John Perient Esquire of Digswell died 1432

 In 1538, George Gill of Wyddial married Gertrude Perient.  So all of those Ginns descended from Mary Gill (see post of Feb 21st 2023 ) are descended from the  early Perient family of Hertfordshire and thus from the John Perient mentioned here.

I first researched John Perient (there are various spellings of his name) in the original records at what was then the Public Record Office in London (now the National Archives in Kew) nearly thirty years ago.  From what I can see, my notes are still by far the most comprehensive research on the man because nobody has ever really produced a biography.  He is still one of the most fascinating people I have ever researched.

In the late 1300s there is a reference in the records to a John Peraunt who in 1385 was made a Sergeant at Arms to our King Richard the Second.  There were twenty or so such men, and their role (they carried a ceremonial mace) was to travel the Kingdom of England to enforce the King's orders and at times take administrative roles ("in the King's name!")

I found Peraunt several times in the records - at one time he collected a prisoner from Corfe Castle in Dorset (which I visited as a boy - it is now a ruin) and in 1405 (now in service to King Henry the Fourth) the guy took control of the Channel Islands for a time.  I can find  no record of him after 1409, when it is supposed he died or left the King's service.  It has been suggested that he is the father of the John Perient mentioned here.  I think it highly likely.

John Perient here was born in Brittany, likely around 1370.

Brittany, though part of France, had originally been populated (as the name suggests) by Celtic Britons from the west of Britain, fleeing overseas from  the invading Germanic Anglo-Saxons (later the English - I am simplifying here) who were pushing the Britons further west into Cornwall (Corn welsh)  and Wales ( Welsh) the term "wealas" being Saxon for "foreigner".

So the Bretons did not feel any particular allegiance to France, and often (either for money or land or both) took service with foreign armies against the King of France.

The English had been fighting the French since 1337 (the Hundred Years War 1337-1453) and for the best part of the first hundred years were winning easily (Battles of Crecy, Poitiers etc) often under the command of Edward the Black Prince (of Wales) a great English warrior who was the first to wear the three lions on his shirt, now a symbol of England.

                                                          The Black Prince

I have read that John Perient entered service with the English and "came into England with Edward the Black Prince".  This would have been difficult because Edward died in 1376 on campaign in France of dysentery, and John Perient was then about six years of age.  What is more likely to have happened is that John Peraunt entered the service of the English and came into England with his family in the 1370s, particularly likely as we know that both Peraunt and Perient entered service with King Richard the Second (King from 1377 to 1399) who was a younger son of the Black Prince.

John Perient is said on his tomb to have been an Esquire to the Body to King Richard the Second (a sort of attendant and bodyguard if you will) of whom there were a number, and also his Pennon or Standard Bearer.  Given that Richard reigned for over 20 years (and others are named Standard bearer) it seems likely that John Perient acquired this latter honour in the later 1390s.

So Perient had taken an oath of allegiance to King Richard, but by all accounts Richard was not a great guy.  He was accounted a narcissist, a man who had an inflated idea of kingship when the notion of absolute monarchy was already beginning to weaken in England (in 1381 we had the Peasants Revolt  - during Richard's reign).  And so factions grew up among the nobles of England and there were several men who having royal blood, considered themselves rivals for the throne and sought to depose Dick.  And one of these was Henry Bolinbroke - Richard's first cousin and shortly to be King Henry the Fourth.

Bolinbroke had been exiled to France, and supposedly spent time in Brittany.  A widower since 1394, he stayed with the Duke of Brittany and his wife Joan of Navarre.  Joan was 31, no great beauty and had had eight children - but she had personality and charm and Henry was smitten with her and she with him.

Now 1399 was an eventful year for Henry.  First, there was something of a revolt and Henry deposed King Richard who was imprisoned.  Secondly the Duke of Brittany died, Harry's dream came true and he proposed to Joan of Navarre who readily accepted.  A happy ending.

But King Dick lived up to his name and over the twelve days of Christmas of 1399/1400 his supporters rose up and made an attempt to kill Henry at Windsor where they were having a Christmas Jousting Tournament.  It is called the Epiphany Rising.  Henry was warned and fled and began to raise an army.  The rebels were pursued all over England being caught and beheaded (if they were lucky) or hanged, drawn and quartered (if they were not) along the way.  The interesting thing is that I turned up a muster of Henry's army, and John Perient was there - the guy had seen the way the wind was blowing !

The former King Richard was quietly executed and in February 1400 Perient was rewarded for changing sides. Firstly he was made an Esquire to the Body of King Henry the Fourth.  I am not sure that I would have readily trusted a guy who switched sides so easily, but there you go.  And he was also I found swearing an oath of allegiance to Ralph Neville Earl Marshal of England (think head of the army) and Henry's chief supporter and brother in law.  Two salaries thus came Perient's way.

Although betrothed to King Henry, Joan of Navarre had stayed on in Brittany to tidy up things there and put things in order for her children, so that they could take over the Duchy.  She did not come to England and formerly marry King Henry until 1402.  With her she brought her Breton entourage, these including her "damsels" ie her ladies in waiting.  One of these we know was a certain Joan Risain.

John Perient married Joan Risain in about 1404, we do not have a date.  I made some superficial investigation into Joan's family back in the 1990s in the Guildhall Library, and the Coat of Arms on her tomb resemble those of the Raisen family of Kernault in Brittany, but I am guessing.  More research needs to be done.

The English had never been happy that King Henry had married what they considered a Frenchwoman.  And they were even more unhappy that she had brought into England a lot of foreigners and that, indeed, those foreigners were encouraging more to come over and they were all being treated preferentially.  There were riots on occasion and some foreigners were forced to go home.  But not John and Joan.  They and their heirs were granted English citizenship in 1411 and 1412 respectively and thus we find the following in the Patent Rolls:

This all brought financial dividends.  In 1411 John Perient was made Master of Horse to Joan of Navarre.  And Joan became the Chief Lady in Waiting.  The Queen was something of a fancy dresser, and we know from her tomb that Joan Perient was well dressed and had her hair exquisitely styled.

