This little snippet, found by chance on-line, whetted my appetite. I had to find out more about Jean or John Tilt, a Brighton lad, and his connection to France:
No. 425- By Order of the King who authorises John Tilt esq, born 28 September 1783 at Brighton in England, to make his domicile in France and there to enjoy the exercise of his civil rights for as long as he shall continue to reside there. (Paris, 12 November 1826) Source BnF/Gallica
Why would Charles X extend such hospitality to an Englishman? And why, seven years later, would Louis-Philippe, King of the French, allow a pension of 1,000 francs to the same man? Tilt (Jean) was listed as a minster of the Anglican Church who had lost his fortune, that is to say, he had lost his ecclesiastical living. Not the usual beneficiary of a Catholic king’s bounty.
Source BnF/Gallica
I’ll start by going back a generation.
Thomas Tilt, John’s father, was a native of Kidderminster. He arrived in Brighton in 1776. In their mid-20s, he and his wife Mary already had three sons, four more children would be born in Brighton. Thomas soon took over the running of the Castle Inn which stood on the Old Steine at the heart of Brighton. So very conveniently near the Marine (later Royal) Pavilion. So far so English. So far so Anglican.
The Castle Inn in 1801, the large building centre left of the engraving. Image courtesy of the Society of Brighton Print Collectors / Regency Society of Brighton and Hove
All William and Mary’s sons seem to have had a good education. Of the Tilt brood, the eldest son William, born in 1773, was educated at Lewes Grammar School, then Eton and finally Trinity College, Cambridge. He became an Anglican clergyman.
Second son Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps by renting out accommodation for visitors to the burgeoning tourist town that Brighton was becoming. The fourth child, Andrew, became a colonel in the army, serving in France, the West Indies and Canada. Of the two girls, little is known: Sarah died aged 13, although Mary outlived them all. She died in 1863, her 80th year.
Born in 1783, John / Jean Tilt was the couple’s the sixth child and fifth son. He does not seem to have been physically adventurous like Andrew. Nor was he conventional like brother William. Nor was he a businessman like Thomas jnr. John was, however, perhaps the most interesting of the bunch.
John seemed restless. He made a start on a career by becoming a schoolmaster in Southwick, near Brighton but in an advert he placed in the London Courrier and Evening Gazette, he tells prospective clients that he has “been several years in France”. Later reports suggest that his stay of “several years” may not have been voluntary. If it can be assumed that he went to France aged about 20, he would have found himself trapped in an enemy country. Napoleon declared war against Britain in 1803.
Back in England, two major events happened in John’s life in 1809: he married Elizabeth Gates and he moved his school from Southwick to Bedford Square, at “the Western extremity of Brighton”. Not surprisingly, John’s school specialized in languages: “Latin, Greek, French and lastly Hebrew” (Sussex Advertiser 12 July 1819). He also turned his hand to writing school books. His first publication was rather expensive (at 5 shillings). It advertised itself as:
Three sons were born to John and Elizabeth between 1813 and 1817. Less than two years after the birth of his youngest child, John decided that school-mastering was not for him, so he enrolled at St Alban Hall, an Oxford college. Aged 34 and with three children under the age of seven, John Tilt became a clergyman – although it would appear he never attended lectures and maybe never set foot in “his” college.
John was now a fully fledged Reverend. The title Rev. may well have improved sales of his books.
Morning Post, Thursday 20 January 1820 ©The British Library Board
In 1823, he was given the curacy at All Hallows Church, Lombard Street in London. Perhaps now was the time to settle down. Instead, he found Catholicism – five years before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. It was an audacious move. The story is told in detail by La Quotidienne on 12 December 1824. Here are the bare bones of the story as told by the newspaper:
One day, John Tilt, a good Anglican, heard that a Catholic priest, Prince Alex de Hohenlohe, had recently cured two nuns in Ireland of an unspecified illness. This he had achieved through the medium of prayer, and remotely, from his monastery in Germany. Tilt was initially skeptical of what the Catholic church considered miraculous. First, he examined in detail this particular miracle. Then he set about delving into the phenomenon in general. When he learned that each century had famous examples of miracles, he came to the conclusion that l’église à laquelle il était attaché n’était point la vraie Église. [The Church to which he was attached was not the true Church.]
After long discussions with eminent Catholics he made up his mind et fit son abjuration, le 29 juillet [he abjured on 29 July] in the chapel of St Mary’s, Moorfields in the City of London. His wife followed his example, despite also being an Anglican born and bred.
The newspaper was not slow to recognize that the couple had children and, henceforth, no income. This, it stated, would be a problem, but the Tilts were strong in their belief. The couple were confirmed in their new faith by no less a person than William Poynter, who the newspaper called, inaccurately, Bishop of London.
