George Witheat was bequeathed his partner’s wine and spirit business – ‘on condition that he pays the sum of twenty pound a piece over and above the value of the stock of liquor and all the implements and utensils’ – and continued as a wine merchant on the death of John Simson in April 1793. As John Simson had in the years up to his death, George continued supplying St Mary’s church with wine and there are various entries in the Dedham church warden’s accounts, payments to Mr Witheat for wine, of three to four pounds every couple of months. In 1802 George’s name appears for the first time in the ledger as a church warden.

George and Phoebe’s daughter, my 3xgreat grandmother Phoebe Simson Wilmar Witheat, was born in 1793 but would barely have known her mother, as in June 1797 she died, when Phoebe was just four or five years old. 

On 9 October the following year, 1798, George was married for a second time, to Sarah Simson, spinster of Wickham St Paul, Suffolk (not far from Dedham). Judging by Dedham baptism records, this would appear to be the sister of his deceased wife: 

Phebe Simson baptised  18 July 1771, Dedham, daughter of John and Phebe Simson

Sarah Simson baptised 6 November 1773, Dedham, daughter of Jno and Phebe Simson

Until the 1835 Marriage Act, which hardened the law into an absolute prohibition, marrying a deceased wife’s sister was possible, although frowned upon by the clergy. Perhaps as the first marriage had lasted barely five years, it was deemed acceptable – or perhaps it was because George supplied the church with wine that encouraged the vicar to turn a blind eye?

Either way, George and Sarah Witheat soon had two daughters, both baptised at Dedham. 

The first was Mary Mulley Witheat (1800–60). In 1821 at Dedham she married John Jowett Stevens, the second master of the Royal Grammar School at Norwich. With his death the following year, she remarried at Dedham in 1830, to William Stebbing Sadler (1803–60) of Little Horkesley. They lived at Langham and had a large family.

The second daughter was Sarah Witheat (1803–49). She married Robert Whalley, a relative of the Constable family (see below).

George Witheat sounds like a kindly man, involved in the parish poor relief. On 6 January 1827, he wrote to Mr Baker, churchwarden of Chelmsford, on behalf of a Robert Griffith of Dedham:

who has requested me to write, His living very near me enables me to speak with confidence of His Character and earnest endeavours to maintain His family He works hard and is himself but a weakley man added to which His Eldest daughter has been exceedingly ill this has thrown Him back [...] He is deservedly respected here and with some assistance will I think do.

Griffith had received occasional relief payments to the amount of one pound in the year ending on Lady Day 1827, as noted in the Essex Pauper Letters, 1731–1837.

George must have done well for himself as a wine and spirits merchant, for on his death in 1844 he owned the Marlborough Head public house in Dedham, along with other property and land in the area, no doubt including the school lodging house in the village high street, where the elderly couple lived. 

The Marlborough Head had been run as an inn for at least a century. In September 1826 the pub sign was believed to have been painted by John Dunthorne, the local plumber and glazier turned painter and tutor to the young John Constable. Was this commissioned by George? He certainly had a connection with the Constables (see below) and Constable mentions Dunthorne painting ‘a large sign of the Duke of Marlborough’ in his correspondence. In 1844 George rented the inn to a James Ransome but forty-five years earlier, at the turn of the century, the landlord at the Marlborough Head was John Tayler – almost certainly my 4xgreat grandfather (1746–1815). So it would seem two of my direct ancestors owned or ran the Marlborough Head between the 1790s and 1840s.

George Witheat was laid to rest with his first wife by the path to the main door, on the north side of the church. His widow survived him by several years and died at the age of eighty-one in 1853. George was for many years a churchwarden at Dedham, and ‘claviger’ (curator) of the Dedham Trust, according to his memorial in the chancel, placed there as a ‘token of affectionate respect’ after his death by his friend the Reverend Grimwood Taylor. After George’s death two auctions were held to dispose of his property. First to go was his ‘very excellent household furniture’ and ‘a very superior Cottage Piano-forte’ and everything from plate, linen, wines, spirits, china and glass to brewing and dairy utensils, horses, ponies, cows, swine, carriages, harness, farming stock, hay, straw and manure.

The following month, another auction took place, offering some ‘eligible investments in several small estates in the parish of Dedham, late the property of Mr. George Witheat, deceased,’ so ran the notice in the Essex Standard of 3 May 1844. 

On Friday, the 31st of May, 1844, at Twelve o’clock at Noon, at the Marlborough Head Inn,  Dedham, by direction of the Trustees under the Will of the said Mr. Witheat, in the following Lots:- Lot 1. That old-established and well-frequented Free Public and Commercial House known as the Marlborough Head, now in the occupation of Mr. James Ransome, a highly respectable and responsible tenant.

Aside from the inn – with its eight ‘roomy bed chambers’, a brewery, commercial room and various parlours, and enough stables to accommodate twelve horses – the auction comprised six more lots. These included arable land, enclosures, gardens, a barn, a ‘substantial brick-and-tile dwelling house’ and a share in a bonded warehouse in Colchester. 

The Whalley and Constable Families

George Witheat was also connected to the Constable family of East Bergholt through marriage, if not also trade. In about October 1794 John Constable’s sister Martha (1769–1845), on a visit to London, met and married Nathaniel Whalley (1765–1838), who was in business with his father Daniel (born c.1733), a cheesemonger and wholesaler at 15 Aldgate High Street. Martha went to live with Nathaniel at his home in the Minories and later, with their children Daniel Constable (born 1806) and Alicia (1808), at Temple House, East Ham. Nathaniel continued to work in the city where his office was used for the transmission and reception of packages sent by boat to or from East Bergholt. This was perhaps via the shipping concern run by his father-in-law, Golding Constable.

Robert Whalley (1792–1859, the son of Nathaniel’s brother John), entered the business and certainly passed through East Bergholt on occasion: ‘a fine spirited fellow’, Ann Constable wrote after his first visit in April 1815. In 1821 (the year Constable exhibited his most famous Suffolk painting, The Hay Wain) Nathaniel retired and brought his family to live at a house opposite Dedham Mill, handing over the reins of the London business to his nephew Robert.

It would not perhaps be unusual for a wine merchant to have some interest in the supply of cheeses, and George Witheat may well have traded with Robert Whalley in Aldgate or used the wholesale operation to bring wines and spirits up to Dedham. Before long, in May 1824, no doubt with George’s vigorous approval, his daughter Sarah married Robert, becoming, as had Martha, a ‘London relation’. 

The Whalleys, living at Loughton or Stratford, were in regular touch with the Witheats at Dedham and Constables at East Bergholt. Martha, writing to her brother in London on 22 June 1831, suggests that 

The Shannon coach will certainly suit you best – & your plan of taking the whole inside is excellent & recommended by Mrs. Robert Whalley [Sarah] who adopts the same when she comes to Dedham with her young family – now five  – they will probably pass you on their way back to Stratford Green from Mr. Witheats.’

And the following month: ‘Mrs. Witheat knows a person at Colchester famous for something which cures the ringworm’! 

By 1840, Robert Whalley had also retired from the business and moved the family to Brantham Hall, on the Suffolk side of the Stour. Sarah Whalley died at the age of forty-seven on 9 May 1849, after giving birth to at least eleven children (the last of whom was still-born in January 1848). Robert died in 1851. They are buried together at Brantham. It is of note that Constable was responsible for the alter painting at the church here (1805).