs shaken up in a gill of vinegar and a gill ofturpentine g
ave relief. By 1814 he had pretty well handed over all his non-
baning affairs to his lawyer son Thomas, and, a