The Cliffes and Dangerfields were two families of typical Midland yeoman, some of them aspiring to that much-loved rank of Old England, a ‘gentleman’, and bearing coats of arms. Both families had branches in nearby towns, the Dangerfields in Bromyard and the Cliffes at Great Witley, the home of Alan Cliffe, who was High Sheriff of Worcester in 1692. The memorial tablets in Mathon Church exhibit their coats of arms. The Cliffe pedigree had been inspected by the Heralds in 1634. Whether the two families made an appearance when the Heralds re-visited in 1660 is not known. The purpose of these officials was ‘to correct and reform all arms, crests, cognizances and devices unlawfully borne and assumed’. It seems that sometimes, as at Oxford, in 1669, the gentlemen had lost interest in establishing their claim to gentle birth and pedigree, preferring to attend a horse race that was being run nearby.
Both families were living in the village early in the 17th Century. They held the various offices of the parish, and were present at each other’s family occasions. Both families used a few well-tried Christian names and had the habit of naming sons after fathers, which makes tracing relationships difficult. There was a wide range of education and wealth in each family, their signatures ranging from elegant italic handwriting to those of men more used to holding a hoe than a quill pen. In the Hearth Tax returns of 1662, where hearths were used as a measure of wealth, the number of their fireplaces ranged from 4 to 1. Both families prospered during the 250 or so years they lived in Mathon. In 1684, William Cliffe had not very much to pass on to his children when he wrote his will, but he remembered the village folk among whom he had spent his life.
“In the name of God, Amen. I, William Cliffe, of the parish of Mathon, in the County of Worcester, gent., doe make and ordeyne this my last will and testament as followeth. In primis, I give to my daughter, Pitt, five pounds, item, I give to my son William Cliffe of Dod Oak, five pounds, item, I give to my grand-daughter (unnamed) the wife of William Cliffe of the parish of Astly, five pounds, item, I give to the poor of the parish of Mathorne, where I live, and where I intend to be buried, five pounds, and I constitute and appoint my son, Henry Cliffe, who liveth with me, my sole executor ....
Witnessed by Robert Dobyns, John Chandler, and another whose signature is unreadable.
William’s possessions amounted to £84, but this was about average for a yeoman farmer of this period.
In 1652, the Manor of Farley was sold by Henry Bromley and Edward Pennell to Thomas Dangerfield, Susan Fawke and George Wood. The manor stayed in the Dangerfield family for almost two hundred years. Thomas Dangerfield, who died in 1735, had many possessions and farm stock amounting to more than £500, and the inventory of his goods fills several pages, closely written. Some of the Dangerfields are described on their memorials as ‘of the Park, gent.’, some as ‘of the Spout (farm) gent.’ Most of the family farmed land in the Ham Green, Harcourt Road, and Mathon Park area, and it was in this district that the Spout Farm, now no longer in existence, was located, near Mathon Lodge.
Three of the Dangerfields, George, Henry and William were involved in the bitter quarrel with the Vicar, Tychicus Whiting, whose memorial tablet is placed above the South Door of the Church, as though still surveying those who enter and weighing them in the balance. He himself was the subject of a long letter of complaint sent by the parishioners to the Bishop of Worcester in 1745, listing “crimes and enormities committed by him.” He seems to have been a very quarrelsome man, who flew into a violent temper on the least excuse, and on numerous occasions “used threatening words of battery against some of the parish, and assaulted one man in the churchyard, Joseph Boneale by name.” Quarrels seem to have occurred in the church and in the churchyard before during and after service. However, although fifteen outraged people signed the letter to the Bishop, the signatories including Abraham Crouch, himself a previous Vicar of Mathon, (1681 - 1703) Tychicus survived it all, and remained vicar until 1772.
Two of the Cliffe family were ordained, Allen, who was one of the parish officials in 1805, and William, (1717 - 1742) whose name appears on a memorial in the church, and who is buried in Westminster Abbey.
By 1840, the only surviving members of the Dangerfield family who owned land in the parish were Mary and Margaret, who held 79 and 103 acres respectively, most of which was farmed by Hannah Jones and Thomas Wood.
The Cliffes, on the other hand, had reached the summit of their power by this time. Nash1, writing in 1782, said that the “Beauchamps, Barons of Powick, had antiently lands and a park in this parish, which is the partition of the lands of Sir Richard Beauchamp, the last Baron Powick, among his daughters, came to Anne, who married Richard Lygon and continued in the family of Lygons of Madresfield till sold by them. The principal landowner is now Mr. Cliffe.” William Bateson Cliffe is described in the parish book (1823) as Lord of the Manor. The Tithe Report of 1840 shows that he owned 491 acres, mostly around the family home, Shipping House, near the present South Hide Farm, and was also lessee of the 218 acres owned by Westminster Abbey and farmed by John Jauncey, a member of another family which had lived in the parish for at least 150 years. The reference to William Cliffe as Lord of the Manor must have been a mistake, or intended as a courtesy to the largest landowner, because the manor belonged to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, as it had since the dissolution of Pershore Abbey.
At about this time, one of the Cliffe daughters, Eliza Wilhelmina, (1810 - 1848) became friendly with Elizabeth Barrett, who lived with her redoubtable father at Hope End near Ledbury, and who later married Robert Browning. Eliza was a talented amateur painter, and made a portrait of Elizabeth, and it was on a visit to the Cliffes at Shipping House that Elizabeth had the following experience, which she described in her diary2, “Talking of bulls, as we proceeded on our way to Mathon, we met one coming to meet us in a narrow lane, and with a bellow. Out of the carriage we all three jumped, and took refuge in a field close by. But one gate seemed to me by no means as satisfactory go-between for us and our enemy; so I climbed a very high railing with a rather deep ditch at the other side. At last a man came to our rescue, and drove away the bull, and we got miraculously safe through the frying sun, and over the earth-quaking roads to Mathon.”
After William Bateson Cliffe died, Shipping House was burnt to the ground, and a rambling party from Malvern, which visited the place in 1861 found nothing but ruins.
Parker’s, a yeoman’s house in the village street, which bears the carved date 1610, and the initials R. M. G.