Mary Max : Short Biography

Mary Max: a 13-year-old heiress is kidnapped and forced to marry her cousin but is she a willing party?

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The connection

Mary Max (1762-89) is Will’s first cousin six times removed.

She is a cousin once removed of Will’s 3x great grandmother, Prudence Max (b1755), who married John Prossor in Cashel, Tipperary, in 1778. Mary’s and Prudence’s common ancestor is Simon Max (1666-1732), who is Will’s 6x great grandfather. Mary is only a distant relative but her story is an interesting one.

Resources  

• Max family wills

• Max and Phillips family gravestones in Gaile churchyard

• There are private family papers that were used by Thomas P Power to research his book Forcibly Without Her Consent. These have passed down a particular branch of the family but their whereabouts are currently unknown.

A section of the Max family tree showing the connection between Mary and Samuel, and Will’s ancestor Prudence Max

The background

Power’s book, published in 2010, gives a splendid summary of the kidnapping of girls in Ireland in the 150 years from 1700. The author says that, worldwide, the practice of kidnapping girls stretched back for millennia. The societies involved included the early Greeks and Romans as well as the Hebrews, Teutons and Scandinavians. He notes that such abductions were “a distinct feature of primeval societies and a function of inter-tribal warfare”.

In England and Ireland in the late middle ages, lower incomes  led to greater competition for land, and some young men saw abduction (and a coerced marriage) as a way to gain an estate and a partner. 

While it was a half-accepted practice, such kidnappings were uncommon. In Ireland between 1700 and 1802 there were an average of one or two incidents a year. Technically, abduction was a hanging offence but the number of prosecutions was small.

Kidnappings peaked in the mid to late 1700s. One of the last examples in England was that of Ellen Turner, a 15-year-old heiress from Cheshire who was abducted by Edward Gibbon Wakefield in 1826. That incident caused public outrage.

The story

Thomas Power’s book on abductions in Ireland includes the Mary Max story

So back to Mary Max. Mary was born in 1763, the year that her parents John Max of Killough and Joanna Meagher (John’s second wife) were married. Mary had two older siblings, James (b1745) and Thomas (b1747). The likelihood is that they were John and Joanna’s sons but born out of wedlock. 

John Max’s first marriage looks to have been barren, although his first wife is thought to have brought most of the money to the relationship. 

It is believed that John carried on an affair with Joanna, a family servant, for several years and that they married after the death of John’s first wife. 

The Maxes were farmers – and wealthy too. John ran his widespread business from Gaile House, Co Tipperary. He held Dogstown and Farrenlyny while long-term leaseholds included land in Faunshure, Carron, Ballycherahan and Boycetown. See his will for details.

The network of extended family and friends appears to be strong, with connections to the Lanphiers, Bettses, Youngs, Hintons, Brays and the Phillipses.

Mary must have lived a privileged but largely uneventful life until she was six, when her father died. In his will he appointed his widow Joanna and son Thomas as her co-guardians and left £2,000 (to inherit at age 18); that sum would rise by £1,000 if either brother died without having children. 

When Mary was 11, James died. Two years later Thomas died too. This meant that all the family’s money passed to Mary. The year 1777 was to prove eventful.

Mary was a rich girl. Her fortune is estimated to have been between £30,000 £40,000. To put that into perspective it is worth £5m to £6.5m today, according to the BoE inflation calculator. The interesting figure, though, is the “relative output worth” of her legacy, which measures the influence of a person against their peers and the economy in general. By that measure, Mary was worth £536m.

How did a 13-year-old in the mid-1770s make use of that kind of money? Perhaps she hankered after a fast horse, fine dances and maybe a man of good standing to become her husband.

It is possible that she was fond of her cousin, Samuel Phillips (1756-1815) of Foyle in neighbouring Kilkenny, who at 21 was eight years her senior. Like the Maxes,. the Phillipses probably came over to Ireland in the mid 1600s, possibly as traders before the mid 1600s or as part of the Cromwellian invasion force. One theory is that they are from Wales or Shropshire.

