Jane Austen and the Austen family of Hall Place

Jane Austen (1775-1817) was the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

Her novels with their realistic, some might say cynical stories of love among the English gentry have been the regular subject of films and television series.

People sometimes ask whether Jane was related to the Austen family of Hall Place. The answer to the question is yes, albeit very remotely. Both descended from a common ancestor living in Tenterden, Kent.

We do not know if Jane was aware of the existence of her distant cousins. If she had been their histories might have supplied good material for her novels.

Sir Robert Austen, the first Baronet was a successful London merchant with Royalist sympathies, who bought Hall Place from an impoverished Parliamentarian, Richard Champney in 1649 and greatly extended the house in the Jacobean fashion.

His son Sir John and grandson Sir Robert were both Whig MPs for the Cinque ports and played a part in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  However, the third Baronet who died in 1704 left the estate virtually bankrupt, leaving his children dependent on their mother, who had inherited a fortune from her uncle, Lord Henry Seymour only to lose much of it in the South Sea Bubble.

When she remarried the children were guaranteed bed and board at Hall Place for life as part of the marriage settlement. This left the boys desperately searching for a wealthy heiress to marry, while the girls were obliged to remain single or forfeit the small annuity granted them by their father’s will.

One sister did eventually marry, but in secret while the fourth Baronet Sir Robert Austen married Rachel Dashwood, sister of Sir Francis Dashwood, the notorious founder of the Hellfire Club, who bailed out the estate which he then controlled through trustees of his choosing. He also succeeded Austen as MP for Rye.

Jane Austen would no doubt have had to tone down some of the more scandalous details of the plot, but it would have made a wonderful seventh novel.