Sevenoaks, Seal and Ightham - 1560 to 1650

SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 JEAN FOX, C.Eng., F.B.C.S. This paper continues the investigation of Seal, Kemsing and lghtham reported in Archaeologia Cantiana, cii (1993)1 and adds information on the small market town of Sevenoaks which would have been the local focus for the three villages. In addition to showing how the available vital statistics for Sevenoaks and the villages compare with those for other villages, the registers show the local interaction between Seal and Sevenoaks in the 1640s and the number and distribution of burials of chrisomers in Sevenoaks in the 1590s is unusual. What also stands out is the apparent difference between lghtham and the other parishes investigated. There seem to have been many more small families just passing through lghtham than was the case in Seal and Sevenoaks. With regard to lghtham and Seal, the difference is likely to be connected with the use of land (pastoral farming in Seal, many more orchards in lghtham) and perhaps with land ownership (yeomen in Seal, county gentry in lghtham). As in the previous paper, all dates are given in the modem form, that is, with the new year starting on 1st January. VITAL STATISTICS The previous paper showed baptisms, burials and marriages for Seal, Kemsing and Ightham. The records for Sevenoaks2 during the same period have now been analysed and the nine-year running averages are given in Fig. 1. The totals for each decade for Sevenoaks, Seal, lghtham and Kemsing 1 See Bibliography. 2 From the typescripts of the church registers held at CKS Maidstone, Ref. P330 1/42, 1/43, 1/44. 225 N SEVEt\JOAKS - 1562 to 1654 Running Average over 9 years 70 60 50 40 I 30 -1#'¥''" 20 10 0 1566 / 1576 - 􀀌--•·􀀍 -· - .. 􀀇􀀈 -J􀀂􀀃 1586 -·- -- -J burials 􀀎 - ,.-:o,.; 1596 1606 1616 1626 1636 Fig. l. Sevenoaks - 1562 to 1654; running average over nine years. - -· til \ I I 0 I >l 7 - t>l .--±I- 0 2 0 I I 􀀁 -- -- 􀀄 I I , --, I Seal, Kemsing & lghtha􀀑 􀀒 ..... V, °' 0 >-cl i 0 ..... I °' V, 0 01 1562-71 1572-81 1582-91 1592-1601 1602-11 1612-21 1622-31 1632-41 Fig. 4. Marriages in prohibited periods. JEAN FOX TABLE 3 Marriages During Forbidden Periods period Sevenoaks Seal, expected if and villages Ightham and marriages 1561 to 1602 Kemsing had been evenly 1603 to 1648 distributed no. % no. % % Christmas 52 6.4 20 5.3 12.3 Lent 72 8.8 29 7.7 19.7 Whit 37 4.5 13 3.4 6.0 other 655 80.3 316 83.6 61.9 Total 816 378 marriage,8 only six married during a supposedly prohibited period. Two of these six marriages took place two days and four days before Christmas Day with their infants being baptised five and fifteen weeks later. If it had been of great importance to marry outside a prohibited period, both these couples could have married before the end of November. Another couple married three days before the end of the Lent period but the baptism was over 5½ months later so that a few days' postponement would hardly have mattered. Thus, whether or not a couple married within one of the specified periods or not does not seem to have been dictated by trying to ensure that the marriage preceded the birth. Perhaps, it was not so much the church enforcing the 'closed periods' as tradition continuing to endorse them. Since the date of marriage in Sevenoaks between 1602 and 1631 does not seem to have been dictated by religious prohibitions, the monthly distribution of these 373 marriages has been investigated and is shown in Table 4 as both actual numbers and as a monthly index with 100 representing the number expected if there had been no seasonal distribution. These show that the Lent period was still avoided with June and October (before and after the harvest period?) as the most popular months. Also included are the national monthly indexes for 1600-1649 given by Wrigley and Schofield.9 Comparing the two sets of indices shows that both the fall in marriages in March and the October/No- 8 Six months is taken here since, if the couple were to marry because it was known that the woman was pregnant, some weeks would elapse between actual conception and the date of marriage. 9 Wrigley and Schofield, 300. 234 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 TABLE 4 Seasonal Distribution of Marriages Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jui Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Sevenoaks 1602-1631 no. 30 32 16 32 30 40 34 27 26 40 36 30 Index 95 111 51 104 95 131 107 85 85 126 118 95 National Indices 1600-1649 Index 99 100 22 93 123 129 103 73 89 158 165 48 TABLE 5 Age at Marriage Location baptised Men Women between number mean median number mean median Seal, Ightham 1560s to 91 26.4 25.25 102 24.6 24.3 and Kemsing 1620s Staplehurst 1540s to 45 26.3 26 64 23.5 23 1570s Terling 1550 to 42 25.9 25 88 24.5 23.8 1624 vember peak were smaller in Sevenoaks than the aggregate for England as a whole. Age at Marriage It has been possible to calculate the age at marriage of 91 men and 102 women in Seal, Kemsing and Ightham10 in the period 1562 to 1650 and the results are given in Table 5 together with similar data for Staplehurst given by Zell and for Terling given by Wrightson and Levine. 