This is only the second blog on this blog-page about a woman; and the first I have attempted on one of my own female ancestors.
She made her will in Antigua, one of Leeward Islands in the West Indies, in September 1693, as the widow Frances STOUGHTON; and she was probably by then aged in her early to mid 70's, or thereabouts.
Initially, I had no idea who Frances was; so I took then, as my starting point, the last documentary evidence of Frances's existence, her 1693 will; the following is the abstract of it that Vere Langford OLIVER had published in the "Family of PIGOTT" section of his "History of the Island of Antigua, etc," Volume 3, 1895, at page 25:
"Francis (sic) STOUGHTON [footnote] of Antigua. Will dated 9 September 1693.
To my grand dau Ffrances KERBY 10,000 lbs and an heiffer.
To my son John PIGOTT a negro, a mare and colt.
To my dau Ffrances PIGOTT all my linen, bedding and household stuff, plate only excepted, also a negro woman for life.
To my two grandchildren John GUNTHORPE and Wm GUNTHORPE all my estate real and personal equally, only my son John PIGOTT to keep my negros on my land at Falmouth for five years, then paying 15,000 lbs [of sugar] to them.
To my friend Mrs Martha EDGCOMB £5 for a piece of plate.
To my son John PIGOTT £20 left me by Major John GUNTHORPE to buy mourning.
To the first child my dau Ffrances PIGOTT has £5 for a piece of plate.
Major Edward BYAM, my son John PIGOTT and my dau Ffrances PIGOTT Executors.
Witnessed by Wm BARTER, Cutbord R. PARKER, An ASHTON.
By His Excellency the Governor were sworn Anne ASHTON and William BARTER, 8 February 1693[-94].
[Footnote] - Probably Frances, widow of Acquilla."
OLIVER recorded that her previous husband was named PROCTOR, and speculated that he was Lieutenant William PROCTOR of Rendezvous Bay, near Falmouth, Antigua.
MOLL's Atlas Minor, 1716-32, published in Volume 1 of OLIVER's "History of the Island of Antigua."
Proctor's Point and Gunthorp's Plantation are highlighted in blue.
And a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence, some of which we will look at below, indicates that she had previously been married to John COOKE, Gray's Inn Barrister, who was executed in October 1660 as a Regicide, for his prosecuting the Commonwealth's legal case against King Charles in 1649.
But the surname of her birth family is not yet established with certainty.
This article, as initially written, tried to explore Frances's life in reverse order, by looking at it through the prisms of the recorded lives of the sequence of her three presumed husbands, and of those of her three daughters.
Although we found that we could get a little help from the recorded lives of her several prospective brothers-in-law, as it became apparent that Frances had a sister Elizabeth, who, as the widow MASSEY, set out on a voyage to Antigua in 1681, making a precautionary will before she sailed, in which she mentions her niece Freelove, now the wife of John GUNTHORPE of Antigua (he was undoubtedly the recently deceased Major John GUNTHORPE mentioned in Frances's will); Elizabeth had evidently been widowed twice before becoming Mrs Robert MASSEY of Northampton.
Claims have been made by others that Frances was born a CUTLER; but these are unsubstantiated. Percival BOYD, in his "Inhabitants of London" series of manuscript notes prepared for (or lodged with) the Society of Genealogists in London, identifies her as Frances MASSEY, which, in the absence of detailed sources, suggests he may have interpreted that, almost certainly in error, from Elizabeth MASSEY's 1681 will (see below).
However, there is gathering circumstantial evidence which suggests that she was perhaps instead Frances BARROW, who, as Frances BARR... (the end of her surname disappears into the binding of the register), was married at the parish church of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, City of London, on 19 May 1646, to "... Mr John COOKE, Counsellor."
Although scrutiny of the original parish register entry by staff at the London Metropolitan Archives suggests that the
surname is probably more likely to be BARRES, stating that "... there certainly does not appear to be a letter 'w' in the spelling of the surname."
However, there was a Frances BARROW who was baptised in Lillingston Lovell, Buckinghamshire, on 4 April 1620, a daughter of Edward BARROW and his wife Elizabeth - Frances was of the right age to have been the 1646 bride. Her father appears to have been Edward BARROW of Potterspury, Northamptonshire (about four miles north-east of the Lillingstons Lovell and Dayrell), whose wife was Elizabeth CHEYNEY, the widow of Samuel BRYAN of Northampton.
And Frances did have an older sister Elizabeth BARROW Junior, baptised in the same church in 1618.
Further, there is some evidence that Elizabeth BARROW Senior, as a widow, married thirdly, to a gentleman named COOKE, probably later (1654) identified as being named Isaac, and of Potterspury, Northamptonshire; and that this may have been a second marriage for Isaac COOKE, the father of John COOKE - which, if actually happened, would mean that in 1646, Mr John COOKE, Counsellor, had married his step-sister. See further below.
Recent progress, particularly in documents from The National Archives (a 1654 Bill of Complaint brought before the Court of Chancery), and research done in the Northamptonshire Record Office, now enable us to see that the BARROW family is a strong prospect for our Frances, and her sister Elizabeth. But the speculation is not without some inherent difficulties.
The following notes for the BARROW family are therefore posted here (in late January 2015) - as "...breaking news..." - before we return to the earlier article, at "HUSBAND NUMBER 3 - ACQUILLA STOUGHTON OF ANTIGUA" further below.
THE FAMILY OF BARROW OF CHESTER AND POTTERSPURY.
According to several pedigrees - one recorded in The Cheshire Sheaf [6 September 1899, page 92 et seq.], and another in the Herald's Visitation of Northamptonshire, 1618-19 - there was a BARROW family, as follows, with some additional details collected from other sources:
Richard de Barrow, of Cheshire; married Ellen, with issue:
Hugh de Barrow; living 8 Hen VI (1430); died young.
John de BARROW; of Churton; married with issue:
Robert BARROW; of Chester; married with issue - a son Robert BARROW, who married Anne YARDLEY of Caldecot, with issue.
Richard BARROW. See [A] next.
[A] Richard BARROWE; living 13 Hen V (1426); of the City of Chester, 21 Hen VI (1443); Barber, of Chester, when he was Sheriff of Chester, 1445; married with issue:
John BARROW, eldest son. See [B] next.
[B] John BARROW, 32 Hen VI (1454); Sheriff of Chester, 1454; possibly Sheriff of Chester, 1473, as Ironmonger; he was father of:
Robert BARROW; living 1487, 1489; he had issue sons:
Thomas BARROW.
Robert BARROW; of Chester, 19 Hen VIII (1528-29).
Thomas BARROW. See [C] below.
Agnes BARROW; married Richard WYRALL (or WORRALL), an Alderman of Chester.
[C] Thomas BARROW; a Mercer in Chester; Sheriff of Chester, 2 and 22 Hen VII (1487 and 1507); Mayor of the City of Chester, 1495, 1505, 1518; he died 15 Hen VIII (1524-25); he married Ann LLOYD, the daughter and heir of Humphrey Ap David LLOYD of Bryn; he was father of:
1. Roger BARROW. See [D] below.
2. Thomas BARROW; died v.p.
3. Robert BARROW.
4. Edward BARROW.
[D] Roger BARROW; said to have migrated to Cambridge, and to have been Sheriff of Cambridge, 15 Hen VIII [The Cheshire Sheaf]; slain at the Siege of Boulogne, in 1544 [Visitation of Northamptonshire]; married Katherine SINGLETON, daughter of Mr SINGLETON of Scales, Lancashire; they had issue two sons:
1. Thomas BARROW. Possibly mentioned as purchaser, with wife Margaret, of three closes in Potterspury, Northamptonshire, 1603 [TNA - CR 162/281] - unless instead a nephew?
2. John BARROW. See [E] next.
[E] John BARROW, born before 1545 (if his father died in 1544); he married firstly, Anne AMOS, daughter of William AMOS of County Oxford, who died without issue; John and his second wife Mary were defendants in a case brought before the Court of Chancery, 13 November 1582, by Plaintiff William STANDISH of Winchester, Hampshire, concerning the will of William STANDISH of Thornburgh, Buckinghamshire, whom the defendants claimed had died intestate, and his lease of Tenements in Southwark Saint Olave, Surrey, and lease of a messuage with lands in Thornborough, of pastures called "Wykye" (or Wicky in Little Staughton) in Bedfordshire, and of lands in Syresham, Northamptonshire [TNA - C 78/59/10]; John BARROW was assessed at £3 8s on his goods, in Potterspury, Cleley Hundred, Subsidy of 1580; mentioned in Henry PEDDER's Terrier, 1596, as holding adjacent lands [N.R.O. - F XIII.4(4)]; John was named in an Exchequer document dated 1599, as being a Certificate of residence showing him to be liable for taxation in Northamptonshire [TNA - E 15/43/55]; he was rated for goods, in Potterspury, at £3 8s in the Subsidies of 1600 and 1602; witness to 1601 will of Richard SCRIVEVENR of Potterspury; he died in 1617, and his will, dated 5 September 1615 (he "signed" his mark), was proved P.C.C. 17 October 1617, and was subject of a sentence (in Latin) in 1619, naming sons Edward, Richard, John (with wife Elizabeth) and William; John was married secondly, before 1582, Mary STANDISH, daughter of William STANDISH (probably of Thornborough, Buckinghamshire, and said to have been of the City of Oxford, and perhaps the M.A., Magdalen College, who was later Registrar of Oxford University); they had issue:
1. Edward BARROW. See [F] below.
2. Richard BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of his father's best horse, or the value thereof in money; married with issue, the wife living in 1615, with 22s. in her father-in-law's will, and "each and every one of the children" to share equally in 22s.
3. John BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with property bequests related to the Manor of Potterspury; married Elizabeth, living in 1615, with 22s. in her father-in-law's will; her daughter Sibell, living 1615, with 22s. in her grandfather's will.
4. William BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of £100.
5. Robert BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of £20.
6. Anne BARROW; named in her father's will, 1615, with bequest of a 2 year-old roan mare in Lillingston; she was buried at Deane, Bedfordshire, 31 January 1618-19, the wife of William ESTON ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," F.A. BLAYDES, London, 1890, p.90]; she married firstly, perhaps about 1605-06, John DILLINGHAM of Over Deane, Bedfordshire; he was buried at Deane, 3 May 1608; his will dated 12 March 1607, proved P.C.C. 9 June 1608, naming his wife Ann, evidently pregnant, with different provisions for that unborn child depending upon its gender, referring to a financial obligation of £200 owing to John BARROWE his father-in-law (probably under the marriage settlements), and mentioning his late father (Walter), his un-named mother (still living - probably Alice formerly ROULTE), his sisters COLBY (with three children), POTTER (Arthur POTTER and Eliz. DELLINGAM were married at Bedford Saint Paul, on 18 May 1597) and BARNWELL, and his two brothers Francis DILLINGHAM (their father's son and heir, born 1568, M.A. Cantab, 1590) and Thomas DILLINGHAM; Ann married secondly, at Deane, 18 January 1615[-16], William ESTON; John and Anne had issue an only child:
a. Anne Posthuma DILLINGHAM, baptised at Deane, 15 May 1608; named in her grandfather's will, 1615, with a bequest of 22 shillings; she was married at Deane, Bedfordshire, 14 May 1626, to Nicholas THRESHER.
[F] Edward BARROW was probably born about 1570s and perhaps in Potterspury, Northamptonshire; mentioned in Henry PEDDER's Terrier, 1596, as holding adjacent lands in Potterspury; he was named in his father's will, dated 5 September 1615, and in the Sentence of it dated 1619, with a bequest of his father's property in Marblefish, parish of Berkhamsted, County Hertford; Edward was rated for goods, in Potterspury, at £3 8s. in the Subsidy of 1621 (just as his father had in 1600 and 1602); he and his wife Elizabeth were named as Plaintiffs in a case they brought before the Court of Chancery, 1623, defended by Sir Richard BURNEBYE, Knt, and others, concerning Money Matters in Northamptonshire [TNA - C 3/333/62]; he was recorded in the Subsidy of 1628 as Edward BARROWE, gentleman, taxpayer in Potterspury, and assessed at £3 16s. on goods; a Mr BARROES was assessed at 10 shillings, Potterspury Ship Money List, about 1635-36, although this date range conflicts with the next; recorded in a Deposition dated 1634, as "...Mr Edward BARROWES deceased carried twoe loades of the like stone... from the honor howse of GRAFTON to Stoke lodge since Sir Francis CRANE came thither" [Ph35288 Northampton Deposition].
Edward BARROW, Gent., was married at the parish church of Luton, Bedfords, 27 March 1617[-18], to Elizabeth BRIANT, widow, gentlewoman ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," by F.A. BLAYDES, London, 1890, page 185] - footnoted as Edward BARROW of Potterspury, and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Thomas and Frances CHEYNE, and widow of Samuel BRYAN of Northampton, Gent ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," p. 410, citing 'Beds. N. and Q. ii, 70'].
Elizabeth was a daughter of Thomas CHEYNEY (1550-1612) of Bramingham, Bedfordshire, by his wife Frances BROCAS (died 1630); and a grand-daughter of Thomas CHEYNEY by Elizabeth ROTHERAM, and of Bernard BROCAS by Anne PEXSALL (died 1591).
Samuel and Elizabeth had been married at Sundon, Bedfordshire, on 15 September 1608; and Samuel was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 1 October 1616, a Gentleman [Northamptonshire Record Office - Ref 223P/1]. He was the son of John BRYAN of Northampton, a Merchant of the Staple of England, by his wife Ann. Samuel made a will on 26 September 1616, proved P.C.C. on 13 November 1616, in which he mentioned his wife Elizabeth, a sizable property portfolio, and two brothers, Joseph and John BRYAN Junior. But the lack of mention of any children suggests they had none surviving.
Elizabeth evidently married thirdly, Mr COOKE (probably Isaac); as Elizabeth COOKE, she was probably mentioned in the Crown Survey of 1660, as "Elizabeth COOKE, Copyholder, old rent £1 13s. 4d." and all ditto "6d." [N.R.O. - G 3199]; on 22 February 1661-62, as Elizabeth COOKE, late the wife of Edward BARRONES (probably BARROWS) she made a petition, with her son Thomas BARRONES (or BARROWS), concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury [Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660-67, Volume 1, edited by William SHAW, H.M.S.O., London, 1904].
Elizabeth BARROW, baptised 1 November 1618. Possibly married firstly in 1642 to Nicholas BACON of London; secondly, in London in 1648, to Peter FARREN, and thirdly, in Northampton in 1655, to Robert MASSEY - the last two both Merchants of Northampton.
Frances BARROW, baptised 4 April 1620. Possibly our Frances, who married firstly to John COOKE of Gray's Inn, London; secondly to William PROCTOR; and thirdly to Acquilla STOUGHTON, the last two both of Antigua.
Mary BARROW, baptised 18 October 1621. At present we have no further particulars for her.
Edward and Elizabeth evidently also had issue a son (unless he was of an earlier marriage):
Thomas BARROW, baptism not yet found, perhaps in Potterspury, about 1620s; probably named in 1641, with Isaac COOKE, as witness to the copy of a deed made in 1577, concerning a transaction made by Thomas MEADE of Lillingstone to Thomas HILLIER of Potterspury [N.R.O. - F XIII.3] - but if he was of age, then he was born about 1620 or earlier, which does suggest he may have been an older half-brother to the three girls; probably the Mr BARROW assessed in the Potterspury Army Tax List, 24 April 1653 (the assessment amount no longer legible); in 1653 he entered into a bond with the rate collectors of Potterspury of £6 to secure the payment of £3 3s. 6d, in connection with the benefaction of £3 previously made to the poor of Potterspury in the will of his grandfather John BARROW ["Miscellaneous Papers, viz Charitable Donations; Parish Returns; and the Poor Clergy" Session 8 November 1814 to 12 July 1815, Volume II, Bodleian Library]; Crown Survey, 1660, "Thomas BARROW, Copyholder, old rent £7 13s. 0d." [N.R.O. - G 3199]; living 1662, when, as Thomas BARRON[ES], he made a petition with his mother, who was by then known as Elizabeth COOKE, concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury; possibly recorded in 1684, as a gent and resident of Potterspury, with an Inventory of Goods valued at £30; Thomas may have died at Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, on 13 September 1684; he married Margaret, who was named with Thomas in a conveyance of land in Cosgrove, near Potterspury, 3 September 1663 [Grafton Estate papers, NRO Ref G331]; possibly by her the father of John BARROW, who matriculated into Saint Edmund Hall, Oxon, in May 1688, aged 17.
The BARROW residence in Potterspury was identified in a detailed survey conducted in 1723 by agents of the Duke of Grafton - a two storied dwelling attached to a barn, it stood on the south side of the High Street, and about half way between Watling Street and the Parish Church, between the residences of Thomas SCRIVENER and William BUSHNELL - and it is the house where in 1684 Thomas BARROW, Gent, was Inventoried with £30 value of goods [see "Renewal and Replacement in a Northamptonshire Village: Housing in Potterspury 1727-1910," by Rod CONLON, Vernacular Architecture, Volume 40, 2009, pages 36-50]. The house was demolished about 1850-70.
Elizabeth BARROW's third husband was probably the one recorded on the 1654 Chancery Court Bill of Complaint as Isaac COOKE of Potterspury, Gent, who was a party to the 1641-42 marriage settlements for her daughter Elizabeth to Nicholas BACON - which supports the circumstantial evidence that Edward BARROW had died (probably by 1634), and that his widow Elizabeth married Mr (Isaac) COOKE, at least as early as December 1641. He was inevitably the Isaac COOKE who, with Thomas BARROW, was in 1641 witness to a deed of sale of a house in Potterspury by John HILLIER the elder to John HILLER the younger; he was probably the Mr COOKE, assessed at 17s 3d for the Potterspury Army Tax List, 24 April 1653.
Another document, Ref YZ 2955-6, Northamptonshire Record Office, of date 13 March 1743, which records details of an earlier feeoffment, dated 22 April 1654, concerning the purchase by Thomas BARROWES, gentleman of Potterspury, of land in Potterspury parish and in Cosgrove and Yardly Gobion, from Michael TASSELL the elder of Potterspury, yeoman, his wife Frances, Michael TASSELL the younger, his son, Richard SCRIVENER the elder of Potterspury, and William JEWETT of Deanshanger, at a cost of £112; part of which property Thomas BARROWES then leased, on 9 November 1676, to Henry EDWARDS, yeoman of Byfield.
The livery of seisin for the original 1654 feoffment was evidently signed by of Isaac COOKE, Richard SCRIVENER, Elizabeth FARREN, Millisent QUARLES and R. MASSEY.
It will come as no surprise if the four names we recognise here were Thomas BARROWES, his step-father Isaac COOKE, Isaac's widowed step-daughter Elizabeth FARREN and her very-soon-to-be third husband, Robert MASSEY of Northampton.
But perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence so far appears in a Parliamentary Survey of the Manor of Potterspury by the Trustee for Crown Lands and Fee Farm Rent, indexed by The National Archives [Ref - E 317/Northants/40, at fol.20], which records the following:
"1650. Rental. Isaac COOKE, Gent, held three tenements in Potterspury by copy. Rent for them all is £3 10s., fine £7, herriot 2s. Annual value 13s. 6d. farthing. 'Isaac says his copy is in Ireland with his son, by which means, no date appears'."
It does seem unlikely that the other Isaac COOKE would have had a son who was also in Ireland in 1650 - in which case, it seems very likely that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury WAS the father of John COOKE the Gray's Inn Barrister.
Elizabeth CHEYNEY, first the wife of Samuel BRYAN, then of Edward BARROW, and finally of Mr (probably Isaac) COOKE, may have later gone to live with her daughter Elizabeth (Mrs MASSEY) in Northampton; she may have been the Mrs COOKE who had a seat in All Saints Church, 1664 (although this may have been another - the widow of Tempest COOKE of Northampton). I had wondered whether she may have been buried in that church on 17 January 1668-69 - but it has been confirmed that that burial was for Elizabeth, the wife of Lawrence COOKE, Barber [Northamptonshire Record Office - 223P/1].
Her daughter Elizabeth probably made her will on 5 February 1680-81 (proved P.C.C., 10 April 1686); she probably married firstly, perhaps at Potterspury, on 3 January 1641, Nicholas BACON of Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, parish of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, City of London (son and heir of Clement BACON, Mercer, and his wife Martha); he was buried at Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, on 17 August 1643; Elizabeth probably married secondly, at Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, on 29 June 1648, Peter FARREN, Baker and Innholder in Northampton; he was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 August 1650; and Elizabeth married thirdly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 28 July 1655, Robert MASSEY, Attorney in Northampton; he was buried in woollen at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 September 1678.
Another interesting entry appears in the Poll Tax listings for Potterspury, dated 9 August 1660 [NRO Ref YZ 4397] - it was for "Mr COOKE" who was assessed at £2, and "...his wife, one daughter, and 2 servants" who were assessed at 2 shillings, but with no entry under the name of BARROW.
This Poll Tax was levied by the Convention Parliament (which first met on 25 April 1660 to replace the Long Parliament which dissolved itself on 16 Mar), in order to fund the disbanding of the New Model Army and pay off their arrears in pay - the bill's first reading took place on 12 June 1660, and a committee was appointed to verse it on 6 Nov.
If the list for its assessment was made in 1660, then Mr COOKE could not have been the Isaac COOKE who died in 1658; but if the list used by the 1660 Parliament was a residual list made prior to the Restoration, and had been compiled in early 1659, then it might just have been John COOKE, his wife Frances, and his daughter Freelove (unless all those assessed were over 16 years of age, which would rule out Freelove, then less than five years old); or if even earlier again, from before early to mid 1658, then it may well have been Isaac COOKE, his second wife Elizabeth (the widow BARROW), and perhaps her adult daughter (possibly the Mary BARROW born 1621?).
Unfortunately, it is evident that Parish Registers for the parish of Potterspury, and the Bishop's Transcripts of them (for the Diocese of Peterborough), have not survived for any dates prior to 1674.
In the absence of any chance of corroborating these speculations from parish registers, it is important to observe that some of the few details that we have found do not, in themselves, give cause for great confidence in this speculation:
1. Frances COOKE, in her petition to Charles II in 1664, stated that her marriage had taken place in 1645. This is not 1646. Did Frances have a memory lapse? Did a copying clerk perhaps misread a 6 for a 5?
Or did Frances perhaps regard the "marriage" as beginning at the moment of their betrothal and commitment, rather than the later church ceremony confirming same?
2. When John COOKE wrote his 1660 letter from the condemned cell to his daughter Freelove, he only mentioned three of her close blood relations - her mother, her good grandmother, and her aunt MASSEY. Nowhere here is there any indication of the existence of an uncle Thomas BARROW, who appears, from the above speculated pedigree, to been just that. Perhaps Thomas, living in 1661-62, had not approved of his brother-in-law's involvement in the death of Charles I?
3. If Isaac COOKE did marry France's mother Elizabeth BARROW alias BRYAN alias CHEYNEY, in about 1641, and went to live with her in Potterspury, how is it that his grandson Luke CLAPHAM was born in Baldwin's Garden, Gray's in Lane, in 1643, recorded in the baptismal register as the house of Isaac COOKE? Did Isaac COOKE keep his house in London after moving to Potterspury? Did he move there later?
But I am getting a bit ahead of myself - the details referred here are discussed in detail below, in the sequence in which I had originally written this article, well after the reverse sequence of France's three presumed husbands, to which we now return.
HUSBAND NUMBER 3 - ACQUILLA STOUGHTON OF ANTIGUA.
It is apparent from the above 1693 will that Frances's most recent husband was named STOUGHTON.
And OLIVER ("History of Antigua") provides further indications that he was almost certainly Acquilla STOUGHTON, Deputy Secretary of Antigua when he was named on a list, dated 9 January 1679[-80?], of the "... names of persons sworn to the Acts of Trade"; he leased 266 acres from John LANGFORD on 1 May 1680, for 2 years at £200 per annum; and was a Member of the Antigua Assembly which met on 2 April 1686, signing a motion of dissent from the Governor's requirements to pay "... the gunners and matrosses out of the King's Revenue of a pound an acre."
He was not recorded by name in the August 1678 "Census" of Antigua, but as this Census identified heads of households only, he may either not yet have arrived in Antigua, or he have been living in somebody else's household.
Acquilla STOUGHTON made his will on 17 July 1690, making a bequest to his brother John STOUGHTON (16,000 lbs of sugar), and naming his wife Frances as sole executor, and with all of his goods, lands, tenements, negroes, etc; it was proved by Frances on 21 June 1693.
It is uncertain where Acquilla came from, but it is possible that he was the Acquilla STOUGHTON (alias STANTEN) of the City of Cork, in Ireland, who had issue by his wife Ann baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Cork, between December 1657 (Jael) and September 1665 (Daniel - with Joshua, John and Thomas intervening at regular intervals), before marrying again, by License of the Diocese of Cork and Ross, in 1670, Hanna ROSS.
It is such an unusual given name that these are either one and the same person, or else, I venture, very closely related.
If Acquilla STOUGHTON did live in Cork in the 1650's, it is, I suppose, not beyond the realms of possibility that he may have known of, or even met, Frances when she was the wife of John COOKE, Chief Justice of Munster (see below).
And if the Cork family was his, then it appears that the children may not have survived, or those that did were not within his family circle in Antigua when he made his will.
There is certainly no indication that Frances had any issue by Acquilla STOUGHTON.
HUSBAND NUMBER 2 - LIEUTENANT WILLIAM PROCTOR OF ANTIGUA.
There is less certainty about Frances's likely second husband, Lieutenant William PROCTOR, of Rendezvous Bay, near Falmouth, on the south coast of Antigua, just east of English Harbour (the headland separating Rendezvous Bay from Falmouth Harbour was still called Proctor's Point when I visited in 2004).
OLIVER ("History of Antigua") records that John PIGOTT married Frances PROCTOR in 1690. While the date is not sourced, it may be a little premature, as John PIGOTT did not arrive in Antigua until 31 May 1690, and his Regiment were not informed of London's decision to keep them on in the Caribbean until January 1691.
But it also evident that William was the only PROCTOR who leaves any trail in Antiguan records for the appropriate time frame.
William PROCTOR was first mentioned by OLIVER as receiving a grant of 50 acres at Falmouth, Antigua, by Patent of Governor AUSTIN dated 18 February 1646[-47?]. This was well early in the time-frame of English settlement of the Island (which began in 1632); it also begs the question as to why PROCTOR was in that part of the world at a time of increasing upheaval in England, otherwise known as the Civil War between King and Parliament.
PROCTOR further obtained 72 acres at Falmouth by purchase from Colonel Bastian BOYER, although OLIVER does not record the date for this transaction (the 72 acres was formerly William PIKE's, and by him mortgaged to Cloies ABRAHAM alias BAKER, whose heirs entrusted it to Colonel Bastian BOYER).
And he had another five acres by the nun-cupative (verbal) will of Peter THORNHILL (another parcel of William PIKEs' land sold to George NOBLE and then by him to THORNHILL).
He also had 30 acres at Willoughby Bay by gift from Thomas WITHERED (by his will, and; who bought 10 acres from Richard BARTLET), 20 February 1650[-51?].
In all, Lieutenant William PROCTOR's total was 157 acres.
After the brief French occupation in 1666 (Antigua was ceded back to English control by the Treaty of Breda, and Saint Kitts was partitioned between French and English forces), a new book of Patents for Government land grants was commenced in 1668, and in it, under warrant of William, Lord WILLOUGHBY of Parham, and entered by Samuel WINTHROP, Registrar, we find that Lieutenant William PROCTOR had one for an identical area, 157 acres, which was undoubtedly a re-patenting of his earlier holdings.
Shortly after, William PROCTOR was one of the signatories to a Petition and Remonstrance in support of Lord WILLOUGHBY and his continued governance over them, news having filtered through that he was to be superseded.
In 1671, William PROCTOR and Major Richard BURRASTON were chosen to take care of the poor in Falmouth and Rendezvous Bay Division; in July 1672 he was £100 in debt to Richard COWES; and he acquired 10 acres in New North Sound Division by warrant of Governor Philip WARNER dated 17 October 1672 (this property was surveyed by Archibald COCHRAN in April 1675).
Lieutenant William PROCTOR was one of six military men among 19 members of the Assembly which met on 7 May 1674, with Major Thomas SMOLLETT as Speaker, and which dealt with the banishment of Mr (Archibald) HENDERSON. Property conflicts arose subsequent to this banishment, and we shall meet up with Mr HENDERSON and these consequences a little later.
On 30 April 1676, PROCTOR swore the will of Renold BARTER, Planter at Falmouth; and on 19 June 1678, he executed a deed of sale to Mr Thomas INNETT, Merchant, although OLIVER did not identify the nature of the property involved.
In his last known appearance in Antiguan records, William PROCTOR was named in the 1678 Census of Antigua, and his household at Falmouth Division comprised two adult males (I presume PROCTOR and another), an adult female (probably our Frances) and two children (probably their two daughters), all Europeans (enumerated as "whites"); the household also comprised eleven Africans (four men, three women and four children - enumerated as "negros"), whom I presume to have been slaves.
Falmouth Harbour looking north-east. Falmouth town is off to the right of the photo on the distant shoreline.
The Census, dated 27 August 1678, counted a total of 4,480 people living on the island.
Of this total, 2308 were Europeans, and 2172 Africans; of the Europeans, 1600 were English, 610 Irish, and 98 were Scots.
Of the total, 2041 were men, 1412 were women, and 1027 were children.
William's holdings appear to have been about twice the average per capita acreage; his allocation of slaves was about the same, twice the average per capita ratio.
If William PROCTOR made a will, it has not survived - OLIVER wrote of his visit to Antigua in 1884-85:
"Most of the old books of wills, etc, are in a deplorable condition; they have, as a rule, lost their covers, hundreds of pages are missing, and even some folios which are legible are so fragile from former exposure to the damp, deplorable condition; they have, as a rule, lost their covers, hundreds of pages are missing, and even some folios which are legible are so fragile from former exposure to the damp that the paper falls to pieces on being turned over. The early records were always badly housed and kept..."
FRANCES'S "PROCTOR" DAUGHTERS.
There is evidence that Frances may have had two daughters by her presumed marriage to Lieutenant William PROCTOR:
[A] In her 1693 will (see above) Frances made a bequest to her grand-daughter Frances KERBY; the lack of any mention of the mother of this grand-child indicates that she was probably already deceased, along with the grandchild's father.
OLIVER ("History of Antigua") speculates elsewhere ["Family of KERBY," Vol.2, p.122] that she may have been a sister of Thomas KERBY, and if this is accurate, probably a daughter of Dr Thomas KERBY Senior.
However, in his early pedigree construction of this family, OLIVER (whose early pedigree constructions are often somewhat "faulty") indicates that Thomas Junior was an infant in 1698, which would make it difficult for him to be Frances KERBY's brother if her parents were dead before 1693; and if they weren't, the question would arise as to why they were therefore not mentioned in Frances STOUGHTON's 1693 will. The 1698 document was a lease granted by Thomas's guardians, to Robert FREEMAN, of Antigua, Gent; and the "infant" tag may have arisen from an earlier will of his father (now lost), so perhaps still under age in 1698 but no longer an infant. This Thomas KERBY Junior was probably of age by 1702 when he was appointed Deputy Secretary for Antigua, and he married Jane GAMBLE in 1705; he may well have been an elder half-sibling to Frances KERBY, and so not a grandson of Frances STOUGHTON, which might account for his not being named in her will.
The mention of the KERBY grandchild first in her grandmother's will may support the notion that her mother was the elder of the two PROCTOR daughters.
[B] In the same 1693 will, Frances named her daughter and son as Frances and John PIGOTT resp.
We know from PIGOTT family sources that John PIGOTT's mother was Elizabeth WELDON, so it is apparent that Frances PIGOTT must have been Frances's daughter, and that John PIGOTT was therefore her son-in-law.
Details of the PIGOTT family can be found at the first post on this blog-page, made on 24 May 2008, at this link:
http://pigott-gorrie.blogspot.com.au/2008/05/vital-statistics-can-be-hard-to-come-by.html
Unless Frances KERBY was instead a daughter of Frances PROCTOR by a KERBY husband she had before she married John PIGOTT?
There is just a hint of such a possibility mentioned in a book published in London in 1717 by George FRENCH, entitled "The History of Colonel PARKE's Administration," and made accessible courtesy of J-STOR; at page 59, concerning the leadership of the two "rebel" Parties who attacked PARKE in Saint John's in December 1710, FRENCH wrote:
"... the one commanded by Capt. PIGGOT... who had been... drawn into that Faction by the Artifice of the Party, and the Apprehension he had of a Suit in Chancery to be commenc'd against him by his Wife's Children, in which they should not fail of having Justice done to them..."
At first reading I presumed this referred to his wife's PIGOTT children; but none of them were yet of age; and it then occurred to me that Frances PROCTOR may have had other children before she married John PIGOTT, and that Frances KERBY may have been one of them!
Although we cannot yet account for the other (or others) implied by the word "children" - perhaps Thomas KERBY, another participant in the PARKE Riot on the "rebel" side - unless they were the PIGOTTs after all.
But this was all happening well after Frances STAUGHTON had departed the scene.
HUSBAND NUMBER 1 - JOHN COOKE OF GRAY'S INN, BARRISTER.
Again, the evidence that Frances had a first husband before William PROCTOR is only circumstantial, but compelling. And, to my own mind at least, it seems assured that it was John COOKE, the Solicitor General for the Commonwealth, who prosecuted the case against King Charles in 1649, and was executed in 1660 as a "Regicide."
Part of the illustration of the Regicides, published in 1661, as a frontis-piece to
"A compleat Collection of the Lives, Speeches, Private Passages, Letters and Prayers of Those Persons lately Executed, and..."
And about this supposed first husband, there is considerably more information in the public domain.
Wilfrid PREST wrote the on-line Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for John COOKE, and outlines his career fairly concisely, from the evident viewpoint of an Academic Legal Historian, with a minimal emphasis on his broader family connections; although he did insert several marital details not found in the earlier hard-published D.N.B. biography which preceded his contribution.
Geoffrey ROBERTSON, Q.C., another Australian, and the eminent ex-patriate Barrister now living in London, wrote a very detailed account of the life and times of John COOKE in his book "The Tyrannicide Brief," published by Chato and Windus in 2005 (the paperback edition by Vintage Books, 2006, is used for page references in this blog). Likewise, ROBERTSON was scarce on detail of COOKE's extended family circle, and even decried the lack of any mention of his connections by genealogists and family historians in the then available on-line pedigrees.
Both of these more recent biographies identified John COOKE's wife as Frances CUTLER, and that the marriage had occurred in Saint Olave's, Hart Lane, London, on 12 September 1646; although neither of them provided substantiating evidence for that being the correct one.
However, there was another London marriage in that year, at the parish church of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, on 19 May 1646, of a Frances BARR[...] to "Mr John COOKE, Counsellor," which, in the absence of any other evidence, might perhaps have been considered to have been a more appropriate candidate for the Gray's Inn Barrister.
The published register (Harleian Society) recorded the entry as "Mr John COOKE, Counsellor, and Mrs Frances BARR of " (fn - "sic").
The on-line image of the register page (ancestry.library edition) shows the bride's name as BA..., the remainder disappearing into the shadow created by the binding; although the B was not identical to another capitalised B of a surname two entries below it, evidently missing the first vertical and downwards stroke; and the part that remained, the feint return upward stroke and two half-loops, one under the other to the right, did resemble that similar portion of the "Ff" at the beginning of Frances.
In correspondence with the London Metropolitan Archives, their Senior Research Officer, having looked at the original register, stated that the final three letters of Frances's surname appeared to be BARROSS, although he did suggest the "O" may have been an "A," and he stated that the last letters were affected by an ink "splodge" which made the letters thicker. I imagine that if the binding was like that when the churchwarden wrote up the entry, he may have had difficulty controlling his quill as it wrote into the binding.
PREST evidently interpreted a "footnote" to a "COOKE of Sketchley" family pedigree, published by John NICOLS in his "The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester" [Volume IV, Part 2, 1811, on page 468], as implying that John COOKE's wife Frances had died before him, and that he had married secondly, about 1659, to a Mary CHAWNER.
