Robert Smith, 1st Lord Carrington’s correspondence with Thomas Cubitt

Central to understanding Thomas Cubitt’s early business development and success, was the influence of Robert Smith, 1st Lord Carrington.

Robert Smith was a highly influential and well connected figure in the finance world of the 1780’s – 1820’s. This is gone into in some detail in Hermione Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt Master Builder, Universe Books, 1971 Chapter XV: Finance.

Here, we focus on telling the story through the most significant of the documents. In a few places we have, seemingly, found documents that were not mentioned in Hobhouse. We, of course, have the considerable advantage of having imaged all of the documents that we could find that might be relevant and so can OCR them and search them at our leisure.

We are fortunate that a substantial number, but clearly not all, of papers survive between the two men and are held in the Buckinghamshire Country Records Office in the series D/CN – all of the reference numbers on this page are from The Buckinghamshire Country Records Office catalogue. The papers include a ledger [simply entitled ‘Cubitt’], a number of bundles of [draft] deeds and bundles of correspondence.

The papers were recatalogued and added to in 2012.¹ Where we found slips of paper folded into other documents, we have photographed them on top of the first page to make it clear that we found them together. Over the passage of years, it is very possible that items have been displaced and replaced inappropriately. We can only record what we found – it is very possible that the documents are not arranged as they were 200 years ago.²

The various bundles are imaged below, as we found them:-

The early stages

The first entry into the ledger ‘Cubitt‘ is dated 21st December 1819 valued at £270. Therefore, it is our working assumption that this is how the business relationship started.

Carrington was instrumental in facilitating Cubitt’s finance for the deals with The Duke of Westminster to start the building of, what is now, The Grosvenor Estate.

The giddying exchange of deeds in and out of Carrington’s possession must have made it incredibly hard to keep track of the loan and assets values at any point in time.

It is, sometimes, hard to pin down exactly what is going on as there are various undated schedules of deeds entitled variously ‘Cubitts Proposition‘, ‘Mr Cubitts Security‘ and other such uninformative titles without dates. Sadly, these were likely folded in with other documents, such as covering letters and now they are separated are much harder to make sense of contextually.

There were some ups and downs in the Smith-Cubitt relationship, particularly around the time of a letter to Lord Gardner [below], in which Carrington is clearly sounding Gardner out as to how much he has lent to Cubitt and on what security. It also implies that Carrington has been told, by Freshfield [founder of the eponymous, famous firm of solicitors] actually via his solicitor William Eliot Oliver that Gardner thinks that he [Carrington] has recommended these loans as investments.

‘…..that they [sic loans] had been approved by me. I am anxious to throw you off a responsibility to which I have no production(?). So far from having approval of these Loans I was ignorant of their existence.’

Carrington is very clear that he did no such thing. And wanted to put clear blue water between him and the loans. Presumably to try and get Gardner to gain proper security given how mercurial Cubitt had become and how complex his various ‘engagements’ were becoming.

It is suggestive that Carrington wanted to get this relationship back on a more formal footing and maybe sensed that something might not be quite right.

Then, Gardner, probably at the persuasion of Carrington, secures at least some of the loan value by means of formal mortgages.

A December 1832 schedule entitled ‘List of Mortgages executed by Mr Thomas Cubitt‘ [D/CN/20/2/9/9/14] gives a clear insight into who was supporting Cubitt’s venture[s]. One name does jump out from the page Oswald Smith Esq, a partner in Smith, Payne & Smith. His private ledger survives but alas there is no mention of any transactions with Thomas Cubitt – only a few minor entries for William Cubitt. This is, of itself, quite interesting and does raise the intriguing possibility that Cubitt banked under a pseudonym or through a nominee. But this remains pure conjecture.

John Martin, likely of Martins Bank, is named in the two slots at the top of the schedule. The way the, corresponding, right hand column is worded ‘£10,000 & for advances not exceeding £20,000‘ the second line ‘£10,000 already advanced and £10,000 agreed to be advanced‘ is rather the language of a banker agreeing a facility.