Samuel was the son of Richard Phillips who in turn was the son of Mary’s great aunt Sarah Max, who had married Samuel Phillips Sr (b1698). 

In 1774, Richard, a magistrate for Kilkenny, had been displaced as head tenant of 200 acres on the Kilkenny-Tipperary border. By the mid 1770s when the Max brothers died, he was possibly in financial difficulty. 

Coincidentally, it looks as though Mary’s mother Joanna had lined up “a gentleman of good breeding from Dublin” and a treaty of marriage was in the offing.

Almost certainly “Uncle Richard” would not have wanted Mary’s money to leave the wider Max/Phillips family.

On the night of August 7 1777 Mary was at a ball, which was most probably attended by both Samuel Phillips and the Dublin gentleman. Also there was Frances Phillips, Samuel’s sister and Mary’s trusted cousin.

When it was time to go home, Frances persuaded Mary to ride with her in her coach. However, instead of heading for Gaile, Frances, with Mary, sped off towards Waterford.  

Here is where confusion sets in – and we will never know the truth of the matter. 

There is no doubt, given what followed, that the entire Phillips family knew about the plan for the kidnap. The question has to be posed, however: was Mary a willing victim? Could a headstrong girl, about to turn 14, have disliked her mother’s choice of beau and decided to rebel? Was she keen on Samuel already? Did she have prior knowledge of the Phillipses’ plan and its extent? 

Then again, Mary could have been wholly in the dark. She might have liked the suitor from Dublin and such an attraction could have caused alarm bells to ring in the Phillips household: all that money and land was about to slip out of their grasp.

According to author Power, the incident involved violence, but there are no details. Did one of Mary’s retinue realise what was happening as the young heiress climbed into Frances’s coach? Did they try to stop her – whether Mary was willing or not?

Others who were involved in the kidnapping were William Phillips, Edmond Leonard (a gentleman of Kilkenny city), Dennis Meagher and several others. Meagher’s involvement is intriguing – he is Joanna Max’s brother. Again, this raises questions about family loyalties that today we cannot hope to answer.

Abductors in similar incidents often had a minister on hand to perform a marriage but the Phillipses were so confident of success they did not do that.

Instead they and their teenage prize rode out of Tipperary and probably into “friendly country” in Kilkenny, knowing that Mary’s mother would raise a hue and cry. They were aiming for the small port of Passage  near Waterford, nearly 60 miles from Gaile but most probably 

After several nights during which they probably laid low in “friendly” houses, they struck out forTaken together, it was a hard ride on rough roads that took several days. (Are you sure it’s such a long journey? It doesn’t look that far on the map, and coaches could travel fast. I haven’t added up the time spent but assumed they were on the boat the following day.)

If Mary had been taken against her will, it must have been terrifying for her; if she was complicit, it would all have been part of a wonderful adventure. 

On the night of August 14, the Phillipses with their young captive boarded a brig under the command of a Captain Hearn, which sailed for south Wales. 

It is not clear whether the ship put into Swansea. The next mention of the Phillipses and Mary is in Edinburgh, where Richard procured James Aron, an Anglican clergyman and “a man of indifferent character”, to perform the marriage ceremony. 

By September 18, the law was on their tail. The London magistrate Sir John Fielding, co-founder of the Bow Street Runners, had been alerted to the abduction. Joanna Max put up a reward of £50 for the apprehension of Samuel, while his father Richard had £500 on his head.

By early September, the Phillipses had made their way south, virtually the length of Britain, using side roads to avoid detection. The newspapers sensed scandal, reporting that Samuel and Mary travelled as Mr and Mrs Phillips and shared rooms in inns en route. One report said:

“It appeared that when they left Ireland they sailed for and landed in Wales, that they crossed all England and made the best of their route to Scotland, where it is supposed young Phillips and Miss Max were married, as it also appeared they slept together at Kingston, and at Brighthelmstone.’”