And both acknowledged that John COOKE had a daughter named Freelove, to whom he wrote a letter from his condemned cell in October 1660 (see full text below), and presumed further that she was then but an infant.
Another and "Fictitious portrait called John COOKE," by Robert COOPER.
From holdings of the National Portrait Gallery, London [NPC D 17879].
Frances COOKE's subsequent career focuses much light on the complications that have arisen from NICHOLS's placement, immediately under his translated COOKE Family Pedigree (the Latin original had appeared in the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire), of his unsourced note:
"Mary, daughter of Henry CHAWNER, of Barwell, and wife of John COOKE, was remarried to John SHENTON, Gent, in 1668-69."
Indeed, the slightly enlarged space between the two items reinforces the notion I have that they were not directly connected.
And I believe that the evidence from other sources now makes it abundantly clear that the wife John COOKE farewelled from the traitor's scaffold in 1660 was the one he married in 1645 or 1646.
Further, there is no evidence yet found in on-line records of the COOKE-CHAWNER marriage. There was a Henry CHANOR or CHAWNER of Barwell, Leicestershire; by his wife Elizabeth, he had a son Humphrey CHANOR, baptised at Barwell on 25 October 1639, and he, as Humphrey CHAWNER, married at Barwell on 2 February 1664 to Elizabeth ROBERTS; and a Henry CHAWNER had several children, by an unidentified wife, who were baptised at Barwell - Rebecca (13 October 1667), John (24 July 1670) and John (23 July 1675). But no Mary among them.
[As of late June 2015, it appears that the editors of the on-line Oxford D.N.B. have accepted this explanation, and have altered John COOKE's biography appropriately.]
Insofar as John COOKE's life highlights and illustrates the movements of his wife Frances, we find the following date information, much of it from ROBERTSON's "The Tyrannicide Brief":
1. COOKE married Frances in 1645, as she recorded in her own 1664 petition to Charles II.
Percival BOYD ("Inhabitants of London" - S.O.G. Library, London) also records the date as 1645, but does not give his source (he also identified Frances as being a MASSEY, probably in error).
ROBERTSON and PREST both, probably incorrectly, record his marriage in 1646, in London, and to a Frances CUTLER.
2. Frances gave birth to a son, who evidently died an infant, perhaps in England, and if so, probably about 1646-49; COOKE mentioned him in his last letter to his daughter Freelove in 1660; the child is only known to history as "D. COOKE" - perhaps the biblical Daniel?
However, BOYD ("Inhabitants of London") records him as John COOKE, again without identifying his source.
3. COOKE made a decision to follow CROMWELL into Ireland; having been appointed by a grateful Parliament to the Mastership of Saint Cross's Hospital in Winchester, COOKE spent a little time in Winchester in September 1649 before crossing the Irish Sea.
5. On 1 January 1650, John and Frances, with three servants, set sail from Wexford for Kinsale in the ship Hector; on 5 January, they met with a violent storm, which those on board feared would sink their ship and that all hands would be drowned; after being buffeted along the full length of the southern Irish coast, as far west as Mezne Head, to the west of Cape Clere, they finally fetched up, minus a blown out foresail and a jettisoned anchor, back up the coast in Kinsale, on about 9 January. COOKE published some reflections on surviving that experience (London, 1650), to which Frances added her own version:
"Mrs COOKE's Meditations; being an humble thanksgiving to her Heavenly Father, for granting her a new life, having concluded her selfe dead, and her grave made in the bottome of the sea, in that great storme, Jan'y the 5th, 1649."
COOKE alluded to this voyage just before he was executed (see below); however, they nowhere made any mention of a child or children accompanying them on that voyage.
6. Frances also had a daughter, named Freelove COOKE, their only surviving child; her birth year is unknown, but probably in the mid 1650s; she was almost certainly born after January 1650, and was therefore probably born in Ireland.
Percival BOYD ("Inhabitants of London") gives the date, again without source, as 1655.
7. COOKE was appointed Chief Justice of Munster in March 1650.
8. COOKE was in Cork in 1650 [publication of his account of his passage by sea from Wexford to Kinsale on the "Hector"]; in Waterford in 1651 [ his "Monarchy; no creature of God's making"] and in 1652 [his "Vindication of the Lawe, etc"].
9. COOKE's pension arrangements were finalised on 26 September 1653 by an Act of Parliament - specifically "An Act for the speedy and effectual Satisfaction of the Adventurers for Lands in Ireland and the Arrears due to Soldiers there, and of other Publique Debts, and for the Encouragement of Protestants to plant and inhabit the land" - whereby he was granted, in lieu of all arrears of pension due to him for his services in Ireland, property already in his possession, namely a house in the City of Waterford (valued at £208), a nearby farm of two plow-lands and a half, mostly of grazing land, at Kilbarry in the Liberty of the City of Waterford (£245), and a farm of three plow-lands at Barnahaley in county Cork.
PRENDERGAST ("The Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland," Dublin, 1922, at pages 316 et seq.) referred to these Waterford possessions as "..a fine mansion in the City, and another beside the town for his country house (both taken from the former owners)..."
As these arrangements were established by one Act of Parliament, it is understandable for COOKE to expect that it would require another Act of Parliament to alter or rescind them (notwithstanding the hugely punitive nature of an Attainder for Treason).
10. COOKE was appointed Recorder of Waterford in January 1655.
11. COOKE was appointed a Judge of the Upper Bench in Ireland in June 1655; this Court was established to supersede the various Provincial Courts, including the one in Munster; COOKE argued against its efficacy, and resigned his Commission to it in August 1655.
12. COOKE, with fellow Commissioners SANTHY and HALSEY, submitted their Report on the Athlone Commission, 26 April 1656, to the Council of Ireland.
13. Justice COOK, with Justice HALSEY, presided in August 1656 at the Court at Mallow for the Qualification of the Irish that were formerly inhabitants of the towns of Cork, Youghal and Kinsale.
15. COOKE was at Northampton, 9 December 1657, when wrote to Henry CROMWELL, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, offering his congratulations; and acknowledging his orders back to Ireland, setting some provisos on reviving the presidency Court in Munster (to have law and equity), and indicating his intention to "...attend your Lordship in March" [A Collection of the State Papers of John THURLOE, 1657-58, page 666].
In "The Records of the Borough of Northampton" [Volume 2, Edited by J. Charles COX, 1898, at page 244], we find mention of "...Mr Justice COOKE" as having subscribed 10 shillings towards the cost of furnishing "...leatherine bucketts" to be used for fighting fires in the Town (he was one of 80 subscribers, only three or whom were named in the abstract - the date of his subscription was not mentioned, but the abstract implied a date range for the payments of 1643-1657).
16. Frances's father-in-law, Isaac COOKE, evidently died in late 1657 or during 1658. John COOKE was in London, 1 February 1658-59, when he wrote again to Henry CROMWELL in Dublin, stating that he had "...foreborne the frequencies of writing, as intending all the last year to have returned, had not my wife's consumptive condition and the death of my aged father retarded"; but he was unsure "...whether my poor weake wife be able to travaile or not"; and he gave the undertaking "...if God spare my life, I shall attend your lordship before Easter term" [THURLOE's State Papers, VII, page 305].
ROBERTSON, noting this reference to Frances's consumptive illness, presumed that it had claimed her life at about this time.
18. Frances [*] was residing in Waterford, February 1660, when her husband was arrested at Monkstown (perhaps as early as 10 February), on his way to Dublin; he was imprisoned in Dublin Castle, awaiting further political developments in London.
19. With several other "Regicides" (including Colonels HACKER and PHAIRE), and under the close guard of Captain Hugh CLOTWORTHY, they set out from Dublin on 16 May 1660 for England.
Frances [*] may have accompanied him on his journey, or followed on shortly afterwards, their Irish assets having been "frozen" prior to sequestration.
21. Frances [*] evidently resided in London with the family of Colonel Edmund LUDLOW, at least until he fled [ROBERTSON] - LUDLOW had arrived back in London from Ireland in January 1660; he surrendered himself to the Speaker on 20 June, just two days after COOKE had arrived back in London; he fled to Europe shortly afterwards.
Frances made daily but futile attempts to visit her husband while he was in the Tower; in one letter to her from there, he asked her not to wear black on his behalf, for "...I shall be in white" (a biblical reference with chapter-and-verse - perhaps also a nod to his "nick-name" of White COOKE, apparently used to distinguish him from other COOKEs at Gray's Inn).
22. COOKE was transferred to Newgate Prison early on the morning of 10 October 1660, in preparation for his trial at the Old Bailey; thereafter Frances's [*] visits were apparently more successful, although, as it turns out, he only had six days more to live.
23. COOKE wrote a letter from his condemned cell to his wife, whom he addressed simply as his "Dear Lamb"; this letter was largely of a religious nature; he also wrote letters to his daughter Freelove (15 October - see full text below), and to his "...brother F." (a follow up to one had written earlier, from the Tower, and addressed to his "...dear Brethren and sisters" - see texts of both under the TWIGDEN Family segment below).
24. Frances [*] was in his cell on the morning of his execution, 16 October 1660, when he chided her for her flood of tears, and removed her hand from his arm as he was leaving the cell, admonishing her for keeping him from his appointment with Christ.
25. COOKE also made reference to her in his Ladder Speech (from the scaffold), reminding her that they had earlier made their farewells to each other during the great Storm they had endured together (identified by the editors of the published reports of his speech as being their nearly fatal voyage on the ship Hector in January 1650).
[*] I have seen no original documents for the whole of this period which actually identify COOKE's wife by her first name - the presumption that it was Frances is mine, but hopefully no longer mine alone.
And it is the wording of the sign-off line in the next item, but in particular the 1664 Petition in the one following it, that give me the greater confidence to make that presumption.
JOHN COOKE'S 1660 LETTER TO HIS WIFE.
John COOKE wrote a letter to his wife from his cell in the Tower, prior to his trial and sentence. The letter is undated, and was published in 1661. It is abstracted as follows:
"A letter written by Mr Justice COOKE, from the Tower to his Wife.
[Page 322.]
"My dear Lamb, blessed be God, for Jesus Christ, and for a Prison, where I find much of his comforting presence.
"Tell sister JONES that she keeps but two or three Sabbaths in a week, but in Prison every day is a Christian Sabbath...
[Page 323.]
"...but as to us, it is all Mercy that his Satisfaction should be accepted for us, and that thee and me and dear Daughter too...
[Page 327.]
"Use, let this teach us more to mind Eternity, to study the Joys of Heaven, that we may receive a full Reward, 2 Ephes. to 8. As Mr WHITFIELD once exhorted to Oliver [? CROMWELL], in every Thing to mind and eye Eternity, for they are brave Men and Women that will be so that Day...
"...therefore (my dear Sweeting) let us wait patiently and cheerfully for that blessed Translation from Earth to Heaven. We must begin our Heaven here; the more prepared to die, the fitter we are to live; so let us live, so let us die, that we may live eternally.
"If thee likest such poor Breathings and broken Meditations, thee may'st command more of them. I leave thee, and me, and my dear sweet Child, and our Christian Relations, with thee, in his Arms, who is in heaven at the Right hand of the Father; therefore we need not fear which Man can do unto us Isia. 51, 12.
"To him, I am thine forever.
"Thy loving Husband during thy Life,
"John COOKE."
It appears that Frances may have been deprived direct access to her husband while he was incarcerated in the Tower (from his arrival in London in June until his transfer to Newgate in October). It is poignant, therefore, to see that this letter is perhaps a substitute for those "...poor breathings and broken meditations" that would have passed intimately between him and his "...dear sweeting" had visits been allowed.
FRANCES COOKE'S PETITION TO KING CHARLES II.
In 1664, Frances COOKE, widow of John COOKE, made a petition to the son and heir of the man her husband had prosecuted in 1649.
A copy of the petition, perhaps made by a writing clerk in whichever Royal (or Parliamentary) office petitions of that nature were deposited, survives in The National Archives [Ref: SP 63/266-268, Table Drawer, 2nd Floor Reading Room, Kew], as follows, with modernised spelling:
"To the King's most Excellent Majesty,
"The Humble petition of Frances COOKE, the poor disconsolate widow of John COOKE, Most humbly showeth.
"That your Petitioner's husband, in consideration of the Marriage Portion, part whereof was then received, engaged to settle upon feoffees, in Trust for your Petitioner, to raise £2,000 for the use and maintenance of your Petitioner and her children in case she should survive him.
"That your Petitioner's intermarriage with her husband was in the year 1645, and three years before her husband took part in any public employment.
"That part of your Petitioner's portion was kept in the hands of some of your Petitioner's friends till such settlements be perfected.
"That in the year 1655, the Petitoner's husband settled for 99 years Several lands in your Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland, upon Trustees accordingly, some whereof was purchased by your Petitioner in her husband's name and with some part of her portion, and then received the remainder of her Portion.
"That not only the lands so settled, but also all the stock bought by your Petitioner herself with her own money, are seized upon in Ireland, and thereupon your Petitioner and her poor child exposed to great misery and want.
"She humbly casteth herself at your Majesty's feet, beseeching your Majesty graciously to consider her sad, distressed and deplorable condition.
"That, by your Princely Piety, Mercy, Grace and Favour, she may enjoy ye said estate according to the intention of ye said deed, or have the £2000 according to the said engagement made to her upon her said marriage.
"And your Petitioner shall ever pray for your Majesty's long life and happy Reign, etc."
The original "office-copy" of the petition which I saw at Kew was undated; an abstract of the petition, among others dated 1664, was published in the "Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, preserved in the Public Record Office, 1663-1665" [edited by Robert Pentland MAHAFFEY, B.A., and printed for H.M.'s Stationery Office, by MACKIE and Coy Ltd, of Fleet Street, 1907, at page 514].
Whilst there is no smoking gun with fingerprints all over it here, there are far too many coincidences for this not to be a very serious contender for the petition of the widow of John COOKE, the Solicitor-General who was executed as a Regicide in October 1660, as the following shows:
1. John COOKE did obtain "public employment" with CROMWELL's Parliamentary party in the latter part of 1648 (he had previously been in private employment as a Barrister at Gray's Inn).
2. He was in Ireland periodically from late 1649 until his arrest in 1660, as Chief Justice of Munster, off and on.
3. He did obtain property in the south of Ireland, in the 1650's, some of it, apparently, in lieu of a pension.
4. And he was dead before 1664. See further below.
In my mind, at least, there is very little doubt, if any at all.
There is no evidence as to whether Frances's Petition found its way to the King, and if so, how it was received - I expect that it did not get very far.
Perhaps coincidentally, about the same time, there was a Mrs COOKE who evidently was a parishioner of All Saint's Church, Northampton; an entry in the Vestry Book of that church, dated 4 April 1664, ordered that "...Dr CONANT and wife should sit in a seat with Mrs COOKE" [see "A History of the Church of All Saints, Northampton," by Rev R.M. JENNINGS, Northampton, 1901, footnote on page 221].
We do not yet know if this was our Frances, but it would not be inconsistent with information from ROBERTSON ("The Tyrannicide Brief") that John and Frances COOKE's daughter Freelove was raised amongst "...her people in Northampton."
Dr John CONANT (1608-1694), was Regius Professor of Divinity and Head of Exeter College, Oxon, afterwards Archdeacon of Norwich, and then Rector of All Saints, Northampton; his will, proved P.C.C., was witnessed by John FARR and John MASSEY; his wife, Elizabeth, was a daughter of Edward REYNOLDS, the Bishop of Norwich. JENNINGS, in his history of All Saints [pages 220-21], records that, after the Reformation, CONANT resigned his University appointments and the Rectorship of Exeter College, "...eventually took up his abode in Northampton" and "...while residing there, he refused to form a separatist congregation, as he was invited to do, but made a point of attending regularly the services in his parish church."
But this Mrs COOKE may have been another - there was a Tempest COOKE, of Northampton Saint Peter, who was Town Clerk in 1654, and died in August 1658, survived by his widow Joyce COOKE, who was buried at All Saints on 21 December 1673, with Administration, Archdeaconry Court of Northampton, 24 January 1673-74.
FRANCES'S FUTURE PROSPECTS AFTER THE RESTORATION.
The above chronology of her late first husband does give rise to questions as to what future prospects Frances might then have faced into the somewhat bleak future.
Both John COOKE and his wife Frances must have known that his prospects for surviving a Restoration of the monarchy intact was highly unlikely. At what point in time this realisation became obvious is unclear, perhaps as early as Charles COOTE's invitation for COOKE to call upon him in Dublin in early February 1660.
Did COOKE have any strategic plan?
His options were probably only either to go back to the Continent, or go to one of the distant American colonies - but even he would have been aware that the new king's agents would hunt him down; and that by fleeing a charge of treason, he would forfeit any right to a trial.
And it is apparent that by travelling from Waterford up to Monkstown, he had already decided to trust his faith in his God, and face the music.
Did COOKE have any plan for Frances?
It would appear that he did not, apart from the hope, perhaps unreasonable under his circumstances, that her hold on his Irish property might be secure. He must have conceived it likely that a re-newed Monarchist Parliament would inevitably pass whatever new Act was necessary to complete his total obliteration.
How did Frances fare?
COOKE stated that he had been "...illegally restrained" from accessing his assets in Ireland since Michaelmas last, when he was forced to borrow money in Chester (in June 1660) in order to avoid having to walk to London.
[Michaelmas (29 September) was a Quarter Day for settlement of accounts; it remains unexplained why COOKE had not been able to access his assets on the more recent Quarter Day at Yuletide.]
If Frances was travelling alongside him, which is not entirely likely, then her condition must have been difficult as well. And we have no indication as to how he came about borrowing money - either through family connections, and I know of none in Chester, or from religious friends.
Did Frances witness her husband's execution?
I suppose she may have wanted to be there, for him perhaps to chance a glimpse of her in his last moments; although it is unlikely she would have been given, or wanted, a ring-side seat.
But in his ladder speech, he "reminds" her of their previous farewells they had made to each other during the great storm on the ship "Hector", so evidently she was there.
If she was there, she would have needed all the strength that her religious faith could offer to survive the ordeal. Especially observing the very public removal of his very private parts.
It brings to my mind the position in which another one of my ancestors, Martha PIGOTT, found herself 14 years earlier, on 6 October 1646, as a witness to the Storm and Sack of Dysart in the Queens's County; during which her husband, John PIGOTT, was stripped naked and murdered by the Confederate forces, and subsequently had his private parts "...slitted into many parts" (as described by Martha in her Deposition, now available from Trinity College Dublin's "1641 Depositions" on-line), and which had all the hallmarks of an attempt to eradicate the PIGOTT seed in that part of Ireland.
[See my earlier post - http://pigott-gorrie.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/peremptory-bold-companion-major-john.html ].
Martha's great-grandson, John PIGOTT, would become Frances's other son-in-law.
And it is of note that John COOKE's original interest in Irish legal affairs was precipitated by the losses incurred by Irish Protestants in the early stages of the rebellion which began in November 1641, and continued until the Cessation of Arms negotiated in September 1643.
Where did Frances go after COOKE's execution?
From ROBERTSON we learn that she had spent some time in London living with the family of Edmund LUDLOW, at least up until he fled the capital (which was not long after COOKE had arrived in London under close arrest from Ireland).
Afterwards, I expect she went to live with her (presumed) sister Mrs Elizabeth MASSEY and her husband Robert, or with their mother (name unknown, but living in October 1660 - perhaps instead her step-mother), all of whom appear to have lived in the Town of Northampton, perhaps near the Sign of the Peacock.
When did Frances go to Antigua?
Clearly not until after her 1664 petition.
And probably, I am speculating, in or about 1670, as her two presumed PROCTOR daughters were probably born in the early 1670's. It is not certain that the presumed marriage and the births took place in Antigua - but I have assumed they did, in the absence of any other information about these events.
Which does raise the question as to whether Frances had the opportunity to fulfil one of her late husband's condemned cell wishes - that his daughter Freelove should not marry without her mother's permission, if she be still living. Perhaps Frances left that "power of attorney" with her sister Elizabeth MASSEY, or they both rightly regarded that Freelove, on reaching her majority, could make up her own mind?
When did Frances welcome her daughter Freelove to Antigua?
There is evidence to indicate that Freelove may have joined her husband in Antigua after the 1678 Census of Antigua (see below) - this is confirmed by the fact that Freelove witnessed the signing of her uncle Robert MASSEYs will in Northampton on 5 September 1678.
I did briefly wonder if she and her infant son may have traveled in 1680-81 on the same ship as did her widowed aunt, Elizabeth MASSEY; but that would have made her will unworkable, especially if all three of them were to perish on the voyage out.
View of the township of Saint John's, Antigua, taken from the churchyard of Saint John's parish church.
But I have got a little ahead of myself - we should now take a look at the life of Frances's daughter Freelove COOKE, and her marriage to John GUNTHORPE in London.
JOHN COOKE'S LETTER TO HIS DAUGHTER FREELOVE.
Before reviewing Freelove's later contribution to her mother Frances's story, as we have been doing up till now by looking into the wrong end of the telescope, we should first go back to the beginning, and look at the earliest evidence we have yet found from published records of her existence being acknowledged.
On the day before his execution, John COOKE wrote a touching and at times illuminating letter to his daughter Freelove, the only surviving child, which I reproduce here in full, as published in 1724:
"Mr COOKE's Letter to his Daughter. Octob. 15, 1660. A letter before his Death.
"To my dear Child, Freelove COOKE. These with my most Fatherly Endeared Love.
"My Dear Sweet child,
"Let thy Name, Freelove, put thee in mind of the free love of God in Christ, in giving thee to me and thy dear mother; and know, so soon as God gives thee any Understanding, that thou art the Child of one whom God counted worthy to suffer for his Sake, and to seal the Truth of his Law and Gospel with his Blood, which will be a great Honour to thee, in the Judgement of all that truly love and fear God.
"I leave thee to the Lord, who I know will take care of thee, and be thy Portion, so thou shall never want. Learn with all Speed to read the Scriptures, and to understand them; and have great Care to serve God, and study to love Jesus Christ, and be obedient to thy dear mother, and good grandmother, and thy loving Uncle and Aunt MASSEY.
"I pray thee never to learn any Pride, but be humble and meek, and courteous, and wait upon God's Ordinances; love the Word more than thy appointed Food.
"When the Lord shall please to alter thy Condition, be sure to marry one that is gracious, and a man that feareth God; be sure to prefer Grace before Wealth and Parts; for a little with the Fear of God is better than great Riches with an ungodly Man.
"The Lord make thee Religious; for Beauty is Vanity, and Favour is deceitful; but a woman that feareth the Lord shall be praised.
"If the Lord give thee Children, be sure to bring them up virtuously and religiously, in the Nurture, Admonition and Fear of the Lord.
"I charge thee never to marry without the Consent of thy dear mother, if she be then living.
"In all thine actions have an eye to Eternity, and never do any thing against the Light of thy own Conscience.
"Know that thy dear father is gone to Heaven to thy dear Brother - and be sure to live that by God's Grace thou mayest follow after.
"If God give thee Ability, I charge thee to be good to thy Friends and to all God's People; and if my last will and testament be of Force, do not violate it in the least.
"So I leave God's Blessing with thee, praying for thy temporal and eternal Happiness and rest.
It is tempting to make an estimate of the age of the child John COOKE is addressing here.
Freelove is clearly not yet of "altered state" (i.e., of woman's estate, or of marryable age, then probably set at 16), which is entirely consistent with her not yet being born in January 1650; which I presume to be the case, as there was no mention of a child in the COOKE's published stories of the Great Storm they encountered on the ship Hector.
The letter appears to be to a child rather than an infant; although it is not clear whether she could not yet read, or just that the Bible had not yet become part of her "reading" list. Clearly COOKE held the view that God had not yet given his daughter "any understanding" or "ability" - so perhaps she did not yet have the capacity for independent reasoning?
A birth for Freelove in the mid 1650's is not inconsistent with my reading of the letter - which would put her age about five years. But, until a baptismal entry is found (and if Irish, this is unlikely to have survived), that age can only ever be an estimate. However, ROBERTSON does state that Freelove was carried on her mother's hip at the trial and execution of John COOKE, so probably aged five or under.
Further, Freelove was married in June 1675; if aged 16, then she was born before June 1659; if aged 18, then before June 1657; and if 21, before June 1654. An age of 19 or 20 at marriage would not have been inappropriate.
The overall tone of COOKE's letter is inevitably religious (his present circumstances, a day from his death, ensured that), and Puritan at that (that was his family background, which he embraced, and which he carried into his public employment).
Our present and perhaps misguided view of Puritanism is that it tends to begin with a strict, if not even misunderstood, view of human relations and sexuality as part of them - but the expressed view that children come by gift of the Lord probably does not reflect a total misunderstanding by COOKE as to how it actually worked (it was, after all, a letter which would be read to a child, and was likely to become part of his published legacy).
Although his marriage to Frances was not blessed with too many of the Lord's little gifts (only two have been mentioned over 15 years), and as he had married relatively late in life (at age 37), it does not necessarily follow that their connubial relationships were in any way strained, or uncommon to their age.
FRANCES'S DAUGHTER FREELOVE COOKE.
Frances STOUGHTON did not name her daughter Freelove in her 1693 will, so it does seem logical to presume that Freelove was by then already dead.
Frances did name Major John GUNTHORPE, who had left her "...£20 to buy mourning."
From this detail, I interpret that he was the GUNTHORPE spouse of her daughter Freelove; that he had probably died very recently; and that his bequest had probably not yet been paid from out of his deceased estate (otherwise she would not have needed to identify the origin of that particular money amount).
And Frances named her two grandsons John and William GUNTHORPE, whom I interpret to have been the two younger sons of Major John GUNTHORPE and her daughter Freelove COOKE, and therefore probably the younger brothers of Robert GUNTHORPE, who was living in 1680 but appears to have since died.
All of which is, on its own, rather speculative, and not a lot to go on.
But there is another P.C.C. probate grant, with will copy, that fills in some of the gaps.
In 1680, Mrs Elizabeth MASSEY, relict and widow of Robert MASSEY, Attorney of Northampton, Northamptonshire, made her will just as she was about to set out on a voyage to Antigua; in it she named her niece Freelove, now the wife of John GUNTHORPE of Antigua, and their son Robert GUNTHORPE.
Elizabeth's will was proved in 1686 - see further below for details.
Further, OLIVER ["History of Antigua," Volume 2, page 40] recounts in detail the story of Buck's Plantation, which was originally granted to Archibald HENDERSON - he of the 1674 banishment proceedings, decided by an Assembly meeting which included our Lieutenant William PROCTOR, probably already married to the soon-to-be mother-in-law of the future owner!
After his banishment, HENDERSON went to Jamaica, where he died several years later; his brother James HENDERSON, serving in the Army in Scotland, did not hear of his brother's death until several more years had elapsed, and then set out for Antigua to "settle" his late brother's affairs. But he died on the voyage out, and it was left to his widow Margaret to seek to settle the estate on their infant son, Archibald's only surviving nephew.
In her attempts to get a hearing in 1684 on the matter of Buck's Plantation, Mrs HENDERSON asserted that John GUNTHORPE had acquired it illegally; on 12 May 1685, she commenced but withdrew an action in the Court of Common Pleas, as GUNTHORPE was away in New England, and she perceived that "...everyone was against her" anyway; and in her reply to their Lordships, 1 December 1687, she railed that he was the "...son-in-law to that egregious traitor John COOKE Solicitor to the pretended high Court of Justice against King Charles the Martyr."
It appears that she may have left off her action-at-law because she perceived that the jury would probably be stacked against her interests - it appears there weren't too many hide-bound Royalists left in Antigua after the Restoration.
There is no evidence that GUNTHORPE ever challenged or denied the above "allegation" - and if it is correct, then it points directly to GUNTHORPE's wife as being the daughter of John COOKE the "Tyrannicide."
There is an important piece of further evidence, which establishes that John GUNTHORP's bride Freelove was indeed named COOKE.
From holdings of the London Metropolitan Archives, made available through the resources of Ancestry.com Library-edition, is an image of the following Parish register entry:
"Parish Church of Saint Mary's, Newington, County Surrey - Weddings - page 114 - 1675:
June - John GUNTHROP and Freelove COOCK -13(th)."
BOYD, in his "Inhabitants of London" (S.O.G. Library, London, now viewable on Findmypast) also recorded that Freelove had married John GUNTHORPE, describing him as Major (which title was not his until much later, in Antigua, and probably from Militia connections), and that the marriage had taken place three years later, in 1678 (without source details, but evidently not from a parish register, as it is not included in his celebrated Marriage Index) - he also noted that she was born about 1655.
Four years earlier, on 5 July 1671, her future husband, John GUNTHORPE Junior, perhaps then aged about 17 or 18, was apprenticed by his father, John GUNTHORPE Senior, Citizen and Innholder of London (and clearly still living), for a term of 7 years, to Michael SCRIMSHIRE or SCRIMSHAW, Citizen and Goldsmith of London.
Goldsmith Company archives do not record details of his freedom; it is possible that he came into some inheritance (perhaps ? by the death of his father), which enabled him to settle his obligations early, to make a marriage in 1675, to emigrate to the West Indies, and there to purchase a Plantation (named Buck's) in Antigua, which he obtained by grants dated August and September 1678.
In the 1678 "Census" of Antigua, John GUNTHORPE was enumerated at Falmouth Division; but the household of which he was head comprised only three adult European males - which appears to suggest that his wife Freelove and their child or children were either living elsewhere on the Island, or had not yet arrived in Antigua.
This last possibility is virtually confirmed by the fact that Freelove was still in England in September 1678, when as "Fr: GUNTHORPE" she witnessed the will of her uncle, Robert MASSEY of Northampton, dated 5 Sep, probably on his deathbed [Northamptonshire Record Office - N Will 3rd Series E, 37].
By 1680, John GUNTHORPE was Provost-Marshall of Antigua; he was a member of the Assembly which met at Saint John's on 11 July 1689, on 28 March 1691, and in March 1692 (the last date entry recorded for him by OLIVER in his "History of Antigua"); and he was also a member of the Council of War, 21 August 1691.
A PROBLEM IN AMERICA.
There is a "problem" in America, involving perceptions by descendants of Richard STILLWELL (born about 1634), of Staten Island, that he had married, as his second wife, Freelove COOKE, the daughter of the Regicide (condensed from MSs of William H. STILLWELL, Esq, of Gravesend - one pedigree actually refers to her as Freelove MASSEY, daughter of John COOKE, perhaps having encountered BOYD's "Inhabitants of London").
If they are right, then clearly I am wrong, and all the evidentiary trail I have outlined above has begun with a very serious flaw somewhere. Otherwise, that flaw may be theirs.
From what I can deduce from snippet references, STILLWELL descendants found a letter which they believed had been addressed to Richard's father Nicholas STILLWELL (he died in Staten Island, in December 1671), and which they believed was a letter written by John COOKE in his condemned cell, which he had dubbed as his "Jeremiah's Prison", addressed to him as "...my dear brother"; and in measure of this "honour," Nicholas had apparently given his younger son, born about that time, the name of Jeremiah (he was a younger half-brother of Richard).
A. Maunsell BRADHURST, in his book "My Forefathers. Their History from Records and Traditions," published in London in 1910, gives several transcripts of letters written by John COOKE from his condemned cell, but does not identify whether his transcript was made from originals that survived in the STILLWELL family possession, or from accounts of them published in England shortly after his execution. His abstract of COOKE's letter to his daughter Freelove is short, and omits the "inconvenient" mention of Freelove's dear Aunt and Uncle MASSEY, just for starters.
His abstract of the second letter, which BRADHURST claims was "...the first intimation which Nicholas STILLWELL received of his brother's fate", was equally abbreviated, BRADHURST citing the opening and closing paragraphs only:
"My Dear Brother,
"I am condemned to die, and this is my cordial farewell to you from my Jeremiah's prison...
...
"I can at present only leave my dear love and respects for you and my dear sister, beseeching God, and not doubting, but that we shall shortly meet in eternal glory. Company so spends me that I can write no more..."
It is very clear that this letter was identical to a short "...letter from Mr COOK to a Friend after Condemnation" which was further addressed at the foot "...For my dear brother F."
This letter addressed legal matters relating to his Treason charges (the Judges having retro-dated treasonable actions from 1648 back to 1642) - it is reproduced in full below.
This letter also referred to an earlier one, and that was probably the much longer "...Letter written from the Tower to a Christian Friend," in which COOKE addresses largely religious matters to people who may simply have been "brethren and sisters" of his religious connections, rather than being his blood relations - that is also reproduced in full below.
It may have been instead a copy of this earlier, and perhaps "circular" letter which found it's way into the STILLWELL family Archives.
Although, as is so often the case, there may be another and much simpler explanation.
In an on-line pedigree, "Descendants of John STILLWELL Sr," we find that Nicholas STILLWELL (born Collopmore, Surrey, 1608; and died at Dover, Staten Island, N.Y., 28 December 1671) had an eldest sister named Mabel STILLWELL (born Surrey, 1586); they were two of a number of children of Nicholas STILLWELL (1570-1647) of Dorking, Surrey, by his wife Alice. Mabel STILLWELL married at Dorking, Surrey, on 4 May 1619, Robert COOKE; by whom she had a son named John COOKE (also born at Collopmore in Surrey).
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the identity of this John COOKE (presumably born after 1619) of Surrey (and a cousin of the STILLWELLs of Staten Island), has been confused with that of the other John COOKE (born in 1608 in Leicestershire), who was executed in 1660 as a Regicide, without any trace in English records of ever having been to America (or of having any relations named STILLWELL).
For the sake of further corroboration (or otherwise), I have made abstracts from the two letters, confined to those parts with any possible useful genealogical information, and they are as follows.
The first is from "A compleat Collection of the Lives, Speeches, Private Passages, Letters and Prayers of Those Persons lately Executed, etc," by a "Person of Quality," London, 1661, with publisher's italics highlighted in blue:
"A Letter written from the Tower to a Christian Friend by Mr Justice COOKE.
[Page 53.]
"Sir,
"Now in answer to your loving inquiry, how it fares with my better part, I bless God I never found so much internal spiritual solace, and unmix't joy and comfort, as I have experienced in these five mo(nths) indurance, 2 Cor. 2, 3, 4, 5.
"Let never any Christian fear a Prison, it being the only place where (wanting other Books) a man may best Study the book of knowledge of himself, having a long vacation from all businesse...
[Page 57.]
"...And I have charged my poor Lamb not to wear any black for me (if she have wherewith to buy it) for I shall be in White, Revel. 6, 11...
[Page 58.]
"...I know you, and my dear Brethren and Sisters are of Paul's mind, if I dye in my bed being a Church-member, you will by the rule of Charity judge me happy; I cannot do you more service than to bear my witness in this cause of Christ wherein you are so much concerned..."
[Page 61.]
"...My Cousin HARRISON is very full of spiritual comfort (as the Gentleman Jaylor tells me) and bids me cheer up...
"So, having unbosomed my heart unto you, that you, and such whom you judge faithful and secret may the better spread my condition before the Lord..."
[Pages 62-63.]
"...I have some trouble upon me concerning the losse of my temporal estate, especially for my poor, tender, loving Wife and Child: I was a Purchaser, and had a flock of Cattel, and being wrongfully made Prisoner two months before any speech of a King, I was surprized and could save nothing, nor get £20 out of my estate since Michaelmas; They promised to bear my charges to London, but at Chester I was forced to borrow money or must have come a foot..."
[Pages 64-65.]
"...I blesse God my poor Wife does much encourage me, to be faithful to the Death, and she is a meet helper indeed who helps her Husband so to Heaven, as in a Fiery Chariot; she is one who bears an unfeigned love to Christ and all the Saints; I entreat your tender care of her and my Child, providebit Deus, Jer. 49, 11. I shall leave her that Scripture, and Isa 54, 5 to 8. while they cannot take away by confiscation; When we were in the Storm we took our leaves each of the other [fn] and though we have not paid our vows at Babel, yet I trust (as was then promised) we shall be willing to go to Christ if he call through a Sea of Blood. But O the infinite wisdom and Love of God, and the unsearchable riches of his Grace, that if I had been drowned, the Malignants would have said, though he escaped by Land, yet Divine Vengeance overtook him by Sea..."
