THE MUDDLE FAMILIESTHE LINEAGE & HISTORY OF THE MUDDLE FAMILIES OF THE WORLD INCLUDING VARIANTS MUDDEL, MUDDELL, MUDLE & MODDLE |
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Joseph Muddle – A Dickensian Wicked Uncle?
The answer to the question posed by the title of this article depends on what motives and reasons, you think, lay behind the actions of those involved in the inheritance muddle, during the 1840s, of the Muddle family’s copyhold properties at High Hurstwood. For you to decide if Joseph Muddle was a wicked uncle, who tried to swindle his young nephews out of their rightful inheritance, in the style of characters so beloved by Dickens in his novels of the period, you will need to know something of the history of these copyhold properties.
The purchase of the properties and the first generation
The Muddle family’s copyhold properties at High Hurstwood were holden of the Manor of Framfield and their history has been gleaned from the voluminous Court Books of the manor together with the wills of the Muddle family that are all held by the East Sussex Record Office in Lewes.[1] The story starts in 1681 with the purchase, by John Muddle of Rotherfield (born 1643 and great-grandson of John Muddle the horse thief in ‘Three Elizabethan Horse Thieves’) and his wife Elizabeth, of the house and land at High Hurstwood that is now part of the property called Firstead Bank, but was known as Browns Nest when the Muddle family owned it. This purchase was recorded at the manorial court held on 19 October 1681: William Durrent of Speldhurst in Kent surrenders, a tenement, barn, garden, orchard and piece of new assart land, containing together about one acre, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted, late of Thomas Durrent and occupied by Henry Goldsmith, to John Muddle of Rotherfield for his life and then to his wife Elizabeth and then their heirs. John was a prosperous Rotherfield businessman involved in the charcoal trade. He had married Elizabeth Vincent at Wadhurst in 1676 and in two bonds dating from just after his marriage he is described as a collier, which then meant a charcoal burner or producer, and as the bonds, which were probably to do with a marriage settlement for his wife, each had a penalty of £300 (equivalent to about £35,500 today), he must have been the owner of a charcoal business, not a lowly charcoal burner working in the woods.[2] He had probably been supplying charcoal to the local iron industry, and as the charcoal fuel represented about half the cost of producing iron it must have been a considerable business at that time. The following year John purchased farmland situated a few hundred yards up the road from his house. This land is now the properties of Greystones Farm and Land End Cottages, but was then called Greystones and Browns Croft. This purchase was recorded at the manorial court held on 13 December 1682: Thomas Mathew of East Grinsted surrenders, six pieces of bond land of the Yard of Turk, called Greystones and Browns Croft, containing about 17 acres, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted, late of Burgess’ and Pickering's and sometimes Arnold's, to John Muddle. Elizabeth died in 1692, at the age of 40, but it was another twenty-three years before John died in 1716, at the age of 72. They were both buried in Rotherfield Churchyard. John had been a yeoman, meaning that he was a small scale land owner of the middling class, with a status below that of a gentleman, but still a respected member of the community with obligations to serve in the lower levels of local administration, in positions such as churchwarden and headboro (parish constable). Probate of John’s will valued his personal estate (movable goods) at £37 17s 0d (equivalent to about £4,500 today), so he had probably lived a comfortable but modest life.[3]
The second generation
John’s will had left all his property to his only surviving son, another John, with an obligation to pay his only surviving daughter, Anne, a yearly income of 50 shillings. This second John married Susanna Gilbert at Withyham in 1719 and they had seven children. It is from the year that the last of these children was born, 1734, that we have an indication that the Muddle family owned freehold property as well as the copyhold property that we are considering, for in that year John was recorded as voting in the election held at Chichester for two Members of Parliament to represent Sussex, and the qualification to be a voter was to be a male aged between 21 and 70 and to own freehold land with a minimum value of 40 shillings annual rental. Ten years later John inherited from his sister Anne a copyhold cottage and one rood of land that adjoined the western boundary of his Browns Nest property. Then two years later John was fined three pence at the manorial court held on 14 October 1746 for encroaching on the waste of the manor by two plots containing one rood (quarter acre). A further ten years later John was fined four pence for again encroaching on the waste of the manor, this time by one plot containing 12 perches and a hop garden containing 12 perches. These encroachments are only about half the size of the earlier ones, but are probably in part at least the same land; this was land lying next to the southern boundary of his Browns Nest property. The following year John’s occupation of these two small plots of land was regularized at the court held on 5 October 1757 when he paid 15 shillings to the Lord of the Manor to be admitted as the copyholder of these lands. This may seem to be a lot of detail about two fairly insignificant plots of land, but nearly a century later they were to be critical in Joseph failing in his attempt to swindle his nephews out of their inheritance.
