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Lot Essay
The crest and the initials RN indentify the owner of the box as being the doctor and alderman Roger Nunn. He was from a Suffolk family who lived in and around Bury St. Edmunds. The crest (On a Wreath of the Colours (Or and Azure) Upon a Mount Vert in front of an Oak Tree proper a Beehive or) engraved on the box was granted to his brother Elias Sturley Nunn (1775-1842) of West Hill, Bury St. Edmunds, on 20 May 1831 (College of Arms Mss: Grants 38/22). The grant also applied to the descendants of his late father John Nunn, therefore entitling Roger Nunn to use the crest as well. This suggests the plaque was attached to the box sometime between 1831 and Roger's death in 1844, however it is possible the family had been using this crest on an unofficial basis before the date of the grant.
Sadly Roger Nunn's will, proved on the 25 July 1844, is very short and makes no specific mention of individual chattels. There are however, a number of interesting connections between the refugees of the French Revolution and North Suffolk. Norman Scarfe, in the introduction of his translation of A Frenchman's Year in Suffolk - French Impressions of Suffolk Life, 1784, published in The Suffolk Record Society, 1988, vol. xxx, p. xxxiv comments that 'There is material for a slender book on the life of the émigrés in Bury.' He continues 'Mme de Genlis was here with some curious characters in 1792 and made some disobliging remarks about Arthur Young [author of a work on travels in France and Italy published in 1792], Fanny Burney said that "as soon as [the Duc de] Liancourt arrived in October, Mme de Genlis 'quitted Bury with the utmost expedition". She did not even wait to pay her debts...' Could the box have been a gift to Roger Nunn's father or perhaps it was taken as payment for treatment by Roger Nunn himself, the donor supplying the intriguing story surrounding the history of the box ?
Sadly Roger Nunn's will, proved on the 25 July 1844, is very short and makes no specific mention of individual chattels. There are however, a number of interesting connections between the refugees of the French Revolution and North Suffolk. Norman Scarfe, in the introduction of his translation of A Frenchman's Year in Suffolk - French Impressions of Suffolk Life, 1784, published in The Suffolk Record Society, 1988, vol. xxx, p. xxxiv comments that 'There is material for a slender book on the life of the émigrés in Bury.' He continues 'Mme de Genlis was here with some curious characters in 1792 and made some disobliging remarks about Arthur Young [author of a work on travels in France and Italy published in 1792], Fanny Burney said that "as soon as [the Duc de] Liancourt arrived in October, Mme de Genlis 'quitted Bury with the utmost expedition". She did not even wait to pay her debts...' Could the box have been a gift to Roger Nunn's father or perhaps it was taken as payment for treatment by Roger Nunn himself, the donor supplying the intriguing story surrounding the history of the box ?