11 All three locations give similar results with women tending to marry about two years younger than men. 10 Families have not been reconstituted for Sevenoaks. 11 Zell, 70; Wrightson and Levine, 68. 235 JEAN FOX Seasonal Distribution of Baptisms The seasonal distribution of baptisms has been investigated for Sevenoaks between 1562 and 1599 and for Seal, lghtham and Kemsing between 1562 and 1645/1650. The results are shown in Table 6, both as monthly totals and in the form of a monthly index with 100 representing the number of baptisms which would be expected in a given month, if there had been no seasonal variation. Table 6 also includes those for 18 Kent Weald parishes calculated by Zell for the same period and national figures given by Wrigley and Schofield for 1540 to 1599. 12 TABLE 6 Seasonal Distribution of Baptisms Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jui Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Seal, Kemsing and Ightham, 1562-1645 (3,153 baptisms) no. 283 305 362 317 283 224 211 246 238 262 241 288 Sevenoaks, 1562-1599 (1572 baptisms) no. 153 156 163 143 121 111 114 93 123 1234 138 123 Sevenoaks, Seal, Kemsing and Ightham (4, 832 baptisms) no. 436 461 525 460 404 335 325 339 361 396 379 411 Index 108 114 130 114 100 83 81 84 90 98 94 102 18 Kent Weald parishes, 1560-1599 (22,178 baptisms) Index 107 117 123 119 98 85 77 87 94 97 96 100 National indexes, 1540-99 Index 111 123 123 111 89 81 78 89 105 100 101 91 The broken line in Fig. 5 shows the seasonal distribution for Sevenoaks and the three villages in graphical form and the solid line the index for the Weald parishes. This shows that, at least with regard to the seasonal distribution of baptisms, Sevenoaks and its surrounding villages was indistinguishable from its Wealden neighbours. Neither Sevenoaks and the villages nor the Weald parishes differ greatly from the national seasonal distribution shown by the dotted line in Figure 5. The peak in the early months of the year indicates a high level of 12 Zell, 245; Wrigley and Schofield, 287. 236 -..l Seasonal Distribution of Baptisms 140 120 I M" 􀀁 100 I . 􀀁 . , • . National 80 60 -- ---- ----- --------- -7 Seal, Kemsing & lghtham . . . ,.,, Weald Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jui Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Fig. 5. Seasonal distribution of baptisms. _c,:, 􀀂 I I .... VI 0\ 0 a 0\ VI 0 JEAN FOX conceptions in the April to July period with a fall in late summer and autumn when those working on the land would be at their busiest. Since even towns like Cranbrook, with its growing cloth industry, still showed the seasonal distribution of births traditionally expected of those making their living from the land, we would expect these rhythms to be at least as pronounced in the Sevenoaks area. Age at Baptism Parish registers usually give only the date of baptism so that taking time of conception as nine months before baptism assumes that they occurred only a few days after birth. Chislet, near Herne Bay, has records going back to the 1540s. Not only is this rare but the baptisms recorded in 1544, 1545 and 1546 give the date of birth as well as baptism and a very large proportion of the infants were baptised on their day of birth - 13 out of 15 in 1544, 8 out of 11 in 1545 and all 16 in 1546.13 Berry and Schofield's14 analysis of 43 parishes in which the dates of both birth and baptism were recorded showed that the average age at baptism was only a few days about 1600 increasing to about a month by 1800. During Elizabeth's reign it was the parents' responsibility to have their infants publicly baptised on a Sunday or holy-day and the 'clergy's duty to admonish their flocks not to defer christening longer than the first or second Sunday after birth except for just cause' .15 In 1587, John Petchie of Fryerning in Essex and his wife were reported to the Church Courts 'for keeping their child unchristened three weeks and the wife brought her child to be baptised when she came to give thanksgiving at the end of three weeks'; 16 the Petchies were not an isolated case of presentment to the Essex Courts for delay in having a child baptised. In the Ightham register, the date of birth, as well as date of baptism, is recorded for twenty-five infants born between 1642 and 1650. Of these, half were baptised when between one and three weeks old with a quarter being over three weeks - see Fig. 6. Both the mean and median age of these infants was 15 days and, if this is typical for the locality and the period, it implies that about two weeks, on average, needs to be deducted from baptism date to give date of birth. 