Now he was classed as an Englishman, Perient could take land in England.

Perient was friends with two Members of Parliament, John Derham and John Ludwick.  Both of these men lived near Hatfield in Hertfordshire (not far from Aston where the earliest Ginn family lived as it happens) and they encouraged John Perient and Joan to move near them.  They did.  Perient initially acquired the manor of Digswell (in Welwyn) and later the manors of Gobions and Lavares in Stapleford, Lockleys in Welwyn and before his death Holwell in Hatfield.  John Perient owned a fair chunk of what is today Welwyn Garden City.

Henry the Fourth died in 1413.  The heir was his son the famous Henry the Fifth, who by all accounts respected but was not enamoured of his stepmother Joan of Navarre.  She was treated quite shabbily and denied much of her income and retreated to the country.  We can assume that Joan Perient was no longer her lady in waiting

                 Tomb of Henry the Fourth and Joan of Navarre

We know from his tomb that Perient was now made an Esquire to the Body of Henry the Fifth.  Perient was in his early 40s.  This is when things start to get really interesting.

I have read history books, fiction and non fiction since I could read.  An early favourite novel was "The Gauntlet" by  Ronald Felton        (writing as Ronald Welch).  I read it in the early 1960s.  A young boy was on a misty hillside where he picked up a rusty knight's gauntlet that he saw in a ditch.  Holding it up and putting it on, he was transported, as if in a dream, back to the 1300s.  I felt a similar experience when I started to read the extensive original documentation left from the reign of King Henry the Fifth and the real people, including John Perient,  that framed the events of his reign.   I was there.

The English Kings, rightly or wrongly, had been claiming the throne of France for years, that was what all the fighting had been about.  A great deal of time, money and English and Welsh blood (England having control of Wales and Welsh longbowmen a treasured part of the English army) had been spilt in that pursuit.

Henry the Fifth now laid claim to the throne of France.  And the years 1413-15 were years spent preparing to invade. And so we come to the Agincourt campaign,

Henry the 5th needed an army, and he raised ten thousand men of England and Wales.  The men at arms, that is those fully armoured with lance and warhorse were composed of the nobility, the knights and esquires - the landed gentry.  Each of those was obliged to supply men according to his lands held from the King, and Perient held four manors each held on half a knight's fee, in other words in time of war his lands demanded he supply and equip two men at arms.

In 1415 King Henry was ready to invade France.  Sadly, in April of that year we know that Joan Perient died, likely in childbirth and leaving several infants.  We must assume that John Perient relied on servants to bring those up as in July he was ready to depart.

Back in the day I read an article which said that a certain Sir Harris Nicholas  had said that Perient had gone with the 1415 expedition that led to the Battle of Agincourt.  So I scuttled off to the Guildhall Library in London to find the book.  It turned out that that dated from 1832, and the author had himself scuttled off, this time to the British Museum  and had turned up the passport records (every English gentleman going needed a passport from the King to leave the Kingdom) of the officers of the expedition from the Norman Rolls (I have seen the entry) from which he knew that Perient had gone to France in 1415.   But he estimated the number of the little bundle of men that went with him, and in that estimate he was wrong.

Harris was correct as I say, both Perient and his friend and fellow King's Esquire Nicholas Aldwick were granted passports (3rd June 1415), and they were said to be "in the retinue of the King".  Now these words are important, this means that they were in the King's own unit, who would be called the King's Guard today, the sort of  Housecarls of the Saxon King Harold at Hastings in 1066, the men who had sworn the English "Blood Oath" to die in battle around the King.

                                                                 Henry the Fifth

I cannot tell you that Perient definitely fought at the Battle of Agincourt, though he probably did.  What I can tell you is that he went on the campaign and, incredibly, I can even tell you the names of the men who went with him.  Life is short, and we are dead a long time, so I consider myself privileged to have read an original document from 1415 which is truly amazing, what is called the Agincourt Roll.

I was always a fan of the late Christopher Hibbert, researcher and historical writer.  And at the time I was researching Perient, I had a copy of Hibbert's "Agincourt".  Now Henry the Fifth led three expeditions to France, and Hibbert found a document that listed one of those armies, but which was the question, it was undated.  The argument went that it was the first expedition, crucially because several prominent men in the list were known to have been dead before the second expedition, indeed some died on the first, a persuasive argument.  Since I did my research in the 1990s, it appears to have become accepted generally that the document in question is a complete list by name of the men who went on the first invasion of France by King Henry the Fifth.

The Agincourt Roll (E/101/51/2 at the National Archives) is a remarkable thing.  It is like a huge roll of wallpaper, a foot or more wide, being pages of parchment sewn together.  It lists every man who went, down to the meanest soldier.  Perient was required to supply two men at arms (known as "Lances" in the Roll)  and six archers, the names

Lances

John Perient Esquire

Richard Hames Esquire

Archers

Richard Bassett

Thomas Toryton

John Teringham

Henry Smith

Thomas Rodhaw

Richard Welsh 

I was later delighted to discover that Richard Hames and Dick Bassett were both mentioned in Perient's will, so they survived two campaigns and remained close to him.  It seems likely Dick Bassett was the senior archer, perhaps the man centre left below..  It is also likely that Richard Welsh was a welsh man, a lot of archers in the English army were.  These men had been bred to the bow since early childhood, skeletons discovered show that they were incredibly muscular with distorted chests, an English longbowman's arrow with a bodkin point could easily pierce plate armour or chain mail or be driven four inches into a block of oak.  The longbowmen terrified the French, with good reason, there was no greater disgrace for a French aristocrat in full armour on warhorse, than to be brought down by an English peasant's arrow.

                                English archers at Agincourt 

The English army gathered at Southampton in July 1415 and landed in France (Normandy) in August, obviously the best time of the year to cross the English Channel.

