Untold lives blog

Sir Josiah Child (bap.1631, d.1699) was the successful son of a London merchant. He made a large fortune as a brewer and victualler and through the Royal African and East India Companies. Child bought an estate at Wanstead in Essex and lavished money on landscaping. Palladian Wanstead House pictured below was built after Sir Josiah’s death by his son Richard.

View of Wanstead House, by G. Robertson; engraved by Fittler
BL: Maps.K.Top.13.30.d © The British Library Board Images Online

Child was active in local politics, sat as an MP, and served nearly 25 years as an East India Company director, with two periods as Governor. He was the author of a number of economic tracts, and his letters and published works can be read today in the British Library. He married three times and had eight children.

The historian T. B. Macaulay described Sir Josiah Child as an autocrat, ‘the despot of Leadenhall Street’. However Child’s will dated 23 February 1697 reveals that he was not so successful at commanding obedience in his private life:

‘I give unto my said daughter Mary the sume of Five pounds and noe more because she hath married not only without my consent but expressly against my command and contrary to her own repeated promisses and lett others learne by her example.’

‘…my said sonn Sir Josiah and my said daughter Mary have both of them behaved undutifully to me and broake many promises made to me in a high and ungratefull contempt of me their Father who have bin to kinde to them.’

Mary had been betrothed to John Barrington of Hatfield Broad Oak but he died of smallpox in November 1691 before the marriage could take place. On 23 February 1693 Mary married widower Edward Bullock of Faulkbourne Essex by licence at St Botolph Aldgate, London. This wedding was very different from the magnificent celebration at Wanstead on 5 June 1682 attended by the Bantam ambassador and his entourage when her sister Rebecca married Lord Herbert.

Why did Child object to his daughter’s choice of husband? Edward Bullock was a wealthy landowner who later became an MP. The couple had eight children. After Edward’s death on 6 December 1705, Mary spent nearly 20 years as a widow before marrying Edward Hutchinson at Faulkbourne in 1724. Hutchinson was an Army Captain and the grandson of Sir Josiah’s sister Anna. The couple lived at Faulkbourne Hall with Mary’s son Josiah Bullock and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke of the East India Company. Edward Hutchinson died shortly after making his will in December 1734, leaving £200 to be invested to buy bread every Sunday for the poor of Faulkbourne who attended church. Mary died in 1748 aged 76.

If you know more about Mary or the quarrel between the Childs and the Bullocks, please tell us!

Many thanks to Georgina Green and Tim Couzens for providing information for this blog.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Sources:
Will of Sir Josiah Child 23 February 1697 (with later codicils), proved 6 Jul 1699 (The National Archives: PROB11/451)
Will of Edward Hutchinson 20 December 1734, proved 24 January 1735 (The National Archives: PROB 11/669)
Marriage register of St Botolph Aldgate (London Metropolitan Archives: P69/BOT2)
Boyd’s Marriage Index
Burke’s genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry
Daniel Lysons, The environs of London (1792-96)
History of Parliament Online

See also East India Company at Home 1757-1857