John’s wife Susanna had died earlier in 1757, and then seven years later John died in 1764, at the age of 80. They were buried side-by-side in two graves in St Margaret’s Churchyard at Buxted close to the south door, a privileged position at that time. Their two headstones made of local sandstone are still there, though somewhat eroded and difficult to read. John’s will, which he had made in 1744, twenty years before his death, left bequests of money, totalling £55 (equivalent to about £5,500 today), to each of his children except his eldest son, yet another John, who inherited all the remainder of his father’s estate including all his property.[4] There was a tradition in this Muddle family that the eldest son was called John, which continued unbroken for seven generations spanning 208 years from 1616 to 1824 (from the grandson of John the horse thief to the son of Joseph).
The third generation
This third John had married Ann Olive at St Margaret’s Church in Buxted in 1747 but they failed to produce any children. Five years after he had inherited his father’s property John sold the cottage and land that his father had inherited from his sister. This sale was recorded at the manorial court held on 6 December 1769 when John Booker, a cordwainer (shoemaker), was admitted to the property. Richard Booker, one of the sons of this John Booker, was in 1811 to marry Joseph Muddle’s eldest sister, Dorothy, and one of their sons was to start accumulating property in High Hurstwood at the same time as the long-owned Muddle property was to pass from the family’s ownership. John died in 1777, at the age of 55, and in his will he made bequests of money, totalling £26, to his sisters and a niece, with the rest of his estate, including all his property, to be for the use of his wife Ann during her lifetime, and then to be for the use of his brother Isaac for his lifetime, and to be finally inherited by Isaac’s eldest son, John, and his heirs.[5] At the manorial court held on 21 June 1777 Ann was admitted to her husband’s copyhold properties. But Ann was only to survive her husband by just over a year; she died at Loose in Kent during September 1778. With Ann’s death John’s brother Isaac was admitted to the property at the manorial court held on 4 July 1780. Isaac had married Elizabeth Weeks at Framfield Church in 1763 and they had three children, all sons, before Elizabeth’s early death in 1772. The following year Isaac married 41-year-old spinster Sarah Wildish at Framfield Church, but there were not to be any children from this marriage. It was Isaac’s grandson Isaac Muddle, the second son of Isaac’s second son, Isaac, who was to migrate to Australia in 1838 (see ‘Bounty Migrants – Australia Bound’), and who was a first cousin and neighbour of Joseph Muddle, the subject of this article. Isaac the migrant, and his family, had been living in the house, owned by Richard Booker and numbered 152 on the tithe map, which lay at the bottom of the orchard that formed part of the Muddle property of Browns Nest. Thirty-five years after his second marriage Isaac died, in 1807 at the age of 76. His wife Sarah died the following year, also aged 76.
