Catherine SPOONER [15872]

  General Notes:

Catharine Spooner
Age: 23
Event Type: Marriage
Birth Year: abt 1820
Marriage or Bann Date: 22 Jun 1843
Marriage or Bann Place: Elmdon, Warwickshire, England
Spouse: Archibald Campbell Tait
Father: William Spooner

Catharine Tait, the youngest daughter of Archdeacon Spooner, a distinguished Evangelical clergyman, and of his wife, Miss O'Brien, a member of the great House of Thumond and Inchiquin, was born at Elmdon Parsonage, Warwickshire, on December 9, 1819. Other family intermarriages made her the near kinswoman of the Wilberforces, and between the two influences her naturally devout and ardent mind received at first a strong Protestant bias, and wag specially eager for the spiritual enlightenment of the benighted Irish Papists. But while she was still very young, she was brought under an influence which changed the direction of her thoughts, and moulded her spiritual life thenceforward, that of her brother-in-law, Edward Bowles Knottesford Fortescue, afterwards so well known as Provost of St. Ninian's Cathedral, Perth. An interesting letter from his sister gives much insight into the effect which his teaching and example had upon Catharine Spooner's inner life, and tells how they gave that definiteness and backbone to her belief, that permanently higher aim, which she had, as she was conscious, previously lacked. A similar process, singularly enough, was going on amongst her Irish cousins, whose most conspicuous outcome, not without permanent results for the whole Anglican Church, was the adoption of the religious life and habit by one of them when left early a widow., and her long and successful administration as first Superior of St. John Baptist's Community; at Clewer. After being the delight of her home because of her beauty, amiability, and practical piety throughout a happy girlhood, Catharine was married in 1843 to Dr. Tait, then not long installed as Arnold's successor in the head-mastership of Rugby. Once settled there, she used to prepare herself for each day's work by attending the daily service held in the parish church by the poet-vicar, John Moultrie, returning thence to family prayer. She also not only took a deep interest in the school-chapel services, but was careful in teaching all the younger servants of the household, and preparing them for confirmation, besides pursuing intellectual studies for her own improvement, and withal managing all the business details and expenditure of the sehool-house, nay, all the school accounts, with an exactness and thoroughness which marked the born organizer and financier, a power she never lost or disused when she was called to a higher station and to the distribution of greater revenues, as was testified by the state her accounts were found in after her death last year. Withal, she found time for constant visits to the poor in their own homes, besides having a regular time for receiving such as made application to her at her own house. Her work was changed in character rather than in extent by her removal to Carlisle in 1849, and there she found herself in the midst of at poor town population, crowded into It disproportionately small area, and front various causes suffering under great spiritual as well as temporal destitution. And bracing herself, as at Rugby, by the daily service in the cathedral, she gave herself freely up to the task of helping her new neighbours, here, too, it was that she underwent the greatest sorrow of her life, narrated in full in her own pathetic journal, when, between March 6 and April 8, 1850, five little daughters were torn from her one by one by the ravages of scarlet fever. It was this crushing calamity, by the by, which directed the Queen's attention specially to Dr. Tait, and made her offer him the Bishopric of London by way of consolation one of the oddest reasons for preferment on record, and certainly not justified its a precedent by the event. As wife of the Bishop of London, Mrs. Tait set herself not only to extend and amplify the hospitality which Bishop Blomfield had been wont to show his clergy, and to visit among the poor of Fulham, but to take a strong practical interest in hospital, penitentiary, and Sisterhood work in the diocese, and was the foundress of the Ladies Diocesan Association, still doing useful work. There are not many anecdotes in the book which do not concern herself or her son, but two occur together in the account of Fulham which are worth citing. An emu was turned into a meadow, during a garden party, to be inspected by the guests, " But the cows resented the intrusion, and gave chase to the unfortunate bird. ' Hallo,' exclaimed Dean Milman excitedly, ' there goes Colenso, and all the Bishops after him ! It was we think, on the same day that he saw Bisliops Wilberforce and Villiers into a cab together, as they drove off to attend some meeting. He approached them as they started, and with much solemnity of manner whispered, "See that ye fall not out by the way!' It was after a visitation of cholera in London that Mrs. Tait began the scheme for an orphanage which was first started at Fulham, and later, when her husband had been advanced to the Primacy, was transferred to Stonehouse, in the Isle of Thanet, where the bequest of a relative had enabled him to purchase a small residential estate for vacation rests. There was little change wrought in her mode of life by the higher station to which her husband was raised, save that Addington gave her more of country variety than she bad ever enjoyed since leaving Elmdon, and the chief events which marked her last ten years were the Primate's dangerous illness, the firm establishment of her orphanage, for a long time under the charge of the Sisters of St. Peter's, Kilburn, and the death of her only son, Craufurd Tait, the other subject of the present Memoir, which finally exhausted her powers of endurance, cheerful and hopeful as her religion always proved, and undoubtedly hastened, if it did not actually cause her own decease six months later, which took place in Edinburgh, while engaged in a course of visits to Scottish relations and friends.
Church Times 19 Sep 1879.

  Research Notes:

Catherine was a close friend of Maria Jackson nee Fortescue [9953].

Press cutting from Standard on Jan 26^th 1899, announcing death of her brother Rev Edward Spooner. Elsewhere on Web 'To the Glory of God and in grateful memory of EDWARD SPOONER, MA, Rector of Hadleigh and Co-Dean of Bocking who fell asleep January 25th 1899.' IN Cobbold family history, https://family-tree.cobboldfht.com/people/view/185, states Edward born 1821, Mother Anna Maria Sidney O'Brien. In 1857 he married Octavia Mosley @ All souls Langham Place, and that their father Willian died in 1857. In 1885 Edward married Anna Frances Cobbold. NOTE from Solihull council entry on web, 'The Elmdon estate was bought in 1760 by Abraham Spooner (c.1690-1788), a Birmingham banker. He started to build Elmdon Hall in 1780 and it was completed in 1795 by his son Isaac (1736-1816/7). Isaac's daughter, Barbara Spooner, married the famous anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce in Hull in 1797, having apparently met him the previous year in Bath.' Presumably Barbara was William Spooner's sister.
Maria Liveing 2020

Catherine married Dr Archibald Campbell TAIT [15873] [MRIN: 5672], son of Craufurd TAIT [32970] and Unknown, on 22 Jun 1843 in Elmdon WAR.