Vol 1, Chapter 1
The current Thomas Bennet was the great-great grandson of the former Thomas Rhys-Davies who became Tom Bennet. Like the three masters of Longbourn and Netherfield after the split in the family occurred, he did not know he was a direct descendant of Lord Sedgewick VII, the seventh Duke of Bedford.
The first Tom Bennet had made it seem, in the family bible, they were cousins of the last Earl of Meryton this obscuring the truth of his heritage.
Like his predecessors, Thomas Bennet eschewed Town, even though with the wealth that the Bennets had accumulated over four generations, they would have been welcomed by the Ton.
Bennet hated the hypocrisy and debauchery indulged in by many of its members.
Following the tradition set by the original Tom Bennet, Netherfield’s agent was the current master of Longbourn’s former brother-in-law, Frank Phillips, who had taken over the Gardiner solicitor’s practice when old Mr. Gardiner retired.
The agency for the two townhouses on Grosvenor Square was in the hands of barristers and solicitors of the Norman and James company, led by Sir Randolph Norman.
The aforementioned barrister personally took care of any of Thomas Bennet’s legal issues.
As far as his neighbours knew, Longbourn earned less than three thousand a year.
Few knew that Netherfield belonged to the Bennets, not even close friends like Sir William and Lady Sarah Lucas.
The Bennets preferred to live frugally, so close to five and seventy percent of the fifteen-thousand-pound profit from the two estates and the rents from the townhouses was invested.
Most of this was with Bennet’s other former brother-in-law, Edward Gardiner, who ran Gardiner and Associates.
This firm included an import/export company and other ventures, so that should one market falter the company had diversified enough to be fully sustained and able to weather any economic storm.
The current master of Longbourn and Netherfield continued the practice of vastly understating his daughters’ dowries.
The amount reported to the general public was that each had but a meagre two thousand five hundred pounds.
The only blemish for the Bennet family was when a Mr. Ned Collins compromised Thomas Bennet’s Aunt Elizabeth after he had heard some gossip that her dowry was larger than what was publicly reported.
Bennet’s father had given only a two-thousand-pound dowry to the disgusting man who had forced his daughter into a marriage she did not desire.
Ned Collins felt cheated, so he started the myth that the Bennet estate was entailed away to the male line and that if the Bennets bore no male heir the estate would devolve to the Collins’ family line.
Although a falsehood, his illiterate son believed him, and passed that erroneous belief onto his only son, William.
William, by all accounts, was just as much of a dimwit as his father.
Not only did the entail not support his claim, but the day after his Aunt Elizabeth’s forced marriage Bennet’s grandfather added a clause to the entail expressly forbidding anyone of the Collins line from inheriting!
Further, should someone from the Collins line, or any other, compromise another Bennet daughter who was heir to the estate, not only was the estate automatically willed to the next daughter in line, but the reprehensible man would receive only the same two-thousand-pound dowry as was given when Bennet’s Aunt Elizabeth had been compromised, and no more.
There was a codicil which also suggested that if a compromise occurred, the Miss Bennet who was compromised could take charge of her dowry and leave without shame so she would not be tied to such a man.
No other Bennet daughter would be forced into an unwanted marriage again.
Thomas Bennet had married the woman that he loved, Fanny Gardiner, the daughter of his local solicitor.
Though not as intelligent as he, it had not affected their relationship as there had been enough love to overcome that particular difference.
In 1787, Fanny Bennet had given birth to Jane Amelia Bennet, but, to Thomas’s great despair, she had become violently ill with childbed fever.
Before Fanny Bennet drew her final breath, she had extracted a promise from Thomas to find a woman that he could esteem and respect so their daughter would know the love of a mother.
In 1789 Thomas fulfilled that promise when, by pure chance, he met Lady Priscilla De Melville.
In mid-1788, Lord Jersey and his family were on their way from their estate in Essex to visit friends in Buckinghamshire when their coach’s wheel cracked close to Longbourn.
One of the grooms sought assistance at Longbourn; Thomas Bennet agreed to help and brought some of his men with him.