"Yours forever in our Dear Redeemer,
"John COOK."
The second letter I repeat unedited, from "The Indictment, Arraignment, Tryal, and Judgement, at large, of Twenty-nine Regicides, The Murtherers of His Most Sacred Majesty, King Charles the 1st of Glorious Memory," London, MDCCXXIV:
"Another Letter from Mr COOK to a Friend after Condemnation."
[Page 76.]
"Dear Brother, beloved in the Lord, condemnatus sum ad vitam, and this is my Cordial Farewel to you and all Saints, from my Jeremiah Prison; tomorrow I shall be in eternal glory, in the bosom of Christ, where our father Abraham is, and a guard of Angels will convey my soul thither. Never let God's people fear a Prison any more, for the Lords supporting or comforting spirit hath not been absent from me since my indictment. I writ a letter to you formerly, acquainting you with my spiritual condition, to which I refer you; and fearing lest wrong may be done to the cause when I am in heaven, I think fit to leave a few wordes with my dearest love to all Christian friends.
"1. Upon my trial it came to this, that the Judges said, that all have been treason since 1642, so that the Lords and Commons are not to meddle with the King. I said, that I acted obedientially (sic) by order from the House of Commons, and the Commons being the representatives of the people cannot commit treason, for there can be no trial of all the people. And as for any force upon the House in 1648, they were the only Judges of it, and no inferior Court can judge of the lawfullnesse of their acts or orders. But they said all our Acts and Orders are treason. So that now it is brought to that it was in 1642.
"2. I intend by God's assistance upon the Ladder to bear my testimony for Jesus Christ to all his Offices, and for a Gospel Magistracy and Ministry, and to speak [Page 77] something so far as God shall enable, and will be permitted, for the good Old Cause, of righteousness and holinesse. I can at present only leave my dear love and respects for you and my dear sister, beseeching God, and not doubting but that we shall shortly meet in eternal glory. Company so spends me that I can write no more; I shall suddenly enter into the joy of the Lord, O blessed be his name, blessed be the Comforter, my Soul is full of consolation, Farewel, Farewel, Renede in Paradiso. Yours for ever,
"John COOKE.
"For my dear Brother F."
It would be in the interests of accuracy for any descendants of Nicholas STILLWELL who have documentary evidence of him actually having received delivery of one or other, or both, of the said letters, to make that fact known to the wider public. And if the letter so received happened to have the addition details omitted by BRADHURST - in particular the sign-off line "For my dear brother F." - which appears to have relevance to someone other than Nicholas STILLWELL.
However, the likely fantasy in this story is revealed by large numbers of published pedigrees, viewable on-line, which indicate that Captain Richard STILLWELL (1636-1668), a son of the said Nicholas STILLWELL, married Freelove Mercy COOKE at Gravesend, King's County, New York, on 1 May 1655 - when the Regicide John COOKE's daughter Freelove was either not yet born, or at best, a year or two old, and living with her parents in the south of Ireland.
THE AUNT ELIZABETH MASSEY.
When John COOKE wrote a letter from his condemned cell, dated 15 October 1660, to his daughter Freelove, he urged her to:
"...be obedient to thy dear mother, and good grandmother, and thy loving Uncle and Aunt MASSEY."
There can be little or no doubt that this aunt was the Elizabeth MASSEY, widow of Robert MASSEY of Northampton, who made her will in 1680, naming her niece Freelove:
"...now the wife of John GUNTHORPE of Antigua."
And at All Saints Church, Northampton, on 28 July 1655, was recorded the marriage between Robert MASSEY and Elizabeth FARRIN.
Now we cannot be certain that this marriage is pertinent to this story.
But what is certain is that five out of six aspects of it are - the location, the given name and surname of the groom, the given name of the bride, and the date - which preceded by five years the date of the letter in which John COOKE mentions them as an "uncle and aunt" and presumably married couple.
Some further research into Elizabeth MASSEY's connections may perhaps be facilitated by those whom she named in her will, which was copied onto her probate grant, the highlights of which are as follows:
"Elizabeth MASSEY, late of Northampton, widow, Relict and Executrix of the last will and testament of Robert MASSEY my late husband, being at present in health of body and memory praise be to God, and being shortly to take a voyage to Antego in parts beyond the seas...
"Whereas Mr Thomas COWPER of Newport Pannell (sic - Pagnell), Bucks, Draper, stands indebted unto me by bond thirty and six pounds money, which bond is now in the hands of Mr John GIBBS dwelling in Newport Pannell, my will is that after my Debts and Legacies shall be paid, the said money bonds and all profits thereof shall come and be to such person and persons only as Ffreelove GUNTHORPE now wife of John GUNTHORPE of the Island of Antego, alone and of his wife without her husband, whether she be married or sole, shall in writing under her hand direct and appoint.
"The same to be paid in case of her death, and in default of such direction and appointment I give the same unto Robert GUNTHORPE, sonne of the said John and Freelove GUNTHORPE...
"Whereas I am interested and intitled to abide in a certain tenement or tenements in the Town of Northampton next to the Sign of the Peacock there, and to a term of 99 years thereof, granted to me by my said late husband, and to the equity and benefit of redemption of the same, and being now in mortgage to Mr Timothy NEALE, of Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, for £200, now I hereby bequeath the same and all the benefit and profits thereof... unto the said Freelove... or in default...the same to Robert GUNTHORPE...
"I do give to my loving friends Mr Samuel LEE 20 shillings, and to Mr DUNN of Green Norton 20 s., and to Mr John GIBBS of Newport Pannell and to Mr Robert PAUNCEFORT of Craise Tone (?), Gent, the sum of £5 to each of them...
"I desire my loving friends Mr John LUCAS and John SELBY of Northampton, in whose custody I left the writings and Lease of the said house or houses in Northampton, to be assistfull to my said niece Freelove GUNTHORPE touching the obtaining the said mortgaged premises. And I do hereby make them executors in trust for the said Freelove and give unto them 50 shillings apiece to buy them rings in testimony of my love to them, provided they doe accept and take on them the said executorship, otherwise... I desire my worthy friends My Robert PAUNCEFORT and Mr John GIBBS to be executors...
"5 February 1680 - signed and sealed Elizabeth MASSEY ...in the presence of Margaret GOLDSMITH and John WYNNE. Proved in London, 10 April 1686, by John LUCAS and John SELBY."
One of her "worthy friends" may have been John GIBBS (1627-1699), B.A., Sidney Sussex College, Cantab, 1648; he was probably the Vicar of Newport Pagnell who was ejected in 1660; he held religious views that were similar to those of John BUNYAN.
But it is indeed curious that in her will, Elizabeth did not mention Freelove's mother - especially so if it was her own sister Frances. Perhaps Elizabeth was unsure as to whether Frances was still living; and wanted to ensure the passing of her assets to someone who might be expected to enjoy them for some time to come.
It is likely that Elizabeth's husband had recently died in Northampton, in September 1678 - a Robert MACEY, Attorney, was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 September, "...in woollen only according to a late act," with an affidavit signed by two women, and another by the then Mayor, that he was buried in conformity with that "Act for Burying in Woollen" ["A History of the Church of All Saints, Northampton," by R.M. JENNINGS, Northampton, 1901, page 327] - and the 1678 will of Robert MASSEY, Gent, was proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Northampton, 1679 [Book E, No 37].
But there is another possibility, which, if proven, will lead us in a very different direction - Robert MASSEY's wife Elizabeth may have been, indeed probably was, a widow.
THE PROBABLE FARREN BROTHER-IN-LAW.
If Frances's sister Elizabeth was a widow, which seems likely, then she was probably the Elizabeth BACON who married Peter FARREN at Saint Clement Dane's, Westminster, on 29 June 1648.
And this Peter FARREN may have been the Baker in Northampton, whose first wife, Susanna ROSON or ROLESON, had died in Northampton in 1647.
About this Peter FARREN we know quite a bit of detail.
He was probably baptised at Dean, Bedfordshire, on 8 February 1596, a younger son of Oliver FARREN and his wife (married in 1578) Francis DAYRELL, daughter of Francis DAYRELL of Lamporte, Buckinghamshire and Ann WOODFORD.
It appears that Peter FARREN may have been "raised" by his grandfather Francis DAYRELL of Langporte, parish of Stowe, Buckinghamshire - in his will, dated 24 June 1601, DAYRELL instructed his executors to "...bring up Peter FARREN and when he is 16 apprentice him to some merchant" [Probate grant, P.C.C., 24 April 1605] - this suggests that Peter's parents may have already died.
Peter was evidently living in Northampton in 1630, when he was named in a List of Recognizances received in Michaelmas Term, vi Chas I, as "...non venit" (or did nor appear), "...Petrus FARREN, de eadem [villa North'], pistor [or baker] - xxli [£20]" ["Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Northampton, A.D. 1630..." by Jonan WAK, 1924, page 49].
He was visiting Stowe in June 1642 when he intervened in a dispute between his cousin Paul DAYRELL (Junior) and the game-keeper of the Lord of the Manor (Sir Peter TEMPLE - he enclosed land there that had been common, including assorted tracts of DAYRELL lands that were intermingled with his own), and so avoiding a potentially violent physical confrontation.
Several years earlier, in Paul DAYRELL of Barford's will, proved in 1638, mention was made of "...Peter FARREN of Northampton, Lawrence FARREN, Benjamin FARREN and Rebecca KING, my sister's children" - Rebekka FARREN was married at Dean, Bedfordshire (where Peter FARREN was baptised in 1597), on 14 November 1616, to Robert KINGE; and a Laurence FARREN was married at All Saints, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, on 16 December 1629, to Elizabeth SIMESON.
One of the Churchwardens at All Saints, Northampton, in 1637, was a Peter FARREN, a Baker; in that year he was excommunicated by agents of his bishop (Francis DEE) for failing to follow their instructions, emanating from Archbishop William LAUD, concerning the removal of the Communion Table from the body of the Chancel (where many more of the congregation were able see and hear the officiating minister) to the East End of the building, where it was to be turned Altar-wise, and railed in, with a padded kneeling stool attached (an apparent nod to Catholic practice, and which had Crown approval).
It appears that Peter FARREN may have been a dedicated Puritan, and shared his fellow parishioners distaste for LAUD's "improvements" - he and RUSHWORTH more than once had turned the table back 90 degrees from its "altar position" (as determined by LAUD).
FARREN and RUSHWORTH petitioned the Court of Arches against their excommunication in 1641, and were represented legally by Robert WOODFORD. RUSHWORTH went to London for the hearings, and it is almost certain that FARREN would also have gone to London.
Susannah was a daughter of Roger HIGHAM, Innholder of Northampton, by Edith SYMONS (she married secondly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 3 September 1609, Edward MERCER, who was buried All Saints, Northampton, May 1617).
As Susan HIGHAM, she was married firstly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 14 June 1603, to Robert ROSON, of Northampton, Baker; he may have taken Peter FARREN as an apprentice; Robert was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 29 November 1620 (his will proved 1621, Archdeaconry Court of Northampton); they appear to have had two daughters - Susannah ROSON was buried at All Saints, 14 August 1610; and Sara ROSON, who was named in her MERCER grandmother's will.
Edith MERCER, widow, made her will on 12 April 1637 (proved 12 November 1644), naming her daughter Susan as the wife of Peter FARREN and the mother of Sarah ROSON (who was to have £5 within six months of marriage); appointing her "...sonne-in-law Peter FARREN of Northampton, Baker," as her executor, and bequeathing his daughter Anne FARREN £20 at 18 or at marriage.
Peter's wife, Susannah FARRIN, was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 24 August 1647.
Peter FARREN, Baker, and Susanna his wife, had a daughter Anne FARREN baptised at All Saints, Northampton, on 12 May 1626; another daughter of Peter FARREN was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 19 April 1631.
However, there are no other FARREN baptisms recorded in Northampton church registers for the period 1625-1647.
Peter FARREN's occupation as Innholder in his later years may have resonances. The residence of Elizabeth MASSEY, at the Sign of the Peacocke in Northampton, may have been the name of an Inn, and perhaps one owned or leased by him at the time of his death; and he may have been a member of the Innholders Company, which may have been why he was in London in 1648.
John GUNTHORPE Senior was also a Citizen of London and a member of the Innholder's Company - it was his son John GUNTHORPE Junior whom he apprenticed as a Goldsmith in 1671; and who in 1675, married Freelove COOKE, Frances's daughter. See above.
In another potentially interesting twist, FARREN appears to be a simplified version of the unusual surname of FORRYAN, and there is an extended family of this name with long-term connections to the Parish of Burbage, Leicestershire, where John COOKE's own family lived.
And it further appears that John COOKE may have had FORRYAN relations, as we shall see below - his paternal aunt, Anne (or Agnes) COOKE, was married to John LICHFIELD; it is likely that as a widow, she was the Anne LYCHEFIELDE who was married in Claybrooke, Leicestershire, in 1626, to a Richard FORRYAN, and he may well have been of the Burbage family.
Richard FORRIN, Yeoman of Burbidge, Leicestershire, apprenticed his son Samuel, in 1625, for 7 years to Robert PARDOE, Master Clothworker; his Freedom by Servitude, 1632, Company of Clothworkers.
THE PROBABLE BACON BROTHER-IN-LAW AND A CHANCERY COURT DOCUMENT.
Three documents survive, in The National Archives, relating to a case brought before the Court of Chancery in 1654.
The Bill of Complaint, and one part of the Answer (that of John FREEMAN, and his son John FREEMAN Junior), are filed at TNA - C 5/23/97 - FARREN v. BACON, Plaintiffs Elizabeth FARREN, Widow, and another; Defendants Clement BACON, Martha BACON his wife, [unknown] FREEMAN and others; Bill and Answer; 1654.
The other part of the Answer (that of Clement and Martha BACON) is filed separately at TNA - C 10/35/72, FARREN and COOKE vs BACON, date range 1 January 1654 to 31 December 1654.
The case concerns part of premises in Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, in the Parish of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, in the City of London, occupied since before 1631 by the BACON family, on a form of leasehold arrangement with the FREEMAN family of Blackfriars, but which may have been complicated by a mortgage.
The Bill of Complaint was made by Elizabeth FARREN, widow, the late wife of Nicholas BACON, deceased, who was the son and heir apparent of Clement BACON, a Draper, by his wife Martha (they occupied the premises in 1641 and in 1654). Elizabeth's co-complainant was Isaack COOKE, of Potterspury, Northamptonshire, Gent.
When Elizabeth married Nicholas BACON, on 2 January 1641-42, an Indenture of marriage settlements had already been made, dated 27 December 1641. In this indenture, part of the Bishopsgate Street property - described as "...the shoppe, cellars, garrets, one lodging chamber, two payres of stayres and other convenient rooms with the shoppe" - was demised to Isaack COOKE as part of the marriage portion, for which he paid the sum of £100.
When Nicholas BACON died in August 1643, his widow Elizabeth continued to reside in the premises with her parents-in-law Clement and Martha BACON, for a period of five years after her husband's death, when, according to Clement, she left the house to go into the country with her friends.
This coincides very neatly with the marriage in London in June 1648 of Elizabeth BACON to Peter FARREN, who was probably the friend with whom she went into the country, and who probably lived in the Town of Northampton, formerly a Baker, but by then an Innholder.
If this was the case, then Elizabeth became a widow again when Peter died in Northampton in August 1650.
Clement's answer indicates that Elizabeth had claimed she was "...turned out of the house" by Clement and Martha; but he denied this, declared that they had allowed her to continue living there out of their love for her - notwithstanding their evident legal obligation, presuming Elizabeth's claims about the marriage settlements were accurate. Although she might reasonably have expected circumstances to change when she remarried - this scenario does not appear to have been canvassed in the marriage settlements, even though her rights to it after Nicholas's death had been.
Clement BACON was granted his Freedom, Draper's Company, on 28 November 1610 (his former Master was Humphrey CLARE); by his wife Martha (maiden surname not yet known), he had issue, including a first child Clement BAKON, born at Bishopsgate Street, 15 May 1613, and, among others, a son Nicholas BAKON who was baptised at Saint Peter Upon Cornhill on 9 April 1618; Clement was buried there on 13 August 1669 "...in the East yard", probably with his wife Martha, who was buried there on 2 March 1658-59, as "...the wife of Clement BACON, Clerke" and in the "...pitt in the East Churche yeard by her children."
Their son named Nicholas was also buried "...in pitt in ye east Yard" on 17 August 1643, aged 25; he had been granted his Freedom, Drapers Company, 1 July 1640, by right of patrimony; he was recorded as Flaxman, at Bishopsgate Street, 1640 Poll Tax.
No corroboration of his marriage to Elizabeth has yet been found in parish registers - it may have taken place at Potterspury, Northamptonshire.
The contested leasehold was probably originally in the possession of Priscilla FREEMAN, who was named in the Answer, together with mention of an Indenture dated 1622.
Priscilla was the widow of John FREEMAN (he was buried at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, on 25 September 1622), Haberdasher in Blackfriars; she was buried beside him on 25 February 1630-31; her will, dated 27 December 1630, was proved on 7 June 1631 (P.C.C.), mentioning:
"Item. My will and mind is that my said executors and the survivor of them and the executors and assigns of the said executors shall also [? receive] the issues and profits of all that messuage or tenement wherein --- BACON, widow, dwelleth, situate and being in Bishopsgate Street in London, during the minority and to the sole benefit of John FREEMAN my grandchild, son of my younger son John FREEMAN. And if shall die in his minority, then during the minorities and to the sole benefit of such other child or children as the said John FREEMAN my son shall have, if the same lease shall so long continue. And if my said son John FREEMAN shall die childless, then to the sole benefit and behoof of the said John my son his executors and Assigns during the rest of the term then to come in the same lease."
This property was not among the many listed by her late husband in his will (proved P.C.C., 1622).
Priscilla was baptised at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, on 1 January 1570, a "...daughter of Mr ANGELO, french"; she married John FREEMAN, in the same church, on 3 September 1595.
Samuel and John FREEMAN were the two surviving sons of John and Priscilla; they are said to have emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, around the time of their mother's death; but they are recorded as having been obliged to return to England to deal with legal issues arising from their mother's will - of which the above appears to be a good example.
John FREEMAN Junior is also said to have died at Watertown in 1650; published pedigrees of his brother Samuel FREEMAN, which mention this death, do not record him as having any wife or children.
Given that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury had paid the 1641 marriage portion that secured the demise of part of the Bishopsgate Street property to him, his executors and assigns, it seems reasonable to assume that he was either Elizabeth's father, or her legal guardian, or otherwise closely connected to her.
He may even have been John COOKE's father, and thereby Elizabeth's step-father, according to the following speculation. Indeed, when Isaac COOKE's holdings in Potterspury (almost certainly those he had acquired through marriage to the widow BARROW) were mentioned in the May 1650 Survey of the Grafton estate [TNA], it was recorded that Isaac's deed was in Ireland with his son, by which the date on it was unknown - and we do know that John COOKE had just recently gone to Ireland before 1 January 1650, to take up his post as Chief Justice in Munster.
In February 1662, the following was recorded in the Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 1, 1660-1667, published by H.M.S.O., London, 1904, for 22 February:
"Petition from Elizabeth COOKE, late the wife of Edward BARRONES of Potterspury, County Northampton, and from Thomas BARRONES his son, concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury."
However, there does appear to have been a misreading here of Edward's surname, as we find no references in the historical record of the name BARRONES or similar being associated with Potterspury - but we do find, from the 1618-19 Herald's Visitation of Northamptonshire, published by the Harleian Society, 1887, that the name may instead have been BARROW.
In the 1618-19 pedigree of BARROW of Potterspury, we find that John BARROW of Potterspury (son of Roger BARROW and Katherine SINGELTON) died in 1617; and that by one of his two wives, Mary STANDISH (daughter of William STANDISH of the City of Oxford), he had issue a son Edward BARROW, who was married to Elizabeth CHENEY, sister of Sir Thomas CHENEY of Sundon, County Bedford, Knight.
And at Lillingston Lovell, in Buckinghamshire, Edward and Elizabeth BARROW had baptised three daughters - Elizabeth BARROW on 1 November 1618; Frances BARROW on 4 April 1620, and Mary BARROW on 8 October 1621.
Although we are not yet certain that this Elizabeth was the CHENEY spouse, the details fit in to our story, date-wise, very well indeed. However, another source indicates that when Elizabeth married Edward BARROW, she was the widow of Samuel BRYAN - indeed, Sam BRYAN and Eliz CHEYNE were married at Sundon, Bedfordshire, on 15 September 1608, and a Samuel BRYAN was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 1 October 1616.
So, it does remain a very real possibility that the Frances BARROW baptised in 1620 may well have been the Frances BARR... who was married in the parish church of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill (in which parish her sister Elizabeth, the widow of Nicholas BACON, was then residing), on 19 May 1646, to Mr John COOKE, Counsellor.
It further remains a distinct possibility that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury was also John COOKE's father; and that as a Widower, he probably remarried, to Elizabeth BARROW, the widow of Edward BARROW of Potterspury; and that Isaac took up residence in Potterspury as a result.
Archival searching is currently underway to establish whether this string of circumstantial co-incidences will lead to confirmation of the speculations.
THE COOKE FAMILY CONNECTIONS IN LEICESTERSHIRE.
Apart from the COOKE Family pedigree that was published as part of the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire, not a lot is known of the COOKE family origins. Some confirmation is available from published parish register information, including the registers of Saint Catherine's, Burbage, and All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, both in the County of Leicester.
And as far as John COOKE's own siblings are concerned, ROBERTSON ("The Tryannicide Brief") offers what little is known of them, in his several references to a brother Jacob COOKE (living in 1641), and to a brother-in-law named CLAPHAM.
The following is my first lapse into a standard "family-historian's" display of available information, building on the framework of the "Pedigree of COOKE of Sketchley" [see "The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester," by John NICHOLS, London, 1811, Volume IV, Part 2, page 468 - in effect an English translation of the original Latin version of the 1619 Herald's Visitation pedigree].
William COOKE; perhaps born before 1515; said to have been of Sketchely; recorded with an "alias" of BRODFEILD (which may have a property connotation, rather than being an alternative family name - see below); married with issue:
1. Abraham COOKE. See [A] below.
2. (son); probably married with issue:
a. Isaac COOKE; named as "...cousin" in the 1657 will of Rev John TWICKTEN of Corby (his sister Elizabeth was married to Isaac son of Abraham COOKE).
Possibly Isaack COOKE of Pottersury, Northamptonshire, 1654, when named as the co-complainant in a Chancery Court case, together with Elizabeth FARREN, the widow of Nicholas BACON of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, City of London, as having been demised the dwelling and shop in Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, in that parish, occupied by Clement BACON and his wife Martha (Nicholas's parents), as part of the marriage settlements for Elizabeth's marriage on 2 January 1641-42 to the said Nicholas BACON. See above.
[A] Abraham COOKE; perhaps born before 1545; of Sketchley; also recorded with the "alias" BRODFEILD; Abraham COOKE and others were plaintiffs in a Chancery Court case, date range 1603-1625, defended by Thomas WIGHTMAN and others, concerning an agreement on part of the inhabitants of Sketchley, Leicestershire, to allot and adjust their respective lands; Abraham COOKE of Burbage Leicestershire, and Isaac his son, with Edward GLOVER, Esq, Edward LEWIS Gent, and George his son, all of Mancetter, Warwickshire, agreed to the release to Basil FEILDING of Newnham, Esq, of title to the lands enclosed and exchanged in Mancetter called Bottom Field, Middle Field and Bridgfield, and land called Ox Leasowe, set forth for Sir William FEILDING (now deceased) and the said Basil in the agreement of October 1604 [Warwickshire Record Office - TNA Index Ref CR 2017/D132]; Abraham was possibly named in a Pleading in the Court of Chancery, dated 1627, as co-defendant concerning "...money matters in Leicestershire," being a Bill and Answer, brought on by the Plaintiff, Thomas COLEMAN [TNA - C 3/399/33]; an Abraham COOKE was a freeholder in Dalby Magna, Leicestershire, in 1630 (perhaps ? another).
Abraham married, about 1570, Margaret GREENE [1619 Visitation - NICHOLS, "History and Antiquities" records her, probably in error, as Joyce] - see GREEN and HARCOURT family details below.
By this marriage, Abraham acquired his wife's half of the one-third share in the manor of Mancetter; the original third share had gone to Julia, the second of three daughters of Guy de MANCESTRE who died in August 1365; and the half of which third share was eventually purchased in 1543 or 1544 [Dugd. 1077; Common Pleas Deeds, Enr Trin. 36 H viii, m. 8d] by Robert GREENE of Atherstone, who died in 1546 [Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser 2), lxxv, 79]; the share then went to his younger son Thomas GREENE, who died in 1559 [Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser 2), cxl, 185], leaving two infant daughters; one of them was Margaret GREENE, who became the wife of Abraham COOKE [see John NICHOLS, "History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester," Volume 4, Part 2, page 1034; and V.C.H. "A History of the County of Warwick, Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred," Mancetter - I have opted for the better sourced V.C.H. version over NICHOLS where there are discrepancies]. See further below under "The Manor of Mancetter."
1. Katherine COOKE, baptised at Burbage, Leicestershire, 6 January 1573; probably died young.
2. Elizabeth COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 26 September 1574; possibly married at Burbage, 17 November 1602, Anthony RAULINSON; living 1619, but recorded as the wife of Anthony BROMFIELD of Eaton, County Warwick.
3. Margaret COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 15 November 1576; married at Burbage, 17 December 1601, Harman SHEPARD; living 1619, the wife of Harman SHEPARD of Leire, County Leicester; issue:
Elizabeth SHEPARD; named in her cousin William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
4. Anne COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 October 1580; probably married at Burbage, 13 June 1615, John LICHFIELD; prob issue:
Sarah LITCHFIELD, baptised at Claybrooke, Leicestershoire, 19 May 1616.
Anne LITCHFIELD married, probably secondly, at Claybrooke, Leicestershire, on 1 January 1626, to Richard FFARREN; she made her will on 26 September 1655, proved P.C.C., 20 August 1657, naming brothers William COOKE, John WATKIN and Robert FORRYAN, and among others, William's sons John and Abraham COOKE.
5. Alice COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 December 1581; married at Burbage, 1 July 1612, Thomas BULLOCKE; living 1619, the wife of Thomas BULLOCK of Spratton, County Northampton.
6. Isaac COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 8 June 1583. See [B] below.
7. William COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 1 October 1585; aetatis 34 in 1619 Visitation; named in his sister Ann FORRYAN's will, September 1655; married with issue:
John COOKE; named in his aunt Anne FORRYAN's will, 1655.
Abraham COOKE; named in his aunt Ann FORRYAN's will, 1655.
8. Agnes COOKE; baptism not recorded - probably instead Anne (above - unless born later ? without a recorded baptism); living 1619, the wife of John LICHFIELD of Yelvertoft, County Leicester.
9. Katherine COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 6 January 1589[-90?]; living 1619, the wife of John WATKIN, of Burbage, County Leicester; she married at Burbage, 8 November 1612, John WATKIN; named in the 1619 Visitation of Leicester; he was named in his sister-in-law Ann FORRYAN's will, September 1655; issue:
William WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 16 August 1613.
Abraham WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 23 September 1615.
Christian WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 15 June 1617.
Katherine WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 19 May 1622.
10. Arbery COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 19 May 1594; n.f.p.
11. Abraham COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 November 1596; matriculated as a Plebeian, Lincoln College, Oxon, 10 November 1615, aged 17; aetatis 23 in 1619 Visitation, still a student at Oxford.
12. Jane COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 28 January 1598[-99?]; n.f.p.
13. Jacob COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 21 February 1601[-02?]; n.f.p.
[B] Isaac COOKE, born in 1583; of Sketchely, Farmer; of Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, 1622-23, when his son John matriculated into Oxford University; in 1626, he sold to Richard WHITEHALL his one-sixth share of the Manor of Mancetter (which probably came to him on his father Abraham's death, he having acquired it by his marriage in about 1570); probably living at Baldwin's Gardens, Gray's Inn Lane, London, November 1643, when his grandson John CLAPHAM was born there.
Image of the 1643 entry in the Saint Andrew's Holborne Baptismal Register, courtesy of Ancestry.library edition and London Metropolitan Archives.
Isaac was living with son John COOKE at Gray's Inn, 1657; mentioned as "brother" in his brother-in-law John TWIGDEN's will, 1637; Isaac evidently died in 1658 (his son John's letter to Henry CROMWELL, February 1659), although his burial details have not yet been found.
There are several mentions of an Isaac COOKE in indexes to the holdings of The National Archives at Kew, although it is not certain whether they are of our Isaac:
1631 - King's Remembrancer - Sir Thomas TEMPLE Kt and Bt, Sir Peter TEMPLE and Thos JUSTLEY, vs Sir William FAWNT Kt, Isaac COOKE, and five others, concerning the Manor of Lutterworth, Leicestershire, and the ancient mills there [TNA - E 134/6Chas1/Mich39].
This TEMPLE family had dealings in Stowe, in 1642 with relations of Peter FARREN of Northampton; and the two CHAPLIN half-brother's of Ann DICKENS alias THORNTON, who married Edward TWIGDEN of Little Creaton.
And on 3 August 1629, James COOKE was admitted to Gray's Inn, the son of Isaac COOKE of Lutterworth - perhaps a bit young for the son of our Isaac?
1649 - Court of Exchequer - Francis RISHWORTH, John OAKLEY v. Isaac COOKE, Richard SCRIVENER the elder and the younger and John YERBEY; concerning a messuage and lands in or near the parish of Potters Perry (Northampton) called "Moore end Farm" and a sheepwalk or common called Brownsworth green, and the Town or Village of Yardley. Metes and bounds. Right of Common of pasture. Northampton. [TNA - E/24Chas1/East6]
1654 - Court of Chancery, Six Clerks Office - Isaac COOKE, Plaintiff, vs John HALFORD, Defendant, concerning property in Little Bowden, Northamptonshire, an answer [TNA - C 5/404/50].
1656 - Court of Chancery, Six Clerks Office - Sir Beachamp ST JOHN, Kt, and Oliver ST JOHN, Plaintiffs, vs Isaac COOKE and Luke CLAPHAM, Defendants, concerning personal estate of the deceased George BENNETT of Leicestershire, being a Bill, Answer and Demurrer [TNA - C 6/144/156].
The 1649 and 1656 cases almost certainly involve our Isaac, as he appears to have been a resident of Potterspury, Northamptonshire, in 1641, and his daughter Elizabeth was married to Luke CLAPHAM.
It may be of some interest here to mention that Francis RISHWORTH - as RUSHWORTH - was probably the Church warden of All Saints, Northampton, who was, with fellow warden Peter FARREN, excommunicated in 1637 by his Bishop's agents for failing to carry out Archbishop LAUD's anti-Puritan "improvements" - he and FARREN brought their appeals against the ex-communications to the Court of Arches in London in 1641, at the end of which year Isaac COOKE of Potterspury, Gent, made marriage settlements for his probable step-daughter Elizabeth BARROW to Nicholas BACON of London (she later, in 1648, married Peter FARREN).
But two further entries, both dated 1659, may relate to another Isaac, as our Isaac apparently died sometime during 1658; one involved property in Northamptonshire, and named Gerard BANKES as defendant [TNA - C 6/147/30], and the other named Gerard BANKES with other co-defendants (Peter HARRISON and Ann his wife, and Peter WATSON and Jane his wife) related to Little Bowden, Northamptonshire [TNA - 6/142/31]. The latter appears to have been connected with the 1654 case.
This other Isaac COOKE may have been the "cousin" Isaac COOKE mentioned in Rev John TWICKDEN of Corby's 1657 will.
There was another case brought before Chancery in 1663 by Susannah CLAPHAM, Plaintiff, with Isaac COOKE the defendant, concerning money matters [TNA - C 6/164/23] - but as this record is the Answer only, it suggests that this Isaac COOKE was still living, and probably therefore another.
It was probably the land-holdings associated with the Manor of Mancetter that emboldened Isaac COOKE to present his credentials, and his 3-generation pedigree, to the Office of the Chief Herald as part of the 1619 Herald's Visitation; although he did not provide, nor was he approved the use of, any Armigerial bearings.
Isaac COOKE was married, at Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, on 26 August 1605, to Elizabeth TWIGDEN, daughter of John TWIGDEN [so recorded in the 1619 Herald's Visitation] of Husbands Bosworth (see below); issue:
1. John COOKE, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 September 1608. See [B] below.
2. James COOKE, born about 1610; named Jacob, 1619 Visitation of Leicestershire, aetatis 9; possibly admitted to Gray's Inn, 3 August 1629, son of Isaac COOKE of Lutterworth, Leicestershire; identified by ROBERTSON ("The Tyrannicide Brief"), as Jacob, living 1641, with a tenancy in Leicestershire of a bankrupt, which led to litigation in which he was represented by his brother John.
3. William COOKE, born about 1613; named in the 1619 Visitation of Leicestershire, aetatis 6.
4. Elizabeth COOKE, born about 1615; named in the 1619 Visitation of Liecestershire, aetatis 4; prob married at Keame (alias Keyham), Leics, 8 November 1630, Luke CLAPHAM, of Willenhall, Warwickshire, Gent (son of John CLAPHAM, of Willenhall, by Mary LEIGH or LEE - John was buried at Holy Trinity, Coventry, 16 February 1630-31; his will proved P.C.C., 19 March 1631, his wife Mary the sole executor, and naming his children Luke, John, Samuel and Mary, a son Samuel having been buried at Holy Trinity, Coventry, 30 August 1631).
Luke CLAPHAM was of Gray's Inn, 1633; called to the Bar, 16 June 1645; he was named as defendant, 1648, in Chancery Court proceedings brought on by John WATKIN (probably husband of his wife's aunt Katherine COOKE), being a Bill only, concerning "...money matters in Leicestershire" [TNA- C 3/466/76]; he was recorded as "...dealing with" the manor Stockton "...during the Commonwealth" [V.C.H. "History of County Warwick," Vol.IV, p.106], which manor had devolved to his father in 1618 on the death of his cousin and name-sake, John CLAPHAM (one of the Six Clerks of Chancery); Luke was further named, with his father-in-law Isaac COOKE, 1656, as a co-defendant in Court of Chancery proceedings brought on by Sir Beauchamp and Oliver ST JOHN, concerning the personal estate of the deceased George BENNETT of Leicestershire [TNA - C 6/144/156; he was probably with 52 others, "...called to be of the grand company of Ancients" at a Pension held at Gray's Inn on 21 May 1658.
Luke and Elizabeth had issue:
a. Luke CLAPHAM, born about 1639; in August 1642, he was given a 1577 volume of Raphael HOLLINSHED's "The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande," inscribed on the verso of the title-page "August 1642, this booke was given to my sonne Luke CLAPHAM by his uncle Mr John COOKE of Gray's Inn"; Luke was admitted to Gray's Inn, 12 February 1655; called to the Bar, at a Pension held at Gray's Inn, 25 November 1661; he died on 2 April 1676, aged 37, and buried Islip Church, Oxfordshire (M.I., marble Tablet, Chancel); aged about 25 when married by License, at Saint Pancras Old Church, London, 13 February 1666-67, Susanna HEARNE of Amring Hall, Norfolk, aged 19, with consent of her mother; she died 16 November 1669, and also buried at Islip; with issue an only surviving daughter:
i. Mary CLAPHAM, who married WELLS and survived him, with an only daughter Elizabeth WELLS (living in the parish of Saint Sepulchre's, London, in 1716, as the widow SIMPSON).
b. John CLAPHAM, born at his grandfather's house, Gray's Inn Lane, London, and baptised at Saint Andrew's, Holborn, 24 November 1643.
c. Isaac CLAPHAM, baptised at Holy Trinity, Coventry, Warwickshire, 21 June 1652.
The CLAPHAM connections get a little complicated - Luke CLAPHAM's mother, Mary LEE or LEIGH, was a daughter of Thomas LEE of Catthorpe, Leicestershire; her brother was Joseph LEE, of Shawell, later Rector of Catthorpe, who in 1619 married Hannah TWIGDEN (a younger sister of Mrs Elizabeth COOKE) - and his father, John CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warwickshire, was undoubtedly related to Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall, who married in 1619, Ann MILNER, who was probably a daughter of Richard MILNER and Mary TWIGDEN (an aunt of Mrs Elizabeth COOKE alias TWIGDEN).
