“HE ACQUIRED A LARGE FORTUNE BY TRADING IN INDIA AND PERSIA”
Month: | February 2025 |
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Type: | Combination wall monument and effigy |
Era: | 17th Century |
Visit this monument
All Saints, Ledsham
Park Ln, Ledsham, Leeds LS25 5LP
Month: | February 2025 |
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Type: | Combination wall monument and effigy |
Era: | 17th Century |
All Saints, Ledsham
Park Ln, Ledsham, Leeds LS25 5LP
Elaborate monument to an East India Company trader
There is a monument to Sir John Lewys and his wife Sarah in Ledsham Church near Castleford in West Yorkshire.
John Lewys worked for the East India Company between 1643 and 1653, firstly in India and then, in a more senior role, in Persia. The East India Company was set up in 1600 with the aim of importing spices from the East Indies. However, the Dutch were so firmly entrenched there that the Company turned its attention elsewhere, particularly to India.
Working for the East India Company at that time was challenging. The voyage to India took between 7 and 8 months. The arrangements in Persia were particularly problematic. Trading was a royal monopoly and so the Company had to make all its purchases in the capital, Isfahan. From there the journey to the Company’s port at Gombroon (modern-day Bandar-Abbas) could take up to 6 weeks. The climate in Gombroon was brutal. A Company employee described it as “a most pestilous place.” There was a high mortality rate caused by a combination of the heat, contaminated water, disease and excessive drinking.
The trading conditions were also difficult. The Company originally wanted to import Persian silk but this was beset with problems and they moved on to spices, drugs, pearls and carpets. At the peak of the trade in the 1620s the Company had no more than 10 traders in Persia but by the time John Lewys was there this had dropped to 4.
In his Diary the Yorkshire antiquarian Ralph Thoresby talks about a memoir written by Sir John Lewys: “writ extracts from Sir John Lewys’s manuscript, till eleven; afternoon, finished my perusal of the said manuscript, wherein some things remarkable of Sir John’s favour with the King of Persia, & c.” Sadly there is no trace of this document now.
On his return from the East John Lewys occupied prominent positions in the commercial world of London. He bought Ledstone Hall in Yorkshire, the former home of the Earl of Strafford who had been executed in 1641. John Lewys was a member of the deputation that went to The Hague in 1660 to meet Charles II at the end of his exile and he was knighted there.
He married Sarah Foote, the daughter of Sir Thomas Foote, a wealthy London grocer. They had two daughters. Both married Earls: Elizabeth married the Earl of Huntingdon and Mary, the Earl of Scarsdale.
In his will he said “my desire is that wheresoever my decease shall be my body may be intombed in Ledsham Church within my own Quire, where I would have a vault made and two or three hundred pounds bestowed in a tomb.” He died on 14th August 1671.
The sculptor of his monument is Thomas Cartwright who was one of the foremost London mason-contractors in the latter part of the 17th century. He was heavily involved in the rebuilding work in London after the Great Fire but was also responsible for “the elegant monuments to Sir John Langham and to Sir John Lewys.” “A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain” comments that in 1677: “Cartwright completed the Lewys, which is now free-standing, and has a pair of semi-reclining figures one above another on a stepped base (Fig 1). It was originally against a wall, and the top part of the monument, a moderate-sized architecturally-framed inscription tablet, remains on the wall (Fig 2). He advertised the metropolitan origins of the work with the words “Londini sculptore” appended to his name (Fig 3) and was paid £280 in two instalments.” (This is the equivalent of about £52,000 today.)
An inspection in 1993 identified that remedial work was required to the tomb chest. An article in the Church Monument Society Newsletter explained that: “Nicolas Boyes Stone Conservation of Edinburgh undertook the project. After extensive recording they dismantled the monument and it was transported to Scotland for conservation work. While it was away tests were performed to see if the floor could sustain the weight of the monument in future. The vault, which contains the coffins of Sir John, Lady Betty Hastings (his grand-daughter) and a child, was opened and an inspection carried out. It was decided that the monument would be better sited somewhere else and a position at the west end of the north aisle was chosen. The monument was returned to the church and re-assembled during May 2009. The final cost, including inspection of the vault and the work required to prepare the new site, came in at nearly £50,000.”