At Kingston upon Thames, the Phillipses thought they were near the south coast. The Kentish Gazette said:

“When they left Scotland, though unacquainted with the country, yet from information they travelled all the bye-roads, and when they arrived at Kingston enquired how far they were from the sea,”
The party’s behaviour now raised suspicions. A post-boy who took them from Kingston to Dorking raised the alarm. According to one report: 

“On Wednesday two o’clock Sir John Fielding received intelligence by a postilion from Kingston that he had driven from Kingston to Dorking.

“This party set off from Kingston to Dorking at half past eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, and their behaviour being quite rude at the different inns, created some suspicions. When the postboy [ie the postilion, who rode ‘post’ on the leading carriage horse] returned to Dorking, he happened to take up a newspaper, in which an account of this affair was given, and reward of £1000 offered for the apprehending of the parties, and the next morning he set off for town and arrived at Sir John’s at two o’clock, Wednesday.  

“Mr. Bond [presumably Fielding’s man] immediately set off in a post-chaise and four, and gained intelligence of them at every inn on the road, where he learnt that they were gone for Brighthelmstone, to which place he bent his immediate course, and arrived there at nine the same evening, when he found, unfortunately, that they had sailed by the packet for France that afternoon, so that he lost them only by three or four hour”

At the small fishing village of Brighthelmstone (Brighton), the fugitives had procured a boat and set sail for France.

It was a close-run thing: according to one newspaper, the abduction party was “chased to the edge of the water by Fielding's men”. That seems to have been journalistic licence. The pursuers turned up shortly after the boat was out of sight. They then offered fishermen on the shore a reward to give chase, but none accepted it.

Two weeks later, two of Fielding’s men caught the Phillipses’ co-conspirator Daniel Meagher. On September 25 they handed him in at the notorious Newgate jail in London and picked up a £300 reward. 

On the same day the London Evening Post reported that Fielding had spoken to the secretaries of England and France (the English post was later split into two: home and foreign) and received news that the French authorities had Mary in their safekeeping.

The search for the abductors went on. On September 25, the Freeman’s Journal reported: 

“Application has been made by the English ambassador at Paris to have the Phillipses who ran away with Miss Max delivered up if they could be found in the French dominions, and liberty given to have them transmitted to this kingdom to be tried for the felony”

In France, however, Mary had become reconciled to Samuel – if she hadn’t been from the start.

The old church at Ballytarsna, a drawing by George Victor du Noyer. Ballytarsna is the burial place of Simon Max, the furthest-back member of the Max family we can find in the area. Later Maxes are buried at Gaile, a stone’s throw away.  By permission of the Royal Irish Academy © RIA

As in many of the similar kidnap cases, It could be reasoned that the girl’s honour had been sullied and that no man of repute would ever look at her – or perhaps she was under the spell of a slightly older man and  had fallen in love.

Power gives rape as a reason why so few girls were reinstated to their former state if rescued after abduction. 

It was now that pragmatism kicked in on the part of mother Joanna. This could point to Mary being complicit in the “kidnap” all along, although equally it could be said that Joan had lost her husband and sons in a short space of time and would be desperate for Mary to come home safely. Also, her daughter was now “damaged goods” and it would be hard to find a husband of good standing, despite her fortune.

According to a later legal report, Joanna was urged by “the constant solicitations of the daughter” to allow the couple to come home, and she agreed because of “her apprehensions for her daughter’s health”. 

She wrote to Richard and Samuel and made an offer: she would withdraw her threat of prosecution and allow Samuel to bring his under-age bride back to Gaile.

There seems to have been an unofficial pact between the parties that lasted several months. Samuel and Mary returned to Ireland some time in 1778. After their return, Samuel faced a charge of abduction of a minor – in theory, a hanging offence.  He chose to stand trial in Kilkenny but on the day of the case neither Joanna nor Mary turned up to bring a prosecution, and the case was dropped. (It would be great to see the court records for this and Meagher’s trial, but so far no one has managed to locate them.)

Samuel’s problems did not end there, however. He now had Mary as his wife but he  wanted control of her fortune, too. He made the mistake of undermining Joanna’s position to the point where she had to remind him she was guardian until Mary was 21, as well as being one of the three executors of John Max’s will.