5. Susannah COOKE, born about 1619; buried at Burbage, 29 April 1620.
6. Susannah COOKE, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 6 February 1620-21
7. Margaret COOKE., baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 8 December 1622.
[B] John COOKE, born 1608; admitted Wadham College, Oxon, 31 January 1622-23, aetatis 14.
His career is recorded in brief in the Dictionary of National Biography (published version); this was further up-dated in the 1980s by Wilfrid PREST in the Oxford D.N.B.'s on-line version; and was further examined in great detail by Geoffrey ROBERTSON, Q.C., in his "The Tyrannicide Brief," Chatto and Windus, 2005; to all of which the reader is referred for details which will not be repeated here.
Although he was said to have been born in Burbage, as that is where his father lived, John was baptised at Husband's Bosworth; ROBERTSON speculates that this was a decision made on religious grounds, and that the COOKE's choice was for a baptism by a Puritan minister at Husbands Bosworth over and above one by the establishment minister at Burbage; whilst this may well be the case, it is also possible that Elizabeth went home to her mother for her first confinement, which was not an uncommon occurrence, and that John was simply baptised there because it was more convenient.
Of his family relationships, which we will look at in some detail below, the following is apparent:
1. John's uncle, Rev Joseph LEE or LEIGH of Catthorpe (the husband of his mother Elizabeth's sister Ann or Hannah TWIGDEN), was also a maternal uncle of Luke CLAPHAM, who married John's sister Elizabeth COOKE.
2. John's mother Elizabeth was a first cousin of Ann MILNER (daur of Richard MILNER andMary TWIGDEN), who was also an aunt of Luke CLAPHAM, on account of her marriage to Luke's probable uncle Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall.
3. John's paternal aunt Alice COOKE married Thomas BULLOCK, who was another first cousin of his mother Elizabeth TWIGDEN.
Part of the 2006 A.A. map of Great Britain, showing COOKE family locations in Leicestershire.
A BRODFIELD OR BROMFIELD ALIAS.
Curiously, in the 1619 Herald's Visitation pedigree of COOKE of Sketchley, William COOKE, his son Abraham and grandson Isaac were all recorded with an "alias" BRODFEILD; but his great-grandson, and Isaac's son and heir, our John COOKE, is the only one in the line of COOKEs whose alias was spelt BROMFIELD.
This last may have been an "error" which resulted from the recording of the marriage of Isaac COOKE's sister Elizabeth COOKE to Anthony BROMFIELD, even though it appears from parish records that her husband was probably instead Anthony RAULINSON.
The use of this "alias" is hard to explain, and may have had something to do with an earlier property inheritance, as yet unknown - it was not unusual for inheritance of property down the female line to have a proviso attached to it, that the son-in-law adopt his wife's family name.
However, the 1633-35 Herald's Visitation of London may furnish a clue.
Thomas BROMFIELD, of Ilford in Barking, County Essex, married (probably around about 1530) Elizabeth COOKE of Northamptonshire (recorded in at least one on-line pedigree as a daughter of Richard COOKE and Margaret HALL); their son Thomas BROMFIELD, of the Manor of Odemere, County Sussex, was, by his wife Grace MARTIN, the father of Edward BROMFIELD, Alderman of London in 1634.
As yet, no links to the COOKE family in Sketchley/Burbage in Leicestershire are apparent.
THE MANOR OF MANCETTER.
In 1626, Isaac COOKE sold his one-sixth share in the Manor of Mancetter, which had come to his mother by her family connections, as shown hereafter, beginning with abstracts from the Mancetter section of the "The History of the County of Warwick, Volume 4: Hemlinsgford Hundred" (part of the Victoria County History series):
"Guy de MANCESTRE or MANCETTER died in 1365; his possessions were divided among the representatives of his three daughters, Margaret, who survived him, Julia and Lucy, who both predeceased him...
"Guy de Mancetter's daughter Julian (sic) married Geoffrey, Lord BROKEHILL in Hertfordshire. Their son, another Geoffrey, inherited one third of the Manor of Mancetter in 1365; he was outlived by his wife Ellen, heir of John de ROOS, who died in 1419, holding her husband's share of the manor. A moeity of the third of the manor called Brokeholes passed to their eldest daughter Joan, widow of Thomas ASPELL and in 1443 the wife of Robert ARMEBURGH. She apparently had no issue, and the whole third came to John SUMPTER, son of Ellen's younger daughter Margery. John died in 1425-26, and in 1437, one of his sisters and co-heirs Ellen BELLERS was dealing with her part of the Manor, here called a moeity of the Manor of Rosehall in Mancetter; with the reversion of the estates held for life by Thomas BARNARD, husband of her late sister Christine. Ellen subsequently married Ralph HOLTE, whose great-grandson Sir Thomas HOLTE in 1544 sold his part of the manor to Thomas LUDFORD and Robert GREENE.
"GREENE died in 1546 seised of a moeity of a third of the manor of Mancetter. His heir was his son Robert, but the estate passed to his younger son Thomas, who died in 1559, leaving two infant daughters.
"One of these, Margaret, married Abraham COOK, and their son Isaac COOK sold it to Richard WHITEHALL... in 1627..."
And so the COOKE's of Burbage came to possess one-sixth part of a Manor; although it is not yet clear what that meant in money terms - either as rentals from tenants, or finally as a sale price.
William HARECOURT or HARCOURT; of Bosworth, County Leicester; married Jane PALMER, second daughter and coheir of William PALMER of Stoney Stanton, County Leicester; they had issue:
Anthony HARCOURT, living 28 Hen viii; he died on 8 February 1541 [his M.I., cited by NICHOLS as being in Cadeby Church, but illustrated in connection with Drayton Church, both in Leicestershire]:
The altar-style tomb on Anthony HARCOURT, as illustrated in NICHOLS's "History and Antiquities."
It is this "Anthonius HARECOURT" who heads the COOKE of Sketchley family pedigree in the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire.
Anthony married Dorothy HARDWICK (daughter of John HARDWICK - see [D] below); issue:
1. George HARCOURT; of Dodington, County Leicester; married Elizabeth LEIGH, daughter of Henry LEIGH of Rushall, County Stafford; with issue.
2. (daughter); wife of CATER.
3. Barbara HARCOURT; the wife of Thomas GREENE. See [C] next below.
[C] Robert GREENE; of Atherstone, County Warwick, Yeoman; Bailiff in Atherstone, 1537, when he made an Agreement with the Abbot of the Monastery of Our Lady of Merevale, County Warwick, concerning a pasture land at Seale, between Nether and Over Seale; in 1540, he purchased the Manor of Arley, Warwickshire, from John CORBET of Shropshire and his wife Anne, jointly with his son Robert GREENE Junior, and William GREENE; shortly after February 1542, Robert purchased from Charles BRANDON, the Duke of Suffolk, the manor of Olbury (together with the free warren and other rights formerly belonging to the Convent of Polesworth), which had come to the Crown on the Dissolution of the Monasteries; in 1543-44 (jointly with Thomas LUDFORD), Robert purchased one-sixth of the Manor of Mancetter from Sir Thomas HOLTE.
Robert died in 1546; his will, dated 6 February 1545[-46?], named his wife Margaret, sons Robert and Thomas, sister Elizabeth FEISAMUTE (? or similar - perhaps FEILDING), Richard YONGE "... my sister's son," and "... the children of my son Robert"; proved P.C.C., 20 April 1562 (as recorded in the index - my reading of the somewhat obscure image suggests it may have been earlier than that); he married Margaret, on whom he settled the manor of Arley on his death, with remainder to his second son Thomas; they had issue:
1. Robert GREENE, Junior; eldest son and heir; inherited his father's share in the Manor of Oldbury, 1546, and subsequently sold it before 1565 to John SYMINGS; he also inherited from his father the Manor of Arley, notwithstanding the remainder in favour of his brother Thomas; he and his wife Dorothy disposed of Arley in 1553 to John POLEY.
2. Thomas GREENE; despite being the younger son, he inherited from his father, the remainder of the sixth part of the manor of Mancetter after his mother's death; that he passed it to his children suggests that his mother Margaret died before him; he died in 1559; he married Barbara HARCOURT (see above); they had issue:
a. (daur).
b. Margaret GREENE; the wife of Abraham COOKE of Burbage, County Leicester. See above.
[D] John HARDWICK; a grandson of Eleanor de FLAUNDERS, later the wife Sampson ERDSWYKE; of Lindley, County Leicester; made a settlement of the Manor of Flanders, parish of Kingsbury, County Warwick, 1459; he died in 1512; married firstly, 1459, Elizabeth BOTELER, daughter of Henry BOTELER of Coventry; with issue:
1. Alice HARDWICK; married William DINGLEY
John married secondly, Ann LANGHAM; she survived her husband, but died before 1537; further issue:
2. Elizabeth HARDWICK; married BURTON.
3. Ann HARDWICK; married George WYNTER; issue:
a. Ann WINTER; married John BOWLES of Lincolnshire.
b. Elizabeth WINTER; married at Hington, County Leicester ?
C. ? married Katherine GRISLEY, sister of Sir William GRISLEY, Knt; issue.
4. Mary HARDWICK; married William WHITEHALL. Possibly related to Richard WHITEHALL, who in 1626 purchased from Isaac COOKE the sixth part of the Manor of Mancetter.
5. Dorothy HARDWICK; married Anthony HARCOURT. See above.
6. Joyce HARDWICK; died 6 March 1585; married about 1525, Michael PUREFOY (born at Fenny Drayton, County Leicester, 14 March 1497); they were dealing with the Manor of Flanders, County Warwick, 1558 and 1566; he died 21 July 1570; issue:
a. William PUREFOY, born about 1527; died 1 September 1615; married at Wolston, Warwickshire, 21 June 1558, Katherine WIGSTONE; with his parents, they were dealing with the Manor of Flanders, 1566.
b. John PUREFOY; of Nether White-acre, 1601; married Isabella BRADSHAW.
c. Thomas PUREFOY; matric 1550; B.A., 1554; married Elizabeth BRADSHAW, daughter of Robert BRADSHAW of Morborne, Hunts.
d. Humphrey PUREFOY, born about 1533; B.A., 1554; elder brother of George; married Alice FAUNT.
e. George PUREFOY, born about 1541; Gray's Inn, 1566; M.P. for Beverley, 1586; died in October 1616; married Jane DAVENPORT.
f. Arthur PUREFOY, sixth son; M.A., 1564; married Elizabeth LANGHAM..
g. Margery PUREFOY; married SALISBURY of Ullesthorpe, County Leicester.
h. Frances PUREFOY; married John SMALLEY.
j. Dorothy PUREFOY; married NICOLS.
k. Jane PUREFOY; married Christopher WRIGHT.
m. Catherine PUREFOY; married Thomas WIGHTMAN.
THE TWIGDEN FAMILY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
Spratton Parish Church, where members of the TWIGDEN family of Little Creaton lie buried.
John TWYKTWYN, of Creaton, Northamptonshire, was living 1491-93; he was probably father of:
William TWYCTWYN, of Creaton, living 1521; probably his will dated 1560, to be buried in Broughton, Northamptonshire, and naming a son Thomas; possibly married to a relation (perhaps a daughter) of Thomas SKYNNER of Creaton (his will, dated 1521, was attested by Wm TWYCTWYN); probably father of:
Thomas TWIGDEN, born about 1510-20; he was a wealthy grazier; purchased the Manor of Little Creaton (Creaton Parva), Northamptonshire, in 1548, on 1 March 1550-51, from Lady OWEN and her son John (shortly after her husband Sir David OWEN's death); purchased the estate of Bosworth Grange, in the parish of Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, on 1 March 1550-51, from Edward FIENNES, Lord Clinton and Saye; Thomas was buried in Spratton Church, Northamptonshire, 14 September 1580; his will dated 2 January 1579[-80?], proved P.C.C., 20 October 1580, leaving his estate to his wife Ann and their eldest son Edward.
Thomas married, about 1545, possibly to Miss WATTS, with issue:
1. Edward TWIGDEN, probably born around 1545; named in his father's will, 1579, with one-half of his estates in Little Creaton; acquired the other half from his mother for 120 pounds; will dated at Spratton, 26 January 1610; buried at Spratton Church, 5 March 1614-15 [M.I., Brass, floor of South Aisle]; married, as her second husband, Ann DICKENS, daughter of John THORNTON, and widow of William DICKENS; she died on 26 December 1614 [M.I., Brass, Spratton Church]; issue:
a. Ann DICKENS, daughter of her first marriage to William DICKENS; she married firstly, her step-father's "alleged" younger brother John TWIGDEN (see below).
b. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; died 1668; her father settled upon her at her marriage in 1600 the Manor of Little Creaton; married firstly, 30 December 1600, William KNIGHTON; he also held lands in Little Creaton of Cornelius WESLEY as of his manor of Dodford; he died about 1607; will proved 1610; issue:
i. Thomas KNIGHTON.
ii. Twigden KNIGHTON.
iii. Mabel KNIGHTON.
iv. William KNIGHTON; his will dated 1634, proved 1642.
Elizabeth married secondly, her cousin Gifford BULLOCK, with issue (see below).
2. Mary TWIGDEN; married firstly, at Spratton, 28 November 1571, Richard BROWNE; she married secondly, before 1580, Richard MILNER; issue:
a. Katherine MILNER, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 2 October 1584.
b. Jane MILNER, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 2 April 1587.
c. Andrew MILNER; named in his cousin William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
(?) Anne MILNER; married in 1619, Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warwickshire (undoubtedly of the same family as John CLAPHAM, whose son Luke married in 1630, Elizabeth COOKE of Burbage).
e. Elizabeth MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 30 November 1595.
f. Ales MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 2 July 1598.
g. Marie MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 30 December 1601.
h. George MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 24 January 1607.
3. Richard TWIGDEN, born about 1550; a properous Glover in Northampton; died 1608; married firstly, Margery; prob married secondly, at Rushton, Northamptonshire, 3 November 1579, Elizabeth LELAM; she died 1606; issue:
a. John TWIGDEN; Glover of Northampton; will dated July 1634, proved 1638; married at Saint Sepulchre's, Northampton, 29 April 1596, Frances COLES; with issue:
i. John TWIGDEN, born about 1608; Glover in Northampton; Freeman of Northampton, April 1633; had "...all that shop in All Saints churchyard" and all the wares therein, in his father's will, 1634; Alderman and Mayor of Northampton; buried All Saints, 17 February 1681-82; married Prudence, with issue four sons and a daughter.
ii. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1634, as the wife of WALKER.
iii. Sarah TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto WADE.
iv. Katharine TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto KING.
v. Ann TWIGDEN; ditto 1634; married firstly, at Weston Favell, 21 July 1625, George SHUCKBURGH, Mercer and Linen Draper in Northampton; Ann married secondly, 1632, George GOODMAN, Mercer, with issue.
vi. Mary TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, as the wife of COLE.
vii. Elinor TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto Richard WOOLLASTON, Mayor of Northampton, 1622-23.
b. Richard TWIGDEN, baptised on 3 October 1583.
c. Elizabeth TWIGDEN, baptised on 8 August 1585.
4. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; married firstly, John BULLOCK of Spratton, Northamptonshire; his will dated 20 November 1596, Proved P.C.C., 24 May 1597; issue:
a. Francis BULLOCK; named in his father's will 1596; named in his half-brother's will, 1634.
b. Thomas BULLOCK; under age in 1596; possibly married at Burbage, 1 July 1612, Alice COOKE (sister of Isaac COOKE, whose wife was Elizabeth TWIGDEN, Thomas's cousin).
c. John BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
d. Gifford BULLOCK; under age in 1596; named in his half-brother's will, 1634; he married his cousin Elizabeth TWIGDON (see above); issue:
i. Elizabeth BULLOCK; named in her half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
ii. Ann BULLOCK; named in her half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
iii. John BULLOCK; named in his half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
e. Edward BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
f. Abraham BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
g. Susannah BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
h. Elizabeth BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
5. John TWIGDEN, born about 1553; named as third son in his father's will, 1579, having already received the lease of all his father's lands in Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire. See [C] below.
6. (son); named John TWIGDEN, as fourth son in his father's will, 1579, to whom he willed a lease in Great Creaton (or Creaton Magna) "...now in tenure of John ESSON and Robert KEBUR."
However, it seems unlikely that there would have been another son named John (and perhaps in error for another name, the error perhaps being one of transcription by the Prerogative Court clerk who wrote out the probate grant).
He is believed by descendants to have been the John TWIGDEN of Little Creaton who was father of Amphyllis WASHINGTON alias TWIGDEN.
See "Another Problem in America" below.
7. Raffe TWIGDEN, named as fifth son in his father's will, 1579, under age; married Ann LELAM (daughter of Thomas LELAM and Ann CHIBNALL and sister of Percival below), with issue:
a. Amy TWIGDEN, baptised at Spratton, 1 January 1592-93.
Raffe and Ann may have had other daughters, who may have made marriages in Spratton:
b. Eleanor TWIGDEN, married 1637, William JOHNSON.
c. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; married 1627, Mark COWPER or COOPER.
d. Joan TWIGDEN; married John WATTS.
e. Dorothy TWIGDEN; married Richard HOLLIS.
8. Dorothy TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1579, under age; married at Spratton, 7 February 1586-87, Percival LELAM (son of Thomas LELAM and Ann CHIBNALL, and brother of Ann above).
9. Alice TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1579, under age; possibly married at Spratton, 3 June 1594, William HAYWOOD.
10. Francis TWIGDEN, baptised at Spratton, 27 October 1566; named as 6th son in his father's will, 1579, under age.
[C] John TWIGDEN, of Bosworth Grange, Husbands Bosworth; this fits the description of Thomas TWIDGDEN of Little Creaton's third son, and so named in his 1579 will; died 1619 [TNA - C 142/373/58: Chancery, Inquisitions Post Mortem (Series II), Leicester, March 1619-March 1620; as John TWICKTEN]; possibly, as John TWICTYN, married at Walgrave, Northamptonshire, 30 June 1580-81, Susanna PELL; with issue:
1. Erasmus TWIGDEN, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 12 May 1583; probably named for Erasmus SMITH, Gent, of Husbands Bosworth, whose second wife was sister of Lord BURGHLEY; named in the Inq. p.m. after his father's death, 1619, as the son and heir, aged 30 years.
2. Elizabeth [EMERTON or] TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 22 July 1584 (father not named - the second surname here carries the whiff of a father of a possible illegitimate birth? - but another record has her baptised 27 September 1584, so perhaps there were two); believed to have married in 1605, Isaac COOKE, See [A] above.
3. John TWICKTEN; no baptismal record yet found, but based on the year of his matriculation, born about late 1580s; matriculated, Jesus College, Cambridge, Easter 1603; B.A., 1606-07; Fellow, 1608; M.A., 1610; D.D., 1622; Rector of andSaint John and Saint Peter, Corby, Northamptonshire, 1614 until his death; buried Corby, 21 April 1657 [M.I., as recorded in his entry in "Alumni Cantabrigienses" - but not consistent with the next detail]; will dated 4 June 1657, proved P.C.C., December 1658, mentioning his "brother" Isaac COOKE, his "...nephew John COOKE, now or late Justice in Ireland," and a "cousin" Isaac COOKE; married with issue:
a. John TWICKTEN; also an M.A. of Jesus Coll, Cantab; he died before his father, at Corby, 19 April 1655 [M.I., ditto].
b. Bridget TWICKTEN; also died before her father, and buried at Corby.
4. Thomas TWICKEN, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 1589 (date obscured, but between 17 February 1588-89 and 5 April 1589).
5. William TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 19 December 1590; said to have been a wealthy Linen Draper; possibly of Saint Martin's, Borough of Leicester, when he made his will, dated 8 December 1635, and proved P.C.C., 6 February 1635-36, naming his wife Elizabeth, to whom he left the house he then dwelt in, a shop in Bruntingthorpe, parish of Saint Mary's, and his houses in Soar Lane, parish of All Saints, with a bequest to the poor of Husbands Bosworth "...where I was born," and mentioning "...my children which it hath pleased God to give me by my beloved wife."
6. Richard TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 4 July 1593.
7. Francis TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 20 November 1595.
8. Ann TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 November 1598; as Hannah, married in 1619, Joseph LEIGH or LEE, Clerk, of Catthorpe, Leics (son of Thomas LEE of Catthorpe, and so a brother of Mary LEIGH, the wife of John CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warws).
9. Susan TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 January 1600-01.
Husbands Bosworth Parish Church, as illustrated in NICHOLS's "History and Antiquities."
ANOTHER PROBLEM IN AMERICA.
Pedigrees of the ancestral connections of the first President of the United States, George WASHINGTON (1732-1799), all now lead back to, among others, a family named TWIGDEN in Northamptonshire, ancestors of his great-great-grandmother Amphyllis TWIGDEN (1601-1655), the wife of Rev Lawrence WASHINGTON.
At the head of it is John TWIGDEN, alleged to have been the son of Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) of Little Creaton, Northamptonshire.
However, John COOKE's maternal grandfather, John TWIGDEN of Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire, is also alleged to have been a son of the same Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) of Little Creaton.
The problem appears to have arisen from the writer's copy of Thomas TWIGDEN's 1579 will which was entered into the Probate Grant at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in October 1580.
It is clear from the down-loaded copy, courtesy of The National Archives (or TNA) web-site, that Thomas TWIGDEN's third and fourth sons have both been attributed the same name of John - the third son with all his father's leases in Husbands Bosworth; and the fourth with property in Greater Creaton.
I cannot conceive of any man giving two of his sons the same name - it is unlikely that the parish minister would have encouraged such duplication at baptism - and it would certainly have created all sorts of identity issues, in particular at the time of the probating of his will.
Although I may be wrong, I suspect that it may have been a clerical error on the part of the writing clerk at the P.C.C. But, as we undoubtedly no longer have any access to the original will document, it is unlikely we will ever be able to resolve this apparent difficulty from that source.
A considerable amount of original research has been carried out into this TWIGDEN family, and apparently reported in the July and October 1940 issues of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Volume 94 is one of them), as an up-date to a much briefer item in a much earlier issue (October 1924), and followed up with Additions and Corrections (April 1942).
It appears to be information collected by H.E. WATERS, and presented under the sub-title of "Genealogical Gleanings in England" and as illuminating an article about Amphyllis WASHINGTON.
I have only seen snippets of them in google-book searches, so cannot yet verify the actual pedigree constructions, what speculations may have been involved in those constructions, or see the particular sources that it uses or cites.
But, from further on-line research, it appears that in 1925, it was revealed for the first time, by Rev H. Isham LONGDEN, the Rector of Heyford, Northamtonshire, that Amphilis WASHINGTON had not been born a ROADES, as had been assumed by earlier researchers, but was in fact a daughter of John TWIGDEN.
Rev LONGDEN continued his research into the TWIGDEN family connection, but did not publish it; instead he handed over copious notes in 1940 to H.E. WATERS, who subsequently published them in two articles in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.
It appears that WATERS accepted, apparently without question, LONGDEN's identification of Amphilis WASHINGTON's father John TWIGDEN as being the fourth son of Thomas TWIGDEN of Little Creaton (will dated 1579).
One English record may provide, at first glance, a hint of adjudication in favour of the WASHINGTON family "claim" - TNA carries an indexed reference to holdings of the Northamptonshire Records Office, and to a Final Concord, dated Easter Term, 44 Elizabeth (1602), of John READE, Esq'r, Plaintiff, concerning "...3 messuages, 2 lofts, 2 cottages, windmill, dovecote, 3 gardens, 3 orchards, 100 acres of land, 50 of meadow, 50 of pasture, 10 of heath and 12d of rents in Creaton Magna, Creaton Parva and Spratton" - the deforciants were listed as Edward TWIGDEN and Ann his wife, John TWIGDEN and Ann his wife, Gregory TARRIE and Elizabeth his wife, and Alice DICKEN.
This has all the hallmarks of being connected with property of the DICKEN family, into which both Edward and his "alleged" brother John TWIGDEN are known to have intermarried; and if Elizabeth, the wife of Gregory TARRIE, was also a DICKEN, then this is probably a collection of DICKEN family members - mother Ann (known to have married as her second husband Edward TWIGDEN), and her three DICKEN daughters Ann (known to have married John TWIGDEN), Elizabeth and Alice (as yet unmarried).
If the Final Concord entry was, as it appears, about the DICKEN(S) family, then it could not be construed from it alone that there was any particular relationship between Edward and John TWIGDEN. They may have been brothers (although I think this unlikely, as I have seen no other evidence yet of this, apart from the 1579 will which I believe is probably in error); however, there is nothing to preclude the possibility that they were instead cousins.
Further information contained in some American pedigrees indicates a likelihood that either Amphyllis TWIGDEN's mother or her grandmother was Amphyllis WATTS. A parish register entry for her marriage, if and when found, could prove particularly useful here.
However, a projected date for the marriage of the older Thomas TWIGDEN of about 1545 probably predates the existence of Parish Registers.
But if it were a generation later... and if Thomas had named his fourth son Thomas... and if the P.C.C. clerk in 1580 had written for the fourth son the name John in error for Thos...
There are just too many if's...
Current American pedigrees record the following family details:
John TWIGDEN; of Little Creaton, Northamptonshire; will dated 8 December 1610, bequeathing half of his goods (but apparently no real property) to his wife Ann, and the other half to his five daughters, equally divided, when they reached the age of 25 years, as well as some monetary bequests to the Poor; married in 1591, Anne DICKENS, daughter of William DICKENS by Ann THORNTON (before her second marriage to Edward TWIGDEN); she died in 1657, having married secondly, Andrew KNOWLING, of Tring, Hertfordshire; he died in 1650; his will, dated at Tring, 13 January 1649-50, named, inter alia, his daughters-in-law Elizabeth FITZHERBERT, Amphylis WASHINGTON and Susan WILLING (deceased); issue:
1. Ann TWIGDEN, baptised on 9 March 1593; named in her father's will, 1610.
2. Elizabeth TWIGDEN, baptised on 23 May 1596; named in her father's will, 1610; named as Elizabeth FITZHERBERT in her step-father's will, 1649; probably married firstly, at Saint Giles's, Northampton, 29 September 1635, John BOUGHTON, of Ashenden, Buckinghamshire, Yeoman, and perhaps a relation of her sister Susan's husband; he died at Tring, and was buried 20 March 1638-39 at Ashenden; his will dated 16 February 1638-39 was proved 12 June 1639 by the widow Elizabeth; she appears to have married secondly at Tring, on 24 June 1641 John [surname obscured in snippet search, Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Volume 8, 1927, page 108], possibly DAGNALL or PAGNALL (who appears to have been guardian to his wife's two WILLING nieces); poss married thirdly, FITZHERBERT.
3. Susan TWIGDEN, baptised on 9 May 1599; named in her father's will, 1610; dead before 1650; aged 18, and of Passenham cum Penshanger, when she married firstly, at Saint Peter's, Northampton, on 4 December 1616, Peter BOUGHTON of Potterspury, Northamptonshire; his will, dated 25 September 1635, was proved at Northampton on 26 October 1635 by his widow Susan; issue:
a. Elizabeth BOUGHTON; named in her father's will, 1635.
b. Jane BOUGHTON; ditto, 1635.
Susan married secondly, John WILLING; poss further issue:
c. Susan [WILLING], born 1639; mentioned, but not by name, in the 1649-50 will of her late mother's step-father, Andrew KNOWLING of Tring.
d. Elizabeth [WILLING], born 1641; mentioned ditto 1649-50; ( if this further lineage is correct, then Elizabeth BOUGHTON probably died young).
If these are her children, then she appears to have died in 1641, five days after her second WILLING child was baptised.
4. Amphylis TWIGDEN, baptised on 2 February 1600-01; named in her father's will, 1610; named as Amphyllis WASHINGTON in her step-father's will, 1649; died at Tring, Hertfordshire, 12 January 1654-55; married at Spratton, Northamptonshire, 1 December 1633, Rev Lawrence WASHINGTON (born Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, about 1602); he was educated at Brasenose College, Oxon, B.A. 1623; M.A.; Rector of Purleigh, Essex, 1632; "ejected" from Purleigh when Parliament sequestered the Rectory in 1643, and was "retired" to the Rectory of Little Braxted, where he is said to have lived in poverty; in 1649, the Standing Committee for Essex ordered a fifth part of Purleigh to be paid to the "plundered" Rector's wife; Clerk, Maldon, 1653, when he apprenticed his son William for 7 years, to Hugh JACKSON, Master Draper (record not annotated as Lawrence being deceased - see the www.londonroll.org web-site); he was buried at Maldon, Essex, 26 January 1652-53; issue:
a. John WASHINGTON, possibly born at Purleigh, about 1634, but perhaps elsewhere, and possibly a little earlier (one U.S. cemetery record has him born as early as about 1627); granted Letters of Administration to his late mother's estate, P.C.C. 8 February 1655, as her "...natural and lawful son" (which were traditionally mutually exclusive terms, "natural" usually meaning illegitimate, and "lawful" as born within wedlock); he went to Virginia, 1656, with a wife and two infant children (who all died shortly after arrival); settled at Bridge's Creek, near the Potomac; church warden of the old "White Chapel" at Lancaster County, 1661; a Planter, Magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses; Colonel of Virginia Forces which engaged against the Seneca Indians; his will dated 26 February 1675[-76?], proved 10 January 1677[-78?]; he married secondly, about 1660, Ann POPE (daughter of Nathaniel POPE); by her he had issue - Lawrence, John and Ann; he possibly married thirdly Ann GERRARD, and perhaps fourthly her sister Frances GERRARD.
b. Lawrence WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 23 June 1635; in 1649-50, he was granted all of the property of his mother's late step-father Andrew KNOWLING of Tring (who made no mention in his will of Lawrence Junior's elder brother John - might this further support the notion that John was perhaps ? illegitimate); went to America; he died about 1677, letters of Administratrion, P.C.C., dated 30 May 1677; married firstly, at Luton, Bedfordshire, Mary JONES, with issue a daughter Mary WASHINGTON (she married Edward GIBSON); he married secondly, in Virginia, Jane FLEMING, with further issue a son John WASHINGTON (he married Mary TOWNSEND) and a daughter Ann.
c. Elizabeth WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 17 August 1636; possibly married RUMBOLD.
d. Margaret WASHINGTON; possibly married TALBOT.
e. William WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 14 October 1641; apprenticed by his father, 1653, for 7 years, to Hugh JACKSON, Master, Draper's Company; no evidence in Draper's Company records of his Freedom.
f. Martha WASHINGTON; went to America; married Nicholas HAYWARD.
5. Hannah TWIGDEN, baptised 1 December 1605; named in her father's will, 1610; died Buckinghamshire, 1687; married 1628, William ROADES, with issue.
A possible scenario which avoids the having two sons with the same name in Thomas's 1579 will would be for this John to have been instead a cousin, and the second John in the 1579 will being recorded in error, perhaps for Thomas?
Unless instead it was John TWIGDEN of Husbands Bosworth who was the cousin?
Further, in Tyler's "Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine" [Volume 8, 1927, at page 108], in an article, probably contributed by T. PAPE, entitled "Amphillis TWIGDEN, mother of the WASHINGTONs", it is recorded:
"...What was her maiden name? I think I have found it in the Register of Saint Peter's, Northampton, in this marriage entry - '1616, December 4, Peter BOUGHTON and Susan TWIGDEN.' I have also discovered, at Peterborough, the marriage license, dated the same 4th December 1616, when he was of Potters Pury, Northamptonshire, Widower, and she of Passenham cum Denshanger, maiden, aged 18 years. Further, what is the parentage of Susan TWIGDEN? I discover at Little Creaton in the parish of Spratton, Northants, one John TWIGDEN, a yeoman, dwelling where his father and grandfather dwelt before him. * * *
"He made his will on 8 Dec'r 1610 as John TWIGDEN of Little Creaton, in the parish of Spratton, where he desired burial, and he gave to the poor of Spratton, fyve shillings, and the poor of Great Creaton and Little Creaton [an]other fyve shillings, adding 'I doe give unto my wife Ann halfe of my goodes and the other halfe of my goodes I doe give to my fyve daughters, Ann, Elizabeth, Susan, Anphellis and Hannah, the other halfe of my goodes to be equally devided amongst them when they shall severallie come to the age of fyve and twentie yeares'."
Note here that PAPE does not identify the father by name, or his grandfather by either given name or surname, although it might reasonably be assumed it was intended to be his paternal grandfather.
If Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) had a brother who lived in Little Creaton, which is entirely possible, then this statement still fits for John being a cousin of Edward, rather than a brother.
JOHN COOKE'S "COUSIN" HARRISON, ANOTHER REGICIDE.
In one of his letters from the Tower, John COOKE mentioned his cousin HARRISON, who was also incarcerated as a Regicide, and would meet his fate as did John COOKE, on the traitor's scaffold at Charing Cross.
This was Thomas HARRISON, who is said to have come from Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. His relationship, if accurately recorded, does not appear to make him a cousin on the COOKE or TWIGDEN sides of the family.
Richard HARRISON (II) was a butcher in Newcastle-under-Lyme, County Stafford; he probably born in Newcastle in the 1550s, a son of Richard HARRISON (I) (he was buried at Newcastle, 1 May 1589) by his wife Alice (buried ditto, 22 January 1588-89); like his father, Richard (II) was also a Church Warden, Bailiff, Constable and Alderman of the Borough, serving as Mayor in 1594 and 1608; he made his will on 3 June 1623, which was proven at Lichfield, 7 May 1625; he married on 2 December 1581, Alice COLLIER, by whom he had issue:
1. Alice HARRISON, baptised at Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1 April 1582.
2. Elizabeth HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 26 June 1584.
3. Richard HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 8 March 1587[-88?]. See [Y] below.
4. Thomas HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 19 November 1589; buried 26 December 1589.
5. William and Helena HARRISON, twins, baptised at ditto, 16 March 1591; both died in infancy (Helena in April 1591, Wm in February 1597).
6. Margaret HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 2 April 1594.
7. Ralph HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 28 February 1599; of Newcastle-under-Lyme, then of London, Citizen and Draper there; married Hester, with issue including a daughter Katherine HARRISON, who married her cousin Thomas, the Regicide [Z].
[Y] Richard HARRISON (III); a capital Burgess in the Corporation of Newcastle, 1621-25, and Mayor of the Borough, 1626, 1633, 1643 and 1648; buried Newcastle-under-Lyme, 25 May 1653; married Mary, who was buried ditto, 18 May 1658; they had issue:
1. Jane HARRISON, baptised at Newcastle-under-Lime, 2 June 1612.
2. Thomas HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 16 July 1616; the Cromwellian General and Parliamentarian. See [Z] below.
3. Dorothy HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 29 March 1618.
4. Anne HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 3 August 1619; she married Randle LOVATT, with issue.
[Z] Thomas HARRISON; arrested in his house in Staffordshire in May 1660; executed as a Regicide on 13 October 1660, three days before his "cousin" John COOKE; he married in 1647 his cousin, Katherine HARRISON; she married secondly, Thomas LEIGH, and died in 1700; issue, perhaps among others:
1. Thomas HARRISON; buried at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, London, 1 February 1649.
2. Ralph HARRISON; buried ditto, 16 April 1652.
3. Richard HARRISON; buried ditto, 12 January 1653.
Newcastle-under-Lyme Corporation records also have details of an Isack HARRISON - he had an apprentice in 1647; was churchwarden in 1655, and was Clerk of the Borough in 1657-58.
Of possible interest, a John HARRISON was married at Foleshill, County Warwick, on 26 October 1568, to Alice FORRIAN. If COOKE's wife Frances was a FORRYAN alias FARREN, then it is possible that the HARRISON family cousinship may have arisen through this Alice FORRIAN connection? If the Regicide was of this family - and from the above detail that is looking somewhat unlikely.
Frances STOUGHTON alias PROCTOR alias COOKE was, I had once believed, my gtx6-grandmother.
However, there was a Frances BARROW who was baptised in Lillingston Lovell, Buckinghamshire, on 4 April 1620, a daughter of Edward BARROW and his wife Elizabeth - Frances was of the right age to have been the 1646 bride. Her father appears to have been Edward BARROW of Potterspury, Northamptonshire (about four miles north-east of the Lillingstons Lovell and Dayrell), whose wife was Elizabeth CHEYNEY, the widow of Samuel BRYAN of Northampton.