The fourth generation and the start of the decline in the family fortunes
With Isaac’s death the copyhold property at High Hurstwood, as required by the will of his brother John, was to pass to his eldest son, yet another John, and this was recorded at a manorial court held on 23 June 1809. This John had married Mary Gates at Buxted Church in 1790 and they had nine children, two of whom, both sons, died in infancy, one being their eldest son, John. This left them with two surviving sons, the eldest was Joseph, the subject of this article, and the other was William, who was probably always of a delicate or sickly constitution. William had been privately baptised when he was born, which was normally only preformed when a child was not expected to live long enough to be baptised in church, and his father in his will made special provision for William not to surviving him as William then had consumption. The decline in the Muddle family’s fortunes may well have started before John inherited the property, but it’s during his tenancy that we have documentary evidence of this. It probably started with the family over-extending itself during the good times for farmers during the Napoleonic Wars, when the government’s purchase of produce for the army produced high prices and a ready market. But with the ending of the wars, with victory at Waterloo in 1815, the market for farm produce collapsed and this coincided with a period of particularly bad summer weather that ruined harvests, producing a very lean time for farmers. But whatever the reason, the finances of the Muddle family must have been in a bad way, because at the manorial court held 19 April 1816 it was recorded that John Muddle had mortgaged his copyhold farmland of Greystones to John Moon of Mayfield for £200 (equivalent to about £10,000 today) at 5% interest. The poor financial state of farming during this period is illustrated by farmers cutting the wages of their farm labourers, which they could do because the rising population was producing a surplus of labour, and this eventually lead to the Swing Riots of 1830-31, when about 850 East Sussex men were sentenced to everything from execution to transportation and varying terms of imprisonment. This disruption probably didn’t directly affect the Muddle family, as it’s thought that during this period they didn’t employ any labourers, all the work on the farm being done by family members. During the 1820s and 30s John’s two surviving sons and three of his daughters married, and it seems that John’s sons when they married, Joseph to Sarah Gaston in 1823 and William to Mary Curd in 1833, continued to live with their parents at Browns Nest. In the census of 1841 Browns Nest was recorded as divided into two, with Joseph and his wife and eight of his children living in one part, and John and his wife Mary (who was away on census night looking after a granddaughter who had recently given birth to an illegitimate daughter) with their son William and his wife and three children and one of Joseph’s sons in the other section; a total of seventeen people, ranging in age from 3 months to 75 years, crammed into a relatively small property. The Buxted Parish tithe map of 1840 shows that as well as the copyhold property he had inherited from his father, John owned a plot of land numbered 1299 that was a pasture called Beards Field of nearly 3 acres that he treated as part of his Browns Nest property, which must have been freehold, as there is no record of it as copyhold property in the manorial court books. This was probably the last remnant of the freehold property that John’s grandfather must have owned to qualify to vote back in 1734. The tithe map shows that the total area of Browns Nest was 4 acres 1 rood 39 perches on which the tithe rent was 18s 6d, and the total area of Greystones, which was mostly arable land, was 19 acres 2 roods 32 perches on which the tithe rent was £3 8s 6d. So the tithe map was showing the area of Greystones as nearly 3 acres bigger than the 17 acres recorded in the manorial court books, and this was to be a factor in Joseph being able to make the manorial court believe that he had inherited all his father’s property.
The family’s decline becomes deadly
It was probably the ever increasing number of mouths to feed in the three generations of Muddles living at Browns Nest, Joseph and Sarah in particular producing fifteen children, from the same limited amount of land, which produced conditions that lead to a spate of deaths in the family during the early 1840s. It started with the death of William’s young son Stephen (John’s grandson) from inflammation of the brain, aged ten months, just six days before Christmas 1841. Then just over two months later John’s wife Mary died suddenly on 5 February 1842, at the age of 72, and a coroner’s inquest was held which came to the very non-medical conclusion that Mary’s death was due to a ‘Visitation of God’, presumably meaning that it was due to unexpected natural causes, such as a sudden heart attack or a stroke. Then later that year on 11 September 1842 Joseph’s young daughter Adelaide (John’s granddaughter) died of cholera, when only 5 months old. This seems to have prompted John to make his will, which he did on 16 December 1842. This will made the following bequests:[6] Copyhold barn and land called Greystones, of about 20 acres, to son Joseph Muddle and his heirs, subject to the payment of £200 to John Moon and the payment of £50 within 12 months to daughter Mary the wife of Henry Keley. To daughter Dorothy, wife of Richard Booker, land of about 12 perches on part of which she has built a house, this being part of my copyhold tenement which pays yearly one penny. All freehold and copyhold buildings and land of about 5 acres called Browns Nest, except small plot given to Dorothy Booker, to son William Muddle, and then on his death to be equally divided between his sons John Muddle and Charles Muddle, but if these grandsons die before me or die under 21 years of age without leaving lawful issue, this bequest to go to my son Joseph Muddle; this bequest is subject to the payment of £40 to Dorothy Booker within 12 months. The executors named in the will were John’s two sons Joseph and William, and the land on which John’s daughter Dorothy had built a house was one of the small plots of land that John’s grandfather had purchased the tenancy of after being fined for encroachment. A few months after making his will, John, on 27 February 1843, re-mortgaged his Greystones property with Benjamin Minns for £210 at 5% interest and paid off the £200 mortgage he had taken out with John Moon. John’s son William had three sons, the youngest of whom had already died, and one daughter who was born on 16 March 1843. Then just 14 days after the birth of his daughter, and just over a month after his father had re-mortgaged Greystones, William died on 30 March 1843, at the age of 33, of consumption (tuberculosis), a disease that William had probably had all or most of his life, and had passed on to his wife and three of his children. Now under the terms of John’s will William’s two surviving young sons should inherit Browns Nest, and Joseph was left as the sole surviving executor of the will. John was only to survive his son William by just over three months, he died on 16 July 1843, at the age of 78, and he was buried three days later in St Margaret’s Churchyard at Buxted, where many family members had already been buried and many more were to be in the future. No cause of death was given on John’s death certificate, the relevant section being left blank. Probate of John’s will was granted to his sole surviving son and executor, Joseph, by South Malling Peculiar Court on 2 November1843.