Canny Joan pointed to the violence in the kidnap and the pact that meant Samuel was not prosecuted. She offered a deal under which Samuel would settle all of Mary’s property on his wife and their issue, “merely giving him use of it for life”.

A frustrated Samuel sought legal advice. His solicitor confirmed that Joanna’s stance was a reas0nable one. Samuel was told that he would have to take the case to the court of equity but was warned that if Mary refused and sided with her mother, the court could impose unfavourable terms on him.

It is not clear what happened but by 1783 Samuel and Mary had a son Richard and daughters Joanna and Frances. Samuel looked to transfer patrimony to the children but for this to happen he had to get the witnesses to the 1777 Edinburgh marriage to swear an affidavit that James Aron had been a valid clergyman. Neither of them would do this, which raised questions over the validity of the ceremony as well as the legitimacy of his children – and their rights to inherit. His lawyers advised him to let matters stand.

It appears that all the issues were eventually resolved but as Power points out: “The case pointedly illustrates that access to the fortune of an abducted heiress was not immediate or without its legal difficulties.”

Poor Mary had a short life, perhaps as the result of early motherhood (Richard was born when she was 16). She died in 1789, aged 27, and is buried at Gaile church, where there is a substantial Max and Phillips plot.

The gravestone inscriptions read:

Here Lieth the Body of Mary Phillips als Max who departed this Life the __ of December in the Year 1789 in the 27th year of her age.

Beneath this tomb lie the Remains of Samuel Phillips of Foyle, Esq, who departed this life the 9th day of December in the Year of our Lord 1816 in the 60th year of his age.

Legacy

So what happened to Mary’s fortune? While canny Joan kept the bulk of it out of reach of Samuel, the money looks to have passed to the Phillips children and to have gone down their family. Samuel is said to have spent a sizeable amount restoring Gaile. 

Samuel and Mary’s eldest son Richard (1780-1829) married Jane Godfrey and their son Samuel married Caroline Long. The Phillips held Gaile until the 1930s with the fortune gradually reducing.

Further research

Will has a detailed history of the Phillips descent. Some of Will’s Maxes stayed at nearby Maxfort. Gaile house itself is currently a stud and an AirBnB. 

Cherry Gilchrist (nee Phillips) is a direct descendant of Samuel and Mary. In a blog post, she considers Mary’s age at the time of the kidnap, especially as sexual activity appears to have started almost immediately after the wedding. 

She says family lore doesn’t seem to indicate a sense of outrage or pity for Mary. Ormonde Phillips, Cherry’s father, often talked to his “kinsman” Jack Max and “didn’t glean any indication that it was a total blot on the family landscape”. 

She adds: “This isn’t conclusive, since the Phillips family in succeeding generations did rather well out of their combined fortunes, but it does at least give a window of hope that Mary was not completely devastated by the event. The Max family, rather than the Phillipses, would surely be the ones to hold onto a grievance.”

Cherry says she likes to think that Mary and Samuel married for love or at least, some romance or sense of adventure on her side. She points to a “letter” (a kind of gossip column) in the Norfolk Chronicle in December 1777:

I suppose you have heard of Miss Max's being taken away by her cousin Mr Phillips. It makes great noise here, but the public are not fairly acquainted with the circumstances. Mr Phillips is a man whose father has a good estate and is nearly related to Miss Max. 

The son paid his addresses to the lady some time since, and had so far gained her affections that she consented to be privately married, but they could not get a clergyman to perform the ceremony. 

After mutual protestations of sincerity, and resolution on the lady's part never to marry any other man, Mr Phillips went to pursue his studies at college. On his return to the country he found the lady had changed her mind: this determined him to take the measures he did; and I hear he has escaped the vigilance of the pursuit.’

Set against this is a Norfolk Chronicle report of September 27 1777, which claimed that:

“A Treaty of Marriage was on Foot [imminent] at the Time she was forced away, between her and a young Gentleman of a distinguished Family in Dublin.”

Cherry concludes her blog post:

I’d like to honour my grandmother by telling her story and keeping the memory alive. 

Cherry and I have a common great grandfather in Adam Max of Gaile (b1666), so in writing this piece, I’d like to echo that.