Whether Elizabeth Tilt spoke French is not clear. No matter! The family (John?) decided that Catholic France was a better place to live than their home country. Almost immediately on his arrival in France, John was given a post as a senior librarian in the Sorbonne. The Étoile newspaper reveals that the Ministre des affaires ecclésiastiques et de l’instruction publique [Minister for Church Affairs and Public Education] who appointed John Tilt was doing so, not out of charity but because
M. Tilt est un homme instruit, en état de rendre des services à l’église dans l’étude des langues anciennes et des matières de controverse. [Mr Tilt is an educated man and is in a position to be of service to the Church through his studies of ancient languages and polemics.]
Somewhat later, English newspapers told the story differently – and rather more pithily:
A jesuit (sic) got hold of him, and he being a man of unstable mind, perverted him to the Catholic faith. He renounced Protestantism, and fled to Paris where he had the enviable distinction of being pointed out [appointed?] sub-librarian to some Bibliotheque there … and betook himself to the sophistry of Catholicism, which was more congenial to his elastic conscience and utter destitution of principle … The Age Sunday 07 February 1830
Strong words indeed.
Perhaps John Tilt was not a good librarian. The family’s affairs do not seem to have gone well. There is nothing to show when or why he left the Sorbonne, but in 1833, King Louis-Philippe was persuaded that the family needed financial support. The King stepped in and awarded Jean Tilt a pension of 1,000 francs.
A series of letters in the Cambridgeshire archive reveal the extent to which Richard Huddleson, a wealthy Catholic of Sawston Hall near Cambridge, also supported the family financially.
This help appears to have started in 1837 as the result of an appeal sent to Huddelston from a friend of his, Kenelm Digby. Tilt and Digby lived in the same street in the centre of Paris. Digby had been moved by the plight of the family. He wrote to Huddleston and Huddleston must have sent funds immediately, for within three weeks Tilt had written his thanks to his benefactor in a letter dated 19 November 1837 from N0 48 rue de Grenelle.
Alas, the situation did not improve for the family. By 1841 matters had gone from bad to worse: Digby was asking for Huddleston’s help once again.
The family to whom you were so generous last year is reduced low indeed. The father for some days was near losing his reason. Absolute starvation was near being their end. Mr Hunt is voucher for their honesty. We are going to get one son apprenticed and to pay £30 for him. £20 is wanting. We are going to place one daughter in a convent school to get her education perfected… Young Tilt who was near dying of hunger in Paris last winter has just had an offer through us of being a Partner to a Surgeon apothecary of Southampton. I have not yet received his answer to say whether he will be tempted by it to abandon his dear old Father and Mother in Paris. (Letter dated 27 August 1841 from Springfield House, Polygon, Southampton)
Two years later, John Tilt was dead leaving his wife, yet again, to rely on the charity of Richard Huddlestone.
… Poor Mrs Tilt is residing with her son, the Doctor. Their address is No 11 rue de la Paix. I shall say nothing to her about your last letter. & indeed I shall not probably see her, but as I have given you her address, I shall not have to reproach myself for your alms will be grateful to her. Her own recovery is considered miraculous. She is respected by all who know her and she has to struggle with poverty with her son. (Letter dated 6 June 1843 from Digby to Huddleston)
“Poor Mrs Tilt” may, in fact, have had a better life following the death of her husband. Her three boys had been brought up in France and each was in a position to support her in her old age.
Postscript
John Tilt’s eldest son became a Catholic priest. When he died, aged just 47, in 1859 he had spent several years as Missionary Rector of the fledgling St Mary’s Catholic Chapel in Richmond as well as undertaking “religious instruction” of the pupils at St Mary’s Collegiate Catholic School. When he had had to retire through ill health in 1859 his congregation gave him 105 guineas, much of the money coming from “the munificent donation of the French Royal Family at Claremont and Twickenham” – that is, the deposed Orléans family who had fled France after the 1848 revolution.
Second son, Edward John, graduated as a doctor in Paris in 1829. He returned to England and became eminent in the realm of women’s health. He had brough with him from France enlightened ideas about the menopause and gynaecology in general. He did not die until 1893, at which time the British Medical Journal gave him a 20-line obituary and he appears at some length in the Dictionary of National Biography.
Third son, William Henry (aka Henri) Gates Tilt is more of a mystery. He lived most of his life in England and seemed to have private means from property. His links with France, and in particular with the town of Rennes in Britanny, remained strong: two of his daughters were born in Rennes in the late 1850s; one of his twin sons married a woman who had been born and, much later, died in that same town; the other son married a woman from Saint-Brieux, just 60 miles from Rennes.
French Brighton 