West-Europese adel » Catharina da Costa (1710-1747)

Personal data Catharina da Costa 

• She was born in the year 1710.

  Attention: Age at marriage (??-??-1724) below 16 years (14).

• She died on March 19, 1747, she was 37 years old.
• A child of Joseph Ferdinand da Costa and Eleonore Mendez da Costa
• This information was last updated on August 28, 2018.

Household of Catharina da Costa

(1) She is married to Joseph Isaac Villa-Real.

They got married in the year 1724, she was 14 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Elisabeth Villa-Real  1728-1792 

(2) She is married to Willem Mellish van Blyth.

They got married on February 25, 1735, she was 25 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Karel Mellish van Blyth  1737-1796 

Notes about Catharina da Costa

Elizabeth Sarah Villa-Real, born between 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning on Monday the 27 June 1757 at her father’s house in Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire had a varied and illustrious heritage. Her father, William Villa-Real, Esquire, a handsome man in his late twenties, was the grandson of Joseph da Costa (1683-1753), a wealthy Portuguese Jewish merchant and the son of Catherine Rachel (Kitty) da Costa.

Kitty had been brought up in luxury, first at the Budge Row house of her paternal grandfather and then at her father’s mansion house, Copped Hall, Totteridge, Hertfordshire.

In 1724 when only 14 years of age Kitty had agreed to marry her cousin Jacob (or Philip) Mendes Da Costa but he was a rake and her parents did not approve. Instead, in 1727 when she was seventeen she married Joseph Isaac Villa-Real. Her husband was a Portuguese Jew who was much older than she being 54 years of age when he married and who had fled from his homeland and the Inquisition to England the previous year.

Two children were born, Sarah in 1728 and Abraham in 1729 before Joseph Villa-Real died on the 27 Dec 1730. Kitty, only twenty and now a very rich widow renewed the acquaintance with her cousin and plans were secretly put in place between the couple for them to marry once she had completed a year of mourning.  Again, her family were against the union and Kitty finally listened to sense, sending Jacob away.  His fury at being denied both her and her fortune was great and he sued her for breach of promise in 1732 but it was decided that Kitty’s promise had depended upon her father’s consent and not on her own word.  Jacob tried once more to bring a civil suit for damages in 1734 which again he lost. Kitty’s fortune was reportedly £35,500 which today would be worth almost £5 million . . . no wonder that Jacob was so eager to marry her!

Although Kitty had respected the wishes of her family in respect to not marrying her cousin she was not prepared to play the dutiful daughter any longer and she left Copped Hall, leaving her two children behind, and married again, clandestinely in ‘Madam Mellish’s own house‘ at Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, on the 25 February 1735, this time outside of her faith, to William Mellish Esquire of Blyth in Nottinghamshire, taking the religion of her second husband at a baptism a month after the wedding.

Her father was furious and initially refused to return her children to her (she had previously signed a deed allowing him to be their guardian) but after various legal wrangles she obtained custody of them and on the 11 April 1738 at St. Anne’s in Soho the young Sarah and Abraham de Costa Villa-Real were baptized in the Protestant faith and given the names of Elizabeth and William.  William Mellish was the same age as Kitty and their marriage was a happy union, producing a son born in 1737 named Charles who would go on to become only the second man who bore Jewish blood to enter the British Parliament. A second son, Joseph, died in infancy.  Kitty died in 1747 and was buried in Blyth. Her younger brother Benjamin also converted to Christianity.
The two Villa-Real children no longer used their Jewish forenames.  Elizabeth had married William, 2nd Viscount Galway of Ireland in 1747 (she was the first person of Jewish blood to marry into the peerage) and William himself married, in 1755, Elizabeth Hallifax of Mansfield whose brother Samuel would become bishop of Gloucester and of St. Asaph, a second brother, Robert, was to be physician to the Price of Wales, later King George IV.
https://georgianera.wordpress.com/tag/edwinstowe/

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Timeline Catharina da Costa

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