The fifth generation and the start of the inheritance muddle
It’s now that the muddle over the inheritance, or rather more likely the scheming by Joseph to get his hands on all his late father’s property, starts. What Joseph, now the sole executor, should have done was go to the manorial court with a copy of his father’s will and have his sister admitted to the 12 perches of land on which she had built a house; his two nephews, the sons of his brother William, admitted to the tenement of Browns Nest and the other 12 perches of land attached to it but treated as a separate property by the manorial court; and have himself admitted to Greystones. This would have meant that Joseph, having inherited Greystones, would have had to take on the mortgage of £210, which was on the Greystones property, and also pay his sister Mary her inheritance of £50; and his nephews, having inherited Browns Nest, would have had to pay his sister Dorothy her inheritance of £40. It seems fairly certain that Joseph would not have had £50 to give his sister and no assets on which to raise it as his inheritance of Greystones was already fully mortgaged. So he faced losing his inheritance as he had no way of taking it up without becoming bankrupt. His way of getting out of this situation seems to have been that if he could also get his hands on Browns Nest, which was free of any mortgage but subject to a payment of £40 to his sister Dorothy, he could mortgage Browns Nest for £90 and pay both his sisters their inheritances. He would then also have all the property, even if it was all heavily mortgaged. The normal procedure when the tenant of a copyhold property died, was that the manorial court would note this and issue a proclamation for the rightful heir to come forward and produce evidence of their right to inherit the property, either by virtue of being the eldest surviving son, as this was the customary right of inheritance in Framfield Manor, or by producing a copy of a will if the property had been made subject to the uses of a will. John had surrendered all his copyhold property to the uses specified in his will back at the manorial court held on 23 June 1809 that had also granted him admission to these properties.
So at the manorial court held on 19 June 1844 John’s death was noted and the first proclamation for a claim on his properties of Browns Nest and Greystones was made, but as was normal the court didn’t use the current names of these properties but the descriptions that it had used since the first granting of copyhold on these properties. For Browns Nest the proclamation was for a claim on: A tenement, barn, garden, orchard and piece of new assart land, containing together about one acre, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted paying yearly 4d, held by the late John Muddle. For Greystones the proclamation was for a claim on: Six parcels of bond land of the Yard of Turk, called Greystones and Browns Croft, containing about 17 acres, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted paying yearly 2s 5d, held by the late John Muddle. Joseph made a claim on these two properties, and as his evidence that he was the rightful inheritor he produced a copy of an extract from his father’s will: I give my copyhold barn and land called Greystones in the Parish of Buxted containing 20 acres to my eldest son Joseph Muddle and his heirs, subject to the payment of the sum of £200 to John Moon on a conditional surrender made of the said lands called Greystones. I also subject my said copyhold lands called Greystones with the payment of £50 to my daughter Mary the wife of Henry Keley within 12 months of my death. The critical point here is that the court seems to have normally accepted extracts of wills as proof and didn’t require to see the full will, presumably because of the costs involved in copying long wills in those days of clerks and quill pens, long before the era of photocopiers. We all know how easy it is to distort the meaning of any statement if it is quoted out of context, and in this case Joseph chose not to disclose the section of his father’s will bequeathing Browns Nest to his brother William’s sons, relying presumably on his father’s statement that Joseph was inheriting 20 acres; then the accepted acreage of Greystone, to the nearest acre, shown on the tithe map, as more than fully covering the combined acreage of the two properties as described in the court records. The court duly admitted Joseph to these properties on his payment of 16s 6d to the Lord of the Manor. At the same court Joseph and his wife Sarah then conditionally surrender (mortgage) these properties to Benjamin Minns for £90 at 5% interest, this being in addition to the existing mortgage of £210 on Greystones from Benjamin, so Benjamin would have considered the £90 to be a mortgage on the additional property of Browns Nest. With this £90 Joseph would have paid his two sisters their inheritances, and they were to prove to be the only ones to significantly gain from their father’s estate.
