Introduction to typescript and index of Blockley Parish ...

Introduction to typescript and index of Blockley Parish ... Introduction to typescript and index of Blockley Parish Registers Vol: Baptisms & Burials 1538 – 1812, and Marriages 1539 –1754 Origins. In July I535 Henry VIII appointed Thomas Cromwell to be his Vicar General under the Act of Supremacy of the previous year. Cromwell's project for making parish registers mandatory was probably discussed during his first year of ecclesiastical administration. Rumours spread that it was intended to levy taxes on the administration of the sacraments or on baptisms. The latter was first on the list of grievances of the Pilgrimage of Grace in October 1535. Probably owing to the amount of discontent, Cromwell delayed issuing his injunction until 5 September 1538. Registers of “Every Wedding, Christening and burying” were to be written up each Sunday in the presence of the wardens, one of who might do the writing. A fine was payable if this was not done, the proceeds to go towards church repairs. The Vicar at the time was the pluralist Dr. Robert Haldesworth (or Holdsworth), who had left Blockley for Halifax, another of his livings, in 1521. : Simon Pope was curate in charge in 1540 and my have been so in January I538/9, and thus responsible for the first registers. There was also a chantry priest, William Cave, from 1502 until the dissolution of his chantry (within the church) under the Act of 1548. 2. On the murder of Dr.Haldesworth in his Halifax vicarage by robbers in I556, the Bishop of Worcester, Richard Pate, nominated Hugh Jones. No record of his institution is available, but he was godfather at three baptisms in Blockley church in 1558, with on entry describing him, as Vicar and is so recorded in Nash?s History of Worcestershire. Meanwhile one John Freeman had also been nominated and instituted by proxy in Canterbury, but he was deprived when Edwin Sandys became bishop in I559 following the death of Queen Mary the previous year. An obscure situation ended in 1560 with the collation of Thomas Wilson (absent as Dean of Worcester from 1571 until his death in I586). 3. Not surprisingly, the registers, then kept in a paper book, were in a mess and one Richard Hanowe seems to have been called in to sort things out. From notes probably inserted by the compiler of the present volume, we know Richard Hanowe recorded the 1554 & 1555 baptisms and the 1554 burials. It may be that he transcribed all the paper book contents onto parchment and it is probable that all of this, and the subsequent entries, was retranscribed into the present volume in I604, in the same or similar hand running, in the case of baptisms, from 1538/9 to October, 1602, and longer for burials and marriages. The transcribers left many blank spaces for entries, which never turned up. 4. This reform in procedure for keeping the registers resulted from the 'constitution' with the approval of the Queen, by the Convocation of Canterbury on 25 October I597, which required that each folio should be signed by the vicar and churchwarden on completion. This was in turn endorsed by James I?s edict of I603, with the further requirement that the registers should be kept in bound volumes – to many loose sheets had evidently disappeared. In Blockley, the bound volume requirement was fortunately honoured, but the signatures at the end of each folio are intermittent. Worse still, a number of incumbents even failed to maintain the registers which had to be written up from the recollections of churchwarden after the registers which had to be written up from the recollections of church wardens after the erring incumbent?s, departure. The identity of Richard Hanowe remains a mystery. There is no record that he was a churchwarden and there is no mention of parish clerks in this period. But a couple of the same name and of an age to have been his parents appear in the burials. Possibly Hugh Jones, was already priest in charge in 1554 and had a hand in the employment of Hanowe. 5. The volume was rebound in I746, judging from an item of ?4.I8.0 in the churchwarden?s accounts for 'binding and filling up ye registers' - filling up presumably being the addition of more folios. It was probably again rebound in 1812 during Wm. Boughton's incumbency (1794-I831), when the latter had his list of incumbents bound in and the volume went out of use, although with many folios left unused. Unfortunately, the binders clipped the margins, removing a number of dates and possibly „P?s for plague from the sides, and a few entries; and at least one churchwarden from the bottom. From 1612 onwards, it has been possible to fill some of the gaps from the Bishop's Transcripts in the Worcester Record Office. An interesting feature, unaffected by the binder's clippers, is the distinction between those dying of small pox and those departing this life as a result of inoculation. In addition to such medical detail - a regular feature in Quaker registers - some incumbents or their wardens recorded, very usefully for genealogists, age at death. Occasionally national events, will also be found - Civil War burials in 1646; plague in France in 1721. 