And Frances did have an older sister Elizabeth BARROW Junior, baptised in the same church in 1618.
Further, there is some evidence that Elizabeth BARROW Senior, as a widow, married thirdly, to a gentleman named COOKE, probably later (1654) identified as being named Isaac, and of Potterspury, Northamptonshire; and that this may have been a second marriage for Isaac COOKE, the father of John COOKE - which, if actually happened, would mean that in 1646, Mr John COOKE, Counsellor, had married his step-sister. See further below.
Recent progress, particularly in documents from The National Archives (a 1654 Bill of Complaint brought before the Court of Chancery), and research done in the Northamptonshire Record Office, now enable us to see that the BARROW family is a strong prospect for our Frances, and her sister Elizabeth. But the speculation is not without some inherent difficulties.
The following notes for the BARROW family are therefore posted here (in late January 2015) - as "...breaking news..." - before we return to the earlier article, at "HUSBAND NUMBER 3 - ACQUILLA STOUGHTON OF ANTIGUA" further below.
THE FAMILY OF BARROW OF CHESTER AND POTTERSPURY.
According to several pedigrees - one recorded in The Cheshire Sheaf [6 September 1899, page 92 et seq.], and another in the Herald's Visitation of Northamptonshire, 1618-19 - there was a BARROW family, as follows, with some additional details collected from other sources:
Richard de Barrow, of Cheshire; married Ellen, with issue:
Hugh de Barrow; living 8 Hen VI (1430); died young.
John de BARROW; of Churton; married with issue:
Robert BARROW; of Chester; married with issue - a son Robert BARROW, who married Anne YARDLEY of Caldecot, with issue.
Richard BARROW. See [A] next.
[A] Richard BARROWE; living 13 Hen V (1426); of the City of Chester, 21 Hen VI (1443); Barber, of Chester, when he was Sheriff of Chester, 1445; married with issue:
John BARROW, eldest son. See [B] next.
[B] John BARROW, 32 Hen VI (1454); Sheriff of Chester, 1454; possibly Sheriff of Chester, 1473, as Ironmonger; he was father of:
Robert BARROW; living 1487, 1489; he had issue sons:
Thomas BARROW.
Robert BARROW; of Chester, 19 Hen VIII (1528-29).
Thomas BARROW. See [C] below.
Agnes BARROW; married Richard WYRALL (or WORRALL), an Alderman of Chester.
[C] Thomas BARROW; a Mercer in Chester; Sheriff of Chester, 2 and 22 Hen VII (1487 and 1507); Mayor of the City of Chester, 1495, 1505, 1518; he died 15 Hen VIII (1524-25); he married Ann LLOYD, the daughter and heir of Humphrey Ap David LLOYD of Bryn; he was father of:
1. Roger BARROW. See [D] below.
2. Thomas BARROW; died v.p.
3. Robert BARROW.
4. Edward BARROW.
[D] Roger BARROW; said to have migrated to Cambridge, and to have been Sheriff of Cambridge, 15 Hen VIII [The Cheshire Sheaf]; slain at the Siege of Boulogne, in 1544 [Visitation of Northamptonshire]; married Katherine SINGLETON, daughter of Mr SINGLETON of Scales, Lancashire; they had issue two sons:
1. Thomas BARROW. Possibly mentioned as purchaser, with wife Margaret, of three closes in Potterspury, Northamptonshire, 1603 [TNA - CR 162/281] - unless instead a nephew?
2. John BARROW. See [E] next.
[E] John BARROW, born before 1545 (if his father died in 1544); he married firstly, Anne AMOS, daughter of William AMOS of County Oxford, who died without issue; John and his second wife Mary were defendants in a case brought before the Court of Chancery, 13 November 1582, by Plaintiff William STANDISH of Winchester, Hampshire, concerning the will of William STANDISH of Thornburgh, Buckinghamshire, whom the defendants claimed had died intestate, and his lease of Tenements in Southwark Saint Olave, Surrey, and lease of a messuage with lands in Thornborough, of pastures called "Wykye" (or Wicky in Little Staughton) in Bedfordshire, and of lands in Syresham, Northamptonshire [TNA - C 78/59/10]; John BARROW was assessed at £3 8s on his goods, in Potterspury, Cleley Hundred, Subsidy of 1580; mentioned in Henry PEDDER's Terrier, 1596, as holding adjacent lands [N.R.O. - F XIII.4(4)]; John was named in an Exchequer document dated 1599, as being a Certificate of residence showing him to be liable for taxation in Northamptonshire [TNA - E 15/43/55]; he was rated for goods, in Potterspury, at £3 8s in the Subsidies of 1600 and 1602; witness to 1601 will of Richard SCRIVEVENR of Potterspury; he died in 1617, and his will, dated 5 September 1615 (he "signed" his mark), was proved P.C.C. 17 October 1617, and was subject of a sentence (in Latin) in 1619, naming sons Edward, Richard, John (with wife Elizabeth) and William; John was married secondly, before 1582, Mary STANDISH, daughter of William STANDISH (probably of Thornborough, Buckinghamshire, and said to have been of the City of Oxford, and perhaps the M.A., Magdalen College, who was later Registrar of Oxford University); they had issue:
1. Edward BARROW. See [F] below.
2. Richard BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of his father's best horse, or the value thereof in money; married with issue, the wife living in 1615, with 22s. in her father-in-law's will, and "each and every one of the children" to share equally in 22s.
3. John BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with property bequests related to the Manor of Potterspury; married Elizabeth, living in 1615, with 22s. in her father-in-law's will; her daughter Sibell, living 1615, with 22s. in her grandfather's will.
4. William BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of £100.
5. Robert BARROW; named in his father's will, 1615, with bequest of £20.
6. Anne BARROW; named in her father's will, 1615, with bequest of a 2 year-old roan mare in Lillingston; she was buried at Deane, Bedfordshire, 31 January 1618-19, the wife of William ESTON ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," F.A. BLAYDES, London, 1890, p.90]; she married firstly, perhaps about 1605-06, John DILLINGHAM of Over Deane, Bedfordshire; he was buried at Deane, 3 May 1608; his will dated 12 March 1607, proved P.C.C. 9 June 1608, naming his wife Ann, evidently pregnant, with different provisions for that unborn child depending upon its gender, referring to a financial obligation of £200 owing to John BARROWE his father-in-law (probably under the marriage settlements), and mentioning his late father (Walter), his un-named mother (still living - probably Alice formerly ROULTE), his sisters COLBY (with three children), POTTER (Arthur POTTER and Eliz. DELLINGAM were married at Bedford Saint Paul, on 18 May 1597) and BARNWELL, and his two brothers Francis DILLINGHAM (their father's son and heir, born 1568, M.A. Cantab, 1590) and Thomas DILLINGHAM; Ann married secondly, at Deane, 18 January 1615[-16], William ESTON; John and Anne had issue an only child:
a. Anne Posthuma DILLINGHAM, baptised at Deane, 15 May 1608; named in her grandfather's will, 1615, with a bequest of 22 shillings; she was married at Deane, Bedfordshire, 14 May 1626, to Nicholas THRESHER.
[F] Edward BARROW was probably born about 1570s and perhaps in Potterspury, Northamptonshire; mentioned in Henry PEDDER's Terrier, 1596, as holding adjacent lands in Potterspury; he was named in his father's will, dated 5 September 1615, and in the Sentence of it dated 1619, with a bequest of his father's property in Marblefish, parish of Berkhamsted, County Hertford; Edward was rated for goods, in Potterspury, at £3 8s. in the Subsidy of 1621 (just as his father had in 1600 and 1602); he and his wife Elizabeth were named as Plaintiffs in a case they brought before the Court of Chancery, 1623, defended by Sir Richard BURNEBYE, Knt, and others, concerning Money Matters in Northamptonshire [TNA - C 3/333/62]; he was recorded in the Subsidy of 1628 as Edward BARROWE, gentleman, taxpayer in Potterspury, and assessed at £3 16s. on goods; a Mr BARROES was assessed at 10 shillings, Potterspury Ship Money List, about 1635-36, although this date range conflicts with the next; recorded in a Deposition dated 1634, as "...Mr Edward BARROWES deceased carried twoe loades of the like stone... from the honor howse of GRAFTON to Stoke lodge since Sir Francis CRANE came thither" [Ph35288 Northampton Deposition].
Edward BARROW, Gent., was married at the parish church of Luton, Bedfords, 27 March 1617[-18], to Elizabeth BRIANT, widow, gentlewoman ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," by F.A. BLAYDES, London, 1890, page 185] - footnoted as Edward BARROW of Potterspury, and Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Thomas and Frances CHEYNE, and widow of Samuel BRYAN of Northampton, Gent ["Genealogia Bedfordiensis," p. 410, citing 'Beds. N. and Q. ii, 70'].
Elizabeth was a daughter of Thomas CHEYNEY (1550-1612) of Bramingham, Bedfordshire, by his wife Frances BROCAS (died 1630); and a grand-daughter of Thomas CHEYNEY by Elizabeth ROTHERAM, and of Bernard BROCAS by Anne PEXSALL (died 1591).
Samuel and Elizabeth had been married at Sundon, Bedfordshire, on 15 September 1608; and Samuel was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 1 October 1616, a Gentleman [Northamptonshire Record Office - Ref 223P/1]. He was the son of John BRYAN of Northampton, a Merchant of the Staple of England, by his wife Ann. Samuel made a will on 26 September 1616, proved P.C.C. on 13 November 1616, in which he mentioned his wife Elizabeth, a sizable property portfolio, and two brothers, Joseph and John BRYAN Junior. But the lack of mention of any children suggests they had none surviving.
Elizabeth evidently married thirdly, Mr COOKE (probably Isaac); as Elizabeth COOKE, she was probably mentioned in the Crown Survey of 1660, as "Elizabeth COOKE, Copyholder, old rent £1 13s. 4d." and all ditto "6d." [N.R.O. - G 3199]; on 22 February 1661-62, as Elizabeth COOKE, late the wife of Edward BARRONES (probably BARROWS) she made a petition, with her son Thomas BARRONES (or BARROWS), concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury [Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660-67, Volume 1, edited by William SHAW, H.M.S.O., London, 1904].
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Edward and Elizabeth BARROW, probably the same, had three daughters baptised at Lillingston Lovell, Buckinghamshire, as follows:Elizabeth BARROW, baptised 1 November 1618. Possibly married firstly in 1642 to Nicholas BACON of London; secondly, in London in 1648, to Peter FARREN, and thirdly, in Northampton in 1655, to Robert MASSEY - the last two both Merchants of Northampton.
Frances BARROW, baptised 4 April 1620. Possibly our Frances, who married firstly to John COOKE of Gray's Inn, London; secondly to William PROCTOR; and thirdly to Acquilla STOUGHTON, the last two both of Antigua.
Mary BARROW, baptised 18 October 1621. At present we have no further particulars for her.
Edward and Elizabeth evidently also had issue a son (unless he was of an earlier marriage):
Thomas BARROW, baptism not yet found, perhaps in Potterspury, about 1620s; probably named in 1641, with Isaac COOKE, as witness to the copy of a deed made in 1577, concerning a transaction made by Thomas MEADE of Lillingstone to Thomas HILLIER of Potterspury [N.R.O. - F XIII.3] - but if he was of age, then he was born about 1620 or earlier, which does suggest he may have been an older half-brother to the three girls; probably the Mr BARROW assessed in the Potterspury Army Tax List, 24 April 1653 (the assessment amount no longer legible); in 1653 he entered into a bond with the rate collectors of Potterspury of £6 to secure the payment of £3 3s. 6d, in connection with the benefaction of £3 previously made to the poor of Potterspury in the will of his grandfather John BARROW ["Miscellaneous Papers, viz Charitable Donations; Parish Returns; and the Poor Clergy" Session 8 November 1814 to 12 July 1815, Volume II, Bodleian Library]; Crown Survey, 1660, "Thomas BARROW, Copyholder, old rent £7 13s. 0d." [N.R.O. - G 3199]; living 1662, when, as Thomas BARRON[ES], he made a petition with his mother, who was by then known as Elizabeth COOKE, concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury; possibly recorded in 1684, as a gent and resident of Potterspury, with an Inventory of Goods valued at £30; Thomas may have died at Bugbrooke, Northamptonshire, on 13 September 1684; he married Margaret, who was named with Thomas in a conveyance of land in Cosgrove, near Potterspury, 3 September 1663 [Grafton Estate papers, NRO Ref G331]; possibly by her the father of John BARROW, who matriculated into Saint Edmund Hall, Oxon, in May 1688, aged 17.
The BARROW residence in Potterspury was identified in a detailed survey conducted in 1723 by agents of the Duke of Grafton - a two storied dwelling attached to a barn, it stood on the south side of the High Street, and about half way between Watling Street and the Parish Church, between the residences of Thomas SCRIVENER and William BUSHNELL - and it is the house where in 1684 Thomas BARROW, Gent, was Inventoried with £30 value of goods [see "Renewal and Replacement in a Northamptonshire Village: Housing in Potterspury 1727-1910," by Rod CONLON, Vernacular Architecture, Volume 40, 2009, pages 36-50]. The house was demolished about 1850-70.
Elizabeth BARROW's third husband was probably the one recorded on the 1654 Chancery Court Bill of Complaint as Isaac COOKE of Potterspury, Gent, who was a party to the 1641-42 marriage settlements for her daughter Elizabeth to Nicholas BACON - which supports the circumstantial evidence that Edward BARROW had died (probably by 1634), and that his widow Elizabeth married Mr (Isaac) COOKE, at least as early as December 1641. He was inevitably the Isaac COOKE who, with Thomas BARROW, was in 1641 witness to a deed of sale of a house in Potterspury by John HILLIER the elder to John HILLER the younger; he was probably the Mr COOKE, assessed at 17s 3d for the Potterspury Army Tax List, 24 April 1653.
Another document, Ref YZ 2955-6, Northamptonshire Record Office, of date 13 March 1743, which records details of an earlier feeoffment, dated 22 April 1654, concerning the purchase by Thomas BARROWES, gentleman of Potterspury, of land in Potterspury parish and in Cosgrove and Yardly Gobion, from Michael TASSELL the elder of Potterspury, yeoman, his wife Frances, Michael TASSELL the younger, his son, Richard SCRIVENER the elder of Potterspury, and William JEWETT of Deanshanger, at a cost of £112; part of which property Thomas BARROWES then leased, on 9 November 1676, to Henry EDWARDS, yeoman of Byfield.
The livery of seisin for the original 1654 feoffment was evidently signed by of Isaac COOKE, Richard SCRIVENER, Elizabeth FARREN, Millisent QUARLES and R. MASSEY.
! ! ! SPECULATION WARNING ! ! !
It will come as no surprise if the four names we recognise here were Thomas BARROWES, his step-father Isaac COOKE, Isaac's widowed step-daughter Elizabeth FARREN and her very-soon-to-be third husband, Robert MASSEY of Northampton.
But perhaps the most convincing piece of evidence so far appears in a Parliamentary Survey of the Manor of Potterspury by the Trustee for Crown Lands and Fee Farm Rent, indexed by The National Archives [Ref - E 317/Northants/40, at fol.20], which records the following:
"1650. Rental. Isaac COOKE, Gent, held three tenements in Potterspury by copy. Rent for them all is £3 10s., fine £7, herriot 2s. Annual value 13s. 6d. farthing. 'Isaac says his copy is in Ireland with his son, by which means, no date appears'."
! ! ! ANOTHER SPECULATION WARNING ! ! !
It does seem unlikely that the other Isaac COOKE would have had a son who was also in Ireland in 1650 - in which case, it seems very likely that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury WAS the father of John COOKE the Gray's Inn Barrister.
Elizabeth CHEYNEY, first the wife of Samuel BRYAN, then of Edward BARROW, and finally of Mr (probably Isaac) COOKE, may have later gone to live with her daughter Elizabeth (Mrs MASSEY) in Northampton; she may have been the Mrs COOKE who had a seat in All Saints Church, 1664 (although this may have been another - the widow of Tempest COOKE of Northampton). I had wondered whether she may have been buried in that church on 17 January 1668-69 - but it has been confirmed that that burial was for Elizabeth, the wife of Lawrence COOKE, Barber [Northamptonshire Record Office - 223P/1].
Her daughter Elizabeth probably made her will on 5 February 1680-81 (proved P.C.C., 10 April 1686); she probably married firstly, perhaps at Potterspury, on 3 January 1641, Nicholas BACON of Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, parish of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, City of London (son and heir of Clement BACON, Mercer, and his wife Martha); he was buried at Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, on 17 August 1643; Elizabeth probably married secondly, at Saint Clement Danes, Westminster, on 29 June 1648, Peter FARREN, Baker and Innholder in Northampton; he was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 August 1650; and Elizabeth married thirdly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 28 July 1655, Robert MASSEY, Attorney in Northampton; he was buried in woollen at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 September 1678.
Another interesting entry appears in the Poll Tax listings for Potterspury, dated 9 August 1660 [NRO Ref YZ 4397] - it was for "Mr COOKE" who was assessed at £2, and "...his wife, one daughter, and 2 servants" who were assessed at 2 shillings, but with no entry under the name of BARROW.
This Poll Tax was levied by the Convention Parliament (which first met on 25 April 1660 to replace the Long Parliament which dissolved itself on 16 Mar), in order to fund the disbanding of the New Model Army and pay off their arrears in pay - the bill's first reading took place on 12 June 1660, and a committee was appointed to verse it on 6 Nov.
If the list for its assessment was made in 1660, then Mr COOKE could not have been the Isaac COOKE who died in 1658; but if the list used by the 1660 Parliament was a residual list made prior to the Restoration, and had been compiled in early 1659, then it might just have been John COOKE, his wife Frances, and his daughter Freelove (unless all those assessed were over 16 years of age, which would rule out Freelove, then less than five years old); or if even earlier again, from before early to mid 1658, then it may well have been Isaac COOKE, his second wife Elizabeth (the widow BARROW), and perhaps her adult daughter (possibly the Mary BARROW born 1621?).
Unfortunately, it is evident that Parish Registers for the parish of Potterspury, and the Bishop's Transcripts of them (for the Diocese of Peterborough), have not survived for any dates prior to 1674.
In the absence of any chance of corroborating these speculations from parish registers, it is important to observe that some of the few details that we have found do not, in themselves, give cause for great confidence in this speculation:
1. Frances COOKE, in her petition to Charles II in 1664, stated that her marriage had taken place in 1645. This is not 1646. Did Frances have a memory lapse? Did a copying clerk perhaps misread a 6 for a 5?
Or did Frances perhaps regard the "marriage" as beginning at the moment of their betrothal and commitment, rather than the later church ceremony confirming same?
2. When John COOKE wrote his 1660 letter from the condemned cell to his daughter Freelove, he only mentioned three of her close blood relations - her mother, her good grandmother, and her aunt MASSEY. Nowhere here is there any indication of the existence of an uncle Thomas BARROW, who appears, from the above speculated pedigree, to been just that. Perhaps Thomas, living in 1661-62, had not approved of his brother-in-law's involvement in the death of Charles I?
3. If Isaac COOKE did marry France's mother Elizabeth BARROW alias BRYAN alias CHEYNEY, in about 1641, and went to live with her in Potterspury, how is it that his grandson Luke CLAPHAM was born in Baldwin's Garden, Gray's in Lane, in 1643, recorded in the baptismal register as the house of Isaac COOKE? Did Isaac COOKE keep his house in London after moving to Potterspury? Did he move there later?
But I am getting a bit ahead of myself - the details referred here are discussed in detail below, in the sequence in which I had originally written this article, well after the reverse sequence of France's three presumed husbands, to which we now return.
HUSBAND NUMBER 3 - ACQUILLA STOUGHTON OF ANTIGUA.
It is apparent from the above 1693 will that Frances's most recent husband was named STOUGHTON.
And OLIVER ("History of Antigua") provides further indications that he was almost certainly Acquilla STOUGHTON, Deputy Secretary of Antigua when he was named on a list, dated 9 January 1679[-80?], of the "... names of persons sworn to the Acts of Trade"; he leased 266 acres from John LANGFORD on 1 May 1680, for 2 years at £200 per annum; and was a Member of the Antigua Assembly which met on 2 April 1686, signing a motion of dissent from the Governor's requirements to pay "... the gunners and matrosses out of the King's Revenue of a pound an acre."
He was not recorded by name in the August 1678 "Census" of Antigua, but as this Census identified heads of households only, he may either not yet have arrived in Antigua, or he have been living in somebody else's household.
Acquilla STOUGHTON made his will on 17 July 1690, making a bequest to his brother John STOUGHTON (16,000 lbs of sugar), and naming his wife Frances as sole executor, and with all of his goods, lands, tenements, negroes, etc; it was proved by Frances on 21 June 1693.
It is uncertain where Acquilla came from, but it is possible that he was the Acquilla STOUGHTON (alias STANTEN) of the City of Cork, in Ireland, who had issue by his wife Ann baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Cork, between December 1657 (Jael) and September 1665 (Daniel - with Joshua, John and Thomas intervening at regular intervals), before marrying again, by License of the Diocese of Cork and Ross, in 1670, Hanna ROSS.
It is such an unusual given name that these are either one and the same person, or else, I venture, very closely related.
If Acquilla STOUGHTON did live in Cork in the 1650's, it is, I suppose, not beyond the realms of possibility that he may have known of, or even met, Frances when she was the wife of John COOKE, Chief Justice of Munster (see below).
And if the Cork family was his, then it appears that the children may not have survived, or those that did were not within his family circle in Antigua when he made his will.
There is certainly no indication that Frances had any issue by Acquilla STOUGHTON.
HUSBAND NUMBER 2 - LIEUTENANT WILLIAM PROCTOR OF ANTIGUA.
There is less certainty about Frances's likely second husband, Lieutenant William PROCTOR, of Rendezvous Bay, near Falmouth, on the south coast of Antigua, just east of English Harbour (the headland separating Rendezvous Bay from Falmouth Harbour was still called Proctor's Point when I visited in 2004).
Proctor's Point, Antigua, from the south-eastern shore, looking almost due west across the entrance from
the Caribbean Sea into Falmouth Harbour, off towards the right of the photo.
OLIVER ("History of Antigua") records that John PIGOTT married Frances PROCTOR in 1690. While the date is not sourced, it may be a little premature, as John PIGOTT did not arrive in Antigua until 31 May 1690, and his Regiment were not informed of London's decision to keep them on in the Caribbean until January 1691.
However, the family name of PROCTOR is published without question mark, suggesting that OLIVER may have had some evidence of it (although he did not source that either); he merely footnoted his abstract of the Acquilla STOUGHTON will as follows:
"... Frances his wife was probably the widow of ... PROCTOR (? Lieutenant William PROCTOR) who was living 1678."But it also evident that William was the only PROCTOR who leaves any trail in Antiguan records for the appropriate time frame.
William PROCTOR was first mentioned by OLIVER as receiving a grant of 50 acres at Falmouth, Antigua, by Patent of Governor AUSTIN dated 18 February 1646[-47?]. This was well early in the time-frame of English settlement of the Island (which began in 1632); it also begs the question as to why PROCTOR was in that part of the world at a time of increasing upheaval in England, otherwise known as the Civil War between King and Parliament.
PROCTOR further obtained 72 acres at Falmouth by purchase from Colonel Bastian BOYER, although OLIVER does not record the date for this transaction (the 72 acres was formerly William PIKE's, and by him mortgaged to Cloies ABRAHAM alias BAKER, whose heirs entrusted it to Colonel Bastian BOYER).
And he had another five acres by the nun-cupative (verbal) will of Peter THORNHILL (another parcel of William PIKEs' land sold to George NOBLE and then by him to THORNHILL).
He also had 30 acres at Willoughby Bay by gift from Thomas WITHERED (by his will, and; who bought 10 acres from Richard BARTLET), 20 February 1650[-51?].
In all, Lieutenant William PROCTOR's total was 157 acres.
After the brief French occupation in 1666 (Antigua was ceded back to English control by the Treaty of Breda, and Saint Kitts was partitioned between French and English forces), a new book of Patents for Government land grants was commenced in 1668, and in it, under warrant of William, Lord WILLOUGHBY of Parham, and entered by Samuel WINTHROP, Registrar, we find that Lieutenant William PROCTOR had one for an identical area, 157 acres, which was undoubtedly a re-patenting of his earlier holdings.
Shortly after, William PROCTOR was one of the signatories to a Petition and Remonstrance in support of Lord WILLOUGHBY and his continued governance over them, news having filtered through that he was to be superseded.
In 1671, William PROCTOR and Major Richard BURRASTON were chosen to take care of the poor in Falmouth and Rendezvous Bay Division; in July 1672 he was £100 in debt to Richard COWES; and he acquired 10 acres in New North Sound Division by warrant of Governor Philip WARNER dated 17 October 1672 (this property was surveyed by Archibald COCHRAN in April 1675).
Lieutenant William PROCTOR was one of six military men among 19 members of the Assembly which met on 7 May 1674, with Major Thomas SMOLLETT as Speaker, and which dealt with the banishment of Mr (Archibald) HENDERSON. Property conflicts arose subsequent to this banishment, and we shall meet up with Mr HENDERSON and these consequences a little later.
On 30 April 1676, PROCTOR swore the will of Renold BARTER, Planter at Falmouth; and on 19 June 1678, he executed a deed of sale to Mr Thomas INNETT, Merchant, although OLIVER did not identify the nature of the property involved.
In his last known appearance in Antiguan records, William PROCTOR was named in the 1678 Census of Antigua, and his household at Falmouth Division comprised two adult males (I presume PROCTOR and another), an adult female (probably our Frances) and two children (probably their two daughters), all Europeans (enumerated as "whites"); the household also comprised eleven Africans (four men, three women and four children - enumerated as "negros"), whom I presume to have been slaves.
Falmouth Harbour looking north-east. Falmouth town is off to the right of the photo on the distant shoreline.
The Census, dated 27 August 1678, counted a total of 4,480 people living on the island.
Of this total, 2308 were Europeans, and 2172 Africans; of the Europeans, 1600 were English, 610 Irish, and 98 were Scots.
Of the total, 2041 were men, 1412 were women, and 1027 were children.
William's holdings appear to have been about twice the average per capita acreage; his allocation of slaves was about the same, twice the average per capita ratio.
If William PROCTOR made a will, it has not survived - OLIVER wrote of his visit to Antigua in 1884-85:
"Most of the old books of wills, etc, are in a deplorable condition; they have, as a rule, lost their covers, hundreds of pages are missing, and even some folios which are legible are so fragile from former exposure to the damp, deplorable condition; they have, as a rule, lost their covers, hundreds of pages are missing, and even some folios which are legible are so fragile from former exposure to the damp that the paper falls to pieces on being turned over. The early records were always badly housed and kept..."
FRANCES'S "PROCTOR" DAUGHTERS.
There is evidence that Frances may have had two daughters by her presumed marriage to Lieutenant William PROCTOR:
[A] In her 1693 will (see above) Frances made a bequest to her grand-daughter Frances KERBY; the lack of any mention of the mother of this grand-child indicates that she was probably already deceased, along with the grandchild's father.
OLIVER ("History of Antigua") speculates elsewhere ["Family of KERBY," Vol.2, p.122] that she may have been a sister of Thomas KERBY, and if this is accurate, probably a daughter of Dr Thomas KERBY Senior.
However, in his early pedigree construction of this family, OLIVER (whose early pedigree constructions are often somewhat "faulty") indicates that Thomas Junior was an infant in 1698, which would make it difficult for him to be Frances KERBY's brother if her parents were dead before 1693; and if they weren't, the question would arise as to why they were therefore not mentioned in Frances STOUGHTON's 1693 will. The 1698 document was a lease granted by Thomas's guardians, to Robert FREEMAN, of Antigua, Gent; and the "infant" tag may have arisen from an earlier will of his father (now lost), so perhaps still under age in 1698 but no longer an infant. This Thomas KERBY Junior was probably of age by 1702 when he was appointed Deputy Secretary for Antigua, and he married Jane GAMBLE in 1705; he may well have been an elder half-sibling to Frances KERBY, and so not a grandson of Frances STOUGHTON, which might account for his not being named in her will.
The mention of the KERBY grandchild first in her grandmother's will may support the notion that her mother was the elder of the two PROCTOR daughters.
[B] In the same 1693 will, Frances named her daughter and son as Frances and John PIGOTT resp.
We know from PIGOTT family sources that John PIGOTT's mother was Elizabeth WELDON, so it is apparent that Frances PIGOTT must have been Frances's daughter, and that John PIGOTT was therefore her son-in-law.
Details of the PIGOTT family can be found at the first post on this blog-page, made on 24 May 2008, at this link:
http://pigott-gorrie.blogspot.com.au/2008/05/vital-statistics-can-be-hard-to-come-by.html
The present Cathedral Church of Saint John's, Antigua (1845-48), surrounded by the Churchyard.
A plain timber church was built here in 1680, and after a major earthquake in 1745, was replaced by a brick church.
It was almost certainly to this hill-top where Captain John PIGOTT led his division of "rebels," in their December 1710
assault on Governor PARKE; and it was probably in this cemetery that John PIGOTT's body was buried.
Unless Frances KERBY was instead a daughter of Frances PROCTOR by a KERBY husband she had before she married John PIGOTT?
There is just a hint of such a possibility mentioned in a book published in London in 1717 by George FRENCH, entitled "The History of Colonel PARKE's Administration," and made accessible courtesy of J-STOR; at page 59, concerning the leadership of the two "rebel" Parties who attacked PARKE in Saint John's in December 1710, FRENCH wrote:
"... the one commanded by Capt. PIGGOT... who had been... drawn into that Faction by the Artifice of the Party, and the Apprehension he had of a Suit in Chancery to be commenc'd against him by his Wife's Children, in which they should not fail of having Justice done to them..."
At first reading I presumed this referred to his wife's PIGOTT children; but none of them were yet of age; and it then occurred to me that Frances PROCTOR may have had other children before she married John PIGOTT, and that Frances KERBY may have been one of them!
Although we cannot yet account for the other (or others) implied by the word "children" - perhaps Thomas KERBY, another participant in the PARKE Riot on the "rebel" side - unless they were the PIGOTTs after all.
But this was all happening well after Frances STAUGHTON had departed the scene.
HUSBAND NUMBER 1 - JOHN COOKE OF GRAY'S INN, BARRISTER.
Again, the evidence that Frances had a first husband before William PROCTOR is only circumstantial, but compelling. And, to my own mind at least, it seems assured that it was John COOKE, the Solicitor General for the Commonwealth, who prosecuted the case against King Charles in 1649, and was executed in 1660 as a "Regicide."
Part of the illustration of the Regicides, published in 1661, as a frontis-piece to
"A compleat Collection of the Lives, Speeches, Private Passages, Letters and Prayers of Those Persons lately Executed, and..."
Image courtesy of the Early English Books On-line (EEBO) subscription web-site.
And about this supposed first husband, there is considerably more information in the public domain.
Wilfrid PREST wrote the on-line Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for John COOKE, and outlines his career fairly concisely, from the evident viewpoint of an Academic Legal Historian, with a minimal emphasis on his broader family connections; although he did insert several marital details not found in the earlier hard-published D.N.B. biography which preceded his contribution.
Geoffrey ROBERTSON, Q.C., another Australian, and the eminent ex-patriate Barrister now living in London, wrote a very detailed account of the life and times of John COOKE in his book "The Tyrannicide Brief," published by Chato and Windus in 2005 (the paperback edition by Vintage Books, 2006, is used for page references in this blog). Likewise, ROBERTSON was scarce on detail of COOKE's extended family circle, and even decried the lack of any mention of his connections by genealogists and family historians in the then available on-line pedigrees.
Both of these more recent biographies identified John COOKE's wife as Frances CUTLER, and that the marriage had occurred in Saint Olave's, Hart Lane, London, on 12 September 1646; although neither of them provided substantiating evidence for that being the correct one.
However, there was another London marriage in that year, at the parish church of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, on 19 May 1646, of a Frances BARR[...] to "Mr John COOKE, Counsellor," which, in the absence of any other evidence, might perhaps have been considered to have been a more appropriate candidate for the Gray's Inn Barrister.
The published register (Harleian Society) recorded the entry as "Mr John COOKE, Counsellor, and Mrs Frances BARR of " (fn - "sic").
The on-line image of the register page (ancestry.library edition) shows the bride's name as BA..., the remainder disappearing into the shadow created by the binding; although the B was not identical to another capitalised B of a surname two entries below it, evidently missing the first vertical and downwards stroke; and the part that remained, the feint return upward stroke and two half-loops, one under the other to the right, did resemble that similar portion of the "Ff" at the beginning of Frances.
In correspondence with the London Metropolitan Archives, their Senior Research Officer, having looked at the original register, stated that the final three letters of Frances's surname appeared to be BARROSS, although he did suggest the "O" may have been an "A," and he stated that the last letters were affected by an ink "splodge" which made the letters thicker. I imagine that if the binding was like that when the churchwarden wrote up the entry, he may have had difficulty controlling his quill as it wrote into the binding.
PREST evidently interpreted a "footnote" to a "COOKE of Sketchley" family pedigree, published by John NICOLS in his "The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester" [Volume IV, Part 2, 1811, on page 468], as implying that John COOKE's wife Frances had died before him, and that he had married secondly, about 1659, to a Mary CHAWNER.
And both acknowledged that John COOKE had a daughter named Freelove, to whom he wrote a letter from his condemned cell in October 1660 (see full text below), and presumed further that she was then but an infant.
Another and "Fictitious portrait called John COOKE," by Robert COOPER.
From holdings of the National Portrait Gallery, London [NPC D 17879].
Frances COOKE's subsequent career focuses much light on the complications that have arisen from NICHOLS's placement, immediately under his translated COOKE Family Pedigree (the Latin original had appeared in the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire), of his unsourced note:
"Mary, daughter of Henry CHAWNER, of Barwell, and wife of John COOKE, was remarried to John SHENTON, Gent, in 1668-69."
It is my personal view that NICHOL's juxtaposition was simply due to the two John's having the same surname - and family historians are prone to do just this with information that is not yet (but may become) relevant to further research. It is clear that NICHOL made no further mention of the son of Isaac COOKE (John was then aged 9 or 10); and further, that he made no attempt to establish any connection between the two John COOKEs.Indeed, the slightly enlarged space between the two items reinforces the notion I have that they were not directly connected.
And I believe that the evidence from other sources now makes it abundantly clear that the wife John COOKE farewelled from the traitor's scaffold in 1660 was the one he married in 1645 or 1646.
Further, there is no evidence yet found in on-line records of the COOKE-CHAWNER marriage. There was a Henry CHANOR or CHAWNER of Barwell, Leicestershire; by his wife Elizabeth, he had a son Humphrey CHANOR, baptised at Barwell on 25 October 1639, and he, as Humphrey CHAWNER, married at Barwell on 2 February 1664 to Elizabeth ROBERTS; and a Henry CHAWNER had several children, by an unidentified wife, who were baptised at Barwell - Rebecca (13 October 1667), John (24 July 1670) and John (23 July 1675). But no Mary among them.
[As of late June 2015, it appears that the editors of the on-line Oxford D.N.B. have accepted this explanation, and have altered John COOKE's biography appropriately.]
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Insofar as John COOKE's life highlights and illustrates the movements of his wife Frances, we find the following date information, much of it from ROBERTSON's "The Tyrannicide Brief":
1. COOKE married Frances in 1645, as she recorded in her own 1664 petition to Charles II.
Percival BOYD ("Inhabitants of London" - S.O.G. Library, London) also records the date as 1645, but does not give his source (he also identified Frances as being a MASSEY, probably in error).
ROBERTSON and PREST both, probably incorrectly, record his marriage in 1646, in London, and to a Frances CUTLER.
2. Frances gave birth to a son, who evidently died an infant, perhaps in England, and if so, probably about 1646-49; COOKE mentioned him in his last letter to his daughter Freelove in 1660; the child is only known to history as "D. COOKE" - perhaps the biblical Daniel?