13 Cox, 40. 14 B.M. Berry and R.S. Schofield, 'Age at baptism in pre-industrial England', Population Studies, 25 (1971), 453-63, quoted by Wilson, 214. 15 Emmison, 139. 16 Essex Archidiaconal Records, quoted by Emmison, 140. 238 Nw IO Age at Baptism lghtham: 1642-1651 8􀀇-------------------􀀈 6 1//// -􀀕'-;,,:,,;,,;,, 􀀖􀀗􀀘 4 2 // //, 􀀘/· [/ ---/􀀚s;;A------ :(r>.,, [􀁐'//,- //// 1/// -'///, t//,./ v_//// //// / ,..., _. /,//: ,- . __ .- 􀁑///.,;, . . . /,-,,.,//i //1/'/1 _, -'/1/,./J '/. /􀁒 , / / /. , / .- ., ,- / ·//A , ,- , I // / /-' • · }, 􀁀. -,,.,/ ), /.'/􀁁 V/,/,.-/ //,,.;,,:,, //.􀀽 //// ,:,;,.-/,,,; 􀀾/:.􀀿>,,1 [,<, · /, V/.-;,_ :) f/ .,.. 01 0 0 0 0 0 0 <10 /G....􀀆􀀇􀀈􀀉"""'􀀊 I (/J s:: (]) lU 0 :- ::s " ,-+ (D -:::1' 3 u, th l 14-15 s· - (Q 15-16 -, ?O lU 0 􀀇 16-17 :::s 0 17-19 Q. 3 "' 3 5 ::r s:: ::/' 0 ... 0 J 23-25 ::r s lU 0) ; 25-27 􀀈 -, s -, a. -· (I 27-2.9 - 0) Pl 01 (IQ Cl) (0 (I) 0 0 (I) I - 􀀉 Cl) "' ..... 35-37 01 0 .... 0 ,, -· -, u, ..... 49-so b I I I I I -· -, ,... ::::T 0􀀗91 O.L 09􀀗1 - WVH.LHDI CINV '1V3S 'S)IVON3A3S JEAN FOX The Employment of Wet-Nurses Further study has not significantly changed the length of time between successive baptisms given in the previous paper with Ightham being similar to Seal and Kemsing and showing a similar reduction in this period when the first baby dies soon after birth. The fact that breastfeeding can delay a subsequent pregnancy has been known for a very long time but recent research shows that how effective breast-feeding is as a contraceptive depends on the total time spent suckling rather than the number of feeds. 27 The same mother can have one baby who is a fast feeder and another who suckles for much longer for each feed, in which case her period of infertility would be shorter for the first than the second, but with little or no supplementary feeding all normal babies in Tudor and Stuart times would have suckled for much longer, and until they were much older, than do most modem babies. This effect is shown by the Glover family; Bartholomew Glover married Alice Parker in 1563 and they had nine children spaced over 22 years. Apparently, none of the children died as infants and the average interval between them ranges from about 30 months to 42 months with an average of 34 months. It is possible that the two intervals of 42 and 41 months indicate miscarriages but the Glovers appear to have been a very successful family with Bartholomew and Alice living all their married life in lghtham; Bartholomew died in 1600 in his sixties and Alice lived for another 23 years and must have been over eighty when she died. In the villages studied the average time between births when the baby survived has been found to be between two and a half and three years and this agrees with other, similar, studies. Where this interval was consistently much shorter, as it was with families such as John Tebold and his wife Clemence described in the previous paper,28 wet-nurses may have been employed. The obvious example in lghtham is William James, lord of the manor from 1627 to 1661, for whom the baptisms of twelve children were recorded between 1629 and 1647 with only one burial. The average interval between the baptisms of the first ten was 17.3 months, very similar to the average interval between the baptisms of the first twelve of the Tebold children born in Seal at the end of the sixteenth century. 27 The Guardian, 7 April, 1994, reporting research carried out by the Medical Council Research Council's Reproductive Biology Unit in Edinburgh. 28 Zell, 248. 248 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 But was lghtham different from Seal and Kemsing? Although, so far, the data for Ightham has been combined with that for Seal and Kemsing on the basis that there was no significant difference between Ightham and the other two, the records do give the impression that there were a number of differences between the types of family in lghtham compared with those in the other two villages: - county gentry in lghtham, parish gentry in Seal - in Seal and Kemsing, there were families such as the Christophers, Frenches and Fremlyns who can be traced for a number of generations and often with brothers each marrying and having children in the village; this is not the case in lghtham - the much larger number of surnames for which only a single birth is recorded in Ightham compared with Seal and Kemsing. These differences are described below and the conclusion reached that there was indeed a difference between Ightham and the other villages. A large part of lghtham was Chart Land, good for neither arable nor sheep so that orchards took up considerable areas of the cultivated land with demands for extra labour in the fruit-picking season which could have brought families into the parish for short