Vita, I was just having a little look at the children's baptisms and I noted bapt 1806, 1808, 1810 then 1821, 1824 and 1831. I thought that is strange the big gap. I thought possibly prison or military.
(From memory) I looked on Ancestry and found that Thomas Headland enlisted April 1815 and fought in Belgium at Waterloo and he also received a pension with his name written as Corp Thomas Hedgland. Not sure if you know this or have reason to discount it but thought it worth mentioning. Julie