However, BOYD ("Inhabitants of London") records him as John COOKE, again without identifying his source.
3. COOKE made a decision to follow CROMWELL into Ireland; having been appointed by a grateful Parliament to the Mastership of Saint Cross's Hospital in Winchester, COOKE spent a little time in Winchester in September 1649 before crossing the Irish Sea.
- - - - - - - - - - THE FIRST VOYAGE WITH HIS WIFE TO IRELAND - - - - - - - - - - - -
4. COOKE had already departed for Ireland by the time of LILBURNE's trial (24-26 October 1649); it is evident from the next that Frances must have been travelling with him.5. On 1 January 1650, John and Frances, with three servants, set sail from Wexford for Kinsale in the ship Hector; on 5 January, they met with a violent storm, which those on board feared would sink their ship and that all hands would be drowned; after being buffeted along the full length of the southern Irish coast, as far west as Mezne Head, to the west of Cape Clere, they finally fetched up, minus a blown out foresail and a jettisoned anchor, back up the coast in Kinsale, on about 9 January. COOKE published some reflections on surviving that experience (London, 1650), to which Frances added her own version:
"Mrs COOKE's Meditations; being an humble thanksgiving to her Heavenly Father, for granting her a new life, having concluded her selfe dead, and her grave made in the bottome of the sea, in that great storme, Jan'y the 5th, 1649."
COOKE alluded to this voyage just before he was executed (see below); however, they nowhere made any mention of a child or children accompanying them on that voyage.
6. Frances also had a daughter, named Freelove COOKE, their only surviving child; her birth year is unknown, but probably in the mid 1650s; she was almost certainly born after January 1650, and was therefore probably born in Ireland.
Percival BOYD ("Inhabitants of London") gives the date, again without source, as 1655.
7. COOKE was appointed Chief Justice of Munster in March 1650.
8. COOKE was in Cork in 1650 [publication of his account of his passage by sea from Wexford to Kinsale on the "Hector"]; in Waterford in 1651 [ his "Monarchy; no creature of God's making"] and in 1652 [his "Vindication of the Lawe, etc"].
9. COOKE's pension arrangements were finalised on 26 September 1653 by an Act of Parliament - specifically "An Act for the speedy and effectual Satisfaction of the Adventurers for Lands in Ireland and the Arrears due to Soldiers there, and of other Publique Debts, and for the Encouragement of Protestants to plant and inhabit the land" - whereby he was granted, in lieu of all arrears of pension due to him for his services in Ireland, property already in his possession, namely a house in the City of Waterford (valued at £208), a nearby farm of two plow-lands and a half, mostly of grazing land, at Kilbarry in the Liberty of the City of Waterford (£245), and a farm of three plow-lands at Barnahaley in county Cork.
PRENDERGAST ("The Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland," Dublin, 1922, at pages 316 et seq.) referred to these Waterford possessions as "..a fine mansion in the City, and another beside the town for his country house (both taken from the former owners)..."
As these arrangements were established by one Act of Parliament, it is understandable for COOKE to expect that it would require another Act of Parliament to alter or rescind them (notwithstanding the hugely punitive nature of an Attainder for Treason).
10. COOKE was appointed Recorder of Waterford in January 1655.
11. COOKE was appointed a Judge of the Upper Bench in Ireland in June 1655; this Court was established to supersede the various Provincial Courts, including the one in Munster; COOKE argued against its efficacy, and resigned his Commission to it in August 1655.
12. COOKE, with fellow Commissioners SANTHY and HALSEY, submitted their Report on the Athlone Commission, 26 April 1656, to the Council of Ireland.
13. Justice COOK, with Justice HALSEY, presided in August 1656 at the Court at Mallow for the Qualification of the Irish that were formerly inhabitants of the towns of Cork, Youghal and Kinsale.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -THE FIRST RETURN WITH HIS WIFE TO ENGLAND - - - - - - - - - - - - -
14. COOKE returned to London in April 1657.15. COOKE was at Northampton, 9 December 1657, when wrote to Henry CROMWELL, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, offering his congratulations; and acknowledging his orders back to Ireland, setting some provisos on reviving the presidency Court in Munster (to have law and equity), and indicating his intention to "...attend your Lordship in March" [A Collection of the State Papers of John THURLOE, 1657-58, page 666].
In "The Records of the Borough of Northampton" [Volume 2, Edited by J. Charles COX, 1898, at page 244], we find mention of "...Mr Justice COOKE" as having subscribed 10 shillings towards the cost of furnishing "...leatherine bucketts" to be used for fighting fires in the Town (he was one of 80 subscribers, only three or whom were named in the abstract - the date of his subscription was not mentioned, but the abstract implied a date range for the payments of 1643-1657).
16. Frances's father-in-law, Isaac COOKE, evidently died in late 1657 or during 1658. John COOKE was in London, 1 February 1658-59, when he wrote again to Henry CROMWELL in Dublin, stating that he had "...foreborne the frequencies of writing, as intending all the last year to have returned, had not my wife's consumptive condition and the death of my aged father retarded"; but he was unsure "...whether my poor weake wife be able to travaile or not"; and he gave the undertaking "...if God spare my life, I shall attend your lordship before Easter term" [THURLOE's State Papers, VII, page 305].
ROBERTSON, noting this reference to Frances's consumptive illness, presumed that it had claimed her life at about this time.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE SECOND VOYAGE WITH HIS WIFE TO IRELAND - - - - - - - - - - - - -
17. COOKE returned to Ireland by Easter 1659, and served back on the Upper Bench until September.18. Frances [*] was residing in Waterford, February 1660, when her husband was arrested at Monkstown (perhaps as early as 10 February), on his way to Dublin; he was imprisoned in Dublin Castle, awaiting further political developments in London.
19. With several other "Regicides" (including Colonels HACKER and PHAIRE), and under the close guard of Captain Hugh CLOTWORTHY, they set out from Dublin on 16 May 1660 for England.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE FINAL RETURN TO ENGLAND - - - - - - - - - - - - -
20. They were in Chester on 6 June 1660, where COOKE was obliged to borrow money for transport, in order to avoid having to walk all the way to London; he arrived in London, 18 June 1660, and was lodged in the Tower.Frances [*] may have accompanied him on his journey, or followed on shortly afterwards, their Irish assets having been "frozen" prior to sequestration.
21. Frances [*] evidently resided in London with the family of Colonel Edmund LUDLOW, at least until he fled [ROBERTSON] - LUDLOW had arrived back in London from Ireland in January 1660; he surrendered himself to the Speaker on 20 June, just two days after COOKE had arrived back in London; he fled to Europe shortly afterwards.
Frances made daily but futile attempts to visit her husband while he was in the Tower; in one letter to her from there, he asked her not to wear black on his behalf, for "...I shall be in white" (a biblical reference with chapter-and-verse - perhaps also a nod to his "nick-name" of White COOKE, apparently used to distinguish him from other COOKEs at Gray's Inn).
22. COOKE was transferred to Newgate Prison early on the morning of 10 October 1660, in preparation for his trial at the Old Bailey; thereafter Frances's [*] visits were apparently more successful, although, as it turns out, he only had six days more to live.
23. COOKE wrote a letter from his condemned cell to his wife, whom he addressed simply as his "Dear Lamb"; this letter was largely of a religious nature; he also wrote letters to his daughter Freelove (15 October - see full text below), and to his "...brother F." (a follow up to one had written earlier, from the Tower, and addressed to his "...dear Brethren and sisters" - see texts of both under the TWIGDEN Family segment below).
24. Frances [*] was in his cell on the morning of his execution, 16 October 1660, when he chided her for her flood of tears, and removed her hand from his arm as he was leaving the cell, admonishing her for keeping him from his appointment with Christ.
25. COOKE also made reference to her in his Ladder Speech (from the scaffold), reminding her that they had earlier made their farewells to each other during the great Storm they had endured together (identified by the editors of the published reports of his speech as being their nearly fatal voyage on the ship Hector in January 1650).
[*] I have seen no original documents for the whole of this period which actually identify COOKE's wife by her first name - the presumption that it was Frances is mine, but hopefully no longer mine alone.
And it is the wording of the sign-off line in the next item, but in particular the 1664 Petition in the one following it, that give me the greater confidence to make that presumption.
JOHN COOKE'S 1660 LETTER TO HIS WIFE.
John COOKE wrote a letter to his wife from his cell in the Tower, prior to his trial and sentence. The letter is undated, and was published in 1661. It is abstracted as follows:
"A letter written by Mr Justice COOKE, from the Tower to his Wife.
[Page 322.]
"My dear Lamb, blessed be God, for Jesus Christ, and for a Prison, where I find much of his comforting presence.
"Tell sister JONES that she keeps but two or three Sabbaths in a week, but in Prison every day is a Christian Sabbath...
[Page 323.]
"...but as to us, it is all Mercy that his Satisfaction should be accepted for us, and that thee and me and dear Daughter too...
[Page 327.]
"Use, let this teach us more to mind Eternity, to study the Joys of Heaven, that we may receive a full Reward, 2 Ephes. to 8. As Mr WHITFIELD once exhorted to Oliver [? CROMWELL], in every Thing to mind and eye Eternity, for they are brave Men and Women that will be so that Day...
"...therefore (my dear Sweeting) let us wait patiently and cheerfully for that blessed Translation from Earth to Heaven. We must begin our Heaven here; the more prepared to die, the fitter we are to live; so let us live, so let us die, that we may live eternally.
"If thee likest such poor Breathings and broken Meditations, thee may'st command more of them. I leave thee, and me, and my dear sweet Child, and our Christian Relations, with thee, in his Arms, who is in heaven at the Right hand of the Father; therefore we need not fear which Man can do unto us Isia. 51, 12.
"To him, I am thine forever.
"Thy loving Husband during thy Life,
"John COOKE."
It appears that Frances may have been deprived direct access to her husband while he was incarcerated in the Tower (from his arrival in London in June until his transfer to Newgate in October). It is poignant, therefore, to see that this letter is perhaps a substitute for those "...poor breathings and broken meditations" that would have passed intimately between him and his "...dear sweeting" had visits been allowed.
FRANCES COOKE'S PETITION TO KING CHARLES II.
In 1664, Frances COOKE, widow of John COOKE, made a petition to the son and heir of the man her husband had prosecuted in 1649.
A copy of the petition, perhaps made by a writing clerk in whichever Royal (or Parliamentary) office petitions of that nature were deposited, survives in The National Archives [Ref: SP 63/266-268, Table Drawer, 2nd Floor Reading Room, Kew], as follows, with modernised spelling:
"To the King's most Excellent Majesty,
"The Humble petition of Frances COOKE, the poor disconsolate widow of John COOKE, Most humbly showeth.
"That your Petitioner's husband, in consideration of the Marriage Portion, part whereof was then received, engaged to settle upon feoffees, in Trust for your Petitioner, to raise £2,000 for the use and maintenance of your Petitioner and her children in case she should survive him.
"That your Petitioner's intermarriage with her husband was in the year 1645, and three years before her husband took part in any public employment.
"That part of your Petitioner's portion was kept in the hands of some of your Petitioner's friends till such settlements be perfected.
"That in the year 1655, the Petitoner's husband settled for 99 years Several lands in your Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland, upon Trustees accordingly, some whereof was purchased by your Petitioner in her husband's name and with some part of her portion, and then received the remainder of her Portion.
"That not only the lands so settled, but also all the stock bought by your Petitioner herself with her own money, are seized upon in Ireland, and thereupon your Petitioner and her poor child exposed to great misery and want.
"She humbly casteth herself at your Majesty's feet, beseeching your Majesty graciously to consider her sad, distressed and deplorable condition.
"That, by your Princely Piety, Mercy, Grace and Favour, she may enjoy ye said estate according to the intention of ye said deed, or have the £2000 according to the said engagement made to her upon her said marriage.
"And your Petitioner shall ever pray for your Majesty's long life and happy Reign, etc."
The original "office-copy" of the petition which I saw at Kew was undated; an abstract of the petition, among others dated 1664, was published in the "Calendar of State Papers relating to Ireland, preserved in the Public Record Office, 1663-1665" [edited by Robert Pentland MAHAFFEY, B.A., and printed for H.M.'s Stationery Office, by MACKIE and Coy Ltd, of Fleet Street, 1907, at page 514].
Whilst there is no smoking gun with fingerprints all over it here, there are far too many coincidences for this not to be a very serious contender for the petition of the widow of John COOKE, the Solicitor-General who was executed as a Regicide in October 1660, as the following shows:
1. John COOKE did obtain "public employment" with CROMWELL's Parliamentary party in the latter part of 1648 (he had previously been in private employment as a Barrister at Gray's Inn).
2. He was in Ireland periodically from late 1649 until his arrest in 1660, as Chief Justice of Munster, off and on.
3. He did obtain property in the south of Ireland, in the 1650's, some of it, apparently, in lieu of a pension.
4. And he was dead before 1664. See further below.
In my mind, at least, there is very little doubt, if any at all.
There is no evidence as to whether Frances's Petition found its way to the King, and if so, how it was received - I expect that it did not get very far.
Perhaps coincidentally, about the same time, there was a Mrs COOKE who evidently was a parishioner of All Saint's Church, Northampton; an entry in the Vestry Book of that church, dated 4 April 1664, ordered that "...Dr CONANT and wife should sit in a seat with Mrs COOKE" [see "A History of the Church of All Saints, Northampton," by Rev R.M. JENNINGS, Northampton, 1901, footnote on page 221].
We do not yet know if this was our Frances, but it would not be inconsistent with information from ROBERTSON ("The Tyrannicide Brief") that John and Frances COOKE's daughter Freelove was raised amongst "...her people in Northampton."
Dr John CONANT (1608-1694), was Regius Professor of Divinity and Head of Exeter College, Oxon, afterwards Archdeacon of Norwich, and then Rector of All Saints, Northampton; his will, proved P.C.C., was witnessed by John FARR and John MASSEY; his wife, Elizabeth, was a daughter of Edward REYNOLDS, the Bishop of Norwich. JENNINGS, in his history of All Saints [pages 220-21], records that, after the Reformation, CONANT resigned his University appointments and the Rectorship of Exeter College, "...eventually took up his abode in Northampton" and "...while residing there, he refused to form a separatist congregation, as he was invited to do, but made a point of attending regularly the services in his parish church."
But this Mrs COOKE may have been another - there was a Tempest COOKE, of Northampton Saint Peter, who was Town Clerk in 1654, and died in August 1658, survived by his widow Joyce COOKE, who was buried at All Saints on 21 December 1673, with Administration, Archdeaconry Court of Northampton, 24 January 1673-74.
FRANCES'S FUTURE PROSPECTS AFTER THE RESTORATION.
The above chronology of her late first husband does give rise to questions as to what future prospects Frances might then have faced into the somewhat bleak future.
Both John COOKE and his wife Frances must have known that his prospects for surviving a Restoration of the monarchy intact was highly unlikely. At what point in time this realisation became obvious is unclear, perhaps as early as Charles COOTE's invitation for COOKE to call upon him in Dublin in early February 1660.
Did COOKE have any strategic plan?
His options were probably only either to go back to the Continent, or go to one of the distant American colonies - but even he would have been aware that the new king's agents would hunt him down; and that by fleeing a charge of treason, he would forfeit any right to a trial.
And it is apparent that by travelling from Waterford up to Monkstown, he had already decided to trust his faith in his God, and face the music.
Did COOKE have any plan for Frances?
It would appear that he did not, apart from the hope, perhaps unreasonable under his circumstances, that her hold on his Irish property might be secure. He must have conceived it likely that a re-newed Monarchist Parliament would inevitably pass whatever new Act was necessary to complete his total obliteration.
How did Frances fare?
COOKE stated that he had been "...illegally restrained" from accessing his assets in Ireland since Michaelmas last, when he was forced to borrow money in Chester (in June 1660) in order to avoid having to walk to London.
[Michaelmas (29 September) was a Quarter Day for settlement of accounts; it remains unexplained why COOKE had not been able to access his assets on the more recent Quarter Day at Yuletide.]
If Frances was travelling alongside him, which is not entirely likely, then her condition must have been difficult as well. And we have no indication as to how he came about borrowing money - either through family connections, and I know of none in Chester, or from religious friends.
Did Frances witness her husband's execution?
I suppose she may have wanted to be there, for him perhaps to chance a glimpse of her in his last moments; although it is unlikely she would have been given, or wanted, a ring-side seat.
But in his ladder speech, he "reminds" her of their previous farewells they had made to each other during the great storm on the ship "Hector", so evidently she was there.
If she was there, she would have needed all the strength that her religious faith could offer to survive the ordeal. Especially observing the very public removal of his very private parts.
It brings to my mind the position in which another one of my ancestors, Martha PIGOTT, found herself 14 years earlier, on 6 October 1646, as a witness to the Storm and Sack of Dysart in the Queens's County; during which her husband, John PIGOTT, was stripped naked and murdered by the Confederate forces, and subsequently had his private parts "...slitted into many parts" (as described by Martha in her Deposition, now available from Trinity College Dublin's "1641 Depositions" on-line), and which had all the hallmarks of an attempt to eradicate the PIGOTT seed in that part of Ireland.
[See my earlier post - http://pigott-gorrie.blogspot.com.au/2008/06/peremptory-bold-companion-major-john.html ].
Martha's great-grandson, John PIGOTT, would become Frances's other son-in-law.
And it is of note that John COOKE's original interest in Irish legal affairs was precipitated by the losses incurred by Irish Protestants in the early stages of the rebellion which began in November 1641, and continued until the Cessation of Arms negotiated in September 1643.
Where did Frances go after COOKE's execution?
From ROBERTSON we learn that she had spent some time in London living with the family of Edmund LUDLOW, at least up until he fled the capital (which was not long after COOKE had arrived in London under close arrest from Ireland).
Afterwards, I expect she went to live with her (presumed) sister Mrs Elizabeth MASSEY and her husband Robert, or with their mother (name unknown, but living in October 1660 - perhaps instead her step-mother), all of whom appear to have lived in the Town of Northampton, perhaps near the Sign of the Peacock.
When did Frances go to Antigua?
Clearly not until after her 1664 petition.
And probably, I am speculating, in or about 1670, as her two presumed PROCTOR daughters were probably born in the early 1670's. It is not certain that the presumed marriage and the births took place in Antigua - but I have assumed they did, in the absence of any other information about these events.
Which does raise the question as to whether Frances had the opportunity to fulfil one of her late husband's condemned cell wishes - that his daughter Freelove should not marry without her mother's permission, if she be still living. Perhaps Frances left that "power of attorney" with her sister Elizabeth MASSEY, or they both rightly regarded that Freelove, on reaching her majority, could make up her own mind?
When did Frances welcome her daughter Freelove to Antigua?
There is evidence to indicate that Freelove may have joined her husband in Antigua after the 1678 Census of Antigua (see below) - this is confirmed by the fact that Freelove witnessed the signing of her uncle Robert MASSEYs will in Northampton on 5 September 1678.
I did briefly wonder if she and her infant son may have traveled in 1680-81 on the same ship as did her widowed aunt, Elizabeth MASSEY; but that would have made her will unworkable, especially if all three of them were to perish on the voyage out.
View of the township of Saint John's, Antigua, taken from the churchyard of Saint John's parish church.
But I have got a little ahead of myself - we should now take a look at the life of Frances's daughter Freelove COOKE, and her marriage to John GUNTHORPE in London.
JOHN COOKE'S LETTER TO HIS DAUGHTER FREELOVE.
Before reviewing Freelove's later contribution to her mother Frances's story, as we have been doing up till now by looking into the wrong end of the telescope, we should first go back to the beginning, and look at the earliest evidence we have yet found from published records of her existence being acknowledged.
On the day before his execution, John COOKE wrote a touching and at times illuminating letter to his daughter Freelove, the only surviving child, which I reproduce here in full, as published in 1724:
"Mr COOKE's Letter to his Daughter. Octob. 15, 1660. A letter before his Death.
"To my dear Child, Freelove COOKE. These with my most Fatherly Endeared Love.
"My Dear Sweet child,
"Let thy Name, Freelove, put thee in mind of the free love of God in Christ, in giving thee to me and thy dear mother; and know, so soon as God gives thee any Understanding, that thou art the Child of one whom God counted worthy to suffer for his Sake, and to seal the Truth of his Law and Gospel with his Blood, which will be a great Honour to thee, in the Judgement of all that truly love and fear God.
"I leave thee to the Lord, who I know will take care of thee, and be thy Portion, so thou shall never want. Learn with all Speed to read the Scriptures, and to understand them; and have great Care to serve God, and study to love Jesus Christ, and be obedient to thy dear mother, and good grandmother, and thy loving Uncle and Aunt MASSEY.
"I pray thee never to learn any Pride, but be humble and meek, and courteous, and wait upon God's Ordinances; love the Word more than thy appointed Food.
"When the Lord shall please to alter thy Condition, be sure to marry one that is gracious, and a man that feareth God; be sure to prefer Grace before Wealth and Parts; for a little with the Fear of God is better than great Riches with an ungodly Man.
"The Lord make thee Religious; for Beauty is Vanity, and Favour is deceitful; but a woman that feareth the Lord shall be praised.
"If the Lord give thee Children, be sure to bring them up virtuously and religiously, in the Nurture, Admonition and Fear of the Lord.
"I charge thee never to marry without the Consent of thy dear mother, if she be then living.
"In all thine actions have an eye to Eternity, and never do any thing against the Light of thy own Conscience.
"Know that thy dear father is gone to Heaven to thy dear Brother - and be sure to live that by God's Grace thou mayest follow after.
"If God give thee Ability, I charge thee to be good to thy Friends and to all God's People; and if my last will and testament be of Force, do not violate it in the least.
"So I leave God's Blessing with thee, praying for thy temporal and eternal Happiness and rest.
"Octob, 15 Thy dear loving Father,
"1660 John COOKE."
It is tempting to make an estimate of the age of the child John COOKE is addressing here.
Freelove is clearly not yet of "altered state" (i.e., of woman's estate, or of marryable age, then probably set at 16), which is entirely consistent with her not yet being born in January 1650; which I presume to be the case, as there was no mention of a child in the COOKE's published stories of the Great Storm they encountered on the ship Hector.
The letter appears to be to a child rather than an infant; although it is not clear whether she could not yet read, or just that the Bible had not yet become part of her "reading" list. Clearly COOKE held the view that God had not yet given his daughter "any understanding" or "ability" - so perhaps she did not yet have the capacity for independent reasoning?
A birth for Freelove in the mid 1650's is not inconsistent with my reading of the letter - which would put her age about five years. But, until a baptismal entry is found (and if Irish, this is unlikely to have survived), that age can only ever be an estimate. However, ROBERTSON does state that Freelove was carried on her mother's hip at the trial and execution of John COOKE, so probably aged five or under.
Further, Freelove was married in June 1675; if aged 16, then she was born before June 1659; if aged 18, then before June 1657; and if 21, before June 1654. An age of 19 or 20 at marriage would not have been inappropriate.
The overall tone of COOKE's letter is inevitably religious (his present circumstances, a day from his death, ensured that), and Puritan at that (that was his family background, which he embraced, and which he carried into his public employment).
Our present and perhaps misguided view of Puritanism is that it tends to begin with a strict, if not even misunderstood, view of human relations and sexuality as part of them - but the expressed view that children come by gift of the Lord probably does not reflect a total misunderstanding by COOKE as to how it actually worked (it was, after all, a letter which would be read to a child, and was likely to become part of his published legacy).
Although his marriage to Frances was not blessed with too many of the Lord's little gifts (only two have been mentioned over 15 years), and as he had married relatively late in life (at age 37), it does not necessarily follow that their connubial relationships were in any way strained, or uncommon to their age.
FRANCES'S DAUGHTER FREELOVE COOKE.
Frances STOUGHTON did not name her daughter Freelove in her 1693 will, so it does seem logical to presume that Freelove was by then already dead.
Frances did name Major John GUNTHORPE, who had left her "...£20 to buy mourning."
From this detail, I interpret that he was the GUNTHORPE spouse of her daughter Freelove; that he had probably died very recently; and that his bequest had probably not yet been paid from out of his deceased estate (otherwise she would not have needed to identify the origin of that particular money amount).
And Frances named her two grandsons John and William GUNTHORPE, whom I interpret to have been the two younger sons of Major John GUNTHORPE and her daughter Freelove COOKE, and therefore probably the younger brothers of Robert GUNTHORPE, who was living in 1680 but appears to have since died.
All of which is, on its own, rather speculative, and not a lot to go on.
But there is another P.C.C. probate grant, with will copy, that fills in some of the gaps.
In 1680, Mrs Elizabeth MASSEY, relict and widow of Robert MASSEY, Attorney of Northampton, Northamptonshire, made her will just as she was about to set out on a voyage to Antigua; in it she named her niece Freelove, now the wife of John GUNTHORPE of Antigua, and their son Robert GUNTHORPE.
Elizabeth's will was proved in 1686 - see further below for details.
Further, OLIVER ["History of Antigua," Volume 2, page 40] recounts in detail the story of Buck's Plantation, which was originally granted to Archibald HENDERSON - he of the 1674 banishment proceedings, decided by an Assembly meeting which included our Lieutenant William PROCTOR, probably already married to the soon-to-be mother-in-law of the future owner!
After his banishment, HENDERSON went to Jamaica, where he died several years later; his brother James HENDERSON, serving in the Army in Scotland, did not hear of his brother's death until several more years had elapsed, and then set out for Antigua to "settle" his late brother's affairs. But he died on the voyage out, and it was left to his widow Margaret to seek to settle the estate on their infant son, Archibald's only surviving nephew.
In her attempts to get a hearing in 1684 on the matter of Buck's Plantation, Mrs HENDERSON asserted that John GUNTHORPE had acquired it illegally; on 12 May 1685, she commenced but withdrew an action in the Court of Common Pleas, as GUNTHORPE was away in New England, and she perceived that "...everyone was against her" anyway; and in her reply to their Lordships, 1 December 1687, she railed that he was the "...son-in-law to that egregious traitor John COOKE Solicitor to the pretended high Court of Justice against King Charles the Martyr."
It appears that she may have left off her action-at-law because she perceived that the jury would probably be stacked against her interests - it appears there weren't too many hide-bound Royalists left in Antigua after the Restoration.
There is no evidence that GUNTHORPE ever challenged or denied the above "allegation" - and if it is correct, then it points directly to GUNTHORPE's wife as being the daughter of John COOKE the "Tyrannicide."
There is an important piece of further evidence, which establishes that John GUNTHORP's bride Freelove was indeed named COOKE.
From holdings of the London Metropolitan Archives, made available through the resources of Ancestry.com Library-edition, is an image of the following Parish register entry:
"Parish Church of Saint Mary's, Newington, County Surrey - Weddings - page 114 - 1675:
June - John GUNTHROP and Freelove COOCK -13(th)."
Image of the Newington Saint Mary "Weddings" Register, courtesy of Ancestry.library edition and London Metropolitan Archives.
BOYD, in his "Inhabitants of London" (S.O.G. Library, London, now viewable on Findmypast) also recorded that Freelove had married John GUNTHORPE, describing him as Major (which title was not his until much later, in Antigua, and probably from Militia connections), and that the marriage had taken place three years later, in 1678 (without source details, but evidently not from a parish register, as it is not included in his celebrated Marriage Index) - he also noted that she was born about 1655.
Four years earlier, on 5 July 1671, her future husband, John GUNTHORPE Junior, perhaps then aged about 17 or 18, was apprenticed by his father, John GUNTHORPE Senior, Citizen and Innholder of London (and clearly still living), for a term of 7 years, to Michael SCRIMSHIRE or SCRIMSHAW, Citizen and Goldsmith of London.
Goldsmith Company archives do not record details of his freedom; it is possible that he came into some inheritance (perhaps ? by the death of his father), which enabled him to settle his obligations early, to make a marriage in 1675, to emigrate to the West Indies, and there to purchase a Plantation (named Buck's) in Antigua, which he obtained by grants dated August and September 1678.
In the 1678 "Census" of Antigua, John GUNTHORPE was enumerated at Falmouth Division; but the household of which he was head comprised only three adult European males - which appears to suggest that his wife Freelove and their child or children were either living elsewhere on the Island, or had not yet arrived in Antigua.
This last possibility is virtually confirmed by the fact that Freelove was still in England in September 1678, when as "Fr: GUNTHORPE" she witnessed the will of her uncle, Robert MASSEY of Northampton, dated 5 Sep, probably on his deathbed [Northamptonshire Record Office - N Will 3rd Series E, 37].
By 1680, John GUNTHORPE was Provost-Marshall of Antigua; he was a member of the Assembly which met at Saint John's on 11 July 1689, on 28 March 1691, and in March 1692 (the last date entry recorded for him by OLIVER in his "History of Antigua"); and he was also a member of the Council of War, 21 August 1691.
A PROBLEM IN AMERICA.
There is a "problem" in America, involving perceptions by descendants of Richard STILLWELL (born about 1634), of Staten Island, that he had married, as his second wife, Freelove COOKE, the daughter of the Regicide (condensed from MSs of William H. STILLWELL, Esq, of Gravesend - one pedigree actually refers to her as Freelove MASSEY, daughter of John COOKE, perhaps having encountered BOYD's "Inhabitants of London").
If they are right, then clearly I am wrong, and all the evidentiary trail I have outlined above has begun with a very serious flaw somewhere. Otherwise, that flaw may be theirs.
From what I can deduce from snippet references, STILLWELL descendants found a letter which they believed had been addressed to Richard's father Nicholas STILLWELL (he died in Staten Island, in December 1671), and which they believed was a letter written by John COOKE in his condemned cell, which he had dubbed as his "Jeremiah's Prison", addressed to him as "...my dear brother"; and in measure of this "honour," Nicholas had apparently given his younger son, born about that time, the name of Jeremiah (he was a younger half-brother of Richard).
A. Maunsell BRADHURST, in his book "My Forefathers. Their History from Records and Traditions," published in London in 1910, gives several transcripts of letters written by John COOKE from his condemned cell, but does not identify whether his transcript was made from originals that survived in the STILLWELL family possession, or from accounts of them published in England shortly after his execution. His abstract of COOKE's letter to his daughter Freelove is short, and omits the "inconvenient" mention of Freelove's dear Aunt and Uncle MASSEY, just for starters.
His abstract of the second letter, which BRADHURST claims was "...the first intimation which Nicholas STILLWELL received of his brother's fate", was equally abbreviated, BRADHURST citing the opening and closing paragraphs only:
"My Dear Brother,
"I am condemned to die, and this is my cordial farewell to you from my Jeremiah's prison...
...
"I can at present only leave my dear love and respects for you and my dear sister, beseeching God, and not doubting, but that we shall shortly meet in eternal glory. Company so spends me that I can write no more..."
It is very clear that this letter was identical to a short "...letter from Mr COOK to a Friend after Condemnation" which was further addressed at the foot "...For my dear brother F."
This letter addressed legal matters relating to his Treason charges (the Judges having retro-dated treasonable actions from 1648 back to 1642) - it is reproduced in full below.
This letter also referred to an earlier one, and that was probably the much longer "...Letter written from the Tower to a Christian Friend," in which COOKE addresses largely religious matters to people who may simply have been "brethren and sisters" of his religious connections, rather than being his blood relations - that is also reproduced in full below.
It may have been instead a copy of this earlier, and perhaps "circular" letter which found it's way into the STILLWELL family Archives.
Although, as is so often the case, there may be another and much simpler explanation.
In an on-line pedigree, "Descendants of John STILLWELL Sr," we find that Nicholas STILLWELL (born Collopmore, Surrey, 1608; and died at Dover, Staten Island, N.Y., 28 December 1671) had an eldest sister named Mabel STILLWELL (born Surrey, 1586); they were two of a number of children of Nicholas STILLWELL (1570-1647) of Dorking, Surrey, by his wife Alice. Mabel STILLWELL married at Dorking, Surrey, on 4 May 1619, Robert COOKE; by whom she had a son named John COOKE (also born at Collopmore in Surrey).
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the identity of this John COOKE (presumably born after 1619) of Surrey (and a cousin of the STILLWELLs of Staten Island), has been confused with that of the other John COOKE (born in 1608 in Leicestershire), who was executed in 1660 as a Regicide, without any trace in English records of ever having been to America (or of having any relations named STILLWELL).
For the sake of further corroboration (or otherwise), I have made abstracts from the two letters, confined to those parts with any possible useful genealogical information, and they are as follows.
The first is from "A compleat Collection of the Lives, Speeches, Private Passages, Letters and Prayers of Those Persons lately Executed, etc," by a "Person of Quality," London, 1661, with publisher's italics highlighted in blue:
"A Letter written from the Tower to a Christian Friend by Mr Justice COOKE.
[Page 53.]
"Sir,
"Now in answer to your loving inquiry, how it fares with my better part, I bless God I never found so much internal spiritual solace, and unmix't joy and comfort, as I have experienced in these five mo(nths) indurance, 2 Cor. 2, 3, 4, 5.
"Let never any Christian fear a Prison, it being the only place where (wanting other Books) a man may best Study the book of knowledge of himself, having a long vacation from all businesse...
[Page 57.]
"...And I have charged my poor Lamb not to wear any black for me (if she have wherewith to buy it) for I shall be in White, Revel. 6, 11...
[Page 58.]
"...I know you, and my dear Brethren and Sisters are of Paul's mind, if I dye in my bed being a Church-member, you will by the rule of Charity judge me happy; I cannot do you more service than to bear my witness in this cause of Christ wherein you are so much concerned..."
[Page 61.]
"...My Cousin HARRISON is very full of spiritual comfort (as the Gentleman Jaylor tells me) and bids me cheer up...
"So, having unbosomed my heart unto you, that you, and such whom you judge faithful and secret may the better spread my condition before the Lord..."
[Pages 62-63.]
"...I have some trouble upon me concerning the losse of my temporal estate, especially for my poor, tender, loving Wife and Child: I was a Purchaser, and had a flock of Cattel, and being wrongfully made Prisoner two months before any speech of a King, I was surprized and could save nothing, nor get £20 out of my estate since Michaelmas; They promised to bear my charges to London, but at Chester I was forced to borrow money or must have come a foot..."
[Pages 64-65.]
"...I blesse God my poor Wife does much encourage me, to be faithful to the Death, and she is a meet helper indeed who helps her Husband so to Heaven, as in a Fiery Chariot; she is one who bears an unfeigned love to Christ and all the Saints; I entreat your tender care of her and my Child, providebit Deus, Jer. 49, 11. I shall leave her that Scripture, and Isa 54, 5 to 8. while they cannot take away by confiscation; When we were in the Storm we took our leaves each of the other [fn] and though we have not paid our vows at Babel, yet I trust (as was then promised) we shall be willing to go to Christ if he call through a Sea of Blood. But O the infinite wisdom and Love of God, and the unsearchable riches of his Grace, that if I had been drowned, the Malignants would have said, though he escaped by Land, yet Divine Vengeance overtook him by Sea..."
"Yours forever in our Dear Redeemer,
"John COOK."
The second letter I repeat unedited, from "The Indictment, Arraignment, Tryal, and Judgement, at large, of Twenty-nine Regicides, The Murtherers of His Most Sacred Majesty, King Charles the 1st of Glorious Memory," London, MDCCXXIV:
"Another Letter from Mr COOK to a Friend after Condemnation."
[Page 76.]
"Dear Brother, beloved in the Lord, condemnatus sum ad vitam, and this is my Cordial Farewel to you and all Saints, from my Jeremiah Prison; tomorrow I shall be in eternal glory, in the bosom of Christ, where our father Abraham is, and a guard of Angels will convey my soul thither. Never let God's people fear a Prison any more, for the Lords supporting or comforting spirit hath not been absent from me since my indictment. I writ a letter to you formerly, acquainting you with my spiritual condition, to which I refer you; and fearing lest wrong may be done to the cause when I am in heaven, I think fit to leave a few wordes with my dearest love to all Christian friends.
"1. Upon my trial it came to this, that the Judges said, that all have been treason since 1642, so that the Lords and Commons are not to meddle with the King. I said, that I acted obedientially (sic) by order from the House of Commons, and the Commons being the representatives of the people cannot commit treason, for there can be no trial of all the people. And as for any force upon the House in 1648, they were the only Judges of it, and no inferior Court can judge of the lawfullnesse of their acts or orders. But they said all our Acts and Orders are treason. So that now it is brought to that it was in 1642.