They laid siege to Harfleur, a French stronghold.  This was the scene of Shakespeare's great speech in the mouth of Henry the 5th calling on the English army "once more into the breach dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead".  But the truth is that there was a small French garrison, the English army mostly sat outside the walls getting dysentery and other diseases there being too many men in too close a proximity without sanitation, and, after negotiations with the French garrison the French surrendered and marched out.  Not much glory there then.

Now Henry had invaded with just over two thousand men at arms and about nine thousand archers.  It is said that about four hundred men at arms died at Harfleur, mostly of disease. Another four hundred were so ill that they had to be shipped home, unable to fight.  Many of those later died or were never to campaign again.  Three hundred men at arms were left to garrison Harfleur and to guard the rear of the English army, because Henry had begun to realise that the French army greatly outnumbered his, that they were coming for him and he had to get back to England quickly. So he was determined to take what was left of his force including perhaps 900 men at arms back to England and, incredibly he chose to do that by marching north across part of France to Calais, which was an English possession, then to sail for home.  But he was marching across the face of the advancing French army and it was now September, moving into October and the weather was turning wet, the ground was muddy and many of the English were ill and getting sicker by the day, there was a shortage of food.

I have always thought that Perient was one of that "band of brothers" as Shakespeare called them.  He was to campaign with Henry again and Henry as we shall see , kept his close entourage and "body" knights and esquires with him, so I am pretty sure he was there.  

Now I am not going to retell the story of the Battle of Agincourt, but suffice it to say that on 25th October 1415 as many as 40,000 French men faced an English army of less than 10,000 men.  The English could have surrendered, as ever they decided to fight.

The day went pretty much like the Battle of Waterloo went exactly four hundred years later in 1815.  The English stood their ground, did not retreat a foot and let the French attack them in wave after wave.  There were in fact too many Frenchmen on a narrow front, they got in each other's way, Dick Bassett and his fellow archers were protected from French cavalry by dug in sharpened stakes and released volley after volley of arrows and the French men at arms were hit and fell, only to be chopped down on the ground by our mean at arms, or less gloriously stabbed through the eye pieces of their armour by the side daggers of the archers.  It was not pretty.  At the end of the day there were some ten thousand French dead, the English had no more than five hundred casualties, mostly wounded.  It was a miracle on the Feast Day of St Crispin Crispianus.  Shakespeare says it best, puts words in the mouth of Good King Harry once more.  I could not have said it better myself -

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

In 1832, Sir Harris Nicholas came up with the names of some five hundred or so of the men at arms who fought at Agincourt two of these I noticed were King's Esquires, but he said himself that he was some four hundred short.  Nobody will ever know the full list.

The English army returned to London to great acclaim.  Perient had lost his wife.  He never married again.

King Henry the 5th was a determined man.  In 1417, he raised some twelve thousand men and invaded France again.  He was more successful this time.  After a savage massacre the English army took Caen in Normandy.  They then laid siege to Falaise.  I know Perient and his little band of brothers were there because they are mentioned in the Norman Rolls, and Perient was sent through Normandy with a Power of Attorney from the King.  In June 1418 our army was as Louviers and Perient was there, as were his men, but they were not named - just mentioned as his retinue..

Rouen surrendered in 1419 and that was it.  Henry the 5th set up his Head Quarters in Mantes, and I know Perient was there which reinforces my assertion that where the King was, so was Perient.

By 1420 our army was at the gates of Paris and the French surrendered.  Henry dished out rewards to many of his men, offering Englishmen castles and landholdings in France if they were stupid enough to accept.  Most declined, realising that they would never be able to leave their French possessions securely, and would be in constant battles with the French to keep them.  Because while the English had beaten the French, they did not have the population to conquer France.

In 1420 Perient was about 50.  You never hear of him in the King's service again.  He was not in Henry's third campaign of 1421/2.  He was clearly too old to campaign again

.From what I can see Perient returned to England and concentrated on building up his landholdings and refurbishing his manors - particularly that of Digswell where he lived.  It is at this time that I believe that he commissioned the manorial brass at Digwell, one of the finest in England.  Like the Pharoahs he was preparing for his death and a memorial.  For the record, Perient was never knighted, though one or two of his Perient descendants were.

Perient's will was made on 10th April 1432, he was in his early 60s.  He is said to have died  on the Monday before St George's Day (23rd April) 1432 (Inquisition Post Mortem).  He was the greatest of the Perients of Hertfordshire and it was a privilege to research him.

He left £200 to build a Chantry Chapel (where a priest would say prayers for him and Joan) at Digswell Church which still stands and is where he and Joan are buried.  You can visit them whenever you wish, they have lain there undisturbed for some 600 years.

             

Aquila Ginn of Reed End, Therfield died 1708

 Aquila Ginn was the eldest son of Aquila the elder of Great Hormead (see post of 14th August 2012  ).  He and his family have remained a footnote on my post on his father until now.  But in late 2023 I turned up two court cases and these gave me so much information that I felt compelled to create this post.

He was born in 1634 in Great Hormead.  His father lived to such a great age for the time that Aquila jnr never really inherited a lot, his father providing in life and, obviously, Aquila jnr tried to marry to advantage to affirm his position as a yeoman.

In about 1657/8 (during Cromwell's Commonwealth after the English Civil War when you were compelled to marry before a Justice of the Peace - so the marriage is lost) he married a lady called Joan or Joanna.  Until 2023 that is all I knew.  But as a result of a discovered court case see below (helpfully indexed under the name of Glynn) it seems likely that her maiden name was Battle or Battell and she came from Bassingbourn which straddles the Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire border.  How they met I have no idea.

It seems clear that Aquila gained financially (and likely in land) from the union.  Joan clearly had a brother Robert of Royston (see below) and although the couple had a son, Aquila, in the Hormeads in 1659, by 1662 or so they had made the move to Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire.  This is quite some distance from Great Hormead and I had always wondered the reason for such a move.