periods. In addition, most of it was owned by the county gentry so that the majority of lghtham's population would have been working as farm labourers, hired for a given length of time. Thus, men of lghtham would have tended to change their place of work, often moving across parish boundaries even if they did not go very far. Pastoral farming in Seal and Kemsing made more all-year-round demands and the land was owned by yeomen who, together with their prosperous tenant farmers, worked it mainly with help from their extended families. Seal Gentry In Seal, most of the wealthy families were prosperous, land-owning yeomen with extended families in the neighbourhood. Where the land was rented, the tenant farmers seemed to continue to occupy the same land for considerable periods. Seal and Kemsing did have their gentry: Richard Tebold, a lawyer, lived in Kemsing and at Stonepits but he also had a house in Saint Bartholomew's and spent a considerable part of his time in London; Steven Tebold was also a lawyer out of the parish for long periods; John Tebold - Richard's brother and Steven's father, was of the parish gentry and his large family was described in the previous paper. Many of the other occurrences of the title 'gent.' which appear in the parish records refer to men marrying women from the village: Thomas Nevinson and 249 JEAN FOX William Gosnoll who married daughters of Richard Tebold; Thomas Wale who married Richard Tebold's widow; Richard Polhil, 'a mercer of London and a gentleman of Otford', who married one of Steven Te bold' s daughters; Peter Stowell, of Rochester, who married Elizabeth Porter and had four children baptised in Seal although the family continued its connections with Rochester. Other 'gents' were mainly heads of small families or single references for which no details are known but there are two which are of interest: Thomas Gylmyn 'of Shoreham, gent.' had two nurse children buried in Seal in the 1590s. Francis Titchboume had two children baptised in the village in September 1615 and November 1616 but when he died 'at Seal on Sunday night being 28 May 1620' he was 'buried the Tuesday next following at Edenbridge'. Since his two children were baptised only fourteen months apart, perhaps his children were wet-nursed in Seal and the family was more fortunate than the Gylmyns in that the children survived. lghtham Parish Ightham was a long, narrow parish stretching five miles from north to south, 'the whole area resembling roughly a hen with the neck of an ostrich' being the description given it by Edward Harrison29 who surmised that, when the parish was carved out of the hundred of Wrotham, its owners claimed for it a share of the downland for grazing whilst Wrotham endeavoured to surrender the minimum amount of land possible. The long neck is part of the St. Clere estate which was part of the parish but not part of Ightham Manor - see Fig. 9. The northern part of this estate is on the chalk downs at a height of about 700 ft. above sea level but the land descends steeply from this height to under 400 ft. before rising again to Oldbury and Raspit Hill which form part of Ightham Common. South of the Common the land again falls, sometimes precipitously, to about 300 ft. at Ightham Mote. Part of the area is scored with deep ravines, one example being at Styant's Bottom. The sandy forest and moorland to the west, known as Ightham Common, was not only not easy to cultivate but also provided poor feeding for sheep and cattle so that the common pasture land was in the more fertile area near Ivy Hatch. Ightham parish consisted of a number of more or less isolated hamlets such as Oldbury, Redwell, Bewley 29 Edward Harrison, 'The Court Rolls and Other Records of the Manor of lghtham as a Contribution to Local History', Arch. Cant., xlviii (1986), 171. 250 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 Approximate scale 1/41 1/2 I 3/4 t I I miles .,,., ........ , ' I ( / I - - -✓ / I I I I \ \ I ,/ \ } \ I I / I 1 \ ' \ SEAL 1 N t \ \ 1 I I ,( i" .,. .... , .. .., ... " . THE PARISH OF IGHTHAM WROlHAM SHIPBOURNE Fig. 9. The parish of Ightham. 251 JEAN FOX ('beau-lieu', perhaps because of its good position on the fertile, high ground to the east of the parish), Ivy Hatch and lghtham Mote. The Great Houses of Ightham In contrast to Seal, lghtham had three great houses - lghtham Mote, lghtham Court and St. Clere30 whose owners were part of the county gentry. The parish records show that they had differing fortunes regarding their offspring - or lack of them. Christopher Alleyn, knight, lived at lghtham Mote in the second half of the sixteenth century with six children baptised in Ightham church between 1564 and 1672 and a servant buried there in 1564. This is the only burial of a servant noted in lghtham during the period studied compared with 12 in Seal. Alleyn's heir, also called Christopher, was