6. Peculiarities. The manor and parish of Blockley (in Worcestershire until 193I) had been appropriated to the See of Worcester in 1332, with the Bishop as Lord of the Manor and Rector, and the parish was combined with Tredington as a peculiar. There was an Episcopal palace on the site of the present so-called manor house, which the Bishop used as a staging post on the way to and from London via Oxford and the Rectory of Hillingdon, with its much more substantial Episcopal palace. Two bishops of Worcester died in Blockley: Walter de Cantilup in 1265 and Henry Wakefield in I395. Blockley was very populous, including the hamlets of Aston Magna (Hanging Aston), Paxford, and Draycott. Dorn, Over, Middle and Nether Ditchford, Upton Old and Northwick, of which the last six wore depopulated by plague or enclosure. Blockley's rights of sepulture extended further to include Bourton-on the Hill (belonging to Westminster & Tewkesbury Abbey, Moreton-in-Marsh (or Hind- or Henmarsh), Stretton-on-Fosse and Batsford throughout the Middle Ages continuing in the case of Bourton-on-the-Hill until 1541 and in the case of Batsford until the end of the 17th Century, to the great dissatisfaction of those who had to carry coffins up hill and down dale - a practice no doubt dating back to Saxon times when Blockley was a minister with outlying chapels unprovided for burial. The jurisdiction of the Courts Leet and Baron went wider still, including Daylesford where Warren Hastings was to end his days as squire and even serve as constable. 7. Another peculiarity is that the Blockley area, along and down- stream of the Blockley brook and tributaries, has for many centuries been industrial as well as agricultural. The head of water of the brooks was sufficient at the time of the Domesday Book (I086) to drive twelve mills, however small and -mostly corn and grist, for grain and pulses had been the main product, probably continuously, since the Roman settlement at Dorn on the Fosseway. After the Black Death in the mid-14th century agricultural labour was too scarce to till so large an area and the economy went over to pasture and sheep. Cotswold wool flourished and Blockley became the headquarters of the Bishop's wool interests. Cornmills were converted to fulling and manpower, rising again, went into weaving. But by the end of the I6th century, Cotswold wool was already in decline. Cotswold sheep, which had produced a staple most suitable for broadcloth, deteriorated just when fashion changed from broadcloth to worsted, for which East Anglian and Yorkshire staples were best. By the end of the Civil War, the long decline of Cotswold wool had touched bottom and Blockley had fallen on evil days. Young men with no prospect of work left for London to seek their fortunes. 8. Fortunately, Blockley's industrial depression was to be relatively brief, for within fifty years silk was to replace wool, the derelict wool mills were to be revived and others built, and the weavers' cottages restored and supplemented, in the early 19th century, by building, along the road out to Chipping Campden. The parish reached the peak of its industrialisation in 1824.with up to sixteen mills, of which about a quarter were corn mills to feed the labour force, and other mills. The 17th century exodus of cloth workers was much more than made good, and the influx brought a great rise in the birth rate and very many new names to the parish registers, not to mention the large proportion of Baptists and other non-conformists (see below). Whilst there is no direct evidence that the Rushout family was responsible for this fortunate and timely conversion to silk, it is noteworthy that it followed upon the purchase of the great Northwick Park estate by Sir James Rushout in I683 - a City of London merchant of Flemish origin with interests in the East India Company and the Levant Company, both involved in the silk trade, and Member of Parliament for Evesham since 1661. In any event, Blockley throve on Silk-throwsting and supplied the Coventry ribbon manufacturers, flourishing particularly when the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars interrupted the import of French silks. 