They had a daughter Elizabeth at Bassingbourn in 1663.  My suspicion is that there may have been other children I have no knowledge of.  They had no less than 5 Hearths there in the Hearth Tax record, but Aquila pleaded relative poverty to get his tax reduced, and my guess is that he was living in a house provided by or rented from the Battle family.

By 1670 I know that Aquila and Joan were in Therfield back in Hertfordshire, almost certainly in Reed End, where Aquila was to live for nearly the next forty years, until the end of his life.  Reed End, indeed the whole of this area is still almost completely rural.  But by this period the manorial copyhold system was already beginning to die out, and although Aquila is mentioned quite frequently in the manorial rolls that I found for this period in the Guildhall Library in London no less, he was not so much holding considerable copyhold land as holding manorial official posts, such as this of Constable.

For Aquila can be clearly seen to have been a tenant farmer, how the yeoman class were to be seen for the next two centuries.  He rented land on a short terms basis or rented on longer leases.  He seems to have lived in some hard earned comfort, but his existence was precarious.  Bad luck, bad weather or ill health would have treated him very unkindly.

Aquila witnessed the will of his distant cousin Francis Ginn of Therfield in 1673, with a certain Edward Mead, of whom more later.  Little Elizabeth, Aquila and Joan's daughter died at Therfield in 1675 and on the face of it the couple were now childless, and Joan herself died at Therfield in 1682.  

Edward Mead of Therfield died in 1679 leaving a widow Mary.  And in 1683 Aquila married Mary Mead "widow of Edward" at Great Hormead, doubtless surrounded by his family.  This was all I knew about this marriage until late 2023.

Mary Mead was born in Therfield in about 1640, but her maiden name was Gray - her parents being Anthony and Rose Gray.  For those interested in the Gray family (there is some nonsense on Ancestry) I will tell the story

Anthony Gray was born in Therfield (to another Anthony) at the beginning of 1600.  His was a very solid Yeoman family.  He married Rose Fison at Cambridge in 1625 and they had a large family, not all the baptism entries surviving - namely Rose (1628)  Anthony jnr (1629) Elizabeth (1631) Henry (1634) Edward and Mary.  Anthony snr had a good deal of land both in Therfield and Sandon in Herts (the latter near Buntingford)

The children are interesting and to help

Rose married Job Holmstead of Queenhithe in the City of London (a Feltmaker - ie a Hatter) at St Botolph Bishopsgate in 1657.  I cannot find any reference to issue and Job was dead by 1664.

Anthony jnr married Ann Fillney at Therfield in 1657.  They had one son, also Anthony in 1660 and then Anthony jnr was also dead by 1664.  Anthony Gray snr referred to Ann as his daughter and she and the infant were very well cared for in his will.  Whether little Anthony survived is unknown.

Elizabeth clearly married Jeremiah Downes of Hertford at distant Great Amwell in 1652.  This was a little scary for me.  Because Jeremiah Downes was one of the sons of Hezekiah Downes of Hertford.  And Hezekiah is an old friend of mine.  He was a Hertford Blacksmith, also a Burgess and the Mace bearer to the Corporation.  He was strongly involved for Parliament (as were his sons) in the English Civil War and is mentioned in not only the story of Richard Ginn of Ware, but also that of Peter Ginn, also a Blacksmith of Hertford.  It now appears that Aquila Ginn here was the brother in law of his sons!  I was astonished.  It illustrates the small population of the 1600s and the relatively small gene pool of the yeoman and tradesman class.  For the record, Jeremiah (some sort of builder) and Elizabeth had a son, also Jeremiah in 1660, who some say went to Harpenden and established a drapery business - I will leave it with you

Edward took all the land in Mardleybury Manor in Therfield - he clearly married and reputedly died in 1705.

Henry - inherited all the land in Sandon - was alive in 1664 - nothing more is known.

Mary Gray clearly married Edward Mead, where and when unknown.  Mary like her sisters was an eligible spinster.  Anthony Gray senior died in 1664 (will PCC) and on his death he left a lot of bequests, a lot of them tied to the life of his widow Rose and payable upon her death and even more conditional upon whether little Anthony above (his grandson) survived to his majority.  Mary received £50 when her father died.  If little Anthony had died she would have been quite a catch.  And upon her mother's death (1687/8) she was due an additional £70.

So, when Rose Gray snr died in 1688 Edward Gray's worst nightmare came true.  His siblings went to him for their money.  Had he laid it aside over the years he would have been alright, and he clearly had some, because some bequests were allegedly paid out.  But not Mary's £70, Ted's cloud has a silver lining for me, because Aquila sued (C8/350/180 ).

The Bill of Complaint had some gaps for essential information (eg Anthony Gray's death) and that, together with the absence of an Answer (defence) from Edward Gray leads me to the conclusion that the case was settled.  The lands in Therfield had been charged with payment of the legacies and Aquila was suing for land in lieu of the money, so he and Edward obviously came to some arrangement. So in 1689 Aquila acquired a little money through his wife.

In 1694 Aquila was 60.  But he was clearly an energetic and active chap and up for a challenge.

The next story starts in North Yorkshire of all places.  This is a lot of research imparted lightly.  How these people moved around is a genealogist's nightmare

In 1630, a lad called John Cockett was born in Yorkshire.  A poor boy, he went to Giggleswick School, a charity school.  Giggleswick chose one bright poor pupil every year to get a scholarship to Cambridge University, and in the mid 1640s John was the lucky one.  He got two degrees, entered the Church and in 1660 this chap was made the Rector of the parish of Reed in Hertfordshire.  The church is shown below, Aquila Ginn is buried in the churchyard.

In 1668 the no nonsense yorkshireman John Cockett married an Ann Flexmer (daughter of Francis) in London and in 1670 they had their only child, a son Francis, at Reed.  In 1693 Francis Cockett, Gentleman of Holborn in London (he had rooms there) married Alice Battle of Royston in Herts in Soho, London.  And in 1694 they had their only known child Ann while living in Royston.  They were back in London by 1695.  You can see how this is starting to come together.