"2. I intend by God's assistance upon the Ladder to bear my testimony for Jesus Christ to all his Offices, and for a Gospel Magistracy and Ministry, and to speak [Page 77] something so far as God shall enable, and will be permitted, for the good Old Cause, of righteousness and holinesse. I can at present only leave my dear love and respects for you and my dear sister, beseeching God, and not doubting but that we shall shortly meet in eternal glory. Company so spends me that I can write no more; I shall suddenly enter into the joy of the Lord, O blessed be his name, blessed be the Comforter, my Soul is full of consolation, Farewel, Farewel, Renede in Paradiso. Yours for ever,
"John COOKE.
"For my dear Brother F."
It would be in the interests of accuracy for any descendants of Nicholas STILLWELL who have documentary evidence of him actually having received delivery of one or other, or both, of the said letters, to make that fact known to the wider public. And if the letter so received happened to have the addition details omitted by BRADHURST - in particular the sign-off line "For my dear brother F." - which appears to have relevance to someone other than Nicholas STILLWELL.
However, the likely fantasy in this story is revealed by large numbers of published pedigrees, viewable on-line, which indicate that Captain Richard STILLWELL (1636-1668), a son of the said Nicholas STILLWELL, married Freelove Mercy COOKE at Gravesend, King's County, New York, on 1 May 1655 - when the Regicide John COOKE's daughter Freelove was either not yet born, or at best, a year or two old, and living with her parents in the south of Ireland.
THE AUNT ELIZABETH MASSEY.
When John COOKE wrote a letter from his condemned cell, dated 15 October 1660, to his daughter Freelove, he urged her to:
"...be obedient to thy dear mother, and good grandmother, and thy loving Uncle and Aunt MASSEY."
There can be little or no doubt that this aunt was the Elizabeth MASSEY, widow of Robert MASSEY of Northampton, who made her will in 1680, naming her niece Freelove:
"...now the wife of John GUNTHORPE of Antigua."
And at All Saints Church, Northampton, on 28 July 1655, was recorded the marriage between Robert MASSEY and Elizabeth FARRIN.
Now we cannot be certain that this marriage is pertinent to this story.
But what is certain is that five out of six aspects of it are - the location, the given name and surname of the groom, the given name of the bride, and the date - which preceded by five years the date of the letter in which John COOKE mentions them as an "uncle and aunt" and presumably married couple.
Some further research into Elizabeth MASSEY's connections may perhaps be facilitated by those whom she named in her will, which was copied onto her probate grant, the highlights of which are as follows:
"Elizabeth MASSEY, late of Northampton, widow, Relict and Executrix of the last will and testament of Robert MASSEY my late husband, being at present in health of body and memory praise be to God, and being shortly to take a voyage to Antego in parts beyond the seas...
"Whereas Mr Thomas COWPER of Newport Pannell (sic - Pagnell), Bucks, Draper, stands indebted unto me by bond thirty and six pounds money, which bond is now in the hands of Mr John GIBBS dwelling in Newport Pannell, my will is that after my Debts and Legacies shall be paid, the said money bonds and all profits thereof shall come and be to such person and persons only as Ffreelove GUNTHORPE now wife of John GUNTHORPE of the Island of Antego, alone and of his wife without her husband, whether she be married or sole, shall in writing under her hand direct and appoint.
"The same to be paid in case of her death, and in default of such direction and appointment I give the same unto Robert GUNTHORPE, sonne of the said John and Freelove GUNTHORPE...
"Whereas I am interested and intitled to abide in a certain tenement or tenements in the Town of Northampton next to the Sign of the Peacock there, and to a term of 99 years thereof, granted to me by my said late husband, and to the equity and benefit of redemption of the same, and being now in mortgage to Mr Timothy NEALE, of Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire, for £200, now I hereby bequeath the same and all the benefit and profits thereof... unto the said Freelove... or in default...the same to Robert GUNTHORPE...
"I do give to my loving friends Mr Samuel LEE 20 shillings, and to Mr DUNN of Green Norton 20 s., and to Mr John GIBBS of Newport Pannell and to Mr Robert PAUNCEFORT of Craise Tone (?), Gent, the sum of £5 to each of them...
"I desire my loving friends Mr John LUCAS and John SELBY of Northampton, in whose custody I left the writings and Lease of the said house or houses in Northampton, to be assistfull to my said niece Freelove GUNTHORPE touching the obtaining the said mortgaged premises. And I do hereby make them executors in trust for the said Freelove and give unto them 50 shillings apiece to buy them rings in testimony of my love to them, provided they doe accept and take on them the said executorship, otherwise... I desire my worthy friends My Robert PAUNCEFORT and Mr John GIBBS to be executors...
"5 February 1680 - signed and sealed Elizabeth MASSEY ...in the presence of Margaret GOLDSMITH and John WYNNE. Proved in London, 10 April 1686, by John LUCAS and John SELBY."
One of her "worthy friends" may have been John GIBBS (1627-1699), B.A., Sidney Sussex College, Cantab, 1648; he was probably the Vicar of Newport Pagnell who was ejected in 1660; he held religious views that were similar to those of John BUNYAN.
But it is indeed curious that in her will, Elizabeth did not mention Freelove's mother - especially so if it was her own sister Frances. Perhaps Elizabeth was unsure as to whether Frances was still living; and wanted to ensure the passing of her assets to someone who might be expected to enjoy them for some time to come.
It is likely that Elizabeth's husband had recently died in Northampton, in September 1678 - a Robert MACEY, Attorney, was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 September, "...in woollen only according to a late act," with an affidavit signed by two women, and another by the then Mayor, that he was buried in conformity with that "Act for Burying in Woollen" ["A History of the Church of All Saints, Northampton," by R.M. JENNINGS, Northampton, 1901, page 327] - and the 1678 will of Robert MASSEY, Gent, was proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Northampton, 1679 [Book E, No 37].
But there is another possibility, which, if proven, will lead us in a very different direction - Robert MASSEY's wife Elizabeth may have been, indeed probably was, a widow.
THE PROBABLE FARREN BROTHER-IN-LAW.
If Frances's sister Elizabeth was a widow, which seems likely, then she was probably the Elizabeth BACON who married Peter FARREN at Saint Clement Dane's, Westminster, on 29 June 1648.
And this Peter FARREN may have been the Baker in Northampton, whose first wife, Susanna ROSON or ROLESON, had died in Northampton in 1647.
About this Peter FARREN we know quite a bit of detail.
He was probably baptised at Dean, Bedfordshire, on 8 February 1596, a younger son of Oliver FARREN and his wife (married in 1578) Francis DAYRELL, daughter of Francis DAYRELL of Lamporte, Buckinghamshire and Ann WOODFORD.
It appears that Peter FARREN may have been "raised" by his grandfather Francis DAYRELL of Langporte, parish of Stowe, Buckinghamshire - in his will, dated 24 June 1601, DAYRELL instructed his executors to "...bring up Peter FARREN and when he is 16 apprentice him to some merchant" [Probate grant, P.C.C., 24 April 1605] - this suggests that Peter's parents may have already died.
Peter was evidently living in Northampton in 1630, when he was named in a List of Recognizances received in Michaelmas Term, vi Chas I, as "...non venit" (or did nor appear), "...Petrus FARREN, de eadem [villa North'], pistor [or baker] - xxli [£20]" ["Quarter Sessions Records for the County of Northampton, A.D. 1630..." by Jonan WAK, 1924, page 49].
He was visiting Stowe in June 1642 when he intervened in a dispute between his cousin Paul DAYRELL (Junior) and the game-keeper of the Lord of the Manor (Sir Peter TEMPLE - he enclosed land there that had been common, including assorted tracts of DAYRELL lands that were intermingled with his own), and so avoiding a potentially violent physical confrontation.
Several years earlier, in Paul DAYRELL of Barford's will, proved in 1638, mention was made of "...Peter FARREN of Northampton, Lawrence FARREN, Benjamin FARREN and Rebecca KING, my sister's children" - Rebekka FARREN was married at Dean, Bedfordshire (where Peter FARREN was baptised in 1597), on 14 November 1616, to Robert KINGE; and a Laurence FARREN was married at All Saints, Huntingdon, Huntingdonshire, on 16 December 1629, to Elizabeth SIMESON.
One of the Churchwardens at All Saints, Northampton, in 1637, was a Peter FARREN, a Baker; in that year he was excommunicated by agents of his bishop (Francis DEE) for failing to follow their instructions, emanating from Archbishop William LAUD, concerning the removal of the Communion Table from the body of the Chancel (where many more of the congregation were able see and hear the officiating minister) to the East End of the building, where it was to be turned Altar-wise, and railed in, with a padded kneeling stool attached (an apparent nod to Catholic practice, and which had Crown approval).
It appears that Peter FARREN may have been a dedicated Puritan, and shared his fellow parishioners distaste for LAUD's "improvements" - he and RUSHWORTH more than once had turned the table back 90 degrees from its "altar position" (as determined by LAUD).
FARREN and RUSHWORTH petitioned the Court of Arches against their excommunication in 1641, and were represented legally by Robert WOODFORD. RUSHWORTH went to London for the hearings, and it is almost certain that FARREN would also have gone to London.
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Peter FARRINE, Innholder, was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 9 August 1650; as Peter FARREN, of the Town of Northampton, deceased - administration of his goods and chattels was granted on 21 October 1650 to his widow, Elizabeth FARREN, the relict [TNA - PROB 6/25 folio 152].
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Peter FARREN, a "single man," was married at the parish church of Saint Peter's, Northampton, on 7 January 1624-25, to Susannah ROLESON, a widow.Susannah was a daughter of Roger HIGHAM, Innholder of Northampton, by Edith SYMONS (she married secondly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 3 September 1609, Edward MERCER, who was buried All Saints, Northampton, May 1617).
As Susan HIGHAM, she was married firstly, at All Saints, Northampton, on 14 June 1603, to Robert ROSON, of Northampton, Baker; he may have taken Peter FARREN as an apprentice; Robert was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 29 November 1620 (his will proved 1621, Archdeaconry Court of Northampton); they appear to have had two daughters - Susannah ROSON was buried at All Saints, 14 August 1610; and Sara ROSON, who was named in her MERCER grandmother's will.
Edith MERCER, widow, made her will on 12 April 1637 (proved 12 November 1644), naming her daughter Susan as the wife of Peter FARREN and the mother of Sarah ROSON (who was to have £5 within six months of marriage); appointing her "...sonne-in-law Peter FARREN of Northampton, Baker," as her executor, and bequeathing his daughter Anne FARREN £20 at 18 or at marriage.
Peter's wife, Susannah FARRIN, was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 24 August 1647.
Peter FARREN, Baker, and Susanna his wife, had a daughter Anne FARREN baptised at All Saints, Northampton, on 12 May 1626; another daughter of Peter FARREN was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 19 April 1631.
However, there are no other FARREN baptisms recorded in Northampton church registers for the period 1625-1647.
Peter FARREN's occupation as Innholder in his later years may have resonances. The residence of Elizabeth MASSEY, at the Sign of the Peacocke in Northampton, may have been the name of an Inn, and perhaps one owned or leased by him at the time of his death; and he may have been a member of the Innholders Company, which may have been why he was in London in 1648.
John GUNTHORPE Senior was also a Citizen of London and a member of the Innholder's Company - it was his son John GUNTHORPE Junior whom he apprenticed as a Goldsmith in 1671; and who in 1675, married Freelove COOKE, Frances's daughter. See above.
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In another potentially interesting twist, FARREN appears to be a simplified version of the unusual surname of FORRYAN, and there is an extended family of this name with long-term connections to the Parish of Burbage, Leicestershire, where John COOKE's own family lived.
And it further appears that John COOKE may have had FORRYAN relations, as we shall see below - his paternal aunt, Anne (or Agnes) COOKE, was married to John LICHFIELD; it is likely that as a widow, she was the Anne LYCHEFIELDE who was married in Claybrooke, Leicestershire, in 1626, to a Richard FORRYAN, and he may well have been of the Burbage family.
Richard FORRIN, Yeoman of Burbidge, Leicestershire, apprenticed his son Samuel, in 1625, for 7 years to Robert PARDOE, Master Clothworker; his Freedom by Servitude, 1632, Company of Clothworkers.
THE PROBABLE BACON BROTHER-IN-LAW AND A CHANCERY COURT DOCUMENT.
Three documents survive, in The National Archives, relating to a case brought before the Court of Chancery in 1654.
The Bill of Complaint, and one part of the Answer (that of John FREEMAN, and his son John FREEMAN Junior), are filed at TNA - C 5/23/97 - FARREN v. BACON, Plaintiffs Elizabeth FARREN, Widow, and another; Defendants Clement BACON, Martha BACON his wife, [unknown] FREEMAN and others; Bill and Answer; 1654.
The other part of the Answer (that of Clement and Martha BACON) is filed separately at TNA - C 10/35/72, FARREN and COOKE vs BACON, date range 1 January 1654 to 31 December 1654.
The case concerns part of premises in Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, in the Parish of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, in the City of London, occupied since before 1631 by the BACON family, on a form of leasehold arrangement with the FREEMAN family of Blackfriars, but which may have been complicated by a mortgage.
The Bill of Complaint was made by Elizabeth FARREN, widow, the late wife of Nicholas BACON, deceased, who was the son and heir apparent of Clement BACON, a Draper, by his wife Martha (they occupied the premises in 1641 and in 1654). Elizabeth's co-complainant was Isaack COOKE, of Potterspury, Northamptonshire, Gent.
When Elizabeth married Nicholas BACON, on 2 January 1641-42, an Indenture of marriage settlements had already been made, dated 27 December 1641. In this indenture, part of the Bishopsgate Street property - described as "...the shoppe, cellars, garrets, one lodging chamber, two payres of stayres and other convenient rooms with the shoppe" - was demised to Isaack COOKE as part of the marriage portion, for which he paid the sum of £100.
When Nicholas BACON died in August 1643, his widow Elizabeth continued to reside in the premises with her parents-in-law Clement and Martha BACON, for a period of five years after her husband's death, when, according to Clement, she left the house to go into the country with her friends.
This coincides very neatly with the marriage in London in June 1648 of Elizabeth BACON to Peter FARREN, who was probably the friend with whom she went into the country, and who probably lived in the Town of Northampton, formerly a Baker, but by then an Innholder.
If this was the case, then Elizabeth became a widow again when Peter died in Northampton in August 1650.
Clement's answer indicates that Elizabeth had claimed she was "...turned out of the house" by Clement and Martha; but he denied this, declared that they had allowed her to continue living there out of their love for her - notwithstanding their evident legal obligation, presuming Elizabeth's claims about the marriage settlements were accurate. Although she might reasonably have expected circumstances to change when she remarried - this scenario does not appear to have been canvassed in the marriage settlements, even though her rights to it after Nicholas's death had been.
Clement BACON was granted his Freedom, Draper's Company, on 28 November 1610 (his former Master was Humphrey CLARE); by his wife Martha (maiden surname not yet known), he had issue, including a first child Clement BAKON, born at Bishopsgate Street, 15 May 1613, and, among others, a son Nicholas BAKON who was baptised at Saint Peter Upon Cornhill on 9 April 1618; Clement was buried there on 13 August 1669 "...in the East yard", probably with his wife Martha, who was buried there on 2 March 1658-59, as "...the wife of Clement BACON, Clerke" and in the "...pitt in the East Churche yeard by her children."
Their son named Nicholas was also buried "...in pitt in ye east Yard" on 17 August 1643, aged 25; he had been granted his Freedom, Drapers Company, 1 July 1640, by right of patrimony; he was recorded as Flaxman, at Bishopsgate Street, 1640 Poll Tax.
No corroboration of his marriage to Elizabeth has yet been found in parish registers - it may have taken place at Potterspury, Northamptonshire.
The contested leasehold was probably originally in the possession of Priscilla FREEMAN, who was named in the Answer, together with mention of an Indenture dated 1622.
Priscilla was the widow of John FREEMAN (he was buried at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, on 25 September 1622), Haberdasher in Blackfriars; she was buried beside him on 25 February 1630-31; her will, dated 27 December 1630, was proved on 7 June 1631 (P.C.C.), mentioning:
"Item. My will and mind is that my said executors and the survivor of them and the executors and assigns of the said executors shall also [? receive] the issues and profits of all that messuage or tenement wherein --- BACON, widow, dwelleth, situate and being in Bishopsgate Street in London, during the minority and to the sole benefit of John FREEMAN my grandchild, son of my younger son John FREEMAN. And if shall die in his minority, then during the minorities and to the sole benefit of such other child or children as the said John FREEMAN my son shall have, if the same lease shall so long continue. And if my said son John FREEMAN shall die childless, then to the sole benefit and behoof of the said John my son his executors and Assigns during the rest of the term then to come in the same lease."
This property was not among the many listed by her late husband in his will (proved P.C.C., 1622).
Priscilla was baptised at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, on 1 January 1570, a "...daughter of Mr ANGELO, french"; she married John FREEMAN, in the same church, on 3 September 1595.
Samuel and John FREEMAN were the two surviving sons of John and Priscilla; they are said to have emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, around the time of their mother's death; but they are recorded as having been obliged to return to England to deal with legal issues arising from their mother's will - of which the above appears to be a good example.
John FREEMAN Junior is also said to have died at Watertown in 1650; published pedigrees of his brother Samuel FREEMAN, which mention this death, do not record him as having any wife or children.
Given that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury had paid the 1641 marriage portion that secured the demise of part of the Bishopsgate Street property to him, his executors and assigns, it seems reasonable to assume that he was either Elizabeth's father, or her legal guardian, or otherwise closely connected to her.
He may even have been John COOKE's father, and thereby Elizabeth's step-father, according to the following speculation. Indeed, when Isaac COOKE's holdings in Potterspury (almost certainly those he had acquired through marriage to the widow BARROW) were mentioned in the May 1650 Survey of the Grafton estate [TNA], it was recorded that Isaac's deed was in Ireland with his son, by which the date on it was unknown - and we do know that John COOKE had just recently gone to Ireland before 1 January 1650, to take up his post as Chief Justice in Munster.
In February 1662, the following was recorded in the Calendar of Treasury Books, Volume 1, 1660-1667, published by H.M.S.O., London, 1904, for 22 February:
"Petition from Elizabeth COOKE, late the wife of Edward BARRONES of Potterspury, County Northampton, and from Thomas BARRONES his son, concerning a copyhold messuage in Potterspury."
However, there does appear to have been a misreading here of Edward's surname, as we find no references in the historical record of the name BARRONES or similar being associated with Potterspury - but we do find, from the 1618-19 Herald's Visitation of Northamptonshire, published by the Harleian Society, 1887, that the name may instead have been BARROW.
In the 1618-19 pedigree of BARROW of Potterspury, we find that John BARROW of Potterspury (son of Roger BARROW and Katherine SINGELTON) died in 1617; and that by one of his two wives, Mary STANDISH (daughter of William STANDISH of the City of Oxford), he had issue a son Edward BARROW, who was married to Elizabeth CHENEY, sister of Sir Thomas CHENEY of Sundon, County Bedford, Knight.
And at Lillingston Lovell, in Buckinghamshire, Edward and Elizabeth BARROW had baptised three daughters - Elizabeth BARROW on 1 November 1618; Frances BARROW on 4 April 1620, and Mary BARROW on 8 October 1621.
Although we are not yet certain that this Elizabeth was the CHENEY spouse, the details fit in to our story, date-wise, very well indeed. However, another source indicates that when Elizabeth married Edward BARROW, she was the widow of Samuel BRYAN - indeed, Sam BRYAN and Eliz CHEYNE were married at Sundon, Bedfordshire, on 15 September 1608, and a Samuel BRYAN was buried at All Saints, Northampton, on 1 October 1616.
So, it does remain a very real possibility that the Frances BARROW baptised in 1620 may well have been the Frances BARR... who was married in the parish church of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill (in which parish her sister Elizabeth, the widow of Nicholas BACON, was then residing), on 19 May 1646, to Mr John COOKE, Counsellor.
It further remains a distinct possibility that Isaac COOKE of Potterspury was also John COOKE's father; and that as a Widower, he probably remarried, to Elizabeth BARROW, the widow of Edward BARROW of Potterspury; and that Isaac took up residence in Potterspury as a result.
Archival searching is currently underway to establish whether this string of circumstantial co-incidences will lead to confirmation of the speculations.
THE COOKE FAMILY CONNECTIONS IN LEICESTERSHIRE.
Apart from the COOKE Family pedigree that was published as part of the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire, not a lot is known of the COOKE family origins. Some confirmation is available from published parish register information, including the registers of Saint Catherine's, Burbage, and All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, both in the County of Leicester.
And as far as John COOKE's own siblings are concerned, ROBERTSON ("The Tryannicide Brief") offers what little is known of them, in his several references to a brother Jacob COOKE (living in 1641), and to a brother-in-law named CLAPHAM.
The following is my first lapse into a standard "family-historian's" display of available information, building on the framework of the "Pedigree of COOKE of Sketchley" [see "The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester," by John NICHOLS, London, 1811, Volume IV, Part 2, page 468 - in effect an English translation of the original Latin version of the 1619 Herald's Visitation pedigree].
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William COOKE; perhaps born before 1515; said to have been of Sketchely; recorded with an "alias" of BRODFEILD (which may have a property connotation, rather than being an alternative family name - see below); married with issue:
1. Abraham COOKE. See [A] below.
2. (son); probably married with issue:
a. Isaac COOKE; named as "...cousin" in the 1657 will of Rev John TWICKTEN of Corby (his sister Elizabeth was married to Isaac son of Abraham COOKE).
Possibly Isaack COOKE of Pottersury, Northamptonshire, 1654, when named as the co-complainant in a Chancery Court case, together with Elizabeth FARREN, the widow of Nicholas BACON of Saint Peter Upon Cornhill, City of London, as having been demised the dwelling and shop in Bishopsgate Street, near Leadenhall Street, in that parish, occupied by Clement BACON and his wife Martha (Nicholas's parents), as part of the marriage settlements for Elizabeth's marriage on 2 January 1641-42 to the said Nicholas BACON. See above.
[A] Abraham COOKE; perhaps born before 1545; of Sketchley; also recorded with the "alias" BRODFEILD; Abraham COOKE and others were plaintiffs in a Chancery Court case, date range 1603-1625, defended by Thomas WIGHTMAN and others, concerning an agreement on part of the inhabitants of Sketchley, Leicestershire, to allot and adjust their respective lands; Abraham COOKE of Burbage Leicestershire, and Isaac his son, with Edward GLOVER, Esq, Edward LEWIS Gent, and George his son, all of Mancetter, Warwickshire, agreed to the release to Basil FEILDING of Newnham, Esq, of title to the lands enclosed and exchanged in Mancetter called Bottom Field, Middle Field and Bridgfield, and land called Ox Leasowe, set forth for Sir William FEILDING (now deceased) and the said Basil in the agreement of October 1604 [Warwickshire Record Office - TNA Index Ref CR 2017/D132]; Abraham was possibly named in a Pleading in the Court of Chancery, dated 1627, as co-defendant concerning "...money matters in Leicestershire," being a Bill and Answer, brought on by the Plaintiff, Thomas COLEMAN [TNA - C 3/399/33]; an Abraham COOKE was a freeholder in Dalby Magna, Leicestershire, in 1630 (perhaps ? another).
Abraham married, about 1570, Margaret GREENE [1619 Visitation - NICHOLS, "History and Antiquities" records her, probably in error, as Joyce] - see GREEN and HARCOURT family details below.
By this marriage, Abraham acquired his wife's half of the one-third share in the manor of Mancetter; the original third share had gone to Julia, the second of three daughters of Guy de MANCESTRE who died in August 1365; and the half of which third share was eventually purchased in 1543 or 1544 [Dugd. 1077; Common Pleas Deeds, Enr Trin. 36 H viii, m. 8d] by Robert GREENE of Atherstone, who died in 1546 [Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser 2), lxxv, 79]; the share then went to his younger son Thomas GREENE, who died in 1559 [Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser 2), cxl, 185], leaving two infant daughters; one of them was Margaret GREENE, who became the wife of Abraham COOKE [see John NICHOLS, "History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester," Volume 4, Part 2, page 1034; and V.C.H. "A History of the County of Warwick, Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred," Mancetter - I have opted for the better sourced V.C.H. version over NICHOLS where there are discrepancies]. See further below under "The Manor of Mancetter."
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Abraham and Margaret had issue:1. Katherine COOKE, baptised at Burbage, Leicestershire, 6 January 1573; probably died young.
2. Elizabeth COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 26 September 1574; possibly married at Burbage, 17 November 1602, Anthony RAULINSON; living 1619, but recorded as the wife of Anthony BROMFIELD of Eaton, County Warwick.
3. Margaret COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 15 November 1576; married at Burbage, 17 December 1601, Harman SHEPARD; living 1619, the wife of Harman SHEPARD of Leire, County Leicester; issue:
Elizabeth SHEPARD; named in her cousin William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
4. Anne COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 October 1580; probably married at Burbage, 13 June 1615, John LICHFIELD; prob issue:
Sarah LITCHFIELD, baptised at Claybrooke, Leicestershoire, 19 May 1616.
Anne LITCHFIELD married, probably secondly, at Claybrooke, Leicestershire, on 1 January 1626, to Richard FFARREN; she made her will on 26 September 1655, proved P.C.C., 20 August 1657, naming brothers William COOKE, John WATKIN and Robert FORRYAN, and among others, William's sons John and Abraham COOKE.
5. Alice COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 December 1581; married at Burbage, 1 July 1612, Thomas BULLOCKE; living 1619, the wife of Thomas BULLOCK of Spratton, County Northampton.
6. Isaac COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 8 June 1583. See [B] below.
7. William COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 1 October 1585; aetatis 34 in 1619 Visitation; named in his sister Ann FORRYAN's will, September 1655; married with issue:
John COOKE; named in his aunt Anne FORRYAN's will, 1655.
Abraham COOKE; named in his aunt Ann FORRYAN's will, 1655.
8. Agnes COOKE; baptism not recorded - probably instead Anne (above - unless born later ? without a recorded baptism); living 1619, the wife of John LICHFIELD of Yelvertoft, County Leicester.
9. Katherine COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 6 January 1589[-90?]; living 1619, the wife of John WATKIN, of Burbage, County Leicester; she married at Burbage, 8 November 1612, John WATKIN; named in the 1619 Visitation of Leicester; he was named in his sister-in-law Ann FORRYAN's will, September 1655; issue:
William WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 16 August 1613.
Abraham WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 23 September 1615.
Christian WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 15 June 1617.
Katherine WATKIN, baptised at Burbage, 19 May 1622.
10. Arbery COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 19 May 1594; n.f.p.
11. Abraham COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 13 November 1596; matriculated as a Plebeian, Lincoln College, Oxon, 10 November 1615, aged 17; aetatis 23 in 1619 Visitation, still a student at Oxford.
12. Jane COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 28 January 1598[-99?]; n.f.p.
13. Jacob COOKE, baptised at Burbage, 21 February 1601[-02?]; n.f.p.
St Catherine's Parish Church, Burbage, County Leicester.
________________________________________[B] Isaac COOKE, born in 1583; of Sketchely, Farmer; of Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, 1622-23, when his son John matriculated into Oxford University; in 1626, he sold to Richard WHITEHALL his one-sixth share of the Manor of Mancetter (which probably came to him on his father Abraham's death, he having acquired it by his marriage in about 1570); probably living at Baldwin's Gardens, Gray's Inn Lane, London, November 1643, when his grandson John CLAPHAM was born there.
Image of the 1643 entry in the Saint Andrew's Holborne Baptismal Register, courtesy of Ancestry.library edition and London Metropolitan Archives.
Isaac was living with son John COOKE at Gray's Inn, 1657; mentioned as "brother" in his brother-in-law John TWIGDEN's will, 1637; Isaac evidently died in 1658 (his son John's letter to Henry CROMWELL, February 1659), although his burial details have not yet been found.
There are several mentions of an Isaac COOKE in indexes to the holdings of The National Archives at Kew, although it is not certain whether they are of our Isaac:
1631 - King's Remembrancer - Sir Thomas TEMPLE Kt and Bt, Sir Peter TEMPLE and Thos JUSTLEY, vs Sir William FAWNT Kt, Isaac COOKE, and five others, concerning the Manor of Lutterworth, Leicestershire, and the ancient mills there [TNA - E 134/6Chas1/Mich39].
This TEMPLE family had dealings in Stowe, in 1642 with relations of Peter FARREN of Northampton; and the two CHAPLIN half-brother's of Ann DICKENS alias THORNTON, who married Edward TWIGDEN of Little Creaton.
And on 3 August 1629, James COOKE was admitted to Gray's Inn, the son of Isaac COOKE of Lutterworth - perhaps a bit young for the son of our Isaac?
1649 - Court of Exchequer - Francis RISHWORTH, John OAKLEY v. Isaac COOKE, Richard SCRIVENER the elder and the younger and John YERBEY; concerning a messuage and lands in or near the parish of Potters Perry (Northampton) called "Moore end Farm" and a sheepwalk or common called Brownsworth green, and the Town or Village of Yardley. Metes and bounds. Right of Common of pasture. Northampton. [TNA - E/24Chas1/East6]
1654 - Court of Chancery, Six Clerks Office - Isaac COOKE, Plaintiff, vs John HALFORD, Defendant, concerning property in Little Bowden, Northamptonshire, an answer [TNA - C 5/404/50].
1656 - Court of Chancery, Six Clerks Office - Sir Beachamp ST JOHN, Kt, and Oliver ST JOHN, Plaintiffs, vs Isaac COOKE and Luke CLAPHAM, Defendants, concerning personal estate of the deceased George BENNETT of Leicestershire, being a Bill, Answer and Demurrer [TNA - C 6/144/156].
The 1649 and 1656 cases almost certainly involve our Isaac, as he appears to have been a resident of Potterspury, Northamptonshire, in 1641, and his daughter Elizabeth was married to Luke CLAPHAM.
It may be of some interest here to mention that Francis RISHWORTH - as RUSHWORTH - was probably the Church warden of All Saints, Northampton, who was, with fellow warden Peter FARREN, excommunicated in 1637 by his Bishop's agents for failing to carry out Archbishop LAUD's anti-Puritan "improvements" - he and FARREN brought their appeals against the ex-communications to the Court of Arches in London in 1641, at the end of which year Isaac COOKE of Potterspury, Gent, made marriage settlements for his probable step-daughter Elizabeth BARROW to Nicholas BACON of London (she later, in 1648, married Peter FARREN).
But two further entries, both dated 1659, may relate to another Isaac, as our Isaac apparently died sometime during 1658; one involved property in Northamptonshire, and named Gerard BANKES as defendant [TNA - C 6/147/30], and the other named Gerard BANKES with other co-defendants (Peter HARRISON and Ann his wife, and Peter WATSON and Jane his wife) related to Little Bowden, Northamptonshire [TNA - 6/142/31]. The latter appears to have been connected with the 1654 case.
This other Isaac COOKE may have been the "cousin" Isaac COOKE mentioned in Rev John TWICKDEN of Corby's 1657 will.
There was another case brought before Chancery in 1663 by Susannah CLAPHAM, Plaintiff, with Isaac COOKE the defendant, concerning money matters [TNA - C 6/164/23] - but as this record is the Answer only, it suggests that this Isaac COOKE was still living, and probably therefore another.
It was probably the land-holdings associated with the Manor of Mancetter that emboldened Isaac COOKE to present his credentials, and his 3-generation pedigree, to the Office of the Chief Herald as part of the 1619 Herald's Visitation; although he did not provide, nor was he approved the use of, any Armigerial bearings.
Isaac COOKE was married, at Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, on 26 August 1605, to Elizabeth TWIGDEN, daughter of John TWIGDEN [so recorded in the 1619 Herald's Visitation] of Husbands Bosworth (see below); issue:
1. John COOKE, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 September 1608. See [B] below.
2. James COOKE, born about 1610; named Jacob, 1619 Visitation of Leicestershire, aetatis 9; possibly admitted to Gray's Inn, 3 August 1629, son of Isaac COOKE of Lutterworth, Leicestershire; identified by ROBERTSON ("The Tyrannicide Brief"), as Jacob, living 1641, with a tenancy in Leicestershire of a bankrupt, which led to litigation in which he was represented by his brother John.
3. William COOKE, born about 1613; named in the 1619 Visitation of Leicestershire, aetatis 6.
4. Elizabeth COOKE, born about 1615; named in the 1619 Visitation of Liecestershire, aetatis 4; prob married at Keame (alias Keyham), Leics, 8 November 1630, Luke CLAPHAM, of Willenhall, Warwickshire, Gent (son of John CLAPHAM, of Willenhall, by Mary LEIGH or LEE - John was buried at Holy Trinity, Coventry, 16 February 1630-31; his will proved P.C.C., 19 March 1631, his wife Mary the sole executor, and naming his children Luke, John, Samuel and Mary, a son Samuel having been buried at Holy Trinity, Coventry, 30 August 1631).
Luke CLAPHAM was of Gray's Inn, 1633; called to the Bar, 16 June 1645; he was named as defendant, 1648, in Chancery Court proceedings brought on by John WATKIN (probably husband of his wife's aunt Katherine COOKE), being a Bill only, concerning "...money matters in Leicestershire" [TNA- C 3/466/76]; he was recorded as "...dealing with" the manor Stockton "...during the Commonwealth" [V.C.H. "History of County Warwick," Vol.IV, p.106], which manor had devolved to his father in 1618 on the death of his cousin and name-sake, John CLAPHAM (one of the Six Clerks of Chancery); Luke was further named, with his father-in-law Isaac COOKE, 1656, as a co-defendant in Court of Chancery proceedings brought on by Sir Beauchamp and Oliver ST JOHN, concerning the personal estate of the deceased George BENNETT of Leicestershire [TNA - C 6/144/156; he was probably with 52 others, "...called to be of the grand company of Ancients" at a Pension held at Gray's Inn on 21 May 1658.
Luke and Elizabeth had issue:
a. Luke CLAPHAM, born about 1639; in August 1642, he was given a 1577 volume of Raphael HOLLINSHED's "The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of Englande, Scotlande and Irelande," inscribed on the verso of the title-page "August 1642, this booke was given to my sonne Luke CLAPHAM by his uncle Mr John COOKE of Gray's Inn"; Luke was admitted to Gray's Inn, 12 February 1655; called to the Bar, at a Pension held at Gray's Inn, 25 November 1661; he died on 2 April 1676, aged 37, and buried Islip Church, Oxfordshire (M.I., marble Tablet, Chancel); aged about 25 when married by License, at Saint Pancras Old Church, London, 13 February 1666-67, Susanna HEARNE of Amring Hall, Norfolk, aged 19, with consent of her mother; she died 16 November 1669, and also buried at Islip; with issue an only surviving daughter:
i. Mary CLAPHAM, who married WELLS and survived him, with an only daughter Elizabeth WELLS (living in the parish of Saint Sepulchre's, London, in 1716, as the widow SIMPSON).
b. John CLAPHAM, born at his grandfather's house, Gray's Inn Lane, London, and baptised at Saint Andrew's, Holborn, 24 November 1643.
c. Isaac CLAPHAM, baptised at Holy Trinity, Coventry, Warwickshire, 21 June 1652.
The CLAPHAM connections get a little complicated - Luke CLAPHAM's mother, Mary LEE or LEIGH, was a daughter of Thomas LEE of Catthorpe, Leicestershire; her brother was Joseph LEE, of Shawell, later Rector of Catthorpe, who in 1619 married Hannah TWIGDEN (a younger sister of Mrs Elizabeth COOKE) - and his father, John CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warwickshire, was undoubtedly related to Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall, who married in 1619, Ann MILNER, who was probably a daughter of Richard MILNER and Mary TWIGDEN (an aunt of Mrs Elizabeth COOKE alias TWIGDEN).
5. Susannah COOKE, born about 1619; buried at Burbage, 29 April 1620.
6. Susannah COOKE, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 6 February 1620-21
7. Margaret COOKE., baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 8 December 1622.
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[B] John COOKE, born 1608; admitted Wadham College, Oxon, 31 January 1622-23, aetatis 14.
