Tudor & Stuart
Among the quieter stories attached to Leigh church is that of a marriage which, in its day, caused something of a stir in one of England's great aristocratic families. In 1661, Lady Anne Sidney became the wife of the Rev. Joseph Carte, then serving as Vicar of Leigh. What made the union remarkable was not the groom's calling but the bride's birth.
Lady Anne came from the Sidney family, whose seat was the magnificent Penshurst Place in Kent. She was a daughter of Robert, 2nd Earl of Leicester, and her sisters had married into the highest ranks of the nobility: Dorothy became Lady Sunderland, and another sister was Lady Lucy Pelham. Her elder sister had married yet higher still, becoming Countess of Sutherland — a figure whose life was later thought worthy of a full biography by Julia Cartwright.
Joseph Carte was no stranger to the Sidney household. He had served as chaplain to the family at Penshurst, and it was presumably in that setting that the two came to know one another. When the match became known, however, the Earl refused his consent outright. To a family of such standing, the marriage of a daughter to a country clergyman was regarded as a misalliance — a union beneath her rank.
Lady Anne was 34 years old at the time of her wedding, old enough by the standards of the day to have made her own choice, and the choice she made appears to have been a firm one. The estrangement from her father seems to have lasted to the end of his life, for when his Will was drawn up, Lady Anne's name does not appear in it at all — a telling silence in a document that would otherwise have provided for his children.
She lived until 1693, and on her death she was laid to rest in the chancel of Leigh church, close to the parish she had joined through her marriage. A eulogy was engraved on her tombstone in her memory, but visitors today will search for it in vain: the stone now lies hidden beneath the altar platform, its words concealed from view.
This account draws on an article by Lawrence Biddle, which appeared in the Parish Magazine in February 1991.