Now, in 1655 or so another character in this story was born, a Christopher Cooper was born near Buntingford, likely in Reed (his family had land there).  Little Christopher also went to a charity school in Buntingford and (no jokes) it is said caught the eye of a local Bishop who put Chris forward for the church and Christopher Cooper also went to Cambridge University.  This could be called the "Clergymen's Tale".

Christopher Cooper became the Vicar of Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire.  He as a Latin scholar and wrote books on latin grammar (bestsellers no doubt)  and became the Headmaster of Bishops Stortford Grammar School.  He comes over as a little pompous.  In 1686, thorough the auspices of the Church of England he had a vicarage (now called "The Old Vicarage" it still stands) built at Bishops Stortford.  The house is important as it figures in Aquila's story.

In 1697 (C7/133/9) all of the stars aligned and, in a court case, all of this came together.

It appears that Christopher Cooper had a house and thirty four acres of land in Reed to be granted by lease.  The house was a bit dilapidated but Aquila Ginn was up for the challenge and in 1694 he negotiated with Cooper to take a lease for 6 years at £25 a year and to renovate the house for his occupation, Cooper rebating (ie reducing) the rent at the start to allow for the work Aquila and Mary needed to do.

Aquila was unknown to Cooper and Cooper later said (hindsight being a wonderful thing) that he had heard reports of Aquila's "ill character" and had got on his horse and ridden from Bishops Stortford to Royston (a fair trek) to check Aquila out.  It is clear that Chris went to see the 24 year old Francis Cockett who was then in Royston (likely residing at the Tabard Inn) for a reference.  It does not necessarily follow that he had heard ill reports of Aquila.

All went well.  The Lease was drawn up by a scrivener called Brown, known to Cockett said the Reverend Cooper but "an utter stranger" to him.  On the 29th November 1694, the sixty year old Aquila Ginn himself travelled down to Bishops Stortford and walked into what is now the Old Vicarage above.  He signed the lease.  He later claimed that he had not read it and my guess is that Aquila was illiterate.

It went wrong of course.  Aquila renovated the house but the good Reverend refused to rebate the rent for the amount Aquila claimed, so Aquila sued.

Now the central figure in this story, the elephant in the room is Francis Cockett, gentleman.  Because I have not mentioned a couple of things.  Firstly, Cockett was a joint plaintiff with Aquila. And the reason for that is that when Cooper rode to see him in Royston, Francis Cockett did more than give Aquila a good reference, he not only stood surety for the rent, but he gave Cooper a financial bond guaranteeing if Aquila could not pay.  Given that Francis Cockett was 24, newly married with a babe in arms- why did he do that ?

Francis was not in business with Aquila, that is clear. And it seems unlikely that Aquila was a long term friend of John Cockett.  And, anyway,  John Cockett had died aged 63 in 1693 (will PCC) still the Rector of Reed. And although Francis and Alice had had their first child at Royston no doubt surrounded by her family, Frank had taken the family to London by 1695 and his widowed Mum Ann had gone with them  She died in Bishopsgate (living there 1695 - Inhabitants Outside the Walls) in 1696 (will PCC)  Both she and John made much mention of the Battle family in their wills, and it is clear that they had known Alice some years before she had married Francis.

So it is the Battle family that I turned my attention to, and particularly Robert Battle of Royston, Alice's dad. Alice was born in 1666.  Now Royston (as the name hints) had had ancient links to the monarchy, and in the first half of the 1600s there was something of a royal palace or at least large residence (below) there which gave employment and benefited tradesmen of the town while the royal entourage of the Stuart kings was there.

This made Royston a somewhat unusual place during the English Civil War as, in an area declared for Parliament, it sheltered more than a few closet Royalists.

And Royston was also an important spot on the Great North Road from London to Cambridge and had many inns and alehouses.  One of these was the Tabard Inn which went back to Tudor times and was in the High Street near the Cross.  It is sadly long gone.

The sign of the Tabard

Robert Battle owned the Tabard Inn and three or four other properties besides. But Bob did not come from Royston but rather Cambridgeshire, and most of his property likely came to him from his father in law, Tom Turner.  Now I know this because in 1674 Robert Battle and his wife Ann pursued a court case over the estate of her late father.  And, like Robert, Thomas Turner is known to have been an Inn Keeper in Royston, and an inn keeper who during the English Civil War was accused of using the Inn to recruit men for the King's army, so Tom was an open Royalist.

Cavaliers at an Inn

Now Robert Battle married Ann Turner at Bassingbourn in 1660, Ann being a Royston girl as I say and Robert clearly born to a William Battle in Bassingbourn (Bob having brothers Leonard, William jnr who married Mary Man or Mann in 1668 and as sister I am figuring our Joan ).  And in 1662 or so Aquila had made that strange journey to Bassingbourn that I have never been able to explain, logically given what we know of him, going after whatever advantage he might be able to gain from the Battles.  This would make him  Alice Cockett's (Battle) Uncle by marriage and would explain why Francis might had stood surety for him.

Sadly I know nothing more of Francis Cockett, he was alive aged 27 in 1697.  His daughter Ann was still alive at the end of 1697 as she is mentioned in the will of Robert Battle (PCC).

My suspicion is that the second legal case was also settled and Aquila and Mary lived on in some comfort.

Now the average Englishman of the 1600s was not the polite, restrained and cold Englishman of the Victorian era.  These were combative and loud.  And so it was with Aquila.  Civil court cases aside, he was also involved in a criminal case involving John Warren and his wife Cecily of Reed End who were convicted of assaulting him.

Aquila and Mary hopefully spent their last years in some quiet comfort.  He died in 1708 aged 74 and is buried at Reed. Mary is as yet untraced.

