Case Study 1

Pushing back a generation before parish registers

An Ancestrography case study interpreting manorial records, wills and deeds to write ancestral biography

by Peter Foden

 William was an incomer; he married Mary in a small Trent valley town in 1616 and then stayed the rest of his life.  We thought we might have found his baptism (as William son of Richard) in a neighbouring parish in 1592, where there were four families sharing the same surname. The registers there began in 1570, so we had little hope of discovering whether or not the fathers of the four families (Richard, James, John and Henry) were brothers, or whether they had lived there for a long time.

 The parish of William’s birth is fortunate to have extensive mediaeval and early modern archives, thanks to its takeover by a great estate that now belongs to the National Trust. Unfortunately however the archive has not yet been fully catalogued or conserved.

 We had two questions:

1. Was the William born in 1592 to Richard one and the same with the William married in 1616? All neighbouring parishes with surviving registers had been searched and he remained the principal candidate, but so many parishes had lost their early registers that we could not be confident.  There was evidence of no fewer than three Williams sharing the same surname and born in the same parish towards the end of the sixteenth century: which one was our groom? William named his eldest son Richard, but we needed other corroborative evidence about his parentage.
2. Were Richard, James, John and Henry brothers and had they always lived in the same parish? Could we name William’s grandparents?

 The parish registers could not answer either of these questions to our satisfaction. In the estate archive were hundreds of uncatalogued deeds and manorial records.  Could they help us?

 Manorial records were fragmentary; a suit roll (register of attendance at the manorial court) kept from 1603 to 1607 told us that Richard, William’s father, had left the village in 1603.  What about William? Was he really our bridegroom of 1616? What if they had gone to the other end of the country? What if he had died in infancy?

 James, who was probably William’s uncle (but we could not prove it) had bought land from Richard before he left, and recorded the fact in his will. He gave us the clue we needed: Richard had gone to the nearest large town, about ten miles away.  The parish registers there kept us hopeful that William had not died or married; he was still in the running to be the William married in 1616.

 A run of earlier manorial records – Views of Frankpledge from 1562 to 1580 – were searched, although they were very fragile.  Frankpledge – a system for ensuring good behaviour and keeping the peace - included every male resident in the manor who was over twelve years old, and individuals took turns to be jurors, constables, Headburrows or Tithingmen. The surname did not feature in the rolls at all. Did this mean that the four “brothers” had all moved into the village in about 1580? This would have been soon after the family of the great estate bought the manor.

 Although the Manorial Documents Register stated clearly that the parish contained just one manor, I discovered one fragment of court roll from the period that belonged to another manor spread across four parishes including this one.  It was just possible that Richard, James, John and Henry and their parents had lived on this manor; their surname was just legible in the jury list of the one undated fragmentary court roll to survive.

 Would a search of the uncatalogued deeds answer more questions than the manorial records had raised?

 Serendipitously, I discovered a feoffment or conveyance dated 1616 and recording the sale of Richard’s homestead to the family of the great estate. Richard was joined in the conveyance by William, his son and heir apparent. Now we knew that they were realising their assets just six months before William married and settled in the next village. 

 The deed told us a lot more than this.  The “appurtenances” of the homestead included one and a half bays of barn, “one fourth part of the ancient fold yard”, and common grazing for one and three quarter cattle. It was clear from this description that it had once (probably within living memory) been part of a larger homestead with a larger farmyard, a barn of six bays and grazing for seven cattle.  There might be four different reasons for subdividing a holding like this:

1. Rising population and property values (typically in growing towns)
   • This was not a growing town; rather it was a village that was rapidly becoming “closed” as the great estate took over.
2. Explicit division of a family home in a will or settlement
   • We had made an exhaustive search for our family’s wills and found none from this village in the sixteenth century.
3. Local inheritance custom (called gavelkind) by which all sons inherit an equal share in the family home
   • There was no evidence of a local custom of gavelkind, although it is thought that such customs had been normal in Anglo-saxon England and gradually gave way to primogeniture during the Middle Ages. It was however very tempting to link the four “brothers” - Richard, James, John and Henry - with a family holding divided into four like this; what a great and convenient coincidence for the genealogist.
4. Common law inheritance custom when a landowner has only daughters (coparcenary)
   • almost impossible to prove, let alone that four brothers might have married four sisters to secure their family property. What surname were we looking for anyway? We had no marriage register for the period. If it was inheritance according to the common law then it would not be recorded in a will.

 But prove it we did.

 Among the deeds were lists of exchanges made between the “great estate” and smaller landowners in the village. The “squire” was consolidating his holdings in the mediaeval open fields so that he could enclose the land and farm it more efficiently.  Some of the smaller landowners complained at the beginning of the seventeenth century, among them William’s “Uncle” James; there was a note that Richard was not “greeved”, but maybe he had already left the village. Just above the lists of lands exchanged with Richard and James was a note about exchanges with “the heirs of B”, followed by exchanges made with four couples including Richard and James and their wives. Another list of James’s exchanges referred to him and his wife “and their fellow coparceners”. These documents are undated, but other documents suggest that the exchanges began in about 1580. 

 The lists of exchanges of land have enabled us to name William’s maternal grandfather, William, with some certainty.  His paternal ancestry remained mysterious; it was possible that they also “belonged” in the village but to a vanished manor. His paternal grandfather may have been called Robert as this was the name of both Richard and James’s eldest sons and of John’s youngest son. Searching all sixteenth-century wills made by testators in the parish revealed that there was indeed a Robert, and that his father was named Nicholas. They may have been servants or paupers as they and other members of their family  were recipients of alms from wealthier villagers.

 We have added two pre-parish-register generations to the family tree. We have also uncovered a story of William’s childhood among the extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins on a large mediaeval farmstead divided up among four families, his father’s departure from the village for the freedom of the town, and his selling up to the squire so that William could make a fresh start in the neighbouring “open village” where his family were to remain for the next hundred years.

 If you’ve gone as far back in your family history as parish registers can take you and you’d like to explore other sources such as wills, manorial records and deeds, I can help you to locate and interpret whatever evidence may survive. Send an e-mail with your question to enquiries@ancestrography.co.uk

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