only sixteen when his father died and, by the end of the century, Ightham Mote was owned by the Selbys who came from the Scottish borders where they were lords of the eastern marches with Scotland. After a long military career, the first Sir William, a bachelor, retired to lghtham Mote where he died in 1611, being succeeded by his nephew, the second Sir William, who also died childless, at the age of 88, in 1641. The manor and estate of lghtham, with the manor house called Court Lodge, was bought from Percival Willoughby of Chiddingstone in 1600 by William James, a merchant whose father had fled from the Low Countries to London where he set up in the brewing business and became a member of the Worshipful Company of Brewers. William's wife was the daughter and heiress of another wealthy merchant but William, moving to Ightham soon after his marriage, settled down as a country squire and was granted arms by James I in 1611. Of his four recorded children, only the eldest son, William, baptised in 1602, survived infancy. William (2) succeeded his father in 1627 and took an active part with the other local gentry in the events leading up to the Commonwealth, becoming a declared Parliamentarian in the 1640s like his friend Sir John Sedley from St. Clere.31 William married Jane Miller, the daughter of Nicholas Miller, a neighbouring landowner from Crouch, in the late 1620s and they had twelve children as described above (p. 264). In the aisle of lghtham church there are brasses to three generations of the Multons who owned St. Clere in the sixteenth century. William Lambarde, author of A Perambulation of Kent, stayed at St. Clere during 30 The details of the occupants of these houses are taken from Bowra. 31 See Bowra, 67, for details of his activities. 252 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 his travels round the county and, in 1570, he married Jane Multon, the daughter of his host George Multon, the marriage taking place the day before her seventeenth birthday. Unfortunately, she died, childless, three years later from smallpox and Lambarde set up a marble monument to her memory in Ightham church. The three brasses commemorate Jane's parents, her brother George who died in 1618 leaving a wife, Athelreda/Audrey who lived for another twenty years and George and Athelreda' s son Robert and his wife Deborah. Deborah died in October 1619 when Robert was only twentyfive, perhaps due to complications during a first pregnancy and Robert, although he lived until 1644, does not seem to have married again. About 1630, he sold St. Clere to Sir John Sedley whose family lived there for about a hundred years, the baptisms of three children of 'Sir John Sedley, baronet' being recorded between 1627 and 1636. Length of Time in the Village In Seal, there were a number of families like the Christophers, described in the previous paper, which can be traced from generation to generation throughout most, if not all, the period under investigation. The Frenches, excluding children born to French daughters, account for over 7 per cent of the total number of baptisms recorded in Seal between 1562 and 1655. Similarly, in Kemsing, there were the Fremlyns (accounting for 9 per cent of the recorded baptisms), Chownings and Kips, having children born in the middle of the sixteenth century, grandchildren at the end of the century and great-grandchildren in the seventeenth. But in Ightham it is unusual to be able to assemble families of two generations. The Ightham Stretfields can be reconstituted to show three generations but Thomas, who was churchwarden in 1608, does not appear to have had any siblings, at least in Ightham, and only one of his sons married and had children in the village. The Hodsolls are another 'three generation family' with Thomas, gent., and his wife Dorothy, who died in their fifties within two months of each other in 1631, having eight children of which William (the fifth child and fourth son) appears to have been his heir. There were also the Hadlows but, of the 46 baptisms ( 4 per cent of all recorded Ightham baptisms), many of them cannot be fitted together as 'families'. In contrast, in addition to the baptisms of single children, there are records such as those for the Busbys with John Busby marrying Anne Shawe in 1586 and their burials in 1617 and 1616, respectively, but no children of the union were baptised in Ightham. This difference between the villages is shown in Fig. 10 where the solid line represents the length of time Seal and Kemsing families were present in their respective villages with the dotted line for Ightham. This 253 Length of Time Families Present 40 % 30 􀀆----------------J \ lghtham \ 20 ,A􀀊-------------J Seal & Kemsing 10 11 􀀂􀀃-== 􀀄 􀀅 I 'x..-.""-rx--􀀆, 0 􀀃 - 􀀈 W M M H H 􀀉 M M 􀀊 decades Fig. 10. Length of time families present. 