His career is recorded in brief in the Dictionary of National Biography (published version); this was further up-dated in the 1980s by Wilfrid PREST in the Oxford D.N.B.'s on-line version; and was further examined in great detail by Geoffrey ROBERTSON, Q.C., in his "The Tyrannicide Brief," Chatto and Windus, 2005; to all of which the reader is referred for details which will not be repeated here.
Although he was said to have been born in Burbage, as that is where his father lived, John was baptised at Husband's Bosworth; ROBERTSON speculates that this was a decision made on religious grounds, and that the COOKE's choice was for a baptism by a Puritan minister at Husbands Bosworth over and above one by the establishment minister at Burbage; whilst this may well be the case, it is also possible that Elizabeth went home to her mother for her first confinement, which was not an uncommon occurrence, and that John was simply baptised there because it was more convenient.
Of his family relationships, which we will look at in some detail below, the following is apparent:
1. John's uncle, Rev Joseph LEE or LEIGH of Catthorpe (the husband of his mother Elizabeth's sister Ann or Hannah TWIGDEN), was also a maternal uncle of Luke CLAPHAM, who married John's sister Elizabeth COOKE.
2. John's mother Elizabeth was a first cousin of Ann MILNER (daur of Richard MILNER andMary TWIGDEN), who was also an aunt of Luke CLAPHAM, on account of her marriage to Luke's probable uncle Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall.
3. John's paternal aunt Alice COOKE married Thomas BULLOCK, who was another first cousin of his mother Elizabeth TWIGDEN.
Part of the 2006 A.A. map of Great Britain, showing COOKE family locations in Leicestershire.
A BRODFIELD OR BROMFIELD ALIAS.
Curiously, in the 1619 Herald's Visitation pedigree of COOKE of Sketchley, William COOKE, his son Abraham and grandson Isaac were all recorded with an "alias" BRODFEILD; but his great-grandson, and Isaac's son and heir, our John COOKE, is the only one in the line of COOKEs whose alias was spelt BROMFIELD.
This last may have been an "error" which resulted from the recording of the marriage of Isaac COOKE's sister Elizabeth COOKE to Anthony BROMFIELD, even though it appears from parish records that her husband was probably instead Anthony RAULINSON.
The use of this "alias" is hard to explain, and may have had something to do with an earlier property inheritance, as yet unknown - it was not unusual for inheritance of property down the female line to have a proviso attached to it, that the son-in-law adopt his wife's family name.
However, the 1633-35 Herald's Visitation of London may furnish a clue.
Thomas BROMFIELD, of Ilford in Barking, County Essex, married (probably around about 1530) Elizabeth COOKE of Northamptonshire (recorded in at least one on-line pedigree as a daughter of Richard COOKE and Margaret HALL); their son Thomas BROMFIELD, of the Manor of Odemere, County Sussex, was, by his wife Grace MARTIN, the father of Edward BROMFIELD, Alderman of London in 1634.
As yet, no links to the COOKE family in Sketchley/Burbage in Leicestershire are apparent.
THE MANOR OF MANCETTER.
In 1626, Isaac COOKE sold his one-sixth share in the Manor of Mancetter, which had come to his mother by her family connections, as shown hereafter, beginning with abstracts from the Mancetter section of the "The History of the County of Warwick, Volume 4: Hemlinsgford Hundred" (part of the Victoria County History series):
"Guy de MANCESTRE or MANCETTER died in 1365; his possessions were divided among the representatives of his three daughters, Margaret, who survived him, Julia and Lucy, who both predeceased him...
"Guy de Mancetter's daughter Julian (sic) married Geoffrey, Lord BROKEHILL in Hertfordshire. Their son, another Geoffrey, inherited one third of the Manor of Mancetter in 1365; he was outlived by his wife Ellen, heir of John de ROOS, who died in 1419, holding her husband's share of the manor. A moeity of the third of the manor called Brokeholes passed to their eldest daughter Joan, widow of Thomas ASPELL and in 1443 the wife of Robert ARMEBURGH. She apparently had no issue, and the whole third came to John SUMPTER, son of Ellen's younger daughter Margery. John died in 1425-26, and in 1437, one of his sisters and co-heirs Ellen BELLERS was dealing with her part of the Manor, here called a moeity of the Manor of Rosehall in Mancetter; with the reversion of the estates held for life by Thomas BARNARD, husband of her late sister Christine. Ellen subsequently married Ralph HOLTE, whose great-grandson Sir Thomas HOLTE in 1544 sold his part of the manor to Thomas LUDFORD and Robert GREENE.
"GREENE died in 1546 seised of a moeity of a third of the manor of Mancetter. His heir was his son Robert, but the estate passed to his younger son Thomas, who died in 1559, leaving two infant daughters.
"One of these, Margaret, married Abraham COOK, and their son Isaac COOK sold it to Richard WHITEHALL... in 1627..."
And so the COOKE's of Burbage came to possess one-sixth part of a Manor; although it is not yet clear what that meant in money terms - either as rentals from tenants, or finally as a sale price.
William HARECOURT or HARCOURT; of Bosworth, County Leicester; married Jane PALMER, second daughter and coheir of William PALMER of Stoney Stanton, County Leicester; they had issue:
Anthony HARCOURT, living 28 Hen viii; he died on 8 February 1541 [his M.I., cited by NICHOLS as being in Cadeby Church, but illustrated in connection with Drayton Church, both in Leicestershire]:
The altar-style tomb on Anthony HARCOURT, as illustrated in NICHOLS's "History and Antiquities."
It is this "Anthonius HARECOURT" who heads the COOKE of Sketchley family pedigree in the 1619 Herald's Visitation of Leicestershire.
Anthony married Dorothy HARDWICK (daughter of John HARDWICK - see [D] below); issue:
1. George HARCOURT; of Dodington, County Leicester; married Elizabeth LEIGH, daughter of Henry LEIGH of Rushall, County Stafford; with issue.
2. (daughter); wife of CATER.
3. Barbara HARCOURT; the wife of Thomas GREENE. See [C] next below.
[C] Robert GREENE; of Atherstone, County Warwick, Yeoman; Bailiff in Atherstone, 1537, when he made an Agreement with the Abbot of the Monastery of Our Lady of Merevale, County Warwick, concerning a pasture land at Seale, between Nether and Over Seale; in 1540, he purchased the Manor of Arley, Warwickshire, from John CORBET of Shropshire and his wife Anne, jointly with his son Robert GREENE Junior, and William GREENE; shortly after February 1542, Robert purchased from Charles BRANDON, the Duke of Suffolk, the manor of Olbury (together with the free warren and other rights formerly belonging to the Convent of Polesworth), which had come to the Crown on the Dissolution of the Monasteries; in 1543-44 (jointly with Thomas LUDFORD), Robert purchased one-sixth of the Manor of Mancetter from Sir Thomas HOLTE.
Robert died in 1546; his will, dated 6 February 1545[-46?], named his wife Margaret, sons Robert and Thomas, sister Elizabeth FEISAMUTE (? or similar - perhaps FEILDING), Richard YONGE "... my sister's son," and "... the children of my son Robert"; proved P.C.C., 20 April 1562 (as recorded in the index - my reading of the somewhat obscure image suggests it may have been earlier than that); he married Margaret, on whom he settled the manor of Arley on his death, with remainder to his second son Thomas; they had issue:
1. Robert GREENE, Junior; eldest son and heir; inherited his father's share in the Manor of Oldbury, 1546, and subsequently sold it before 1565 to John SYMINGS; he also inherited from his father the Manor of Arley, notwithstanding the remainder in favour of his brother Thomas; he and his wife Dorothy disposed of Arley in 1553 to John POLEY.
2. Thomas GREENE; despite being the younger son, he inherited from his father, the remainder of the sixth part of the manor of Mancetter after his mother's death; that he passed it to his children suggests that his mother Margaret died before him; he died in 1559; he married Barbara HARCOURT (see above); they had issue:
a. (daur).
b. Margaret GREENE; the wife of Abraham COOKE of Burbage, County Leicester. See above.
[D] John HARDWICK; a grandson of Eleanor de FLAUNDERS, later the wife Sampson ERDSWYKE; of Lindley, County Leicester; made a settlement of the Manor of Flanders, parish of Kingsbury, County Warwick, 1459; he died in 1512; married firstly, 1459, Elizabeth BOTELER, daughter of Henry BOTELER of Coventry; with issue:
1. Alice HARDWICK; married William DINGLEY
John married secondly, Ann LANGHAM; she survived her husband, but died before 1537; further issue:
2. Elizabeth HARDWICK; married BURTON.
3. Ann HARDWICK; married George WYNTER; issue:
a. Ann WINTER; married John BOWLES of Lincolnshire.
b. Elizabeth WINTER; married at Hington, County Leicester ?
C. ? married Katherine GRISLEY, sister of Sir William GRISLEY, Knt; issue.
4. Mary HARDWICK; married William WHITEHALL. Possibly related to Richard WHITEHALL, who in 1626 purchased from Isaac COOKE the sixth part of the Manor of Mancetter.
5. Dorothy HARDWICK; married Anthony HARCOURT. See above.
6. Joyce HARDWICK; died 6 March 1585; married about 1525, Michael PUREFOY (born at Fenny Drayton, County Leicester, 14 March 1497); they were dealing with the Manor of Flanders, County Warwick, 1558 and 1566; he died 21 July 1570; issue:
a. William PUREFOY, born about 1527; died 1 September 1615; married at Wolston, Warwickshire, 21 June 1558, Katherine WIGSTONE; with his parents, they were dealing with the Manor of Flanders, 1566.
b. John PUREFOY; of Nether White-acre, 1601; married Isabella BRADSHAW.
c. Thomas PUREFOY; matric 1550; B.A., 1554; married Elizabeth BRADSHAW, daughter of Robert BRADSHAW of Morborne, Hunts.
d. Humphrey PUREFOY, born about 1533; B.A., 1554; elder brother of George; married Alice FAUNT.
e. George PUREFOY, born about 1541; Gray's Inn, 1566; M.P. for Beverley, 1586; died in October 1616; married Jane DAVENPORT.
f. Arthur PUREFOY, sixth son; M.A., 1564; married Elizabeth LANGHAM..
g. Margery PUREFOY; married SALISBURY of Ullesthorpe, County Leicester.
h. Frances PUREFOY; married John SMALLEY.
j. Dorothy PUREFOY; married NICOLS.
k. Jane PUREFOY; married Christopher WRIGHT.
m. Catherine PUREFOY; married Thomas WIGHTMAN.
THE TWIGDEN FAMILY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
Spratton Parish Church, where members of the TWIGDEN family of Little Creaton lie buried.
John TWYKTWYN, of Creaton, Northamptonshire, was living 1491-93; he was probably father of:
William TWYCTWYN, of Creaton, living 1521; probably his will dated 1560, to be buried in Broughton, Northamptonshire, and naming a son Thomas; possibly married to a relation (perhaps a daughter) of Thomas SKYNNER of Creaton (his will, dated 1521, was attested by Wm TWYCTWYN); probably father of:
Thomas TWIGDEN, born about 1510-20; he was a wealthy grazier; purchased the Manor of Little Creaton (Creaton Parva), Northamptonshire, in 1548, on 1 March 1550-51, from Lady OWEN and her son John (shortly after her husband Sir David OWEN's death); purchased the estate of Bosworth Grange, in the parish of Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire, on 1 March 1550-51, from Edward FIENNES, Lord Clinton and Saye; Thomas was buried in Spratton Church, Northamptonshire, 14 September 1580; his will dated 2 January 1579[-80?], proved P.C.C., 20 October 1580, leaving his estate to his wife Ann and their eldest son Edward.
Thomas married, about 1545, possibly to Miss WATTS, with issue:
1. Edward TWIGDEN, probably born around 1545; named in his father's will, 1579, with one-half of his estates in Little Creaton; acquired the other half from his mother for 120 pounds; will dated at Spratton, 26 January 1610; buried at Spratton Church, 5 March 1614-15 [M.I., Brass, floor of South Aisle]; married, as her second husband, Ann DICKENS, daughter of John THORNTON, and widow of William DICKENS; she died on 26 December 1614 [M.I., Brass, Spratton Church]; issue:
a. Ann DICKENS, daughter of her first marriage to William DICKENS; she married firstly, her step-father's "alleged" younger brother John TWIGDEN (see below).
b. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; died 1668; her father settled upon her at her marriage in 1600 the Manor of Little Creaton; married firstly, 30 December 1600, William KNIGHTON; he also held lands in Little Creaton of Cornelius WESLEY as of his manor of Dodford; he died about 1607; will proved 1610; issue:
i. Thomas KNIGHTON.
ii. Twigden KNIGHTON.
iii. Mabel KNIGHTON.
iv. William KNIGHTON; his will dated 1634, proved 1642.
Elizabeth married secondly, her cousin Gifford BULLOCK, with issue (see below).
2. Mary TWIGDEN; married firstly, at Spratton, 28 November 1571, Richard BROWNE; she married secondly, before 1580, Richard MILNER; issue:
a. Katherine MILNER, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 2 October 1584.
b. Jane MILNER, baptised at All Saints, Husbands Bosworth, 2 April 1587.
c. Andrew MILNER; named in his cousin William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
(?) Anne MILNER; married in 1619, Thomas CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warwickshire (undoubtedly of the same family as John CLAPHAM, whose son Luke married in 1630, Elizabeth COOKE of Burbage).
e. Elizabeth MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 30 November 1595.
f. Ales MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 2 July 1598.
g. Marie MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 30 December 1601.
h. George MILNER, baptised at Burbage, 24 January 1607.
3. Richard TWIGDEN, born about 1550; a properous Glover in Northampton; died 1608; married firstly, Margery; prob married secondly, at Rushton, Northamptonshire, 3 November 1579, Elizabeth LELAM; she died 1606; issue:
a. John TWIGDEN; Glover of Northampton; will dated July 1634, proved 1638; married at Saint Sepulchre's, Northampton, 29 April 1596, Frances COLES; with issue:
i. John TWIGDEN, born about 1608; Glover in Northampton; Freeman of Northampton, April 1633; had "...all that shop in All Saints churchyard" and all the wares therein, in his father's will, 1634; Alderman and Mayor of Northampton; buried All Saints, 17 February 1681-82; married Prudence, with issue four sons and a daughter.
ii. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1634, as the wife of WALKER.
iii. Sarah TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto WADE.
iv. Katharine TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto KING.
v. Ann TWIGDEN; ditto 1634; married firstly, at Weston Favell, 21 July 1625, George SHUCKBURGH, Mercer and Linen Draper in Northampton; Ann married secondly, 1632, George GOODMAN, Mercer, with issue.
vi. Mary TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, as the wife of COLE.
vii. Elinor TWIGDEN; ditto 1634, ditto Richard WOOLLASTON, Mayor of Northampton, 1622-23.
b. Richard TWIGDEN, baptised on 3 October 1583.
c. Elizabeth TWIGDEN, baptised on 8 August 1585.
4. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; married firstly, John BULLOCK of Spratton, Northamptonshire; his will dated 20 November 1596, Proved P.C.C., 24 May 1597; issue:
a. Francis BULLOCK; named in his father's will 1596; named in his half-brother's will, 1634.
b. Thomas BULLOCK; under age in 1596; possibly married at Burbage, 1 July 1612, Alice COOKE (sister of Isaac COOKE, whose wife was Elizabeth TWIGDEN, Thomas's cousin).
c. John BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
d. Gifford BULLOCK; under age in 1596; named in his half-brother's will, 1634; he married his cousin Elizabeth TWIGDON (see above); issue:
i. Elizabeth BULLOCK; named in her half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
ii. Ann BULLOCK; named in her half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
iii. John BULLOCK; named in his half-brother William KNIGHTON's will, 1634.
e. Edward BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
f. Abraham BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
g. Susannah BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
h. Elizabeth BULLOCK; under age in 1596.
5. John TWIGDEN, born about 1553; named as third son in his father's will, 1579, having already received the lease of all his father's lands in Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire. See [C] below.
6. (son); named John TWIGDEN, as fourth son in his father's will, 1579, to whom he willed a lease in Great Creaton (or Creaton Magna) "...now in tenure of John ESSON and Robert KEBUR."
However, it seems unlikely that there would have been another son named John (and perhaps in error for another name, the error perhaps being one of transcription by the Prerogative Court clerk who wrote out the probate grant).
He is believed by descendants to have been the John TWIGDEN of Little Creaton who was father of Amphyllis WASHINGTON alias TWIGDEN.
See "Another Problem in America" below.
7. Raffe TWIGDEN, named as fifth son in his father's will, 1579, under age; married Ann LELAM (daughter of Thomas LELAM and Ann CHIBNALL and sister of Percival below), with issue:
a. Amy TWIGDEN, baptised at Spratton, 1 January 1592-93.
Raffe and Ann may have had other daughters, who may have made marriages in Spratton:
b. Eleanor TWIGDEN, married 1637, William JOHNSON.
c. Elizabeth TWIGDEN; married 1627, Mark COWPER or COOPER.
d. Joan TWIGDEN; married John WATTS.
e. Dorothy TWIGDEN; married Richard HOLLIS.
8. Dorothy TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1579, under age; married at Spratton, 7 February 1586-87, Percival LELAM (son of Thomas LELAM and Ann CHIBNALL, and brother of Ann above).
9. Alice TWIGDEN; named in her father's will, 1579, under age; possibly married at Spratton, 3 June 1594, William HAYWOOD.
10. Francis TWIGDEN, baptised at Spratton, 27 October 1566; named as 6th son in his father's will, 1579, under age.
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[C] John TWIGDEN, of Bosworth Grange, Husbands Bosworth; this fits the description of Thomas TWIDGDEN of Little Creaton's third son, and so named in his 1579 will; died 1619 [TNA - C 142/373/58: Chancery, Inquisitions Post Mortem (Series II), Leicester, March 1619-March 1620; as John TWICKTEN]; possibly, as John TWICTYN, married at Walgrave, Northamptonshire, 30 June 1580-81, Susanna PELL; with issue:
1. Erasmus TWIGDEN, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 12 May 1583; probably named for Erasmus SMITH, Gent, of Husbands Bosworth, whose second wife was sister of Lord BURGHLEY; named in the Inq. p.m. after his father's death, 1619, as the son and heir, aged 30 years.
2. Elizabeth [EMERTON or] TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 22 July 1584 (father not named - the second surname here carries the whiff of a father of a possible illegitimate birth? - but another record has her baptised 27 September 1584, so perhaps there were two); believed to have married in 1605, Isaac COOKE, See [A] above.
3. John TWICKTEN; no baptismal record yet found, but based on the year of his matriculation, born about late 1580s; matriculated, Jesus College, Cambridge, Easter 1603; B.A., 1606-07; Fellow, 1608; M.A., 1610; D.D., 1622; Rector of andSaint John and Saint Peter, Corby, Northamptonshire, 1614 until his death; buried Corby, 21 April 1657 [M.I., as recorded in his entry in "Alumni Cantabrigienses" - but not consistent with the next detail]; will dated 4 June 1657, proved P.C.C., December 1658, mentioning his "brother" Isaac COOKE, his "...nephew John COOKE, now or late Justice in Ireland," and a "cousin" Isaac COOKE; married with issue:
a. John TWICKTEN; also an M.A. of Jesus Coll, Cantab; he died before his father, at Corby, 19 April 1655 [M.I., ditto].
b. Bridget TWICKTEN; also died before her father, and buried at Corby.
4. Thomas TWICKEN, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 1589 (date obscured, but between 17 February 1588-89 and 5 April 1589).
5. William TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 19 December 1590; said to have been a wealthy Linen Draper; possibly of Saint Martin's, Borough of Leicester, when he made his will, dated 8 December 1635, and proved P.C.C., 6 February 1635-36, naming his wife Elizabeth, to whom he left the house he then dwelt in, a shop in Bruntingthorpe, parish of Saint Mary's, and his houses in Soar Lane, parish of All Saints, with a bequest to the poor of Husbands Bosworth "...where I was born," and mentioning "...my children which it hath pleased God to give me by my beloved wife."
6. Richard TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 4 July 1593.
7. Francis TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 20 November 1595.
8. Ann TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 November 1598; as Hannah, married in 1619, Joseph LEIGH or LEE, Clerk, of Catthorpe, Leics (son of Thomas LEE of Catthorpe, and so a brother of Mary LEIGH, the wife of John CLAPHAM of Willenhall, Warws).
9. Susan TWICTON, baptised at Husbands Bosworth, 18 January 1600-01.
Husbands Bosworth Parish Church, as illustrated in NICHOLS's "History and Antiquities."
ANOTHER PROBLEM IN AMERICA.
Pedigrees of the ancestral connections of the first President of the United States, George WASHINGTON (1732-1799), all now lead back to, among others, a family named TWIGDEN in Northamptonshire, ancestors of his great-great-grandmother Amphyllis TWIGDEN (1601-1655), the wife of Rev Lawrence WASHINGTON.
At the head of it is John TWIGDEN, alleged to have been the son of Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) of Little Creaton, Northamptonshire.
However, John COOKE's maternal grandfather, John TWIGDEN of Husbands Bosworth in Leicestershire, is also alleged to have been a son of the same Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) of Little Creaton.
The problem appears to have arisen from the writer's copy of Thomas TWIGDEN's 1579 will which was entered into the Probate Grant at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in October 1580.
It is clear from the down-loaded copy, courtesy of The National Archives (or TNA) web-site, that Thomas TWIGDEN's third and fourth sons have both been attributed the same name of John - the third son with all his father's leases in Husbands Bosworth; and the fourth with property in Greater Creaton.
I cannot conceive of any man giving two of his sons the same name - it is unlikely that the parish minister would have encouraged such duplication at baptism - and it would certainly have created all sorts of identity issues, in particular at the time of the probating of his will.
Although I may be wrong, I suspect that it may have been a clerical error on the part of the writing clerk at the P.C.C. But, as we undoubtedly no longer have any access to the original will document, it is unlikely we will ever be able to resolve this apparent difficulty from that source.
A considerable amount of original research has been carried out into this TWIGDEN family, and apparently reported in the July and October 1940 issues of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Volume 94 is one of them), as an up-date to a much briefer item in a much earlier issue (October 1924), and followed up with Additions and Corrections (April 1942).
It appears to be information collected by H.E. WATERS, and presented under the sub-title of "Genealogical Gleanings in England" and as illuminating an article about Amphyllis WASHINGTON.
I have only seen snippets of them in google-book searches, so cannot yet verify the actual pedigree constructions, what speculations may have been involved in those constructions, or see the particular sources that it uses or cites.
But, from further on-line research, it appears that in 1925, it was revealed for the first time, by Rev H. Isham LONGDEN, the Rector of Heyford, Northamtonshire, that Amphilis WASHINGTON had not been born a ROADES, as had been assumed by earlier researchers, but was in fact a daughter of John TWIGDEN.
Rev LONGDEN continued his research into the TWIGDEN family connection, but did not publish it; instead he handed over copious notes in 1940 to H.E. WATERS, who subsequently published them in two articles in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.
It appears that WATERS accepted, apparently without question, LONGDEN's identification of Amphilis WASHINGTON's father John TWIGDEN as being the fourth son of Thomas TWIGDEN of Little Creaton (will dated 1579).
One English record may provide, at first glance, a hint of adjudication in favour of the WASHINGTON family "claim" - TNA carries an indexed reference to holdings of the Northamptonshire Records Office, and to a Final Concord, dated Easter Term, 44 Elizabeth (1602), of John READE, Esq'r, Plaintiff, concerning "...3 messuages, 2 lofts, 2 cottages, windmill, dovecote, 3 gardens, 3 orchards, 100 acres of land, 50 of meadow, 50 of pasture, 10 of heath and 12d of rents in Creaton Magna, Creaton Parva and Spratton" - the deforciants were listed as Edward TWIGDEN and Ann his wife, John TWIGDEN and Ann his wife, Gregory TARRIE and Elizabeth his wife, and Alice DICKEN.
This has all the hallmarks of being connected with property of the DICKEN family, into which both Edward and his "alleged" brother John TWIGDEN are known to have intermarried; and if Elizabeth, the wife of Gregory TARRIE, was also a DICKEN, then this is probably a collection of DICKEN family members - mother Ann (known to have married as her second husband Edward TWIGDEN), and her three DICKEN daughters Ann (known to have married John TWIGDEN), Elizabeth and Alice (as yet unmarried).
If the Final Concord entry was, as it appears, about the DICKEN(S) family, then it could not be construed from it alone that there was any particular relationship between Edward and John TWIGDEN. They may have been brothers (although I think this unlikely, as I have seen no other evidence yet of this, apart from the 1579 will which I believe is probably in error); however, there is nothing to preclude the possibility that they were instead cousins.
Further information contained in some American pedigrees indicates a likelihood that either Amphyllis TWIGDEN's mother or her grandmother was Amphyllis WATTS. A parish register entry for her marriage, if and when found, could prove particularly useful here.
However, a projected date for the marriage of the older Thomas TWIGDEN of about 1545 probably predates the existence of Parish Registers.
But if it were a generation later... and if Thomas had named his fourth son Thomas... and if the P.C.C. clerk in 1580 had written for the fourth son the name John in error for Thos...
There are just too many if's...
Current American pedigrees record the following family details:
John TWIGDEN; of Little Creaton, Northamptonshire; will dated 8 December 1610, bequeathing half of his goods (but apparently no real property) to his wife Ann, and the other half to his five daughters, equally divided, when they reached the age of 25 years, as well as some monetary bequests to the Poor; married in 1591, Anne DICKENS, daughter of William DICKENS by Ann THORNTON (before her second marriage to Edward TWIGDEN); she died in 1657, having married secondly, Andrew KNOWLING, of Tring, Hertfordshire; he died in 1650; his will, dated at Tring, 13 January 1649-50, named, inter alia, his daughters-in-law Elizabeth FITZHERBERT, Amphylis WASHINGTON and Susan WILLING (deceased); issue:
1. Ann TWIGDEN, baptised on 9 March 1593; named in her father's will, 1610.
2. Elizabeth TWIGDEN, baptised on 23 May 1596; named in her father's will, 1610; named as Elizabeth FITZHERBERT in her step-father's will, 1649; probably married firstly, at Saint Giles's, Northampton, 29 September 1635, John BOUGHTON, of Ashenden, Buckinghamshire, Yeoman, and perhaps a relation of her sister Susan's husband; he died at Tring, and was buried 20 March 1638-39 at Ashenden; his will dated 16 February 1638-39 was proved 12 June 1639 by the widow Elizabeth; she appears to have married secondly at Tring, on 24 June 1641 John [surname obscured in snippet search, Tyler's Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Volume 8, 1927, page 108], possibly DAGNALL or PAGNALL (who appears to have been guardian to his wife's two WILLING nieces); poss married thirdly, FITZHERBERT.
3. Susan TWIGDEN, baptised on 9 May 1599; named in her father's will, 1610; dead before 1650; aged 18, and of Passenham cum Penshanger, when she married firstly, at Saint Peter's, Northampton, on 4 December 1616, Peter BOUGHTON of Potterspury, Northamptonshire; his will, dated 25 September 1635, was proved at Northampton on 26 October 1635 by his widow Susan; issue:
a. Elizabeth BOUGHTON; named in her father's will, 1635.
b. Jane BOUGHTON; ditto, 1635.
Susan married secondly, John WILLING; poss further issue:
c. Susan [WILLING], born 1639; mentioned, but not by name, in the 1649-50 will of her late mother's step-father, Andrew KNOWLING of Tring.
d. Elizabeth [WILLING], born 1641; mentioned ditto 1649-50; ( if this further lineage is correct, then Elizabeth BOUGHTON probably died young).
If these are her children, then she appears to have died in 1641, five days after her second WILLING child was baptised.
4. Amphylis TWIGDEN, baptised on 2 February 1600-01; named in her father's will, 1610; named as Amphyllis WASHINGTON in her step-father's will, 1649; died at Tring, Hertfordshire, 12 January 1654-55; married at Spratton, Northamptonshire, 1 December 1633, Rev Lawrence WASHINGTON (born Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, about 1602); he was educated at Brasenose College, Oxon, B.A. 1623; M.A.; Rector of Purleigh, Essex, 1632; "ejected" from Purleigh when Parliament sequestered the Rectory in 1643, and was "retired" to the Rectory of Little Braxted, where he is said to have lived in poverty; in 1649, the Standing Committee for Essex ordered a fifth part of Purleigh to be paid to the "plundered" Rector's wife; Clerk, Maldon, 1653, when he apprenticed his son William for 7 years, to Hugh JACKSON, Master Draper (record not annotated as Lawrence being deceased - see the www.londonroll.org web-site); he was buried at Maldon, Essex, 26 January 1652-53; issue:
a. John WASHINGTON, possibly born at Purleigh, about 1634, but perhaps elsewhere, and possibly a little earlier (one U.S. cemetery record has him born as early as about 1627); granted Letters of Administration to his late mother's estate, P.C.C. 8 February 1655, as her "...natural and lawful son" (which were traditionally mutually exclusive terms, "natural" usually meaning illegitimate, and "lawful" as born within wedlock); he went to Virginia, 1656, with a wife and two infant children (who all died shortly after arrival); settled at Bridge's Creek, near the Potomac; church warden of the old "White Chapel" at Lancaster County, 1661; a Planter, Magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses; Colonel of Virginia Forces which engaged against the Seneca Indians; his will dated 26 February 1675[-76?], proved 10 January 1677[-78?]; he married secondly, about 1660, Ann POPE (daughter of Nathaniel POPE); by her he had issue - Lawrence, John and Ann; he possibly married thirdly Ann GERRARD, and perhaps fourthly her sister Frances GERRARD.
b. Lawrence WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 23 June 1635; in 1649-50, he was granted all of the property of his mother's late step-father Andrew KNOWLING of Tring (who made no mention in his will of Lawrence Junior's elder brother John - might this further support the notion that John was perhaps ? illegitimate); went to America; he died about 1677, letters of Administratrion, P.C.C., dated 30 May 1677; married firstly, at Luton, Bedfordshire, Mary JONES, with issue a daughter Mary WASHINGTON (she married Edward GIBSON); he married secondly, in Virginia, Jane FLEMING, with further issue a son John WASHINGTON (he married Mary TOWNSEND) and a daughter Ann.
c. Elizabeth WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 17 August 1636; possibly married RUMBOLD.
d. Margaret WASHINGTON; possibly married TALBOT.
e. William WASHINGTON, baptised at Tring, 14 October 1641; apprenticed by his father, 1653, for 7 years, to Hugh JACKSON, Master, Draper's Company; no evidence in Draper's Company records of his Freedom.
f. Martha WASHINGTON; went to America; married Nicholas HAYWARD.
5. Hannah TWIGDEN, baptised 1 December 1605; named in her father's will, 1610; died Buckinghamshire, 1687; married 1628, William ROADES, with issue.
A possible scenario which avoids the having two sons with the same name in Thomas's 1579 will would be for this John to have been instead a cousin, and the second John in the 1579 will being recorded in error, perhaps for Thomas?
Unless instead it was John TWIGDEN of Husbands Bosworth who was the cousin?
Further, in Tyler's "Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine" [Volume 8, 1927, at page 108], in an article, probably contributed by T. PAPE, entitled "Amphillis TWIGDEN, mother of the WASHINGTONs", it is recorded:
"...What was her maiden name? I think I have found it in the Register of Saint Peter's, Northampton, in this marriage entry - '1616, December 4, Peter BOUGHTON and Susan TWIGDEN.' I have also discovered, at Peterborough, the marriage license, dated the same 4th December 1616, when he was of Potters Pury, Northamptonshire, Widower, and she of Passenham cum Denshanger, maiden, aged 18 years. Further, what is the parentage of Susan TWIGDEN? I discover at Little Creaton in the parish of Spratton, Northants, one John TWIGDEN, a yeoman, dwelling where his father and grandfather dwelt before him. * * *
"He made his will on 8 Dec'r 1610 as John TWIGDEN of Little Creaton, in the parish of Spratton, where he desired burial, and he gave to the poor of Spratton, fyve shillings, and the poor of Great Creaton and Little Creaton [an]other fyve shillings, adding 'I doe give unto my wife Ann halfe of my goodes and the other halfe of my goodes I doe give to my fyve daughters, Ann, Elizabeth, Susan, Anphellis and Hannah, the other halfe of my goodes to be equally devided amongst them when they shall severallie come to the age of fyve and twentie yeares'."
Note here that PAPE does not identify the father by name, or his grandfather by either given name or surname, although it might reasonably be assumed it was intended to be his paternal grandfather.
If Thomas TWIGDEN (died 1580) had a brother who lived in Little Creaton, which is entirely possible, then this statement still fits for John being a cousin of Edward, rather than a brother.
JOHN COOKE'S "COUSIN" HARRISON, ANOTHER REGICIDE.
In one of his letters from the Tower, John COOKE mentioned his cousin HARRISON, who was also incarcerated as a Regicide, and would meet his fate as did John COOKE, on the traitor's scaffold at Charing Cross.
This was Thomas HARRISON, who is said to have come from Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire. His relationship, if accurately recorded, does not appear to make him a cousin on the COOKE or TWIGDEN sides of the family.
Richard HARRISON (II) was a butcher in Newcastle-under-Lyme, County Stafford; he probably born in Newcastle in the 1550s, a son of Richard HARRISON (I) (he was buried at Newcastle, 1 May 1589) by his wife Alice (buried ditto, 22 January 1588-89); like his father, Richard (II) was also a Church Warden, Bailiff, Constable and Alderman of the Borough, serving as Mayor in 1594 and 1608; he made his will on 3 June 1623, which was proven at Lichfield, 7 May 1625; he married on 2 December 1581, Alice COLLIER, by whom he had issue:
1. Alice HARRISON, baptised at Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1 April 1582.
2. Elizabeth HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 26 June 1584.
3. Richard HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 8 March 1587[-88?]. See [Y] below.
4. Thomas HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 19 November 1589; buried 26 December 1589.
5. William and Helena HARRISON, twins, baptised at ditto, 16 March 1591; both died in infancy (Helena in April 1591, Wm in February 1597).
6. Margaret HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 2 April 1594.
7. Ralph HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 28 February 1599; of Newcastle-under-Lyme, then of London, Citizen and Draper there; married Hester, with issue including a daughter Katherine HARRISON, who married her cousin Thomas, the Regicide [Z].
[Y] Richard HARRISON (III); a capital Burgess in the Corporation of Newcastle, 1621-25, and Mayor of the Borough, 1626, 1633, 1643 and 1648; buried Newcastle-under-Lyme, 25 May 1653; married Mary, who was buried ditto, 18 May 1658; they had issue:
1. Jane HARRISON, baptised at Newcastle-under-Lime, 2 June 1612.
2. Thomas HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 16 July 1616; the Cromwellian General and Parliamentarian. See [Z] below.
3. Dorothy HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 29 March 1618.
4. Anne HARRISON, baptised at ditto, 3 August 1619; she married Randle LOVATT, with issue.
[Z] Thomas HARRISON; arrested in his house in Staffordshire in May 1660; executed as a Regicide on 13 October 1660, three days before his "cousin" John COOKE; he married in 1647 his cousin, Katherine HARRISON; she married secondly, Thomas LEIGH, and died in 1700; issue, perhaps among others:
1. Thomas HARRISON; buried at Saint Anne's, Blackfriars, London, 1 February 1649.
2. Ralph HARRISON; buried ditto, 16 April 1652.
3. Richard HARRISON; buried ditto, 12 January 1653.
Newcastle-under-Lyme Corporation records also have details of an Isack HARRISON - he had an apprentice in 1647; was churchwarden in 1655, and was Clerk of the Borough in 1657-58.
Of possible interest, a John HARRISON was married at Foleshill, County Warwick, on 26 October 1568, to Alice FORRIAN. If COOKE's wife Frances was a FORRYAN alias FARREN, then it is possible that the HARRISON family cousinship may have arisen through this Alice FORRIAN connection? If the Regicide was of this family - and from the above detail that is looking somewhat unlikely.
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Frances STOUGHTON alias PROCTOR alias COOKE was, I had once believed, my gtx6-grandmother.
