Pedigree
of John Goien in medieval Amesbury, Wiltshire
Niall
C.E.J. O’Brien
An undated document,
written in English, from the end of the fifteenth century gives the pedigree of
John Goien. The document says that John Goien had two children: Robert and
Christine. Robert Goien died without issue and Christine married John Saucer
and was the mother of Robert and Thomas. Robert Saucer married Alice Lytelcot
and had issue Isabella, Anne and Joan.
Isabella Saucer married
Walter Messenger and had issue: John Messenger, a priest and Ede Messenger who
died without issue. Anne Saucer married Thomas Hobbes of West Amesbury while
Joan Saucer married Geoffrey Rolfe and died without issue. Anne and Thomas
Hobbes I had a son called Thomas Hobbes II who was living at the end of the
fifteenth century.[1]
This article sets out
to find further information on these people and thus bring them back to life
for a modern generation.
The
early generations
The manor of West
Amesbury was held around 1242 by Patrick de Montfort from Patrick, Earl of
Salisbury. By sale, purchase and inheritance the manor came to James and
Elizabeth Dawbeney in around 1510.[2] John
Goien lived in the area of Great Amesbury and West Amesbury in the second half
of the thirteenth century. We don’t know if he ever visited the ancient
monument of Stonehenge which lies in the parish of Amesbury. What impact the
death of Queen Eleanor of Province on 24/25 June 1291 had on John Goien is equally
unknown.
Instead much of the
information that we know about John Goien and his descendents comes from
property documents. During his life time he gave a tenement with a croft in
Great Amesbury to Alexander de Wylegh to hold for life. Alexander de Wylegh was
still alive in September 1331. John Goien also gave a tenement and croft in
Great Amesbury to Ralph le Pope to hold for life. This Ralph le Pope was also
still alive in 1331.[3]
In his lifetime John
Goien was a witness to the land deeds of his neighbours. An undated deed that
he witnessed was between Ralph the baker, son of John the baker, and William
the baker, both of West Amesbury, for a grant of 25 pence of rent which Ralph
used to get from Clarice the washerwoman. John le Saucer, his son-in-law, was
also a witness to this deed.[4]
Sometime before
November 1290, Robert Goien, son and heir of the late John Goien, made a gift
with warranty, for 7 marks, of 4 acres of arable land at West Amesbury along
with a meadow and a close to John le Saucer of West Amesbury and Christine
Goien, his wife.[5]
In 1299 Robert Goien gave a messuage and one virgate of land in Durington to
the Prioress of Amesbury.[6]
As John Goien, father of
Robert, was dead by 1290 it therefore seems that the second person called John
Goien, who was witness to a number of deeds in West Amesbury, between 1321 and
1330, must be a son of John Goien the first by second marriage or a cousin of
same.[7]
The second John Goien was married to Alice and was connected with a person
called William Goien. John and Alice Goien had a messuage and a carucate in
Great Amesbury in 1312.[8]
As said previously,
Christine Goien succeeded to the property of her childless brother Robert Goien
and married John Saucer. They had two sons, Robert and Thomas Saucer. In
September 1361 Thomas Saucer was witness to an inquisition post mortem at West
Amesbury.[9] Thomas
Saucer married a woman called Christian and had one son called Robert and a
daughter called Christian. In August 1437 these two children were unmarried and
so the gift with warranty by Thomas Saucer of property to John Marmell was made
successive to the Isabel Messenger and Anne Hobbes, daughters of his brother,
Robert Saucer.[10]
Robert Saucer married
Alice Lytelcot and was dead by October 1393. On 9th October 1393 the
trustees of the late Robert Saucer gave to his widow, Alice, her due dower
lands, tenements and rents in West Amesbury.[11]
West Amesbury, Wiltshire from the www.thewritingnut.com
On 15th
January 1428 the dower lands of Idonia, wife of Thomas Saucer were divided
equally between Isabel, wife of Walter Messenger and Anne, wife of Thomas
Hobbes I, daughters of Robert Saucer.[12]
The division of the property gives an interesting picture of the property of a
strong farmer in the fifteenth century.
Walter Messenger and
Isabel got thirteen separate plots of one acre each and one plot of half an
acre. Thomas Hobbs and Anne got fourteen separate plots of one acre each and
two half acre plots. The difference in acreage is not a problem as the division
of the property was on the bases that each side would have a share of equal
monetary value. Some of these one acre plots appear to have been originally two
acre plots. For example both sides got a one acre plot of land in Dedeforlong
between the lands of John More and Walter Paunsfote.[13]
These nearly thirty
separate plots of land of one acre each would drive a modern farmer mad. My own
farm is in two divisions separated by five miles and even with modern transport
and machines it still takes a lot of time to get round to all the jobs. To get
round to thirty different plots would like take forever. Yet our notions of the
one person farmer didn't work in medieval times. In medieval times people held
possession of individual plots, but all the differently owned plots in a large
field, of say fifty acres in size, would be worked in a communal manner. This
joint effort helped get the work done with hard working farmers and lazy
farmers playing their part together.
It is difficult to know
which plots were held by John Goien in the time of King Edward I from the list
made in 1428. Various plots were likely to have been brought and sold over the
intervening years. The marriages of the descendants of John Goien also brought
unknown amounts of land into the big pool.
In March 1455 Walter
Messenger and Thomas Hobbes were witnesses to a grant of a messuage with
curtilage and garden in Amesbury and the release of same by way of a lease for
life.[14]
The
family after 1500
R. B. Pugh in his
introduction to the Calendar of Antrobus Deeds (page xiii) said that the
pedigree of the Goien family, drawn up at the end of the fifteenth century was
“not wholly trustworthy” and the “affiliations between Goien, Saucer, Hobbes
and Ballet are extremely difficult to unravel”. Pugh gives the heirs of Thomas
Hobbes I as three daughters and Thomas Hobbes II as a son who died without
issue. My own interpretation is that the three daughters were the children of
Thomas Hobbes II.
