Mary Cardinall was born in Beaumont in about 1745, the daughter of Charles Cardinall and his wife Isabella. She had twin brothers, born the year before her – William and Charles – but it’s possible they died in childhood. She had several half-siblings from her mother’s first marriage to William Cousins – William, Henry, James and Elizabeth. Mary was only two when her father died in 1747, aged 38. He left Mary his part of a farm in Tendring, but if she was to die without issue, it was to go to her mother or her heirs, and then to Charles’ sister, Mary Whiting.
In 1766, Mary married John Mash in Tendring. Their licence bondsman was Edward Sallows, a farmer from Little Bentley, who may have been John’s half-brother. She and John were both of Tendring, so Mary moved away from Beaumont at some point after her father’s death. Her mother never remarried.
John Mash
John was born in Tendring in about 1737, the son of John and Sarah. Sarah, born Sarah Ainger, had been married before. Her first husband was Thomas Sallows (?-1734), whom she married in 1724. According to the marriage licence allegation, Thomas was 51 and Sarah was 24. He had married his first wife, Elizabeth Hudson, in 1695, by whom Thomas had seven children: Elizabeth, Thomas, John, Robert, Martha, William and Mary. Elizabeth died in 1723, the year in which her eldest son, Thomas (1699-?), married Elizabeth Cardinall, the daughter of John and Susan Cardinall – aunt of Mary Cardinall.
To confuse everyone even further, the first son that Thomas senior and Sarah had was named… Thomas! I thought this seemed a bit odd at first, but Thomas Sallows senior left a will, and names two different sons in it “Thomas.” Thomas and Sarah had four other children: Sarah (who died an infant), another Sarah, Edward and Elizabeth. The son could be the Edward Sallows who was John’s bondsman on his marriage to Mary Cardinall.
The widowed Sarah married John Mash in Tendring in 1736. He was living in Manningtree at the time, but their three sons were all baptised in Tendring, where the family apparently settled.
Sarah’s brother Edward Ainger, a yeoman, died in Little Bentley in 1754 and left a will which mentions Sarah’s children: Thomas Sallows; John, Joseph and Robert Marsh (Mash sometimes is spelt Marsh – presumably down to the long Essex vowel at the start of the word).
It might be John Mash’s father who is mentioned in the 1727 will of Elizabeth Cook, a widow from Great Oakley. She mentions her grandson, John Mash, son of her daughter, who lived in Great Oakley too. I haven’t been able to trace them back any further at the moment.
The children of John and Mary Mash
John Mash and Mary Cardinall had six children, all of whom were baptised in Tendring:
- John (1768-1810)
- James (1770-1840)
- Mary (1772-?)
- Charles (1775-1819)
- Sarah (1778-?)
- William Cardinall Mash (1780-1848)
Isabella Cardinall’s will
Mary’s mother Isabella died in 1772 in her late sixties. She mentions four children in her will – sons Henry Cousens and James Cousens, and married daughters Elizabeth Garwood (Garrard in other sources) and Mary Marsh – Mary appears to be the only child from her second marriage who survived. She left very little to Henry, Elizabeth and Mary – just a shilling each. Everything else, including a vast amount of property, she left to James. This was land in Debenham, Thenting (I think the spelling of this place might be awry – I can’t find it on maps) and Winston in Suffolk, as well as in Tendring. Then again, Mary had inherited her father’s farm in Tendring, and perhaps there had been other property or land settled on her when she married, which explains the rather stingy one shilling she inherited from her mother.
Mary Whiting’s will
Mary’s aunt Mary Cardinall, who had married Thomas Whiting of Brightlingsea in 1740, died in 1780. They had had one child, a daughter born in 1747 and given the somewhat peculiar name Whiting Whiting; she died in 1749 and the Whitings had no more children. Mary left her niece her portion of a farm called Ilsents, and on Mary’s death it was to descend to her children. This seems to be part of the property which had passed to the Cardinalls from James Clarkson. One of the witnesses to the will was James Cousins – presumably Mary Mash’s half-brother.
The Mash Deeds
I’ve mentioned before on this website how intriguing it is to see the interlinked families of the Tendring Hundred in this bundle, and how the links between the Cardinalls and the Sorrells show a link between my own grandparents. The deeds concern Ilsents which, so the deeds tell us, had been the property of Charles Mash and Mary Whiting.
John and Mary Mash had mortgaged Ilsents in 1781 to Samuel Frost of Beaumont – he died in October 1781, but it meant that his executor, Leonard Nunn, became involved in the various deeds concerning Ilsents. When John Mash died in 1805, he left Ilsents to his widow for her natural life, and on her death, it was to be sold. The proceeds were to be divided between their children such that John jnr would receive £50 and the remainder was to be divided between the others. But the farm was subject to a lease for William Cardinall Mash for 21 years, at an annual rent of £34, and John senior offered Ilsents for sale to any of his children for £850.
The deeds say that Ilsents had been occupied by John Buckingham, then by James Cousins – presumably the same man who was one of the witnesses to Mary Whiting’s will and was possibly one of Mary’s half-brothers, then by John Mash senior, and in 1830, at the time the deeds were drawn up, by William Cardinall Mash. His 21-year lease would have expired, but he and Robert Thompson – surviving executor of John Mash senior’s will and husband of John’s daughter Sarah – decided to buy both moieties of Ilsents.
The deeds seem to show that in order for William Cardinall Mash and Robert Thompson to be able to purchase Ilsents, it required the involvement of forty people (37 of whom signed, 3 of whom marked), releasing the moiety to this person and that person, holding it in trust for someone else, before, finally, Bill and Bob could call Ilsents their own.
When Mary died in 1822, I wonder if she realised what a massive packet of parchment she would leave behind at the not-yet-in-existence Essex Record Office?