Bennet had invited the De Melvilles to stay at his estate while the wheel was sent to the nearest wheelwright in Stevenage.
When Bennet’s men returned, they informed him that it would take up to a sennight as the wheel could not be repaired and a new one would be fabricated.
The Earl of Jersey had been willing to take rooms at the inn in Meryton for himself and his family, but Bennet would not hear of it.
Lord Cyril and Lady Sarah De Melville were travelling with their younger daughter, Lady Priscilla, who was twenty.
Lady Priscilla had participated in three London seasons and had found no one that excited her interest. That was, until she met Thomas Bennet who was seven and twenty at the time.
She quickly fell in love with him and his adorable two-year-old daughter, Jane.
The Earl and Countess could see that Bennet was a good man and accepted an invitation to return a fortnight later when they would be returning to Town after visiting friends.
The apparent lack of wealth and connections of Thomas Bennet did not worry Lord Cyril and Lady Sarah; their main concern was their daughter’s felicity, and they could see that Priscilla had finally found a man to whom she was attracted and who she respected.
Within a week of their return, Bennet requested and was granted a courtship.
Once he saw that the Earl and Countess did not have any concern when they believed him a poor country squire and that their daughter’s wellbeing was their only priority, Bennet sat the three down and explained the truth of his wealth to them and that he was related to the last Earl of Meryton.
To say that the De Melvilles were shocked when they discovered that Bennet was almost as wealthy as themselves was an understatement.
A month later, the couple married in a small and private ceremony.
By then Bennet had begun to address his bride with the endearment Cilla on occasion.
Lady Priscilla’s older sister Lady Marie and her husband the Marquess of Holder, her brother Lord Wes and his wife Lady Isabelle, the Viscount and Viscountess of Westmore, attended the wedding along with the Phillips and Gardiner families.
Their first daughter, Elizabeth, was born in 1790 and her Aunt Marie and Uncle Percy were named her primary godparents.
Elizabeth was followed in January 1792 by Thomas Junior, who would be called Tom and became the godchild of Lord and Lady Westmore.
Then in October 1793, Esther Mary was born and finally, in 1799, the unexpected gift of the baby of the family, Mark.
The final two children had a mixture of both sets of aunts and uncles as their godparents.
In keeping with their desire to not flaunt their wealth and connections in the environs of Meryton, Lady Priscilla was introduced as Mrs. Bennet and only used the honorific when in Town visiting her parents.
Very few in Meryton outside of the Phillips and Lucas families knew the truth of the Bennets’ connections and who Mrs. Bennet had been prior to her marriage.
For at least six weeks each summer, and alternating Christmastides, the Bennets would travel to the Jersey main estate, Broadhurst in Essex, so the children could be spoilt by their doting grandparents.
Whenever the De Melvilles could, they would stop in at Longbourn to visit their family.
September 1810
“Father, who will the new tenants at Netherfield be?” Mark Bennet, who was eleven, asked. He was always interested in knowing who was leasing Netherfield, for at the age of five and twenty, the estate would become his.
“A Mr. Charles Bingley from Yorkshire. He is a tradesman’s son who is trying to elevate himself.
He is renting the estate for a year to learn how to manage one before he purchases his own,” Bennet shared what he knew.
The question pleased him, as it always did, because it proved his son’s interest in his future home.
Bennet and his wife were fully involved in their children’s education and upbringing.
There were governesses, tutors, and masters who all helped educate the Bennet offspring.
Having seen the results often, they did not hold with the Ton’s opinion that children should be seen and not heard.
Tom was in his second year at Oxford, for the Bennets followed the family tradition of sending their sons to Harrow and Oxford.
“I assume that, as usual, Sir Randolph’s investigators have done their due diligence?
” Jane asked. To no one’s surprise, Priscilla had accepted and treated Jane as if she were born of her body, as had the rest of the De Melville family.
Jane showed a serene facade to people who did not know her, but she was not one that would allow people to mistreat herself nor those she loved.