􀀁 􀀂 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM- 1560 TO 1650 shows the large number of lghtham families whose presence is known for ten years or less and the large number present for 80 and 90 years in Seal and Kemsing. Single Occurrence of a Surname In lghtham the proportion of surnames for which only a single baptism was recorded is much higher than in Seal and Kemsing. From 1562 to 1602, 9.5 per cent of the 613 lghtham baptisms were the only event recorded for that surname compared with only 4.2 per cent of the 1,015 baptisms in Seal and Kemsing in the same period. This difference would be expected to occur by chance less than once in a thousand times32 and seems to imply that there was a definite difference between lghtham and the other villages. With no other record of a particular name, the most likely alternatives are that either the family stayed in the village for only a short time or the record is of the baptism of a first-born child with the mother coming back to her 'home' village for the birth. In such cases where the marriage took place in the village, the surname would not have been categorised as 'only one baptism recorded' but there are a few which can be identified as 'baptisms of first children'. For example, Thomas, son of Thomas and Maria Carpenter baptised 12 July, 1649, was the eldest son of Thomas and Mary Carpenter who lived in Kemsing and William, son of Richard Thomas, gent., baptised 7 May, 1570, was the eldest son of Richard Thomas of Seal. Population Movement Zell illustrates the fluidity of the W ealden population by noting the names of fathers of children baptised in a given parish and comparing the numbers of 'reproducing surnames' in ten-year periods. His assumption is that, if new surnames appear in later decades, new families are arriving in the parish and the figures for Staplehurst33 are reproduced in Table 9 together with those for Sevenoaks, Seal and Kemsing and lghtham. The population of Staplehurst was more or less constant for the whole period implying that, as new families arrived in the parish, existing ones were either leaving or dying out. In Sevenoaks and the villages the population was growing during the second half of the sixteenth century so that more new families entered the parish than old ones disappeared. 32 See Appendix for details of the significance test. 33 Zell, 255. 255 JEAN FOX TABLE 9 Reproducing Surnames 1562-71 1572-81 1582-91 1592- 1601 SEVENOAKS a. no. of names 142 158 171 182 b. new names 81 68 65 c. bas% of a 51 40 36 SEAL and KEMSING a. no. of names 85 102 109 81 b. new names 54 46 24 c. bas% of a 53 42 30 IGHTHAM a. no. of names 61 68 80 86 b. new names 41 50 39 c. bas% of a 60 63 45 SEVENOAKS, SEAL, IGHTHEM & KEMSING a. no. of names 254 281 304 298 b. new names 126 119 100 c. bas% of a 45 39 34 ST APLEHURST 1538-48 1548-58 1558-68 1568-78 1578-88 1588-98 1598- M. Zell 1608 a. no. of names 121 119 127 107 112 118 127 b. new names 54 67 44 31 41 52 c. bas% of a 45 53 41 28 35 41 Combining the results for Sevenoaks and the three villages shows a reduction in the proportion of new names in each decade showing that a considerable amount of movement was between the villages and Sevenoaks. That a large number of young, unmarried people left the village in which they were born is implied by the number of children for whom nothing is known but their baptism, but Table 9 shows that in the Sevenoaks area studied, as in Staplehurst, married men with families were also fairly mobile. There seems to be slightly more change in Seal, Kemsing and Sevenoaks than in Staplehurst but, in Ightham, many more new names appeared than would be expected, if the population had changed at the same rate as in the other parishes; the proportion of men staying in Ightham only a short while was much higher than elsewhere. Another measure which Zell uses to indicate family mobility is the number of children of one father baptised in the parish. His figures for 256 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 TABLE 10 Number of Children Baptised of the Same Father no. of children Seal & Kemsing Ightham Staplehurst Brenchley no. % no. % no. % no. % 1 261 200 153 106 36 43 35 29 2 114 105 86 53 16 22 20 14 3 108 45 55 47 14 10 13 13 4 74 32 28 38 10 7 6 10 5 65 26 45 35 9 6 10 10 6+ 113 59 69 87 15 13 16 24 Total 735 467 436 366 Staplehurst and Brenchley are given in Table 10 together with those for Seal and Kemsing and Ightham;34 as for the two Wealden villages, in some cases the children were of more than one wife. In order to avoid the inclusion of the younger children of families started just before recording began, apparent one or two children families up to the mid-1560s have been excluded unless the parents' marriage was recorded. Some of the Seal fathers are sons of an established family, having one or two children baptised in the village and then, since nothing more is recorded for them, either dying young, not remarrying after the death of their wife or moving on to somewhere else. These figures are shown in graphical form in Fig. 11. As noted by Zell, Brenchley was more stable than Staplehurst which was very similar to Seal but with Ightham, in agreement with other measurements, showing a higher degree of mobility. Family Reconstitution across Parish Boundaries Some families for whom some 'events' were recorded in one parish and others in another have already been mentioned. By looking at three 34 Zell, 255; the records for Sevenoaks have not been analysed in sufficient detail to give this detail. 