Children of Aquila and Joan

Aquila - born 1659 died in infancy

Elizabeth - born 1663 at Bassingbourn died 1675 aged 12 at Therfield

But were there more ?  This is the question.  If Aquila was still such a friend of the Battles and Cocketts in 1694 with his first wife having died quite some years before - did he still have children living ?  Time may give the answer perhaps

Arthur Ginn of Kent Island, Maryland, British America died 1676

 Arthur here is the first recorded Ginn in America.  So 2023 is a remarkable year in that he has been found.  The return of the prodigal perhaps.  More American discoveries will follow.

He seems clearly to be one of the numerous Arthurs in my Study (a possible connection to Devon having been ruled out) but I have no idea as to which one though have a suspicion. Twelve of the fifteen recorded Arthur Ginn references before 1837 come from this Hertfordshire family.

The third settlement in British America (after Jamestown in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620) was on the Island of Kent (shortly after Kent County in Maryland) in Chesapeake Bay.  Kent Fort was built in 1631 and a small settlement of about 120 English souls was established in 1642.

The Crown granted the proprietorship (right to receive the income) of Kent to Lord Baltimore of the Calvert family.  If there were no settlers then there was no income, so Baltimore devised a way of luring colonists from England.  The government supported the move as they wanted England to settle America as quickly as possible as a buffer against any French plans to do so.

The scheme devised was the "head-rights" system, whereby any man (or woman apparently) who could pay for their own passage to America (cost about £20 - a substantial sum) would be  granted 100 acres of land in America shortly after arrival, more if he brought wife, children and servants - ie rights "by head".  The rights attached to the people who were brought our or "transported" so a man who had paid the passage of another could claim the  extra land.  And these rights were assignable, so effectively a settler could acquire a fair chunk of land if he could afford to buy the rights attaching to a person who was brought out there.

The scheme worked - people began arriving from England in greater numbers (early settlers seem to have been almost exclusively English) and by the 1660s or so it is estimated that there were some 600 English settler on Kent, more spreading along small settlements along the Bay on the mainland.

For Kent was an island of sorts, a small strip of land joins it to Maryland proper  as can be seen from the 1866 map above.  

We cannot be entirely certain of the date because the evidence is circumstantial (court records) but Arthur seems to have arrived in

Kent in 1666/7.  He was certainly there by 1668.  His voyage from England (likely from London) would have been very hard and taken two to three months.

What we know of Arthur is that he was certainly English, he was literate and he must have come from the Yeoman class or similar, as he paid his own passage out (cost about £20) and was prepared for a very tough life working on the land.

The Kent County court (there was no actual Court House until after Arthur's death) likely met in taverns and alehouses as it often did in England.  It dealt with business matters, debts etc and Arthur is mentioned both as a juror and as a party to legal proceedings.  I was surprised to discover that English coinage was in short supply in all of the American colonies, so tobacco was used as the barter currency of choice.

                         Land Patent to Arthur 1672 (Maryland State Archives)

Arthur made an application for the 100 land grant that, as a free settler, Baltimore had promised him - and so in 1670 he obtained a Warrant acknowledging his claim.  In 1671 the land was surveyed, and in 1672 he received the formal grant of the land.  The 100 acres were to be called Cony or Conny Hall (the alternative spellings were still used later) and the land was adjacent to the head of  Great Thickett Creek the name of which is no longer used and it took me some months to track this down.  The boundaries were marked on the corners by marked (apparently notches were cut in each tree in a pattern unique to each owner to mark them out) pock hickory trees.  The terms "pock hickory" was the English phonetic rendering of an Indian word, the trees now known as Hickory of course and still common on Kent.

Conny Hall would, of course have been a wilderness that Arthur was obliged to clear before he could farm or grow tobacco, the principal crop.  Kent was pockmarked by creeks and it was somewhat damp and marshy.  For this reason the various native tribes who inhabited it and Maryland generally (they were very friendly to the English) chose to use the waterways and fish, rather than make any attempt to live off of the land.

At some point Arthur married a lady called Alice.  There is  no evidence that he married in England so America is the more likely, particularly given that  at this time the head right was 100 acres per person who came over to the Eastern Shore.  But although a sort of Anglican church was established at Back Creek from 1652, there are scant records and no mention of Arthur.  So the marriage remains a mystery.

So Arthur and Alice would have been working hard to clear the land, build a rudimentary cabin (nothing fancy) and make a living. He seems to have employed the odd indentured servant or two to help him  There is evidence (a set of cooper's tools in his inventory) that he took up that trade as a side line.  From what I can see this was the most popular and numerous trade in early colonial America as barrels were needed for everything, from tobacco to beer and numerous other liquids.  There is also evidence he also went in for fishing, a major food source for the native tribes and, obviously, hunting.  There were a few essential farm animals and he was growing tobacco.

To my astonishment, I found out where Arthur's plantation was and I think I know where he lived.  A researcher of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Cindi Schmidt,  has mapped the plantations granted on Kent Island in the 1600s.  And the Upper Shore Genealogical Society have helped me a great deal.  Combine this with my own research and we have a story.

Cindi produced a map, superimposed on a 1862 map of the landmarks of the 1600s, and I have in turn superimposed on that shown by the hatching the rough location of Conny Hall.

It is apparent that at some point in the late 1600s Conny Hall or at least much of it reverted to Lord Baltimore, the Lord of the Manor.  This was not freehold or leasehold land, but copyhold of the manor (which concept is now extinct in English law) and my suspicion is that it reverted back for want of a surviving male heir of Arthur and Alice.

But, in any event, the land of Conny Hall was subsequently to a large degree incorporated in the Plantation (later farm) called Barnstable Hill, which survives.  By the mid 1700s both Conny Hall and Barnstable Hill were in the ownership of the Gardner family.  Both passed down through that family and in 1866 (see map above) Richard Gardner was the owner (he died in 1870) and you will see mention of R Gardner, he was living in Conny Hall and I know that the Gardner family had their own family cemetery there, containing grave markers and stones from the 1700s to 1900 or so apparently.  The cemetery was allegedly illegally bulldozed about 20 years ago because it obscured the view of an advertising hoarding from the road.  I think it likely that the Gardners occupied the site of the cottage that Arthur had originally built in 1670 or so !

