Machell baptisms at St. Peter Westcheap, London, per the International Genealogical Index:
John Machell, age 14 (born c. 1545), is mentioned as the son and heir of John Machell of London, in the elder John's 1559 inquisition post mortem.[1]
John Machell's first wife, and mother of his children John and Frances, was Frances, daughter of William Cotton, Esq., of Panfield, Essex. Frances died 11 May 1574 in childbed in Hackney, and was buried May 21. [2] John and Frances were married by 1568, when "John Machell esq and Frances his wife" appeared in a fine with "Nicholas Bacon knt. lord keeper of the Great Seal and Anne his wife", regarding "a watermill, lands and free fishery in parish of St. Michaels near St. Albans and Redborne.[3]
John Machell, Alderman of London, and wife Jone, are identified as the parents of John Machell of Hackney, Middlesex, who sued Matthew Machell sometime between 1587 and 1591 regarding the "manors of Guilden Sutton, Cheshire; and Burneside [Burnside],Westmorland; and property in Wood Street, St Peter Westcheap and elsewhere in London; Tottenham, Middlesex; Hatfield, Hertfordshire; Hinton Admiral, Hampshire and Dorset; Sandbach, Holmes Chapel and Goostrey, Cheshire."[4]
" 'The manor or Grange of Cannones in Huntingdonshire' was held of the lord of the manor of Weston next Baldock by John Machell at his death in 1625, (fn. 59) when he was succeeded by a grandson and heir John."[5]
"John Machell, the brother of Matthew and the son of John and Jane Machell, has been described as 'of Hackney in Middlesex,' and a man named 'John Machell, Justice of the Peace,' was mentioned in the record books of the Parish of Hackney in 1584, as 'Mr. Mauchell' on May 6, 1593, and again as 'Mr. John Mauchell, esquire,' in April 1594. This was probably the same John Machell of Hackney who, on April Fool's Day in 1571, 'removed and carried away a certain footbridge, lying between Tottenham Wilde Marsh and a piece of land called the Neh in the Queen's highway at Tottenham.' 'Joh. Machell' was probably still a Justice of the Peace on July 7, 1589, when he endorsed a document regarding the malicious destruction of a fence which belonged to Alice Hayes, by over two dozen armed, and probably livid, local women. And so, a man named John Machell or Mauchell dwelled in Hackney, Middlesex, from at least 1571 until 1594."[6]
In the 1634 Visitation of Essex, John Machell's grandson, also named John Machell, told the herald that John Machell of Woodbury, Cambridge, eldest son of John Machell and Jane Loddington, married (1) Frances Cotton and had children John and Frances; he married (2) Ursula, daughter of Francis Hynde of Maddingley, Cambridge, and had children William (no issue) and Judith (m. William Baber, no issue).[7]
Middlesex Pedigrees, p. 7 shows as children of John and Ursula: William, Jane (married ----), and a third unnamed child. This pedigree gives a coat of arms showing Machell quartering Ludington, Kirkby and Whetthill.[8]
The Hynd pedigree in The Visitations of Cambridgeshire, 1575 and 1619, p. 113 shows that Ursula, daughter of Sir Francis Hynd of Madingley, Cambridge by his wife Jane Verney, married "John Machell of Hackney."[9]
"From Edmund, Lord Sheffield, Woodbury passed to his son John (d. 1568) and to his grandson Edmund, who sold it to John Manchell of Hackney (Mdx.) in 1591. (fn. 147) The estate, heavily mortgaged by Manchell, (fn. 148) descended to his grandson, also John, in 1628..."[10]
John Machell came into his inherited property of Sutton House in Hackney as a minor (age 20) in 1565. Then there was protracted and acrimonious litigation between John and his brother Mathew over various inherited properties. John purchased expensive properties in Cambridgeshire in the 1570s, but was unable to raise the money to pay for them, which led to a violent standoff with his creditor Sir James Deane.[11] "In 1606 Machel was committed for six years to the King's Bench prison in Southwark, as a debtor. After his release in 1612, he returned to Woodbury where he lived until his eighties. When he died in 1625 he was 'worn out with care and grief for his losses.'"[12]
The pedigree of the Machell family of Kendal at the end of Bellasis's [1] The Machells of Crackenthorpe (1886) : Pg. 61 of the downloadable PDF file states that John Machell "of Hatfield, Herts, Hackney, Middlesex, and Woodbury, co. Cumb., Capt. of Horse at Tillsbury Camp, and Master of Horse to Queen Elizabeth; J.P. [Justice of the Peace] for Middlesex."[13] However, a much later source argues that he was not the Captain of Horse, this being a misreading from his activity as Justice of the Peace.[14]
Bellasis's pedigree shows Mary Machell, wife of Rev. Ralph Cudworth, as the daughter of John's younger brother Matthew Machell, without giving any source. It appears that no earlier source gives the parents of Mary; but it seems clear that Mary was the Mary Machell baptized at Hackney in 1584, part of a series of children that can only be of John Machell and second wife Ursula Hynde, as discussed in Adrienne Boaz's Specific Ancestral Lines of the Boaz, Paul, Welty & Fishel Families (2014), pp. 480-81.[15] Mary Machell was a nurse to Prince Henry, while her mother's first cousins Francis and Edmund Verney were Prince Henry's falconer and chief-sewer.[16]
John Machell married his second wife Ursula Hynd on June 29, 1579 at Madingly, Cambridgeshire.[17] Then the following set of Manchell/Mauchell children (no parents' names) were baptized at St. John's, Hackney, London[18] :
Sometime after 1590, "John Mawchel" was a defendant regarding a case of "Libel in cause about pew in Sawston Church (Ely diocese)."[27]
In July 1596 "Jo. Mawchell", then being confined in Fleet Prison, wrote to Sir Robert Cecil: "According to your pleasure signified by my father-in-law, I have sent for the hound, which my servant is ready to deliver to whomsoever you shall appoint. I hope you will pardon my error: not proceeding from contempt but ignorance. I have received a chargeable punishment, although your displeasure is my greatest damage. Yet if my humble submission may redeem your favour, together with my liberty, I shall rather be glad of this experience rather than ill content with this restraint. Beseeching you to give order for my enlargement, I will ever be ready to give bond for my behaviour to the game, and ever be as ready to do you service."[28]
In 1598, wife Ursula's eldest brother Sir William Hynde sued "John Manchell, esq." in Chancery Court for "lands in Gamlingay in co. Cambridge, and in Everton in co. Huntington and Bedford, which defendant, by articles, made on his marriage with Ursula, plaintiff's sister, covenanted to settle as therein mentioned."[29]
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Added sources for the baptisms of John and Ursula Machell's presumed children.