[Work in progress Martins Bank records are extensive but they do not benefit from comprehensive indexing and it was a very large retail bank so un-targeted searching without an ‘in’ is a resource impossibility. So we are awaiting further data to cross correlate and to focus our enquiry].

Lord Stanhope is also a regular feature of the Cubitt-Carrington correspondence but only rates a single mention in this document [D/CN/20/2/9/9/14].

Whilst the Carrington-Gardner letter of 23rd May 1832 seems quite strange, it gets even stranger in a letter of 14th October 1833 [below] in which, on the final page, Cubitt boldly states to Carrington ‘that the Islington Estate is the important engagement that I have made since I have borrowed money from your Lordship as from an observation in the last letter I fear there is some other impression working to my prejudice in your Lordship’s mind.‘

Hermione Hobhouse, very politely states that ‘this is a slightly disingenuous statement.‘ It would be perfectly in order to state that it was flatly not true, as Cubitt had bought lands in Clapham Manor; a large lump of lands and carcasses from Thomas Read Kemp, in Brighton as well as various other small plots and parcels of land dotted around.

However, now we have had chance to digitally cross correlate all of the surviving correspondence and ledgers: there is ample evidence from Carrington’s papers that he perfectly well knew about Kemp[s] Town. For instance in The Ledger ‘Cubitt’ on the page ‘List of Deeds given up by Lord Carrington to Mr Cubitt Feby 24 1832′ 1. Conveyance of No11 Kemp Town – Kemp to Cubitt – cons[ideration] [£]1,100′. So we can state definitively that Kemps Town was recorded in Carrington’s papers more than a year before 14th October 1833 letter.

To introduce a moment of low comedy: the clerk of Smith, Payne & Smith which was based on Lombard Street, writes on 9th November 1832 to Carrington to state that ‘the keys of the box of deeds cannot be found here.’

Mark Singleton

Mark Singleton was introduced to Cubitt by Carrington and lent Cubitt very substantial sums of money. This can be seen from the December 1840 ‘Schedule of Deeds belonging to the Exc[utor]s of Mark Singleton Esq.‘

The main sense is the sheer scale and complexity of Cubitt’s borrowings.

The Ledger ‘Cubitt’

Lord Carrington’s ledger, simply entitled Cubitt [click here for the full PDF – this is a very large file], appears to be have been complied around 31st March 1829. It spans transactions from 21st December 1819 [A House in Calthorpe Place, Grays Inn Place Road] through to 25th December 1829 [mortgage on 14 Eaton Place] via the various illustrious properties of Belgravia including pledging the whole of Cubitt’s interest in ‘The Grosvenor Take’, ‘As a general Security on unbuilt ground’ to Lord Carrington for £30,000! How different Belgravia might have looked if Cubitt had defaulted?

Unlike Cubitt’s ledgers the pages are not numbered and there is no index. It is also interesting how slim the volume is and actually how few entries there are. Particularly, when you compare the sheer physical size of Cubitt’s many ledgers to this one ledger you can see the difference in scale quite clearly. This was a necessary enabler to Cubitt’s massive schemes or as Lord Carrington termed them ‘engagements’ but the ‘engagements’ dwarfed it.

Possibly the most fascinating part of the ledger is the sheets pinned into it after the last entry ‘List of Deeds Given Up by Lord Carrington to Mr Cubitt Feby 24 1832’

To give a feel for the bewildering pace of Cubitt’s transaction compare the variously entitled documents below to the ledger ‘Cubitt’. The general sense is that the ledger could not be kept up to date, as originally intended, with Cubitt’s many and varied deeds, leases, assignments and loans. So, periodically and in fact quite frequently, a new compendium was drawn up from scratch.

