Richard Trench

Richard Trench of Bursledon Hants was a counterclaimant with Rowland Williams of Weston Grove (q.v) as assignees of a mortgage from Henry Anthony Hardman. Trench had been a trustee of the marriage settlement of Henry Anthony Hardman and Mary Armstrong into which the Monteros estate and mortgage had been included.

Richard Trench was a landowner, barrister and magistrate.

He was the son of Frederick Trench (1724-1797 of Woodlawn, Kilconnell, County Galway, Ireland) and Mary Sadleir (?-1819) and the brother of Frederick Trench, 1st Baron Ashtown (1755–1840), an Irish landowner and politician. (MP for Portarlington 1798-1801 then an Irish Peer from 27 December 1800 as Baron Ashtown, of Moate, County Galway.).

On 3 March 1803 he married Melesina Chenevix in Paris. (He was her second husband.) Melesina Chenevix (22 March 1768- 27 May 1827) was born in Dublin, daughter of Philip Chenevix and Mary Elizabeth Gervais. She came from a family, Hugenot in origin, of notable Church of Ireland churchmen, including her grandfather, Richard Chenevix (1698-1779), Bishop of Waterford, who brought her up when she was orphaned at the age of 3.

Melesina was a poet, diarist and woman of letters. She travelled extensively in Europe, and especially in Germany, between 1799 and 1800 meeting many well known figures of the day including Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton, Rivarol, Lucien Bonaparte, and John Quincy Adams. She also, in 1805, petitioned Napoleon in person, successfully pleading for her husband's release after he had been detained in France by Napoleon's armies. Richard and Melesina subsequently settled at Elm Lodge in Bursledon, Hampshire which Richard purchased in 1810.

Their children included the following, of whom only 3 survived into adulthood:

Frederick (1804-1806); daughter - name not known (1805-1805); Reverend Francis Chenevix (1805-1886); Most Rev. and Rt. Hon. Richard Chenevix (1807-1886); Philip Charles Chenevix (1809-1888); William (1811-1828); Elizabeth Melesina (1812-1816).

Francis Chenevix Trench (1805–1886) was a distinguished Church of England clergyman and author.

Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) became Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin anda poet.

There are entries for both in the Oxford DNB.

Richard Trench evidently moved between England and Ireland. He not only owned Elm Lodge, Bursledon but also lived at Brockley Park, Stradbally, Queen's County (County Laois) in Ireland from 1831.

At his death, he left effects of less than £7,000.

http://thepeerage.com/p4871.htm#i48708

Thomas Seccombe, ‘Trench , Melesina (1768–1827)’, rev. Rebecca Mills, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27700]; E. I. Carlyle, ‘Trench, Francis Chenevix (1805–1886)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, ibid. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27697]; Kenneth Milne, ‘Trench, Richard Chenevix (1807–1886)’, ibid. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27702] [all accessed 13/08/2012].

Katharine Kittredge, ‘Melesina Chenevix St. George Trench (1768-1827)’ at the Chawton House Library website:

http://www.chawton.org/library/biographies/trench.html.

For an assessment of Melesina Chenevix Trench’s work see both the entry in the Oxford DNB and Katharine Kittredge, ‘Melesina Chenevix St. George Trench (1768-1827)’ at the Chawton House Library website:

http://www.chawton.org/library/biographies/trench.html.

Her work included The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench (1862).