3. I will now proceed with the positive evidence in this proof that John and Ursula (Hynde) Machell were the parents of Mary (Machell) Cudworth.
Mary Machell married the theologian Ralph Cudworth in Southwark, London in 1611. This couple had several children over the next ten years or so. Mary’s daughter Jane was named as “cousin” and “kinswoman” and received a substantial legacy – payable after her marriage – in the 1646/7 will of John Machell of Wonersh. This John Machell was of the correct age to be either Mary Machell’s brother or her first cousin.; -- depending on whether his father Mathew Machell was Mary's father or her uncle.
Mary Machell and her first husband Ralph Cudworth were the parents of the well-known Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth. This son Ralph was the author of “The True Intellectual System of the Universe.” In 1733 this book was translated into Latin. The preface to this Latin translation stated that Ralph’s father Ralph was a chaplain to King James who participated in translating the King James Bible. The preface also stated that Ralph’s mother Mary Machell was the “nutrix deligeretur” (loosely translated as first-aid nurse) to King James’s eldest son Prince Henry.
Mary Machell had three sons: James, Ralph and John. There was no son named Mathew. It was a common pattern for parents to name the eldest son for the father’s father, and the second son for the mother’s father. However, Ralph and Mary Cudworth varied this pattern: They named their first son JAMES – a name that doesn’t appear in either the Cudworth or Machell families. This son James, who would later emigrate to Plymouth Colony, was clearly named for King James himself. And then Ralph and Mary named their second son Ralph, for Ralph’s father (also named Ralph), and they named their third son John, presumably for Mary’s father.
As we have already seen, after Mathew Machell’s death in 1593, his family had no known London connection, let alone a connection to the royal household. Mathew’s brother John’s family had both, and that is the essence of this proof by circumstantial evidence, together with the 1646/7 will of Mathew’s son John (from which we can infer that Mary had to be the daughter of either Mathew or Mathew’s elder brother John), and the marriage of Mary Machell to Ralph Cudworth in Southwark, London (where John Machell was “residing” at the time), and supported by the names of Mary’s sons, and by John’s widow Ursula being buried in a church across the street from where Mary’s son Ralph Cudworth had just obtained a fellowship.
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John Machell, eldest son of John Machell (Alderman of London) was born in 1546. His father died in 1559, when young John was in his 14th year. John married his first wife Frances Cotton by 1568, when he was 22. By Frances he had a son John (his eventual heir, who was dead by 1634) and a daughter Frances. Frances died in childbed in 1574 in Hackney, Middlesex (a London suburb) and John Machell married his second wife Ursula Hynde in 1579. This couple appears to have been the parents of a set of “Mauchell” children baptized in Hackney between 1580 and 1592, including a daughter Mary. (These baptism records will be discussed in a following post.)
John Machell found himself (briefly?) in Fleet Prison in 1596, in a matter involving Sir Robert Cecil (a leading member of Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council) and a hound. John Machell went into debt to buy an estate in Cambridgeshire (where wife Ursula’s family came from) in the 1570s, which later led to a clash with his eventual creditor Sir James Deane; and John Machell ended up in debtor’s prison from 1606 through 1612. This debtor’s prison was in the London borough of Southwark, where Mary Machell married Ralph Cudworth in 1611. John died in 1625, “worn out with care and grief for his losses.”
All the available snippets point in the same direction – Mary (Machell) Cudworth as the daughter of John and Ursula (Hynde) Machell – and there is not a shred of evidence pointing toward Mathew Machell (younger brother of John) as the father of Mary (Machell) Cudworth. To summarize these snippets of circumstantial evidence:
1. Mary Machell married Ralph Cudworth in Southwark, London, where John Machell was then “residing” (in debtor’s prison).
2. Mary’s first son was named James (for the King, her husband’s patron); her second son was named Ralph (for her husband’s father), and her third son was named John.
3. John Machell’s wife Ursula had two younger first cousins (surnamed Verney) who were listed in 1610 in Prince Henry’s household – the same Prince Henry that Mary Machell served as “nutrix deligeretur” before her marriage to Ralph Cudworth.
4. Ursula (Hynde) Machell was buried in 1639 at a church in Cambridge, across the street from Emmanuel College, where Mary (Machell) Cudworth’s son Ralph had just become a Fellow.
5. If Mary Machell, who married Rev. Ralph Cudworth at Southwark, London in 1611, was indeed the daughter of John and Ursula (Hynde) Machell, then the other Mary Mashall, who married Rev. James Harington in 1617 at Kingston Bowsey, Suffolk fits naturally as the daughter of Mathew and Mary (Lewknor) Machell.
Regarding points 1 and 5, it was almost universal for the place of marriage to have a family association with the bride (rather than the groom, unless of course the groom was from the same locality as the bride). And regarding point #5, the only conceivable family connection for Mary Mashall in Kingston Bowsey is the “obvious” one – she was the daughter of Mary (Lewknor) Machell who was buried in Kingston Bowsey.
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The following is presented as speculation: Mary Machell, as she planned to marry Rev. Ralph Cudworth, was devoted to her father, John Machell, and insisted that he be allowed to walk her down the aisle. This meant that the wedding had to be held in Southwark, near his debtor’s prison. This leads to the further speculation that John Machell was not a spendthrift or a scoundrel, but rather that he got cheated and ruined when he purchased the Cambridgeshire estate that led him ultimately to debtors’ prison. (Imagine, for example, the witnesses to the payment for the estate perjuring themselves in league with the seller, so John was never allowed to enter the estate, as the lender demanded repayment of the loan, which couldn’t be serviced without the revenue from the estate.) This leads naturally to the supposition that when Ursula’s brother William Hynde sued John Machell, it wasn’t done as an adversary, but rather as a show of family solidarity, ensuring that half of the Woodbury estate would stay in the family (in Ursula’s name as part of her marriage settlement), as John Machell was slowly ground to pieces by the legal machinery and hounding creditors. And this leads to the further supposition that this story of the ruin of Machell was a well-known travesty of justice, and that Ursula, with family connections in Prince Henry’s household, arranged for her daughter Mary to briefly serve Prince Henry, as a way to bestow a token of honor on a respected family name that had been falsely besmirched. And all of this would serve as an explanation for the statement that John Machell died “worn out with care and grief for his losses.”