The Illedge Maddox Family of Shropshire

Illedge Maddox owned extensive lands in the vicinity of Withington (as had his father and grandfather,  all of the same name) near Shrewsbury including a malthouse and farm in Withington itself. He was described by Stebbing Shaw as ‘Attorney At Law and Master Extraordinary’.  The latter title places him as an official of the Chancery Court. His daughter Damaris married a surgeon Benjamin Kennedy (see more about them here) in 1769 at St Matthew’s Church, Walsall. In those times it was expected (though not always the outcome) that a young woman take someone of equivalent social status as a husband.  Thus it seems yet more likely that Benjamin’s father was a man of the legal profession too.

The Maddoxes were numerous in the Shrewsbury area during the 1600s and 1700s judging by documentary evidence from the Shrewsbury Archives.  The name is Anglicised Welsh – meaning ‘son of Madoc’.  Welsh people using this patronymic derived it from ‘ap Madoc’ and were claiming their descent from the last independent prince of Powys,  Madoc who ruled in mediaeval times.  It was to this Madoc that the Welsh leader Owain Glyn Dwr traced his lineage and justified his assumption,  in 1400, of the title “Prince of Wales”.  Glyn Dwr’s home of Sycharth is close to Shropshire and he served as a squire in his youth at Chirk Castle a few miles away.  During the height of his powers when he struck a treaty with Mortimer and Percy against Henry IV, he laid claim to these lands as part of the lands of Wales.

The documents relating to Illedge Maddox refer to some associates still in Wales at the time. Shrewsbury is very close to the border with Wales.  There is a document in Birmingham Archives which describes Illedge Maddox as being sued for a substantial sum of money in the 1780s which makes subsequent events seem unlikely to say the least.  There is also a note held amongst Kennedy family papers describing Maddox as having made himself a bit of a nuisance asking for some sort of post of Lord Vernon.

Very much is known about the way of life led by Maddox’s grandfather and his neighbours because of the survival of a book by one Richard Gough,  called ‘The History of Myddle’,  written in 1701.  Gough was of another old Anglo-Welsh family (the name is derived from the Welsh ‘Coch’,  meaning ‘Red’.  More than half of his neighbours had Welsh names.  Welsh people in his narrative frequently moved back and forth without regard for old border.  The names of the villages of Welsh Shropshire speak of the ethnic mixture of the county – names such as Welsh Frankton,  Maesbury Marsh, Welsh End, Street Dinas, Welshampton.

Gough gave a detailed and graphic indeed an often unflattering portrait of the area,  interspersed with latin homilies – he was a man of great education,  familiar with the classics,  and one can only surmise that others of his fellow yeomen were too.  He sadly described the frequent drunkenness and moral degradation of many men and women of the area – though he might not notice much change in that department during our own times.  He described lengthy, pointless and very costly disputes over boundaries between minor landowners such as himself – which of course led to increased business for Maddox’s profession.  Gough frequently describes well-to-do families losing their fortune due to drink.  Even men of the cloth were not immune to moral lapses and are counted among those begetting ‘bastards’ by one or other of the local women – many of whom were supported by the charity of the local parish – to Gough’s chagrin.

The Salopians of those times were a vigorous people who would happily tear down their house and move it themselves to a more inviting spot.  They inhabited beautiful countryside which remains largely unspoilt today – Telford excepted.  Their society was one which would support those in the community who had fallen on hard times.  It is important to note that in his more critical passages Gough was not writing a diatribe against his neighbours – he was simply endeavouring to paint an honest portrait and he seemed aware that his book would last long after his death because he seems to address the audience of posterity.  He wrote movingly of people struck down by terrible illnesses,  whilst the medical practitioners or ‘chirurgeons’ looked on,  ill-equipped to deal with the calamity.  He also portrayed superstitions ruling people’s thoughts,  indeed he showed that he himself believed those superstitions. 

It is true to say that he was describing a way of life common at the start of the 1700s to the people of Cheshire,  Warwickshire, Staffordshire and beyond.  Gough speaks of people from all those counties settling in his parish.  The local yeomanry that Gough represents are the same social group as the Dolphins of Yardley and Shenstone,  the Ranns of Birmingham.  They did not have coats of arms and they did not take part in the Capital social scene like the noble lords and ladies who were the absentee owners of much of the land in their country.  They could however show long genealogies dating back at least to Tudor times and even further.  They were the local leaders of their communities.

