When their children were born, between 1808 and 1830, Thomas junior was living at Ardleigh, Essex (where he was included in the 1811 and 1821 village census, possibly along with his brother William).

By 1839 he was a Poor Law Guardian, farming at Jupes Hill, in Manningtree Road, Dedham. A report appeared in the Essex Standard of a severe gale that swept through Dedham Vale in 29 November 1838. It tore the lead from the church porch and damaged the houses of ‘A. Constable, Esq., J. Fox, Esq., Mrs. Simson, Mr. Firmin, Mr. Mason, Jupes Hill, Mr. G. Blomfield, and Mr. Constable, of Flatford Mill’. Familiar names: the first mentioned could be Abram Constable; Mrs Simson was no doubt related to the late John Simson, George Witheat’s father-in-law and partner in his Dedham wine and spirits business; Peter Firmin was a land-agent and a business partner of the Constables.

In 1851 Thomas was working 240 acres at Jupes Hill and employing four labourers. However by October that year he was advertising that he was leaving ‘in consequence of the farm being let’ and advertised his stock for auction, including cart geldings, mares, ponies, one cow and thirty-four head of swine, as well as harvest waggons, foot ploughs, iron harrows and other ‘farming tools of every description’. He also auctioned off household furniture and utensils. He was seventy-one years old and it was clearly time to retire. Jupes Hill was taken on by another farmer, but interestingly, fifty years later the bailiff here was Thomas’s brother’s grandson, Frank Roberts.

Thomas died on 26 October 1854 and was buried at Dedham. Elizabeth followed him, two years later.

Like his own parents, Thomas had a large family with Elizabeth: fifteen children in all. In fact Elizabeth must have been almost permanently pregnant between 1807 and the birth of their last child in 1830, when she was forty-seven.

Their children were:

Thomas (1808–91). He farmed at Elmstead and married Martha Barton in 1853.

Elizabeth Cooper (1810–85). She lived at Dedham and was unmarried.

George (1812–64). He lived at Deal, Kent and worked as a surgeon. In 1840 he married Sarah Ann Clayson.

William (1813–20).

Henry (1814–77). He was unemployed and described in one census as an ‘idiot’.

Harriet (1816–48). She lived at Hadleigh, Suffolk and was unmarried. She died on 17 September 1848 following a protracted illness, according to one report.

James (1817–87). He lived at Pound Farm, Dedham, run by his brother Charles. He was unmarried.

Charles (1818–92). He also lived at Pound Farm, Dedham and was a wine merchant and farmer. He was unmarried.

Anna (1820–42). She lived at Ardleigh and was unmarried.

Robert (1821–75). He travelled to London where he set up as a milliner and staw-hat maker, at Copenhagen Street, Islington. In 1846 he married Sarah Ann G. Garnham at Marylebone Church, London.

Ellen (1822–1900). She was unmarried and lived with her brothers at Pound Farm, Dedham.

Fanny (1824–84). She married Abraham Mudd in 1845. On 3 October 1845 the Chelmsford Chronicle reported that A. Mudd married Fanny, the daughter of Mr John Mason of Jupes Hill, Dedham. There is no other record of a John Mason living at Jupes Hill and she does seem to have been the daughter of Thomas, so I think this must be a mistake.

Caleb Simpson (1826–51). Caleb left home at the age of sixteen in about 1842. He died in New York in January 1851, on his way home from California, according to newspaper reports. He was a bachelor. Perhaps he had gone to California for the Gold Rush in 1849?

Emma (1828–78). She married George Mudd in 1852 and lived at Ipswich.

[William] Cooper (1830–1909). He also emigrated, to Australia in the summer of 1852. In 1859 he married Sophia Elizabeth Harvey. One possible mention of Cooper in the press was in 1896, when a William C. Mason of Victoria was taken to the petty sessions courts on a charge that he had neglected to pay an Ellen Daucker 3s 6d a week maintenance for her illegitimate child. Cooper died in July 1909 in Victoria, Australia, ‘the youngest and only remaining son of the late Thomas Mason of Jupe’s Hill Farm, Dedham, Essex, England, aged 78 years, 57 years in the colony’. It is interesting to think that he died in the twentieth century, yet his mother had been painted by John Constable over a century earlier.