Frederick Charles Griffiths

Charles was the only son of Colonel Frederick Griffiths, Royal Artillery, and Anne, the sixth daughter of Charles Brandling of Gosforth House, Northumberland, and M.P. for Newcastle upon Tyne. We know little of their relationship, but a sad note, scribbled in pencil on the marriage settlement, declares “not worth the paper”. The Brandling estates were heavily compromised by bad harvests and the abolition of the Corn Laws and one surmises the settled income dried up, but with Anne dying in 1839 and Frederick in 1846, before the abolition took place, it may well be that it was Charles who penned the note.

Frederick Augustus Griffiths (1768-1846), named after Frederick Augustus the second son of King George III, was the 5th and youngest son of Rev John Griffiths, Vicar of Dorney and his wife Mary. The proximity of his parish to the Royal family at Windsor was to provide the family with an opportunity for great advancement which we will read about below. Frederick gained a commission in the Royal Artillery and went on to write “The artillerist's manual and British soldier's compendium” that became the standard gunnery text for three generations, and retired at the rank of Colonel.

Our copy, a fifth edition published in 1852, was from Charles’s library.

Reverend John Griffiths and Mary (née Denning). John was the second son of John Griffiths and Margaret ( née Thomas) of Cil-y-llyn and Erryd in the county of Carmarthenshire. As the second son he was to have no interest in the family estate and entered the Anglican church. They were to have one daughter and five sons.

It was most fortuitous that at the moment Charles, their fourth son, was born, Queen Charlotte had just given birth to Frederick Augustus, her second son and later the Duke of York. The Royal household was on the lookout for a suitable, healthy wet-nurse. As an educated wife of the local Parson, Mary was chosen for the task and John and Mary joined the Royal Household. Their daughter Elizabeth held a number of official positions in the household and married Thomas Stillingfleet (Senior Page of the Back Stairs to George III and son of Thomas, Gentleman of His Majesty’s Wine Cellar). John and Mary’s eldest son Maynard died young but their second son John became Surgeon to Queen Charlotte amongst many other high ranking medical appointments. He was to sell the family’s Welsh estates and produced a number of sons who became ambassadors, including one who established a branch of the Griffiths family in Sydney, Australia. John and Mary’s third son, William, a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, held a number of parishes in the West Country and married an heiress in Pilton. Their son, John Rogers Griffiths fought and was wounded at Waterloo. John and Mary’s fourth son, Charles, the foster-brother to the Duke of York (“the Grand Old Duke of York who had 10,000 men and was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army) reached the rank of Lt General, was Military Governor of Cueta for a while and became Captain of Yarmouth Castle in the Isle of Wight.

Rev. John (1721-1776) was educated at Merton College, Oxford, gaining his B.A. in 1744. He became Vicar of St James the Less, Dorney, in 1747 and on 6th January 1753 married Mary (1726-1778), the daughter of John Denham of New Windsor.

Rev. John’s father, John (baptised 1682, buried 1740), inherited his uncle William Price’s estate at Erryd in 1719 and added to this his father Richard’s Cil-y-llyn estate when he died in 1724.

William Price’s sister, Blanche (the mother of John Griffiths and wife of Richard Griffith), was the daughter of Elizabeth, née Thomas, who held Erryd in her own right. After William’s death the Griffiths family adopted the Price heraldic crest, a lion rampant transfixed with an arrow, which became incorporated into the registered family Coat of Arms.

John’s father Richard Griffith (baptized 1646/7, buried at Llansawel 1724) received lands from his father, John Griffith (sometimes Griffiths) under a deed of settlement dated 10th September 1680.

Richard married Blanche Price, an heiress in her own right, that same year and they bore four sons and three daughters. His father John may have been a clerk or lawyer, as his signature appears as a witness in a number of deeds, settlements and land transactions of the period and he is recorded as having died “at an advanced age” with his Will being proven on 11th April 1682.