The Goien family
pedigree made at the end of the fifteenth century described Thomas Hobbes II as
then living. By 1502 Thomas Hobbes II was deceased. A detailed extent of the
lands belonging to the late Thomas Hobbes II was made about 26th
September 1502. This extent listed eighteen plots of half acre each; sixty-six
plots of one acre each; eight plots of 1½ acres each; fourteen plots of two
acres each; one plot of 2½ acres; seven plots of three acres each; one plot of
3½ acres; one plot of four acres and one plot of 4½ acres. There were five
other named plots but no acreage figure was given for these. The grand total is
something just over 150½ acres.[15]
In modern farming this would be a good sized farm. Yet the one hundred and
seventeen different plots and not all in one area (a few miles between plots in some cases) would be a nightmare.
What the 1502 extent
does show is that in the modern Tudor age the landscape of the medieval
countryside was still visible. Many of these plots would not have a separating hedgerow.
People would know by custom and numerous law actions at the manor court where the
boundaries were. There were some hedgerows in existence but the patchwork quilt
of fields and hedgerows we see today are mostly the result of the enclosures of
the medieval open fields which were made in the eighteenth century.
As said Thomas Hobbes II
of West Amesbury left a number of daughters as his heirs. One daughter, Avise
Hobbes married John Silverthorne. By 1517 Avise and John Silverthorne had a
mature son called William Silverthorne. On 23 April 1517 William Silverthorne
made a gift to Gilbert Beckington of lands, rents, reversions and services in
the town and fields of West Amesbury.[16]
Another daughter,
Christine Feyth Hobbes, married John Ballet and they had three daughters. Agnes
Ballet married John Stephens; Edith Ballet married William Stephens; and Elene
Ballet remained a signal woman living in Baberstock, Wiltshire. On 20th
May 1526 the three daughters and their husbands sold all their property in West
Amesbury and Great Amesbury to William South of West Amesbury.[17]
The sale was made possible by a settlement made two days before (18th
May 1526). On that day Robert South of New Salisbury, Wiltshire made a bond of
£40 to obey a judgement of Sir John Fitz James, chief justice of the King’s
Bench. The judgement related to a dispute between William South (brother of
Robert) and Gilbert Beckington on who had title to the lands in West Amesbury.[18]
Before October 1538
John Beckington, son of Gilbert Beckington, filed a claim before the courts
that William Silverthorne, son of John Silverthorne and Avise, his wife,
daughter of Thomas Hobbes II, had sold various parcels of land in West Amesbury
to his father Gilbert Beckington. The court decided that such a sale was
properly made and drew up an agreement to divide the lands between John Beckington
and William South.[19]
The lands at West
Amesbury continued in the South family for a number of generations and were
enlarge by other purchases.[20]
The lands acquire by the Beckington family also continued to be held by them.[21]
The Silverthorne family
does not appear in the Wiltshire taxation list for 1545 but a number of members
are listed in the 1576 taxation list. In 1576 William Silverthorne the elder
and William Silverthorne the younger lived at West Ashton. It is possible that
William Silverthorne the elder could be the same William Silverthorne of 1538.
Also living there were John Silverthorne and Joan Silverthorne who was a widow.[22]
Further information on
the Silverthorne family is difficult to know. The surviving medieval documents
relating to property are concerned mainly with who owns the property, how much
is it worth and how much do the tenants owe to the landlord. When a family
sells land their subsequent history is of little concern to archivists working
between the land sale and our own time. Thus our present history draws to a
close until some new document surfaces sometime, somewhere.
Medieval history is
usually about royalty, great abbeys and the great barons who left behind them
tons of documents. This article began with one undated document from the latter
quarter of the fifteenth century. The pedigree of John Goien, contained in that
document, was somewhat straightforward but also difficult to interpret properly.
Yet that document, and the other surviving documents, allowed us to get a partial
look in at an ordinary family who lived in West Amesbury nearly three hundred
years and that is extraordinary. Although in the end the family severed their
connection with West Amesbury with a bill of sale that end was with a bill of
sale and not some eviction by a hungry landlord or war or plague and that is
nice to see.
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End of Post
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[1]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625 (Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 3, 1947), no. 76
[3]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 18
[4]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 3
[5]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 5
[6]
Edward Alex Fry (ed.), Abstracts of
Wiltshire Inquisitions Post Mortem in the reigns of Henry III, Edward I &
Edward II, 1242-1326 (British Record Society, 1908), p. 240
[7]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, nos. 9-16, 18-20
[8]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Abstracts of feet of
fines relating to Wiltshire for the reigns of Edward I and Edward II
(Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 1, 1939), p. 82
[9]
Ethel Stokes (ed.), Abstracts of
Wiltshire inquisitions post mortem in the reign of Edward III, part 2,
1354-1377 (British Record Society, 1914), p. 344
[10]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, nos. 49, 50
[11]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 36
[12]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 45
[13]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 45
[14]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, nos. 59, 60
[15]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 78
[16]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 80
[17]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 85
[18]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 84
[19]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, no. 88
[20]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, nos. 92, 112, 130
[21]
R.B. Pugh (ed.), Calendar of Antrobus
Deeds before 1625, nos. 107, 109, 139, 145
[22] G.D.
Ramsey (ed.), Two sixteenth century
taxation lists 1545 and 1576 (Wiltshire Record Society, vol. 10, 1954), p.
139
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