for a man with a wife who did not share his beliefs would have been difficult to obtain. At any rate Patrick decided that nursing a broken heart in Wethersfield was less attractive than a busy life at a new church in Wellington in Shropshire.
He continued to write to Mary for a couple of years but by the time she was 21 and therefore free to wed without her family’s permission, Mary became embittered as the prospect of marriage faded. Somehow Patrick’s letters, and his failure to return to Wethersfield to claim her hand, had turned her love to hatred and she saw herself as a jilted woman. Patrick for his part was coping with a far greater workload than ever the tiny parish of Wethersfield had imposed upon him, and, furthermore, no letters were forthcoming from Mary or her family. He began expressing his admiration of those ministers who could serve God without the
St Mary's, Wethersfield
where Patrick was curate
Inside Wethersfield church, which Patrick left behind
distraction of unrequited earthly love. He admitted it was not easy for
him but he doesn’t seem to have realised that Mary, too, might have
found it hard to understand the situation.
Eventually the matter was resolved by Patrick’s meeting, in his
new Yorkshire parish of Hartshead, 29-year-old Maria Branwell the petite,
though not particularly pretty, daughter of a prosperous Penzance grocer
who had gone north to help in her aunt and uncle’s boarding school.
Patrick and Maria
were married in 1812 and over the next few years five girls and one boy
were born to the couple. It was not to be a long marriage. Less than 10
years after the wedding Maria was found to have cancer; her death at 38
after a few months illness left Patrick with six small children aged between
two and seven.
In desperation Patrick remembered Mary Burder. Was she married? Was there hope of a reconciliation? He wrote to Mary’s mother and received a reply from Mary herself. Yes, she was still single but she wanted nothing to do with a 47-year-old with a family of six to look after. She declined his suggestion of a meeting in Wethersfield.
Patrick, still hopeful, wrote again but there was no reply.
And Mary? A year or two later she married the minister at Wethersfield Congregational Church, Rev Peter Sibree who declared that in marrying her “he had found that blessing of which I can never sufficiently appreciate the importance – a prudent wife, which is from the Lord.” They lived in the Manse by the chapel.
The Manse at Wethersfield where Mary went to live.