The Surtees Marriage Glasses: a very fine enamelled armorial wine glass from the Beilby workshop, circa 1769

Footnotes

Provenance
Commissioned for the marriage of Lieutenant Crosier Surtees (1739-1800) and Jane Surtees (1751-1825) on 12 September 1769
Thence by family descent to the present owner

Together with lots 10-12 this glass forms part of a remarkable set of unrecorded Beilby enamelled armorial wine glasses, which have always been known by the Surtees family as 'The Marriage Glasses'. They were made to celebrate the marriage of Lieutenant Crosier Surtees of Merryshields to his first cousin Jane in September 1769. Jane was the only daughter and heiress of Robert Surtees (1694-1785) of Redworth Hall, just to the north of Darlington in County Durham and a stone's throw away from the Beilby family workshop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Robert, concerned that in time the Surtees name would no longer control Redworth Hall, made considerable efforts to cement the family line. In 1769 he encouraged and no doubt orchestrated Jane's marriage to her cousin Crosier Surtees, the son of his late brother. Jane was just seventeen at the time and Crosier some thirteen years her senior. Crosier was a thoroughly unpleasant individual, described as "a designing artful man, a bad character" in the Surtees family history, see H Conyers Surtees, records of the Family of Surtees (1925), p.98. The pair married in Heighington Parish Church on 12 September 1769 and whilst the match was loveless it was undoubtedly viewed as a victory in the eyes of Robert. It is unlikely that any expense would have been spared and these glasses would have been a fitting commission to toast the occasion. Robert had secured the future of the Surtees family name, potently reinforced with his family coat of arms on these glasses, and Crosier had gained a considerable dowry which included property at Redford Grove and a £20,000 fortune to fuel his drinking habit.

Upon Robert's death in 1785 Crosier inherited Redworth Hall, but his marriage to Jane gradually broke down and the pair separated around 1800, after eleven children and thirty-one years together. Crosier went to live with his mistress at Pennington Rake, near Hamsterley, where she bore him several illegitimate children. He met his untimely end on 21 December 1803 aged just 65, falling drunk from his horse into a stream on the moors north of Raby Castle when returning from a banquet hosted by the Earl of Darlington. He was found frozen to death the next day and his passing apparently went "unlamented". His eldest son and heir, the younger Robert Surtees (1782-1857), subsequently inherited Redworth Hall and the glasses no doubt passed to him with the property. From him they descended through the family. Jane subsequently married a clergyman and lived out the rest of her days happily with him. Redworth was eventually sold in 1952 upon the death of Major Robert Lambton Surtees, the great-grandson of Jane and Crosier, to pay inheritance tax. It stands as a hotel today.

The present glasses belong to a distinct group of Beilby armorial glasses all painted in a limited palette of red, yellow, white, and sometimes also black, some of which were also produced as sets. This includes the Horsley Service (see Bonhams sales, 16 December 2009, lot 65 and 19 May 2010, lot 47), the Thomas Glasses (see Bonhams sale, 19 May 2010, lot 62), and the Kitson Glasses (see Bonhams sale, 15 November 2017, lot 104), together with several one-off commissions such as the Richardson Tumbler (see Bonhams sale, 19 May 2010, lot 61) and the Clavering Goblet in the Victoria and Albert Museum (acc. no. C.632-1936) which commemorates the 1768 election campaign for Sir Thomas Clavering, MP for Durham. The treatment of the coronets on the reverse of the Surtees Marriage Glasses, painted in yellow enamel with details sketchily picked out in dark red, echoes the emblems on two sets of Masonic tumblers, one of which bears the Freemason's arms (see Bonhams sales, 17 December 2008, lot 129 and 15 November 2017, lot 29). The other set includes several tumblers dated 1768 (see Bonhams sales, 16 December 2009, lot 59 and 19 May 2010, lot 48), the year before the Surtees Marriage Glasses were commissioned.