The start of Joseph’s downfall
What seems to have escaped Joseph’s attention was that at the same court held on 19 June 1844 another proclamation was made for a claim on: A plot of land of 12 perches abutting the land formerly of John Muddle on the north and Hayerst Wood on the east, west & south, and a hop garden laying opposite the aforesaid land containing 12 perches, formerly part of the waste of the manor, and paying yearly 1d, held by the late John Muddle. Nobody came forward to make a claim, and within four years this was to be the undoing of Joseph’s plan to hold onto the Muddle property. What must have helped Joseph greatly with his plan was that his brother William’s widow was, at the time of the manorial court, gravely ill, and just two days after the court was held she died of consumption on 21 June 1844, aged only 31. This left her three children orphans, and the youngest, little Sarah Ann, whose father had only known her for 14 days before his death, died three weeks later, also from consumption, when only 17 months old. The two surviving sons of William, John aged 10 and Charles aged 7, were now two young orphan boys at the mercy of their uncle Joseph’s scheming, but as was to be proved later, not entirely friendless. The manorial court issued a second proclamation for someone to claim the two plots of land of 12 perches and this must have come to the notice of Joseph’s sister Dorothy because at the manorial court held on 17 June 1846 the court made its third proclamation for: A plot of land of 12 perches with the messuage thereon abutting the land formerly of John Muddle on the north and Hayerst Wood on the east, west & south, being part of the tenement late Muddle's and formerly part of the waste of the manor, paying yearly 1d. Dorothy went to the court and claimed this plot of 12 perches as that on which she had built her house, which is today known as The Cottage and is next-door to Firstead Bank (formerly Browns Nest). Actually Dorothy was claiming inheritance of the wrong plot of 12 perches; her house had been built on the hop garden of 12 perches, which the tithe map of 1840 shows had by then grown to 39 perches. This seems to be an instance of the Muddle family encroaching on the waste of the manor and getting away with it. As proof of her inheritance Dorothy produced another extract of her father’s will: Also I give to my daughter Dorothy the wife of Richard Booker and her heirs, all that piece of land containing 12 perches, on part of which she has built a house, being part of my copyhold tenement at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted, late Muddle's paying yearly 1d. Dorothy was duly admitted on payment of 6d to the Lord of the Manor, and as this was only half of the tenancy on which the yearly rent was 1d the same court split the rent equally between the 12 perches that Dorothy had been admitted to and the plot of 12 perches that was still unclaimed. The fact that this last plot of John Muddle’s land was still unclaimed was most likely reported to Joseph by Dorothy, as it seems very likely that they were both involved in the scam by this time. But for some reason instead of Joseph going to the court to claim this plot as part of his supposed inheritance of Browns Nest, which he had inadvertently overlooked, he instead had his young nephews go and claim it, when a year later at the manorial court held on 17 June 1846 the third proclamation was made of any claim on: A hop garden containing 12 perches in Buxted, laying opposite to land late Muddle's and now Booker's, being the residue of a tenement late Muddle's and formerly part of the waste of the manor, paying yearly 0.5d. The court record shows John Muddle and Charles Muddle, grandsons of the late tenant John Muddle, came before the court and produced an extract of the will of John Muddle dated 16 December 1842, where he disposed of the said premises as follows: I give all my freehold and copyhold messuage buildings and lands containing about 5 acres called Browns Nest (except the said small plot given to my daughter Dorothy Booker) to my son William Muddle, or if he has died to his sons John Muddle and Charles Muddle as tenants in common. If both these grandsons die before age 21 without issue, the premises to go to my son Joseph Muddle. Subject to that I charge the said Browns Nest with paying the sum of £40 to my daughter Dorothy Booker within 12 months of my death. The court record then shows that John Muddle the grandson and Charles Muddle were admitted to the said premises (their father William Muddle having died) as tenants in common and not as joint tenants, on payment of 3d. At the same court Joseph Muddle and Dorothy Booker are appointed guardians of John Muddle the grandson and Charles Muddle until they reach 21 years of age, they being minors, that is John Muddle is 13 years old and Charles Muddle is 10 years old.