Kent, like much of the Chesapeake Bay coastline was obviously damp, marshy with a lot of creeks and whilst very cold in winter, damp hot and humid in the summer.  There are 59 species of mosquitoes in Maryland and in Arthur's day the freshly arrived English settlers got malaria and died like flies if you forgive the pun.  Many did not even last long enough to receive their land grant.  It was only the constant replenishment of new arrivals and the second and third generations building some resistance to the disease that kept the colony going.

So it is perhaps no surprise that in July 1676 Arthur got ill, he had perhaps been on the island for ten years - it was almost certainly malaria.  He and Alice seem to have lived in rural simplicity.  If he is who I think he is, he was about 41.

Arthur left Letters of Administration to Alice and she produced an Inventory of his goods to the Court.  Alice would have taken an interest in Conny Hall for life, but if she died without a male heir then it would have reverted to the Manor, which it clearly did as widows apart, most manorial courts did not recognize women as heirs.

Arthur had led a simple life, he had his cooper's tools, his fishing equipment, a fur coat for the winter, a knot or ball of tobacco at his death (some weighed 100 lbs before being placed into barrels - which he likely made himself)) some farm animals and, perhaps the greatest comfort to him, "an old bible".  I am very glad to have found him.

                     Arthur's Inventory (Maryland State Archives)

Post script

Conny Hall and Barnstable Hill have been absorbed into Barnstable Hill Wildlife Reserve.  The land that Arthur broke his back trying to clear has gone back to nature.  I doubt he would mind.

Acknowledgement

I am indebted to Jennifer Abbott of Maryland State Archives and particularly David Baker of the Upper Shore Genealogical Society of Maryland for their help and assistance

Mary Ginn and the Bownest family - a mystery

As I type this post the research is fresh and the mystery here like that in a Michael Connelly novel (a favourite author and like me born in 1956).

In my last post, I referenced an indirect link between the Ginn family and the Bownest family of Little Hormead in Hertfordshire - there is another, but in this case a direct link - it is one of the mysteries that intrigue me.

The pertinent year was 1614.  William Shakespeare was 50 and living and working in London.  He had less than two years to live.  In that same year the Globe Theatre (destroyed by fire - a common occurrence in wooden and thatched London) was rebuilt.

The Bownest family were established in Little Hormead and were  there in the early 1500s.  Their origins seem to be obscure.  They were a minor gentry family that acquired a property called Stonebury (it no longer stands) which like Bandons in Anstey, was what we would see as a large farmhouse.

A Thomas Bownest died at Stonebury in  Little Hormead in 1577 leaving a will (PCC)  He had a second son John and it is was clearly this John who  married and moved up the road to Buntingford (a small market town - not a parish in itself but forming part of Layston, Wyddial, Aspenden and Buckland parishes) in the year that his father died.

Now the John who interests us married a Mercy Cook in 1577.  No marriage entry survives, but a Marriage Licence does, and we know that Mercy came from Great Chishill in Essex, just over the Hertfordshire border and not too far away.  John is described as of Little Hormead.

Mercy came from the family of Cooks in Great and Little Chishill that were minor gentry, owning land there (they had a lease of the Parsonage of Great Chishill ) and owned a house called "Osbornes" but also (including the Manor of Bottisham) owning land in Cambridgeshire, the Chishills being on the Herts, Essex and Cambridgeshire borders.  Her parents were Thomas and Margery and she had many siblings namely, William (the heir) Samuel and sisters Anne (wife of Thomas Meade) Katherine (Rowley) Elizabeth (wife of Robert Wallis) and Grace, the latter was unmarried in 1584 when Thomas Cook died (Will - PCC).   Her father modestly called himself a Yeoman, but he was a little more than that !  He bought Bottisham Manor in Cambridgeshire the year that he died (sold by son William in 1592) and had a lease of Chishill Hall Manor that eventually found its way to son Samuel.  It seems likely that the Elizabeth Cook who married Robert Ginn in 1559 (see post of 7th July 2012 ) came from this family and may even have been Tom's sister and thus Mercy's aunt. The Ginns had had a connection with Great Chishill since 1554 and the Cooks back to at least 1560 or so.  We are hampered in knowing more, because the Chishill registers do not survive for this early period.

There is sadly a great deal of nonsense about the family and Mercy's origins on Ancestry.  It looks like an American researcher or two had made claims that have been replicated in publicly available trees so many times that they have been accepted as fact.  The truth is a little more mundane, but fascinating nonetheless.

There is some evidence that the Cooks did not view the Bownests with quite the affection that the Bownests viewed the Cook family.

Thomas Cook's heir was a William who had married an Alice. By his death Willian owned the manor of Chishill outright. They had several children including two sons, but the children were young when William died too soon in 1597.  His will (PCC) was made in the presence of several witnesses including his brothers in law John Bownest and Thomas Mead.  But in the background was Will's younger brother Samuel, and, in 1612 there was a land dealing that  involved Alice Cook the widow, her eldest son Thomas Cook Esq (now in Cambridge) Samuel Cook and John Bownest. Alice had sold the manor of Chishill to Samuel Cook, her eldest son Tom entering into a quitclaim (it having been his birth right). The Cooks by the time were calling themselves gentlemen, which they were of course, William taking that title in 1597.  But in the 1612 Deed (Ref 4008 Herts Archives) they described John Bownest as a yeoman - ouch - he was far more prosperous than that.

After John Bownest married Mercy the baptisms of their children were entered into the Layston (Buntingford) parish registers.  At this point John was indeed mentioned as a Yeoman and there is some evidence that he owned the White Hart Inn in Buntingford which is still there, now a refurbished house.

But in 1612 John Bownest amassed the monies to buy Popes Hall in Buckland, slightly to the north of Buntingford.  This came with manorial lands and thereafter John referred to himself as a gentleman.

