Enriqueta Augustina Rylands held in Kensington, London, on 6 October. The marriage was childless but two children were adopted: Arthur Forbes (a cousin of Enriqueta) and Maria Castiglioni. When John Rylands died in 1888, Enriqueta as the inheritor of most of his estate of £2,574,922 became a major shareholder of his family textile firm and in the Manchester Ship Canal. In memory of her husband, Enriqueta founded the John Rylands Library. She admired the design of Basil Champneys's library for Mansfield College, Oxford, and contracted him to develop something similar, on a more lavish scale. She secretly negotiated the purchase of the 2nd
John Rylands other benefactions he established and maintained orphanages, homes for aged gentlewomen, a home of rest for ministers of slender means, and he provided a town hall, public baths, library and a coffeehouse in the town of Stretford, where he lived. He also built an institute for the benefit of the villagers of Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight, where Rylands passed some of his later years from 1882, having built a house named Longford there after his mainland estate. His donations to the poor of Rome were so generous as to induce the king to decorate him in 1880 with