257 N Ul 00 Number of Children per Father 50 % lghtham 40 I - \ 30r' Y .. ,- Staplehurst Brenchley J I - ... - - - 20 -􀀄 .,,,,,,,., I .. . ..........,.c;_ - - -0.... ...:. • • • • • ■-􀀂..,,,,,. ,,,,, 10 I -.;:i.· - - 􀀌 0'-------------------------' 1 2 3 4 5 6+ children Fig. 11. Number of children per father. trl 􀀂 "I1 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 adjacent parishes, it has been possible to identify families that moved across parish boundaries and if Sevenoaks and other places in the locality were examined in as much detail as Seal, Kemsing and lghtham, extensions to others would no doubt be found. Here just a few examples are given. Women going back to the parish from which they came for the birth of their first child would not be identified, if one parish was investigated in isolation. For example, the burial of Walter Swan's daughter was recorded, in Seal, on 17 March, 1562, with two other children being baptised later. The Ightham records show that Walter Swan married Alice Denman in Ightham in 1560 and Margaret was baptised there in January 1562. Thomas Hodson, the first of the three Hodson generations in Ightham during the period studied, had a second son Steven who married in 1638 when he was twenty-seven in Seal where he settled and had four children baptised there, two of whom died soon after birth. He was buried in Seal in 1652. William Petley had nine children baptised in lghtham between 1580 and 1593 and John Petley, gent., had nine baptised between 1626 and 1641. None of William's sons baptised in Ightham are called John and, in any case, looking just at the lghtham records, the time interval is rather long for him to have been a son and not long enough for him to have been a grandson. Further investigation shows that William moved to Sevenoaks between 1593 and 1596 and there three more children were baptised, the youngest one being John, baptised in 1599. This John was very likely the John Petley having children from 1626 onwards; he would have been 27 when the eldest son, Thomas, was baptised. Two generations of the Petleys can thus be assembled and these are shown in Table 11. With six out of 21 children dying under a year, the figure of only 10 per cent given above for infant mortality appears suspect. However, these are the only six burials recorded for children amongst the 54 baptisms of children whose surname began with 'P'. Nicholas Hooper Nicholas Hooper's history (assuming all the references are to the same man which seems likely) shows not only the way families moved from parish to parish but also how professional men travelled over a large area in the course of their business. From the investigation of Seal, Nicholas is known as the scriptor of at least four wills,35 the first in 1574 and the 35 Jean Fox, 'Wills in Seal', North-West Kent Family History, vol. 6, 10 July, 1994, 331; current investigation is showing that he wrote many other wills in, at least, Tonbridge and Kemsing as well as Seal. 259 JEAN FOX TABLE 11 The Petley Family William Petley: baptised buried age at burial in Ightham: Elizabeth 8 May 1580 12 May 1580 <1 week Lambard 15 May 1581 21 May 1581 1 week George 22 Sep 1583 William 13 Dec 1584 10 Mar 1585 3 months William 6 Mar 1586 17 May 1586 2 months Mable 11 Jun 1587 1 Sep 1587 2½ months Agnes 3 Nov 1588 Matthew 9 Feb 1591 Winifred 1 Jui 1593 in Sevenoaks: Elizabeth 10 Aug 1595 William 19 Sep 1596 John 10 Jun 1599 John Petley: in Ightham: baptised buried age at burial Thomas 3 Oct 1626 9 Apr 1627 6 months George 23 Jun 1629 John 9 Dec 1630 Elizabeth 28 Feb 1632 Jane 22 Dec 1633 William 24 Mar 1635 Ralph 2 May 1637 Bennett 28 Feb 1639 Frances 24 Mar 1641 last in 1610. No Nicholas Hooper is recorded as attending Oxford or Cambridge in the latter half of the sixteenth century but, although such a qualification may not have been necessary for a scriptor, he may have attended one of the Inns of Court. John Hooper was parson of Ightham in the 1560s and 1570s and Nicholas Hooper, possibly a younger brother of John, married Katherine Page there on 3 October, 1575. There are no other Pages in lghtham so perhaps Katherine came from Shipbourne where they had four children in 1576, 1578, 1582 and 1585, the third a son called