9. The registers also show a periodical influx of Welsh labour - about 100 baptisms in 1538/9-1699, and 136 in 1700-I812, and the burial, amongst others, of "a strange young Welsh woman" in1586. These numbers are probably an understatement, for few Welsh incomers are likely to have had surnames and probably received them on arrival. Or if they had Welsh occupational names, their Welsh identity may have been lost by translation into the English equivalent. Such unexpected names as Ponchen, Amaris and Clephat may be gipsy, though only one, in 1549, is specified: “was married James Kyncough the Egyptian" - bride not mentioned. 10. With its industry, Blockley had its nonconformists, recorded for some time as births instead of baptisms. In .1663 a Friends Meeting House, with burial grounds, was established in Broad Campden, serving Blockley and Chipping Campden, with Edward Warner, a Blockley cloth worker. As chief trustee, and Quaker registers were in due course opened, though the early ones seem to have disappeared. The Baptists built their first chapel in 1792 and in 1836, a much larger one, with burial ground, in the High Street, making over their first Chapel to the Primitive Methodists. The Baptists ceased to hold services in Blockley in 1971, and the Primitive Methodists at an earlier date, when their building became the 'village hall' (not to be confused with the later and much bigger St. George?s Hall). By 1988 the Baptist Chapel had been converted into a private residence, when most of the gravestones were dispersed. The parish register of baptisms records conversions of Quakers and has a reference or two to dissenters and Anabaptists. For names not in the parish registers, the Quaker. And nonconformist registers should be searched. 11 Treatment of Text and Acknowledgements. The typescript was made in order to retain in Blockley a working text for local reference, after the original had been deposited in the Gloucestershire Record Office. Since it is a reference document, all surnames have been underlined for ease of scanning, and indexed. Early 16th century items noted by the 1604 compiler as out of sequence, have been put in proper order, as directed, and a number of others obviously out of order have been put in their probable sequence as indicated in notes. In order to reduce the length, words in frequent use have been abbreviated following the example of the compilers, whose abbreviations are usually followed by a colon, whilst new abbreviations have a full stop. Where it is evident that variously spelt surnames are in fact the same family, they have been grouped together in the index. Incumbents' and churchwardens' signatures or marks at the end of folios or of years are noted in the attached list, together with a list of godparents in 1557 and 1558 - unfortunately not continued. All entries in Latin have been translated, as indicated in the type- script. The years usually run from 25 March, but occasionally from January to December, until 1752 when the latter system was adopted. As a result, the baptism and burial registers nominally run from 1538, but in fact only from January I539 according to our present calendar. (As indicated in paragraph 1 above, Thomas Cromwell?s injunction instituting parish registers did not issue until 5 September, I538). Dr. Erasmus Saunders' list of his predecessors written in 1722 on the verso of the first folio of baptisms has not been reproduced, since it is not very accurate. Nor has William Boughton's of 1811, probably inserted at the time of the final rebinding, as it does little more than repeat Saunders' list, updated to include him and immediate predecessors. Accurate information is to be found in H. E. Mc.Icely's Blockley through Twelve Centuries (1974; 2nd edition I984, reprinted 1988), on which much of the above account of origins and peculiarities is based. For the facts about injunctions governing parish registers, recourse has been had to Dr. J.C.Cox?s The Parish Registers of England (1910), on which W.E. Tate relied in his Parish Chest (-3rd. edition 1969); and the Revd. A. J. Soden's History of Blockley has also been drawn on. For information about the local wool industry, Dr. Christopher Dyer's Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: the Estates of the Bishops of Worcester 680-l540 has been an invaluable source, as has the late Mrs Norah Marshall?s Blockley and the Silk Trade, 1972, republished in 1979 and 1988 with a new appendix on the Blockley Mills by Mr R.A.Smeeton. John Malin, 2000 Church Wardens mentioned in Blockley Parish Registers 1538-1812 as signing the record & burials 1554 Richard Hanowe is noted as having recorded the baptisms, and burials but is not described as Church Warden 1604 John