[1][2][5] He left Bedford Modern School at the age of fourteen and went to sea, ‘signing up with the shipping company Wigrams as a midshipman on the frigate Devonshire’.

[1][2][7] While on leave in the early 1870s, Wells became engaged to Josephine Grimbly of Banbury, Oxfordshire.

[1][2] Josephine's father, although in favour of the match, said that ‘Charles Wells must leave the sea and find a new and less dangerous career’.

[1][2] In 1872 Charles and Josephine married; they had five sons (one of whom, Richard Wells, was created a baronet) and three daughters.

[2] Four of Charles's sons became partners in the brewery on condition that they live in Wells's native town of Bedford.