Lord Carrington draws matters to a close

Robert Smith, 1st Lord Carrington, is advancing in years and is well into his 80’s. In a beautifully expressed letter of 13th October 1833, he sets out the situation both clearly and firmly in the gentlest of language. He makes the very reasonable point that if he dies Cubitt will have to repay very large sums in short order and that if Cubitt cannot do so his executors might well take legal action to recover the funds.

‘your debt to me should be speedily discharged’…..’I have as you know for many years past one everything in my power to assist in carrying you through your original great engagement’…..’of your subsequent engagements’……’however as in a few months I shall enter into my eighty third year you will see how important it is that the houses should be sold by yourself during my lifetime & not by any legal proceedings hereafter’

(Signed) Carrington

Then the last list ‘Lord Carrington & Mr Cubitt, Deeds Given Up, in receipt of Mr Hopgood, for the same, 6th January 1835,’ appears to mark the winding down of the financial relationship.

Two notes that, perhaps, indicate the final unwinding of the Carrington-Cubitt interdependence?

‘Cubitt’s Mortgages‘ [D/CN/20/2/9/2-8] states ‘with copies of discharges‘ and gives a date of 23rd February 1835

and within the bundle [D/CN/20/2/9/9/1-19] there is a note ‘Copies & Drafts of Deeds Etc & other Matters relating to Thomas Cubitt all gone by February 21 1835.

And that is probably the end of Robert Smith, 1st Lord Carrington’s financing of Thomas Cubitt’s enterprise. Robert Smith died in 18 September 1838 leaving estate valued at £120,000. Compare that to the estate Cubitt leaves on his death, in 1855, of around £1,500,000. Officially Cubitt’s estate was valued for probable at one million pounds. However, there was no taxation point in having a higher valuation as the maximum estate duty had been achieved at the one million pound valuation, so this was almost certainly an undervaluation of the estate.

This should be compared to the estate of the Coutt’s heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Queen Victoria’s banker, who inherited estate valued at £1.8m in the 1820’s – this was a time of little inflation. 

Then compare all of those to William Cubitt who left estate valued at £4.5m when he died. Are we perhaps researching the wrong Cubitt?

The lending mantel then passes to Smith, Payne & Smith the bank that Lord Carrington founded.

Mark Singleton

Mark Singleton was introduced to Cubitt by Carrington and lent Cubitt quite substantial sums of money. This can be seen from the December 1840 ‘Schedule of Deeds belonging to the Exc[utor]s of Mark Singleton Esq.‘

The main sense is the sheer scale and complexity of Cubitt’s borrowings.

Freshfields

Freshfields were solicitors involved in these arrangements and some handsome bills were generated including “Bill for Mr Cubitt’s Mortgage, £46 2s 5d” complete with a receipt for the monies signed by Thomas Wright Nelson – you can read the full PDF here. Freshfield knew Cubitt from London Institution days.

¹ Personal communication from Buckinghamshire Archives, April 2024

“The collection of records of the Carington family and estate (D-CN) have been held here since the 1960s.  However they were only box listed, and were recatalogued between 2008 and 2012 by an archivist employed by the estate.  The resulting catalogue was much more detailed than the original, and all the records were rearranged and renumbered. The previous reference numbers are recorded on the catalogue entries, but it can be difficult to relate an old reference number to the fully catalogued reference. In 2012 an additional deposit of records was received (AR 13/2012), which has been catalogued as D-CN/A: Deeds and papers relating to the Carrington family (from Freshfields Solicitors) (epexio.com)“

² There are some strange cataloguing decisions particularly around D/CN/20/2/9/9/6/4, D/CN/20/2/9/9/6/3, & D/CN/20/2/9/9/6/1 which all are on the same paper, in the same hand and have consecutively numbered pages – although some of the page numbering makes little sense at all as it is numbered as if the pages are to be folded into a pamphlet whereas the page are set out to be read right across the full width of the folded page. Maybe a sharp eyed reader can make more sense of these items or item as it might be: if so do let us know!? Our view is that the sheets were originally numbered and that someone has subsequently ‘helpfully’ numbered the opposite corners of some of the sheets!