The Popes Hall of John's time is long gone - it was probably thatched and of wattle and daub on a timber frame.  It may have been destroyed by fire as a lot of these buildings were - but the reconstruction of the 1700s is there still (below).  I drive past quite often.

John acquired land in several parishes around and forming part of Buntingford and he also had land in Great and Little Chishill, which I assume came to him on marriage from his father in law.

John and Mercy had several children, including three sons who survived, in order of age these were Thomas, George and Samuel.  There were several daughters, including Mercy jnr who married William Faucet at Layston in 1611 and of whom nothing more is known, Alice who married William Norton of Bishops Stortford at Layston in 1604 (more of her later) and Frances, who was unmarried in 1615 but seems to have married subsequently.

John Bownest died in 1615 leaving a will (PCC)  As he had some manorial land in Buckland there was an Inquisition Post Mortem.

By rights his eldest son Thomas was the heir.  But Tom as we shall see had done very well for himself in London, so John, who clearly knows that Tom has other fish to fry in London and does not need, let alone want his inheritance, makes provision in his will for his lands to be divided up between his sons if "God forbid" says John, Tom turns them down.

What Tom did was to enter into  an agreement with his brothers in 1616, this was to divide the lands up as to who got what, and that deed ( ref:4009 ) survives, is at the Hertfordshire Archives and is shown below and then in subsequent detail.

The gist of this was that Tom effectively gave up most of the land.  His brother George Bownest, Gentleman got the lands in the Chishills and never married dying in 1650 (will PCC).  George also seems to have ended up with the Parsonage and thus the advowson in Thunderley (not Thundersley in Essex as seems to be reported) in Saffron Walden in Essex.  Their brother Samuel Bownest, Gentleman (who marrieed Helen Stapleton in London in 1617) settled at Wyddial where he took lands.  Nothing much further is known of him as the registers for Wyddial do not survive for this period - but George mentions the couple in 1650.

But it is Tom we are concerned with.

Thomas Bownest was apprenticed into the Grocers Company in London in about 1592, he became a Member of the Company and consequently Citizen of London in about 1600.

Now Grocers were not what we think of, they were wholesalers dealing directly with the merchants whose ships had come into port bearing foodstuffs from everywhere.  And it is clear that Tom intended to make his fortune cutting out the middle man.

The East India Company (a joint stock company) was born in 1600 to trade with India and the Orient.  The Levant (Turkey and Persia) and the Virginia (eastern America) |Companies soon followed.  These were exciting times for the English merchants, they were now trading in areas of the world that had been newly discovered or closed to them before, English ships were sailing the world and the roots of the British Empire (no apologies for that on this blog!) were beginning to grow.

And they were exciting times for Bownest too, because in 1614 he was introduced by another Grocer to the East India Company, he seems to have become involved in quartering and furnishing the ships.  Soon after he was a member of the Levant and Virginia Companies.

He married Mary Ginn in London, most likely the daughter of Robert Ginn and his cousin through the Cook family as I say (see post of 7th July 2012) that same year, ie 1614, and my suspicion is that it was a marriage of convenience, for appearances,  Bownest needing a wife to help him further his ambitions in trade.  And it was that that made Bownest somewhat distanced from his father's wish he take up his inheritance in 1615, in truth Tom had no need of it.

Thomas Bownest's sister Alice Norton lost her husband.  And she and two sons ended up in Virginia, British America, soon after - one of her sons was a Church of England Minister, but somewhat Puritan. Now Tom Bownest was not only a member of the Virginia Company, but he knew a certain Abraham Jennens, a Merchant and Ship owner of Bristol, who was also a member of that Company, heavily involved with trade in Virginia and elsewhere and a member of the Council of New England, caught up in the colonisation of British America.  Bownest must have know the guy quite well because he took Jennens' son Ambrose (Jennens had a ship "The Little Ambrose|") as apprenctice.  It is my guess that Jennens or his sons had some involvement in getting the Nortons to America, perhaps also other Bownest relations.

Bownest's rise was meteroric.  By the 1630s he was a Director of the East India Company.  I know that in that decade he explored the possibility of the English trading with Japan as well as China, but turned it down as the original involvement of the English in Japan (think the book and TV series "Shogun" based on a true story) had not turned out well "they [the Japanese] do not like foreigners" said Tom, and they were fickle, the English had to plan their woollen cloth exports in advance and "one year the Japanese favoured one colour, another the next".

By 1628 Thomas Bownest had moved out of the City of London and across the Thames into Putney. there are various surviving Certificates of Settlement (National Archives) that tells us that, but he still retained property in Hertfordshire.  Putnry was a boat ride from London and the disease and squalor  I am sure that Mary was dead before 1630, though I cannot find a burial entry.  They never had any children so far as I know.

Now something intriguing happened during the English Civil War.  Because the Mary Ginn who I think married Tom if I am correct came from the Ginn/Genn families connected to Huntingdon and Ely, and the men of those families I have proved were acquainted with Oliver Cromwell.

The first English Civil War ended with a victory for Parliament.  And in 1647 the officers and many men of that army came to Putney Church for what are known as the Putney Debates - to discuss democracy, its nature and the future of England.  Some great words were spoken "the poorest hee that is in England hath as much a life to live as the greatest hee" (Thomas Rainsborough) words that proved an inspiration to the Americans in 1776.

The men were quartered on local residents or lived in tents, the senior officers stayed with local gentry for a month or so.  Oliver Cromwell was Second in Command of the Army in 1647 - he stayed at the house of Thomas Bownest !  Did Tom know him through the Ginn connection ?

Thomas Bownest Esquire died in 1658 -  he is buried in Putney Church, where the Debates were held.  He was quoted as being 80 which indeed he was, the move to Putney had likely added decades  to his life.  His will (PCC) is very informative and taken with the will of his brother George gives an insight into the lives of numerous cousins and relations.  The guy may not have descendants, but his was a fascinating life.......