I was lucky. One of my middle names is Bux, which was my grandmother’s maiden name. This makes me luckier than my uncles who were given the names, Honeymoon, Ferguson and Bradford respectively. It is that tradition of ensuring that some family names endure.
But I wonder how Cobden Bright Villiers Wright thought about his given names.
This is his picture. He was born in 1848 to Thomas and Fanny Wright who lived in Chislehurst in Kent.
His brothers and sister all had conventional enough names. The eldest was Thomas, followed by Samuel, Sidney and Eliza.
But Cobden was named after politicians, three in fact. Richard Cobden, John Bright and Charles Villiers.
Added to this 1848 was the year of Revolutions when the ground under the monarchies of Europe shook in a way that it hadn’t since 1789.
Some disappeared, while others retained their thrones only after the application of brutal force and amidst the turmoil Marx and Engels wrote of “a spectre ... haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.”*
Here the establishment prepared for the presentation of the third and largest Chartist petition demanding an extension of the franchise to working men against a backdrop of continued industrial unrest.
All of which raises the intriguing question of why Thomas and Fanny bestowed such a collection of names on the young Cobden. I doubt that Thomas was a revolutionary. Within ten years he was describing himself as a “Carpenter, and Builder employing ten men” but he may well have been a fervent free trader celebrating the abolition of the Corn Laws just two years earlier.
In turn I wonder about Cobden and how he voted. He was also a carpenter and lived most of his life in Greenwich.
Now all of this came about because an old friend, one of the “class of 68” read the post on Campaigning with the Anti Corn Law League in Manchester which appeared here on the blog* and drew me to the link between the events here in the city, the trio of Liberal politicians and Cobden Bright Villiers Wright who was his great grandfather.
I remember my grandmother talking from time to time about someone called Cobden Bright Villiers, but had no idea who she was talking about. It was only some time after her death in 1986 that my mother mentioned that her (Grannie's) parents' grave in Cemetery Lane, Charlton was quite close to the Hatch family grave, so I went to take a look. There on the gravestone stood, 'Cobden Bright Villiers Wright', and his dates, 1848-1923.
This was an eye-opener on several levels. Firstly, he was my grandmother's father, therefore my great-grandfather. Secondly, his given names were all surnames of the heroes of the fight against the Corn Laws. Thirdly, the year of his birth was significant not only in the UK but also throughout Europe for civil unrest, so I assumed that this meant that HIS father was left-leaning and enthused by the revolt against authority."
So there you have it another of those odd ways that history makes connections. All that is left to do now is to delve deeper in to the lives of Thomas and Cobden and see if either of them have left speeches or letters which draw Manchester, the Anti Corn Law League and Chislehurst and Greenwich closer together.
*Marx, Karl & Engels, Frederick, The Communist Manefesto, 1848
* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/campaigning-with-anti-corn-law-league.html
Pictures; Cobden and his wife from the collection of David Hatch, The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Green, April 10 1848 by William Kilburn, and Interior of Newall’s Buildings, HQ of the Anti Corn Law League, 1860, m56387 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
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