The marriage took place on July 28^th, 1845, at the Baptist Chapel in Isfield, eight miles west of Nash Street as the crow flies and markedly further by road, but only two and a half from Croxted, so the wedding reception was probably held at the latter. At first the young couple seemed to have lived in East Hoathly, for that was where their first child, Isabella, was born. On her birth certificate her father described himself as an “auctioneer and general agent”; but by the time he had become, in his own estimation, a writer, he was living with his in-laws at Nash Street Farm and it was in Chiddingly that Martha bore two more daughters: Katharine in 1856 and Josephine in 1858. Their father was still a “writer”. By the 1861 Census, however, he, Martha and young Josephine had left Chiddingly, and Isabella and Katharine were living with their grandfather Richard at Muddles Green. Details for the 1871 Census are not available but by then Matthew Henry’s family were almost certainly living in Hastings, for on March 9^th of the following year, Martha died from “apoplexy paralysis” at 1a South Terrace, Halton, Hastings.

Poor Martha – her marriage had not been especially happy; her Prince Charming had fallen short of her expectations. “He was very kind to us girls,” Katharine told her own granddaughter many years later, “but he killed my poor mother!” How, she did not specify. Probably it was through profligacy with money and unwillingness to apply himself to steady, secure work. He was a jack of numerous trades, but, it seems, a practitioner of few.

After Martha’s death, Matthew Henry and his daughters moved to London and by Christmas 1874 he was married again. Again, too, it was to a woman with money: Ann Knapp, a 42-year-old spinster.However, Anne may have been captivated by Matthew Henry’s charm, but she was not so starry-eyed as Martha had been, and before marrying she put almost all her money into a Trust to be administered by a Fenchurch Street solicitor and a Tunbridge Wells surveyor. Matthew Henry could enjoy the interest that accrued but he could not touch the capital, not even after Anne died in Cheltenham of a “diseased womb and lungs” in 1881, for her will specified that this was to remain in Trust until Matthew’s own death, after which it was to be shared amongst his daughters (unless Anne had children of her own, which she did not).

However, interest on the capital still came to Matthew Henry and this permitted him to progress, on Anne’s death certificate, to the self-description of “gentleman”, an unequivocal claim that he did not work for his living. By the time of his third marriage, he was still a gentleman, for it took place only thirteen months after Anne’s death, in Reading Parish Church on February 14^th, 1882 , to Elizabeth Macaulay. Even at 60 he could still charm a 48-year-old widow and Elizabeth, yes, had money of her own. He lived to enjoy Anne’s continuing interest and Elizabeth’s money for another fourteen years. He died on March 6^th, 1896, at 285 High Street, Cheltenham from “senile decay”, aged 74.

What did others think of Matthew Henry? His daughter Isabella, on her own marriage certificate, described him as a “yeoman” in 1877 and Josephine used the term “surveyor” in 1880. When he died, the informant on his death certificate, his stepson, J.H. Macauley, used one of those descriptive phrases that might mean everything or nothing. He said that his mother’s husband had been a “commission agent”. And what, before he himself died, had Richard Lower thought of his youngest son who quite clearly had not shared his father’s concept of the Protestant work ethic. Richard left no record of his thoughts in this matter but it is significant that although Matthew Henry’s first marriage took place only seven miles from Muddles Green and not very far from Maresfield where his elder sister Mary lived, not a single member of the Lower family seems to have been present to sign the marriage register. The only witnesses were Martha’s mother and brother. The Lowers, it suggests, disapproved.