The scam is exposed
Even though the court had now been presented with the part of John’s will that showed that his grandsons should have inherited the whole of Browns Nest, not just the section of 12 perches, it seems that Joseph and Dorothy hoped to stifle any questions by becoming the children’s guardians. But this was not to be as this is where the friend of young John and Charles, who was postulated earlier, comes into the action. Who he was we don’t know, probably it was either the clerk who kept the court records, or possibly the Steward of the Manor who controlled the workings of the court for the Lord of the Manor, but whoever he was he must have examined all the entries in the court book relating to the inheritance of John’s lands and realized that the court had been misled into admitting Joseph to property that should have gone to his nephews. This results in Joseph’s scheme completely unravelling and the whole resultant mess was sorted out at a manorial court held on 14 November 1850. First the court sorts out the ownership of Browns Nest, which it recorded as follows: Joseph Muddle surrenders, a tenement, barn, garden, orchard and piece of new assart land, containing together about one acre, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted paying yearly 4d. To which said premises the said Joseph Muddle was erroneously admitted on the death of his father John Muddle as forming part of the property called Greystones but which have since been ascertained to belong to Browns Nest bequeathed by the said John Muddle to his grandsons John Muddle and Charles Muddle. John Muddle and Charles Muddle admitted as tenants in common and not as joint tenants, on payment of 2s. As Joseph was no longer the tenant of Browns Nest, Benjamin Minns who had given a mortgage of £90 to Joseph on this property would have demanded immediate repayment, and as the only asset that Joseph had was the Greystones property on which another mortgage of £210 was owed to Benjamin Minns, his only recourse was to find a buyer for Greystones who would offer enough to pay off both mortgages. This Joseph managed to do as the court recorded: Joseph Muddle surrenders for the consideration of the purchase money of £300, six pieces of bond land of the Yard of Turk, called Greystones and Browns Croft, containing about 17 acres, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted paying yearly 2s 5d. Now in the occupation of the said Joseph Muddle, bounded, on the east by the High Road leading to Crowborough, on the north by land of the Earl of Liverpool, on the south by the waste, and running to a point on the west. To the use of Joseph Martin farming bailiff of Buxted and his heirs. Joseph Martin admitted on payment of 16s 6d. The court then goes on to record Joseph’s repayment of the mortgages: Benjamin Minns acknowledges satisfaction in payment of £210 and interest on a conditional surrender made by John Muddle on the 27 February 1843, and also in payment of £90 and interest on a conditional surrender made by Joseph Muddle and his wife Sarah on the 19 June 1844. The aftermath of resolving of the inheritance muddle
Joseph is now theoretically homeless and without the means of making a living, but things don’t turn out too badly for him. Joseph and his sister Dorothy were still presumably the guardians of their two nephews as there is no court record that revokes this, and the following year in the census of 30 March 1851 Joseph with his wife and five of their children are still living at Browns Nest with the youngest of his nephews, Charles aged 14. The elder nephew, John aged 17, was now a live-in farm labourer to Joseph Wickens at Brook House. Joseph described himself in this census as a farmer of 25 acres so he must have still been farming all the Browns Nest and Greystones land, and this is confirmed by a mortgage that the new owner of Greystones took out in 1851 which stated that Joseph was the occupier. After both Joseph’s nephews came of age, in fact when the youngest was 22 years old they sold Browns Nest for £50 (£25 each) – a sale price that is equivalent to about £3,300 today for a property that has a current market value of about 200 times that. Their sale of Browns Nest was recorded at the manorial court held on 23 June 1859: John Muddle on the 17 March 1859 and Charles Muddle on the 13 May 1859 surrendered in consideration of the purchase money of £50, a hop garden of 12 perches paying yearly 0.5d, and also a tenement, barn, garden, orchard and piece of new assart land, containing together about one acre, at Hayerst Wood in the Parish of Buxted paying yearly 4d. To the use of Albert Henry Hills of 66 Moorgate Street in the City of London. Albert Henry Hills admitted on payment of 2s 3d. Thus ended the Muddle family’s ownership of Browns Nest after 177 years and six generations. The family had owned Greystones for 168 years and five generations. But the family’s involvement with Browns Nest was not yet at an end because Albert Hills did not initially live there after he purchased it. Joseph and Sarah continued to live there, and in the census of 7 April 1861 they were living in one part of Browns Nest with four of their sons and an illegitimate grandson, and the other part of the house was occupied by their son James and his family. Joseph was now a farmer of just six acres, so he was no longer occupying and farming Greystones. Their daughter Harriet married Henry Wilmshurst in 1863 and replaced James and his family in his part of the house. Then the following year Sarah died on 6 October 1864, at the age of 59, from gangrene of the hand. Joseph continued to live at Browns Nest for another eighteen months until his death on 22 April 1866, at the age of 66. This was not quite the end of the Muddles at Browns Nest because the census of 2 April 1871 records that Henry and Harriet Wilmshurst were living there with four of their children, and also Henry’s mother, Harriet’s illegitimate son Henry Muddle, and Joseph’s youngest son, Albert Muddle, who was Harriet’s brother. The Muddle family’s connection with Browns Nest came to an end sometime during the 1870s, because at the next census, taken on 3 April 1881, Albert Henry Hills was in residence and has changed the property’s name to The Nest. It was probably before he moved in that he had a major extension and other alterations done to the house that changed it drastically from how the Muddle family knew it for so long, but some features that they would recognize still remain, the adze-cut panelling on one wall of the living room where there are also traces of an Elizabethan painting above the great oak beam of the inglenook fireplace.
