Introduction
Elinor has re-married, now being Mistress Shipway and given birth another son. Things seem to be looking up for her. She and Thomas Shipway have acquired property in Friar street and are combining construction with brewing. Things are not all plain sailing though. The presence of no less than three inter-related William Shipway males doesn’t help.
Another Painful Loss
In between the initial negotiations to acquire number 40 and the final settlement Elinor and Thomas’s son William dies. Young William survived for less than a year. His burial took place at St Andrew’s church on 17th September 1730. So we have a third parish used by the family (four if we include St Alban’s where Elinor was baptised). Others in the Shipway family have an association with St Andrew’s so it may be the case that this is where Elinor and Thomas lived at that time. Thomas himself may have grown up there too.
The Shipway Family – Father William
We do not know for sure where Thomas Shipway originates from. We’ve been unable to locate his baptism in any Worcester parish register. What we do know about him comes from his father’s will of 1739. This names Thomas and his siblings as beneficiaries. He has one brother, William, and four sisters, Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary. This assumes that all siblings feature in the will. William, Sarah (Linton) and Mary (Hughes) are all married at the time of the writing of William senior’s will.
William senior describes himself as a bricklayer, just like Thomas, and lived in St Andrew’s parish. So perhaps Thomas was apprentice to his father? William also states in his will that he is of St Andrews parish. The daughter Mary is specifically said to be living in London.
From the will we assume the entire family bar Mary reside in the city of Worcester. One bemusing part of William senior’s will is that he does not appear to know the first name of his son-in-law Mr Hughes. There is a gap where presumably the lawyer was intending to fill in the name once William had remembered it!
William Shipway senior died shortly after making his will, his burial is recorded as being on January 27th 1739 at St Andrews church. It may have been the death of Thomas’s father that prompted Elinor to persuade her husband to write his own will in 1742.
The Shipway Family – Brother William
We know a little about Thomas’s brother William. He too was married at St Helen’s, where he wed an Elizabeth Bowen in January 1715. The parish register has William stated as being “of St Andrews”.
There is also a record of a William Shipway starting an apprenticeship in 1710 which must surely relate to Thomas’s brother and not his father. The date fits nicely with the presumed age of William and him not marrying until he had completed his apprenticeship.
William and Elizabeth had a son, James, baptised at St Alban’s the following year. The fact that William marries so many years before Thomas does would suggest that William is the elder of the two Shipway brothers. Added to this, it was William that is named first in his father’s will and is the son who inherited his father’s clothes.
Either William the father, or more likely, William the brother is a party in the legalities surrounding the purchase of 40 Friar Street. A William Shipway is named as “praecipe” and “tenant-intermediate” on the common recovery deeds. If you want to know what these roles entail please refer to last week’s Nottingham University link.
Building Irregularities
On 18th July 1738 the Chamber Order Book records that Thomas Shipway be “disfranchised”. On the 4th March 1738 William Shipway was also “disfranchised”. A following entry for 1740 records that:
An order made that any masons or carpenters building in the city, encroaching over the building line be disfranchised of freedom
Given that we know that the Shipway family were builders it is quite possible that the brothers lost their freemanship due to similar building regulation infringements. This would have been quite a blow for them as they would have been unable to trade in their own right. Instead, they would have had to work as waged labourers for some other builder. Fortunately, this loss of freeman privilege was short-lived as the same source notes that they were:
made freeman again 2nd April 1741-gratis
The Loss of the Final William Shipway
William, son of William Shipway, appears to have died in 1744. He was buried at St Andrews like his father before him. No will survives (had there been one that is). It seems clear that he entered the family building trade just like his brother Thomas. We like to think of them as “Shipway Brothers, Builders”. Or perhaps “Shipway and sons, Builders”
Read Part Four: Enter Thomas ShipwayRead Part Six: The Cross Keys Expands