Riley & Robert Elmes Marr: Bapt: 1605 John Joyse & John Riley Bapt: 1606 John Joyse & Richard Perkins Bapt: 1606 Richard Perkins & Robert Robins Bapt: 1609 Robert Freeman & Thomas Harris (their marks) Bapt: 1610 Thomas Harris & William Dyde (their marks) Bapt: 1611 William Dyde & Richard Davis (their marks) Bapt: 1612 Thomas Dyde (signed) William Webb (his mark) Bapt: 1613 William Webb (his mark) Thomas Widdowes (signed) Bapt: 1615 Thomas Wacke (his mark) William Riley (signed) Bapt: Bur: 1617 Thomas Widdowes & Robert White Bapt: 1620 William Harris (signed) Thomas Long (his mark) Bapt: 1623 Rbert Robins & William Riley Bapt: Bur: 1627 William Webb (his mark) Robert Hayward (signed) Bapt: Bur: 1933 Robert Elmes & John Perkins Bapt: 1934 John Perkins & Arthur Fletcher Bapt: 1935 Arthur Fletcher & Andrew Lydall Bapt 1936 Adrew Lydall & Thomas Freeman Bur: 1641 John Warner & Thomas Eden . Bapt: Bur: 1643 John Warner & Nicholas Fletcher Bur: 1646 William Riley & William Davies Bur: 1700 William Davies & Thomas Widdowes Bur: 1701 William Davies & Thomas Widdowes Bapt: Bur: 1702 Daniel Dee & Francis Robins Bapt: Bur: 1705 Richard Wilkes & Samuel Cornmell Bapt: 1706 Richard Wilkes & Samuel Cornmell Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1708 Thomas Hyron & Matthew Widdowes Bapt: Bur: 1709 Thomas Hyron & Michael Smith Bapt: Bur: 1710 Michael Smith (of Paxford) & John Dawson )of Blockley) Bapt: Bur: 1711 John Dawson & Michael Smith Bur: 1712 John Dawson & Michael Smith Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1713 John Dawson & Michael Smith Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1716 Thomas Walton (of Ditchford) William Stait of Blockley Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1717 William Stait & Thomas Huggins Bapt: 1720 John Pain of Paxford & William Davies of Blockley Marr: Bur: 1721 Wm.Davies & Nicholas Fletcher Bapt: 1721 William Davies & Nicholas Fletcher Bapt: 1722 William Davies & Thomas Cormel Bapt: 1723 William Davies & Thomas Cormel Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1724 William Davies & Thomas Cormel Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1726 William Davies & Thomas Cormel Bapt: 1727 William Davies & Thomas Cormel Bapt: 1728 Richard Wilkes Jnr & Francis Robins Marr: Bapt: Bur: 1729 Richard Wilkes Jnr & John Wheatcroft Marr: Bapt: 1730 Thos Smith of Upton Wold & Edwd Davies of Northwick Marr: Bapt: Bur: Bapt: Bur: 1731 Thos Smith of Upton Wold & Edwd Davies Marr:1732 William Minchin & Richard Fletcher Marr: 1733 William Minchin & Richard Fletcher Marr: Bur: 1734 William Minchin & Richard Fletcher Marr: Bapt: 1736 John Charles & John Dawson Marr: Bapt: 1737 John Charles & John Dawson Marr: Bur: 1738 John Charles & John Dawson Marr: 1739 John Charles & John Dawson 1743 Richard Wilkes Bapt: 1755 Thomas Wilkes Bur: 1756 Thomas Wilkes Bapt: 1761 John Phillips Vicars & Curates shown as signing the Registers, with or without the above Church Wardens Henry Daniell Vicar. Baptisms 1604-7, 9-13, 15, 17, 23, 27 Burials 1615, 239 27 George Wells, Curate Baptisms 1620 George Durant, Vicar Baptisms 1627 William Tymmes, Curate Baptisms 1633 – 36 Burials 1641, 43, 46 Thomas Turner, Vicar Marriages 1697 - 99 Burials 1699 William Lloyd, Vicar Baptisms 1700 – 02 Burials 1700 – 03 Jeremy William, Surveyor Marriages 1703 Erasmus Saunders, Curate Baptisms 1701 Erasmus Saunders, Vicar Baptisms 1705 – 10, 1712 – 23 Burials 1706 – 23 Marriages 1706 7, 09 – 13, 16 – 18, - 20, 22, 23 Michael Biddulph, Vicar Baptisms 1724 Burials 1724 Marriages 1724 - 25 Francis Saunders, Curate Baptisms 1724, 26 - 7 John Price, Curate Baptisms 1728-31, 33-4 Minister Burials 1728-9, 3I-2 Marriages 1720-34 Benjamin Field, Curate Baptisms 1736-7, 40, 42 Burials 1736-9, 42 Marriages 1736-42 Richard Congreve, Vicar Baptisms 1743 Burials 1743 Marriages 1743 Jo: Williams, Curate Baptisms 1744-52 Burials 1744-52 Marriages 1744-6, 49-50, 52-3 Charles Jasper Selwyn Curate Baptisms 1753-61 Burials 1752-60 Marriages 1753 Vicar Baptisms 1762-74, 78-9, 81-29 84-5 Burials 1761-92 William Boughton, Vicar Baptisms 1796, I802, 05-9, 18I2 v Burials 1795, 99, 1806-8, 1812 The following Vicars did not sign the registers.. Dr.Robt.Haldesworth (15I0-56, absentee from 1521); Hugh Jones (I557-59, acting but not instituted); John Freeman (?I558-591 instituted by proxy but not acting); Dominic Mason (d.1562 described as 'bon custos but believed by Dr.Erasmus Saunders to have been Vicar); Dr,Thos.Wilson (I560-86, absent as Dean of Worcester from 1571); Giles Colligr (ca,1650-78); Francis Phipps (1679-81), absentee); Saml.Scattergood (1681-96); Wm.Byrche (1728-30) &- Edwd. Wheeler (1730-42), both absent as Bishops chaplain.