Charles, the younger of Joseph's nephews, married his second cousin Sarah Charity Muddle in 1858, which was the year before he and his brother sold Browns Nest. Charles and Sarah lived initially at Hadlow Down before moving to Buxted, and they had nine children. Charles worked as a carter and farm labour until on 18 May 1878 he died at the relatively young age of 41. John, the eldest of Joseph's nephews, served in the army for ten years between 1856 and 1866, much of this time being in India. On leaving the army he settled in Uckfield where, at the age of 42, he married young widow Frances Wheatley in 1876. They lived in the New Town area of Uckfield; had five children and John worked as a carman and labourer. John died on 22 April 1889, aged 55, and was buried in Uckfield Cemetery. Both Charles and John died of phthisis (otherwise known as consumption or tuberculosis), the deadly inheritance from their father that had also killed their little sister and their mother. Just as Charles and John had been reduced to being labourers working for others, so at this time, the second half of the 19th century, had most of the other many descendents of prosperous John and Elizabeth, who had first purchased property at High Hurstwood back in 1681.
Was Joseph a wicked uncle?
We must return to the question posed in the title of this article, was Joseph the wicked uncle trying to deprive his two young nephews of their rightful inheritance? I, one of Joseph’s many great-great-grandsons, think that he was. I tend to this way of thinking partly because in directories of 1855 and 1862 Joseph had himself listed as a farmer of what he called High Hurstwood Farm.[7] Normally it was only much more substantial farmers than Joseph then was that had themselves listed in directories. This leads me to think that he had delusions of grandeur way above the situation that the Muddle family had been reduced to in the early Victorian era, and would have done anything to hold onto the position of respected yeoman farmer that the family had enjoyed in earlier and more prosperous days. Even after he had lost title to the property I suspect that Joseph dominated his nephews, who were probably sickly with the consumption they had inherited from their father, and that was how he managed to stay on at Browns Nest. A more generous view would be that it was all a muddle generated by illiterate people, as none of the adults of the family involved during the 1840s and 50s could write or probably read; they only made their mark when signing official documents such as birth and death certificates. My opinion is that the sequence of events is too logical for that, and it’s only at the end, when Joseph slips up in not claiming the last small plot of land that his lack of education shows, and results in his downfall. But you dear reader may have a more sympathetic opinion of Joseph’s character, and see him as a man struggling against the odds to maintain some semblance of the prosperity and status of his ancestors. [1] ESRO ADA/114-136 Framfield Manor Court Books for 1675-1925. [2] ESRO SAS/G30/36 & SAS/G30/37, bonds from the Archive of the Gage family of Firle. [3] ESRO W/SM/D5/p267, Will of John Muddle of Buxted proved 1716 by Deanery of South Malling. [4] ESRO W/SM/D8/p267, Will of John Muddle of Buxted proved 1764 by Deanery of South Malling. [5] ESRO W/SM/D9/p227, Will of John Muddle of Buxted proved 1777 by Deanery of South Malling. [6] ESRO W/SM/D13/p14, Will of John Muddle of Buxted proved 1843 by Deanery of South Malling. [7] ESRO Kelly’s Directory of Sussex 1855; Post Office Directory of Sussex 1862.
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