Paradoxically the yeomen of England often had more money than the lower tiers of the nobility, because they were earning themselves a living instead of idling,  socialising and relying on rack-renting a resentful peasantry like their supposed betters.  They did not fritter their money away on social extravagances – though they sometimes frittered it away on women and beer.  These Midland middle classes were taking advantage of the new ideas that were flowing into the area that would eventually lead to the industrialisation of Birmingham.  They practised cattle farming but also practised law,  manufactured small items in workshops,  brewed ale, or transported goods along the inadequate roads. They owned mills and workshops where industry began. They sold goods and services to the nobility and served in the local institutions that were necessary to good order.  They thought nothing of moving to London to practise their trade,  perhaps at length to return to their beloved Shropshire if they managed to make a success of it.  An example from Gough’s book was a fine cook named Hayward, who by his own efforts became head of the kitchen of the Bishop of London during the early 1640s.  When, during the period of the Commonwealth, the Bishop was forced to flee,  he became the cook of a prominent London parliamentarian,  with the blessing of his former employer and amazingly with the agreement of his new employer that, should the situation change,  he would return to the Bishop’s kitchen.  Upon the succession of Charles II the good Bishop returned and the cook took up his old station.  The distinguished cook eventually returned to his old home in Myddle and stayed until he died.

The nobility might flirt with Catholicism and Jacobitism at card parties in the comfort of their salons,  and pretend that the sacred lineage of the royal person actually made any difference to good governance of the nation.  Many of them were actually descended from middlemen of the Tudor era who had cashed in on the dissolution of the monasteries.  The more honest and worthy yeomanry were generally content to align themselves with the Church of England and the reigning monarchy,  for all its faults, because they feared instability, and most of all, civil war,  still within living memory in Gough’s time.  Gough saw followers of religious sects as weird or even downright dangerous and took pains to show them changing their coats where he could – he described one such individual who converted from Quaker to Roman Catholic.  Gough was conservative in outlook.  He was respectful to the deposed James II whilst writing poetry lauding William III.  His attitude most closely corresponds with that of many Americans towards their president today.  As Head of State,  the King was beyond criticism to men like Gough. 

He describes a Thomas Maddockes who lived in Astley – to the east of Myddle and only a few miles up the road from Withington.  He also describes a Mr Illage who owned some property in the vicinity.  It was the custom in those days in that region for a man to adopt a middle name of a grandparent on his mother’s side.  Some time in the 1650s one William Maddox married a Beal Illedge,  daughter of Nicholas Illedge of Hunckington,  near Withington.  In 1659,  amongst a growing family one Illage was baptized at the parish church of Upton Magna,   born to William and Beal. (Spelling was not an issue in those days – as can be gauged by the varied spellings used throughout Gough’s tremendous book.)  This Illage was to grow up and marry one Anne – surname not known.  They had a son named after his father and grandfather,  baptized in 1690 in Withington. He was not the first,  the previous Illage falling victim to the rampant infant mortality of the times.  The family had many members in the profession of law,  with connections in Lichfield and Birmingham going back to the mid 1600s.

William and Beal had a son named William who fought with the forces of William of Orange in 1689-90 in Ireland.  He died upon his return,  and his will plaintively states that he never received any pay and was owed £200.  Illage received his brother’s periwig in the will,  the parents receiving most of the other property.

Illage is mentioned as residing in Birmingham and leasing an Inn in Market Drayton in Salop in a document dated 15^th April 1700.  He is mentioned as leasing the property from an Edward Smallnam of Middlesex.  Clearly the Illedge Maddox was moving around the country and making confident business deals far afield.  He continued to lease other property in that town.  That Illedge died in 1727 and was buried at Upton Magna.  His son was also called Illedge.

It is hard to say whence the Maddox clan came before they arrived in the vicinity of Withington.  There were several groups of Maddoxes in the county dating back to Elizabethan times,  some ariving with impressively long Welsh names denoting their ancestry – no doubt old uchelyr or gentry.  Others were paupers – such as one Maddox tribe in Grinshill who throughout several generations all continued to remain ‘pauper’,  only one managing to rise to the lofty level of weaver according to the Parish registers.

What is certain is that the Illedge Maddoxes had an association with Sandford family,  a rich family with roots going back deep into early Norman Shropshire.  This association was in the form of leases and other land transactions.  What is also certain is that Maddoxes had been associated with that family going back to the 1500s where Maddoxes leased land from the Sandfords in the village of Egerton, Salop.   The Sandford family have a strong link with Lichfield – one of the streets is named after them. One Richard Maddox who was a notary in Lichfield in 1609 leased property from Humphrey Sandford of the Isle of Rossall.  Over 100 years on in 1729 Illedge Maddox, the one born in 1690, is described as a gentleman of Lichfield.  Sometime after this he was to rise to the rank of Master Extraordinary In Chancery,  an officer of the Chancery Court in London.

Those who have read the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens will know well of the unreformed Chancery Court.  At the time of the early 1700s the Chancery Court was a place where the careless and foolhardy took their fortunes to Westminster Hall and lost them to unscrupulous court officials who would postpone the conclusion of their court case until all their client’s money was gone and the point at issue lost in the mists of time.  The arcane show on display was the backdrop for the miserable demise of large numbers of gentlemen and lords who could not resolve their differences amicably,  or whose diminishing financial future was tied up in piles of obscure papers gathering dust.

I would like to thank Peter Turner for his help with the above research.