We  understand  that  Mr  Foster  expressed  himself  perfectly
willing to permit the removal of the coffin if legal faculty was

eldest son of John Foster, whose father William had been
an important architect in Liverpool and was nick-named
the ‘King of Liverpool’ owing to the number of buildings he
had designed for the city which included Lime Street
station.10 His mother Margaret Troutbeck,11 was the
daughter of William Troutbeck, a very wealthy merchant
and an influential man, partly due to his supposed lineage
to King John.

obtained. The grounds of the objections to the one produced,
was we believe that no citation had been produced or issued to
let the objectors come forward.

The memorial on which it had been  obtained also stated that
the  applicants had obtained  the  consent of  the  Rev. Dawson,
Rector of Belchamp Otten, for re-interment in his churchyard.

This  is  denied,  on  the  other  side  it  is  alleged  to  have  been
given   verbally.   However   written   notices   were   served   on
Tuesday,  on Mr  Vial,  not  to proceed  to inter  the remains in

 John  Henry  inherited  a  large  fortune  from  his
grandfathers and father and throughout  his lifetime
courted the rich and powerful. He spent his early years in
his home city, was educated privately, went in due course
to St Mary Hall, Oxford, and entered the church.

Belchamp Otten Churchyard.
 The Bishop of Rochester had also written to Mr Foster to say

the faculty obtained was quite out of order, no citation having
been issued.

 His first curacy was at Kempston, Bedfordshire in 1844
where he married his first wife Rosalind. She gave him
three children, two of whom would die before the age of
three. He was instituted to the living of SS Peter & Paul,
Foxearth, a year later in 1845 - the same year a good friend
and  fellow  Tractarian  John  Henry  (later  Cardinal)
Newman converted to Rome.

It  appears  Mrs.  Ewer  had  also  protested  and  prayed  the
Bishop not to permit the removal. An order likewise was given

by  the  Rector and  churchwardens of  Belchamp Otten  not to
assist in any manner.

No  attempt  was  made  to  disinter  the  body,  and  about  five
o'clock the hearse and the men left the ground, and the crowd

 Up to the time of his death, Foster was domestic
chaplain to the Molyneux family, who were Earl’s of Sefton
and lived at Croxteth Hall12 near Liverpool and one of the

dispersed. We hear it is intended to take proceedings, and that
the  matter  is  likely  to  cause  considerable  litigation  in  the

grandest estates of its day with farmland stretching for
several square miles.

Samuel’s body was later exhumed early one morning
and re-buried in Belchamp Otten churchyard though the
perpetrators had charges of body stealing and sacrilege lay
against them. However, it seems the crime was not fully
investigated and the charges were later dropped by the
order of the Rector. Simon Quy Viall eventually sold Lower
Hall Farm for £3000 in 1862 to real estate agents Oakes,
Bevan & Co in which the Rector’s brother George Anthony
Foster was a partner. On its sale Viall returned to his other
home at Baythorne Hall at Birdbrook, Essex, where he died
in 1885.

On his death in 1846, William Foster left an estate worth in
excess of £300,000. Rev John Foster received £30,000.

money from the estate was used to buy property in various
villages (including Foxearth) and paid for alterations to SS Peter

land at Aintree for the purpose of horseracing and visited his
Chaplain at Foxearth on more than one occasion.  The Earl’s
nephew was priest at St Peter, Sudbury, 1847 – 1876.  

The central character to this plot, John Henry Foster,
was born into a patrician family at Liverpool in 1815, the