Elizabeth Saunders

Tryon had one other family member, his illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth, whom he did not invite to Upper Grosvenor Street despite his "strong Affection" for her. Elizabeth, who had "a grateful Simplicity" that appealed to Tryon's "Pride & Liberality," had made an unhappy marriage with a butcher named James Saunders, separated from him, and moved back to her mother's home at Stony Stratford, Northampton, with her two sons and a daughter. In 1785 Elizabeth was attempting to make the separation permanent, and Tryon, to assist her in these proceedings, enlisted the aid of William Smith, who had come to London as a Loyalist refugee. Elizabeth Saunders, meantime, was lodged at her father's expense on Red Lion Street. After considerable negotiating, Smith got James Saunders to accept an arrangement whereby Tryon paid him £20 per year for life, the first ten years' payments to be advanced in a lump sum of Lzoo, in return for which he bonded himself never to bother his wife and family again. Smith was impressed by Tryon's love and concern for Elizabeth Saunders; "His heart," said Smith, "is in this Business & it raises my Opinion of [him]." Tryon, in appreciation for Smith's assistance in this matter, paid him £100 and presented him with a beautifully wrought silver cream and sugar set, valued at £10 19s. 7d. 26

Smith was also much impressed with the young woman. "She has plain Sense and an amiable Temper," he said, "and is neat & upon the whole comely . . . With a good Education [she] had been a fine Woman." Even as things stood, she was "Infinitely more like him [her father] than Miss [Margaret] Tryon, & the better Person of the Two." The legitimate Miss Tryon, who in Smith's eyes suffered in comparison with her half sister, was of marriageable age and heiress to a fortune, but she seemed unlucky in love. Since her arrival in London, she had been courted by a nobleman with an annual income of £6,000, but she had refused his offer of marriage because he was sixteen years her elder. Later she became enamored of Mr. George Villars, member of Parliament and youngest son of Thomas Villars, earl of Clarendon, with whom she became acquainted when members of the Villars family came to dine at Tryon's home. Young Villars, however, did not reciprocate her affection, and in fact was slightful of and inattentive toward her, perhaps because he knew that his mother, Lady Clarendon, disliked the liaison. Tryon was of two minds about Margaret's attachment to Villars, worried on the one hand that his daughter was being hurt by a snobbish young cad but believing on the other hand that a marriage between a Villars and a Tryon "could not be better for himself" from a practical and economic standpoint. The relationship finally was broken off, and when Miss Margaret Tryon died prematurely in 1791, she was still unmarried and residing in the Tryon family household.

William Tryon and the Course of Empire: A Life in British Imperial Service. Contributors: Paul David Nelson - author. Publisher: University of North Carolina Press. Place of Publication: Chapel Hill, NC. Publication Year: 1990. Page Number: 178-79