[BITList] Pushy in Bushy

[John Feltham]

A man after my own heart…







To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2013-06-19



Bennett,  Timothy  (1676/7-1756), cordwainer and public access campaigner, is of obscure origins; details of his birth, family, and upbringing are unknown. On 19 July 1716, at All Hallows, London Wall, he married Katherine Magitt (1673/4-1749), of Kingston upon Thames, Surrey; the parish register-which also gives his wife's name as Catherine Augitt-records Bennett as thirty-nine years old at the time of his marriage, and his wife as aged forty-two.

A long-term resident of Hampton Wick, Middlesex, Timothy Bennett is remembered for his successful campaign to reopen a right of way across Bushy Park, a Tudor royal hunting ground and part of the Hampton Court Palace estate. The path, which ran for nearly 2 miles, was a popular route for local residents crossing the park between Hampton town and Hampton Wick. In contemporary accounts Bennett is typically described as a 'cobler', though he is known to have worked as a cordwainer and is reported to have kept a shop in Hampton Wick from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. The motivation for his campaign-which did not take place until the early 1750s, when Bennett was in his mid-seventies-was said to be his concern at declining trade, with customers prevented from crossing Bushy Park, from Hampton via Hampton Wick, en route for the market at Kingston upon Thames. The precise origin and timing of the protest remain uncertain, given that these restrictions had then been in place for about fifty years. However, Bennett's stand bears similarities to a nearby campaign-also active from the early 1750s, and headed by the brewer John Lewis-to re-establish public access to Richmond Park following restrictions imposed by that park's ranger, Princess Amelia.

The closing of the pathway in Bushy Park was the result of ambitious plans for Hampton Court Palace in the reign of William and Mary. One of these was an improved road which, from a grand new gateway (now the Lion Gate, Hampton Court Road), provided an entrance to the royal residence through the palace gardens. The new road, nearly a mile in length, was flanked by rows of trees from which it took its name, Chestnut Avenue. The planting was overseen by the royal gardener, Henry Wise, while the basin and fountain set in the avenue were designed by Christopher Wren as part of his remodelling of the palace. On its completion, the avenue bisected the existing right of way between Hampton and Hampton Wick. Access to the new road, part of the royal route to London, was only permitted to those issued with tickets, and this excluded most of the local population. The new road was protected by setting posts and rails along its length. In 1700 the cost of these boundaries, as well as that for drainage, was £831 7s. 11d.

Protests against the restrictions gained momentum in the 1750s, with Bennett-then a successful shoemaker-emerging as the figurehead for local opposition. According to newspaper accounts, Bennett wrote a memorial, or petition, to the second earl of Halifax, ranger of Bushy Park since 1739, in which he 'demonstrated the Peoples Right to the Way and plainly shewed the Inconveniencies attending their being deprived of it'  (London Evening Post, 9-11 Nov 1752). It is not known if there was a formal response to the memorial, and the details of an encounter between Bennett and Halifax remain obscure. Having received no satisfactory response to his petition, Bennett 'flew to the Laws of his County, and made it appear, that a poor Man with the Laws may be always a Match for the over-bearing Great One'  (London Magazine, 21, 1752, 511-12). He is said to have declared his willingness to spend his £700 of savings on the case and was duly summoned to meet with Lord Halifax. At this encounter Bennett offered 'his favourite expression'-that he was 'unwilling to leave the world worse than I found it'-whereupon he was dismissed by the ranger as an 'impertinent fellow'  (Rutt and Wainewright, 1.259). In summer 1752 mezzotint depictions of Bennett seated at this meeting were 'exhibited in most of the Print Shops of this Metropolis'  (London Evening Post, 9-11 Nov 1752). The print, which was clearly issued after the successful conclusion of the protest, praised a 'True Briton ... [who] by a Vigorous application of the Laws of this country In the Cause of Liberty, obtained a Free Passage through Bushey Park, Which had many Years been with-held from the People'. Unlike the Richmond access campaign, which was only settled by a judicial ruling in April 1758, it is unclear whether Bennett's case came to court. Wakefield and others explain the restoration of public access within Bushy Park in terms of a change of heart by Halifax who 'beginning to compute the ignominy of defeat ... desisted from his opposition and opened the road'  (Rutt and Wainewright, 1.259). Halifax's decision may also have been influenced by the declining importance of Hampton Court Palace as a royal residence-one in which George II took little interest-and by the disrepair into which the royal avenue and its boundaries had fallen by mid-century. Newspaper accounts in the autumn and winter of 1752-3 praised the 'patriot', 'honest', or 'publick spirited Cobler' as a man of 'Spirit equal, if not superior, to the High and Mighty' (London Evening Post, 9-11 Nov 1752; 1-3 March 1753).

Timothy Bennett was predeceased by his wife who was buried at St Mary's, Hampton, on 27 June 1749. 'Being weak in body', on 5 March 1756 he wrote his will. Bennett died on 7 June of that year at Hampton Wick, and was buried on 10 June 1756, also at St Mary's Church. A man of some wealth in his final years, he bequeathed his eight properties to various in-laws and friends, his principal beneficiary being his sister-in-law, Mary Howard. In obituary notices Bennett was described as the 'honest Presbyterian cobbler of Hampton-Wick'  (GM, 26.314) and a 'true Briton' whose actions had created a 'noble monument to his memory' and provided encouragement to other champions of public access. In the nineteenth century Bennett and his Richmond counterpart, John Lewis, were frequently cited as patriotic defenders of English liberties in newspaper articles and books, including the memoirs of Gilbert Wakefield, who described their actions as 'instances of public virtue [which] redeem the degenerate age' (Rutt and Wainewright, 1.259). Bennett was also the subject of an eponymous play, published in 1883. In June 1900 the former lord chamberlain, Earl Carrington, unveiled a monument to Bennett adjacent to the public path that, since the eighteenth century, has been known as Cobbler's Walk.

Kathy White 

Sources  marriage register, All Hallows, London Wall, LMA, P69/ALH5/A/007 + burial register, St Mary's, Hampton, Middlesex [Timothy and Katherine Bennett], LMA, DRO/140/A/01 + will, proved 17 June 1756, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/823/80, 73r-74r + London Evening Post (9-11 Nov 1752); (14-16 Dec 1752); (1-3 March 1756) + London Magazine, 21 (1752), 511-12; 25 (1756), 301 + GM, 1st ser./26 (1756), 314 + Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser (11 June 1756) + B. Garside, The ancient manor courts of Hampton-on-Thames during the seventeenth century, 2 vols. (1948-9) + Memoirs of the life of Gilbert Wakefield, ed. J. T. Rutt and A. Wainewright, 2 vols. (1804) + P. Foster and E. Pyatt, Bushy House (1976) + K. White and P. Foster, Bushy Park: royals, rangers and rogues (1997) + Timothy Bennett memorial, TNA: PRO, WORK 16/107 + 'Timothy Bennet and Bushy Park: memorial to a brave shoemaker', Daily News (21 June 1900)
Likenesses  J. Macardell, mezzotint, 1752 (after G. Budd, 1752), NPG [see illus.]
Wealth at death  will, TNA: PRO, PROB 11/823/80, 73r-74r




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