COUSINS’ PARTY AT THE DOWNS SCHOOL, 29TH MAY 2004

The Howard Legacy – a talk about the Howard family from whom many of those present are descended, and the way in which “The Budget” has acted as a major means of keeping the cousinly connections active.

The Lord’s Meade Budget

What was/is The Budget? It’s a correspondence circle which has been going since 1893, among the family descended from:

John Eliot Howard & Maria Crewdson  - 9 children, 7 of whom had families. 4 of the daughters married their second cousin Lloyds (2 pairs of brothers) 

From this family group, we therefore have 3 lines of Howards (Joe, John Eliot Jnr, and Henry) 3 lines of Lloyds (Howard, Zachary and Frank), and one line of Thomas Foxes.

Many of these lines are represented here at Colwall today...

John Eliot was a distinguished pharmacist (FRS) who specialised in studying the Chinchona barks from South America from which Quinine was derived. Memoir Booklets available. If you ever get the chance to go to the RHS Lindley Library in Vincent Square, have a look at his wonderful illustrated work on these trees. (Recent book by Fiammetta Rocco “The Miraculous Fever Tree” puts his work into a wider context). It was he who lived at Lord’s Meade in Tottenham from the 1830 till his death in 1883. Though the house has gone, the name lives on in a local street, and also in the Lordsmeade Vocational college in Uganda, founded by John Kirkwood (son of the late Janet Kirkwood who was a great Budget supporter – newsletter on display). And of course in The Budget, which was started by JEH’s granddaughter May Fox in 1893. There are 8 current members of the Budget here today. (And the Budget has now branched out into the Internet world with email communication among a wider group oc cousins, and a website). Tottenham in those years was full of interrelated cousins, hence the many intermarriages among branches of the family. It has remained a very “cousinly” family, taking great pleasure in organising gatherings of a greater or lesser size like this where old links could be rediscovered, and new ones forged. The Tennis Tournaments of the 1920/30s were, I gather, a very successful marriage-broking system!

John Eliot was one of three surviving children of Luke Howard – also FRS. He trained as a chemist, and in conjunction with his friend William Allen (later of Allen and Hanbury) founded what became the firm of Howards & Sons Ltd, manufacturing chemists in both the pharmaceutical and industrial spheres of work. But he is best known for his “hobby” which was Meteorology. In 1802 at the age of 30 he first presented his ideas on “The Modification of Clouds” which led to his teminology for classifying them into types (Cirrus, Cumulus, Stratus, Nimbus) and subdivisions and combinations of these. A recent book by Richard Hamblyn “The Invention of Clouds” tells this story. Rfecent radio 4 broadcast by him on clouds. Blue Plaque erected in 2002 in Tottenham which was his London base when not in Yorkshire (of which more later). There is currently a proposal by the International Association for Urban Climate to make an award in his name “for outstanding contributions to Urban Climatology”

Luke’s father Robert Howard was a prosperous Tinworker in London, and his ancestry goes back a further generation of metal working in Folkestone, and then rather vanishes due to an apparent adoption and never proven links with the Norfolk/Arundel Howards. But what marks this family out, and just about all the families with whom subsequent generations married, is that they were Quakers; many of them suffered persecution in the difficult days of Charles II in the 1660s-80s – Sampson Lloyd was born in Welshpool Gaol in 1664 where his parents were locked up for their beliefs. Eventually many (but by no means all) of the Quaker cousinhood left the Society of Friends when there was a major doctrinal division in the 1830s which is described in the JEH Memoir – “The Beacon Controversy”) and ended up “ecclesiastically” in The Brethren, various Nonconformist Churches, or “low” Church of England – and nowadays, all-sorts including Roman Catholic priests, and those of other faiths or none. Oliver Howard has recently been rediscovering the family link with Ackworth in Yorkshire where Luke Howard lived for many years; it is still well known for its Quaker School, but it also boasts the Ackworth Howard Junior and Infants School, whose buildings still bear the plaque to Rachel Howard (John Eliot’s sister) who founded it in 1833, just before she died of consumption at the age of 33. Display.

Just a few aspects of the Howard family, whose genes live on in the multitude of different descendants where there remains a strong flavour of the Quaker ethos of service to the community founded on a quiet but determined Christian faith.

Richard Lloyd
May 2004