Thomas Bartholomew Weld (1750–1810), known as Thomas Weld of Lulworth Castle, was a member of the English Catholic gentry, landowner, philanthropist and bibliophile. He was connected to many of the leading Catholic families of the land, such as the Bodenhams, Cliffords, Erringtons, Petres and Stourtons. He proved to be a great benefactor of the Society of Jesus in England in their educational and pastoral endeavours, as timely donor of his Stonyhurst estate in 1794. He was also a benefactor to other Roman Catholic religious and clergy. He was a personal friend of King George III. His sister-in-law was Maria Fitzherbert. After the French Revolution he hosted refugee remnants of the French royal family at his castle. He was the builder, in 1786, of the first Roman Catholic place of worship in England after the Protestant Reformation.
Life
Thomas Weld was born into an old recusant family descended from Sir Humphrey Weld, a grocer, who was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1608. He was the fourth son of Edward Weld and Dame Mary Teresa, née Vaughan of the Welsh Bicknor exclave in Herefordshire. Two of his older brothers and both his parents died when he was still a child. At age six in 1761, on the death of his father, Weld inherited the Bowland-with-Leagram and Stonyhurst estates in Lancashire from his father's cousin, Maria Shireburn (died 1754), the independently wealthy widow of Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk (1683-1732).
After home schooling, he was sent to the English Jesuit school at Watten and Bruges in Northern France and Austrian Netherlands. He was reputedly not a distinguished scholar, due to repeated disruptions of his schooling from local political turmoil, but he developed an attachment to the community he met there and it fostered his lasting interest in education. On return to England, he married Mary Stanley-Massey-Stanley daughter of Sir John Stanley-Massey-Stanley, 6th Baronet (1711–1794). They had six daughters and nine sons, the eldest of whom was also Thomas, who after being widowed and left with a daughter, entered the church and rose to the status of cardinal.
His older brother, Edward, died in a horse-riding accident three months after his marriage to Maria Smythe (later, Mrs Fitzherbert) in July 1775 and the family inheritance fell to Thomas. His brother's widow, Maria née Smythe, married Thomas Fitzherbert who also died prematurely in 1781. She was introduced to the Prince of Wales, the future George IV and they contracted a morganatic marriage in 1785, which was repudiated both by the king and the Privy Council of England. Subsequently, William Stourton, 18th Baron Stourton, one of Weld's sons-in-law, became executor of Maria's will and fought hard to prove the validity of her marriage to the Prince of Wales, but met implacable opposition from Queen Victoria in the shape of the Duke of wellington.
Bibliophile landowner
As the new owner of Lulworth Castle and the Lulworth Estate, Thomas Weld, who until then had been living with his wife in Britwell in Oxfordshire, refurbished the interiors of the "castle" in the then fashionable Adam style. It is said the most sumptuous was the library indicating he was a keen bibliophile who possessed a number of exceptional rarities in his collection, including the Luttrell Psalter, and Shakespeare's history textbook, Holinshed's Chronicles 1587 2nd edition. Thomas Weld's ex libris bookplates all bear the family motto on the plates' ribbon "nil sine numine". Weld is known to have collected artworks. He was a friend of another Jesuit school alumnus, Giles Hussey (1710-1788), a Dorset artist specialising in portraiture and depictions of Charles Edward Stuart. Two pencil drawings of Thomas and his wife Mary are known to have survived.
Although the "Castle", originally intended as a hunting lodge, fell victim to a disastrous fire in 1929, a number of valuable items it housed appear to have been saved. Unless it had been sold prior to the fire, one of them would have been Engelbert Kaempfer's History of Japan, translated from the German manuscript held by Sir Hans Sloane and published in 1728.
Builder
In the absence of public catholic worship, the Welds were accustomed to having services celebrated by a personal chaplain in a chapel space within the castle. One of these came to them fleeing the French Revolution. He was a French ordained Jesuit priest, named Jean Grou, who as well as fulfilling his pastoral duties, was a prolific writer on spiritual matters. He stayed at Lulworth for almost a decade, until his death in 1803.