Robert. The next reference found to Nicholas is the baptism of two more children in Tonbridge in 1588 and 1595. Thus, it seems that Nicholas first carried out the duty of scriptor in Seal before his marriage, but continued to be called upon by some of the Seal parishioners throughout his career, visiting them from Shipbourne and Tonbridge. The journey, given a good 260 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 horse, is not particularly long, but it does involve the climb up the steep, clay escarpment between Underriver and Seal. The three wills of 1576, 1598 and 1610 were written on the 15th May, 30th September and 7th April, respectively, times of the year when the roads should not have been too bad. When Nicholas wrote William Denman's will in 1598 he was accompanied by Robert Hooper who also witnessed the will; this could have been his son who would then have been 16. It would be interesting if more could be discovered about Nicholas, perhaps by finding wills he wrote in other parishes. The population of parishes in the Kent Weald - especially those in the cloth-making region - was found by Zell36 to be continually changing and he pointed out that it is crucial to include migration in population studies of Kent, if any overall conclusions are to be reached. This investigation of Sevenoaks, Seal, Kemsing and lghtham concludes that the population of Seal, Kemsing and Sevenoaks changed in a similar way to the villages in the Weald, but that the population of Ightham changed even more rapidly. By searching for particular names in other parishes in the locality, it has been possible to build up a more complete picture of some of the Ightham families. This emphasises Zell's recommendation; where local migration was of the magnitude found in this part of Kent, if complete families are to be reconstituted, it is necessary to look at the records for a number of parishes. APPENDIX Calculation of Populations The average population of Sevenoaks has been calculated on the basis that the birth rate was 35 per thousand persons37 and also on the assumption that the baptism and burial rate was the same, in each decade, as it was in Seal. The calculations are shown in Table 12. The populations of Kemsing and Ightham have been calculated using the same method as for Sevenoaks since, as they are much smaller than Seal, family reconstitution as carried out for Seal is considered too unreliable. Assuming a birth rate of 35 per thousand for Seal, the population for the 1560s would have been about 550, over 25 per cent more than the figure obtained using the method described in the earlier paper; both methods give a similar average for the whole period. 36 See Bibliography. 37 This is the method used by Zell, 234. 261 JEAN FOX TABLE 12 Calculating the Population of Sevenoaks SEAL1 SEVENOAKS SEY/SEAL SEVENOAKS ratios population2• 3 bapt. bur. pop. bapt. bur. bapt. bur. aver. 1562 to 195 131 432 338 264 1.73 2.02 1.87 810 966 1572 to 200 104 587 393 215 1.97 2.07 2.02 1183 1123 1582 to 236 136 733 416 266 1.76 1.96 1.86 1363 1189 1592 to 161 135 666 458 322 2.84 2.39 2.61 1742 1309 1602 to 183 131 498 511 382 2.79 2.92 2.85 1421 1460 1612 to 190 138 534 502 417 2.64 3.02 2.83 1512 1434 1622 to 214 172 543 512 444 2.39 2.58 2.49 1350 1463 1632 to 231 179 590 424 362 1.84 2.02 1.93 1138 1211 1642 total 1610 1126 3554 2672 aver./yr 20 14 573 44 33 1315 1269 Notes: I. Population of Seal as calculated, Seal 1993 2. Population of Sevenoaks estimated by multiplying that of Seal by average of ratios for baptisms and burials 3. Calculated on basis of birth rate equal to 35 per thousand Single Baptisms A 'single' baptism in this context is where the only recorded event for a particular surname is one baptism. Using a x-squared test to compare the number in lghtham with the number in Seal and Kemsing combined, for 1562 to 1602, gives a value for x-squared of 16.9 which implies that this difference would be expected to occur by chance in less than one case in a thousand. TABLE 13 Single Surnames in Seal and Ightham Ightham Seal and Kemsing Total no. of baptisms 613 1015 'single' baptisms 58 43 expected if single were same proportion of 38 63 total in all villages x-squared test: 10.53 6.35 x-squared 16.88 no. of degree of freedom 1 significance level <0.1% 262 SEVENOAKS, SEAL AND IGHTHAM - 1560 TO 1650 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Wilma Picton for her suggestions regarding Ightham and her help in tracing particular families and Margaret Stevens and Sally Wilkinson for their continuing support. BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowra 1978 Cox 1910 Emmison 1973 Fox 1993 Levine and Wrightson 1979 Wrigley and Schofield 1981 Zell 1984 Edward V. Bowra, 'Ightham, Notes on Local History', Ightham and District Historical Society, 1978. J. Charles Cox, The Parish Registers of England, London, 1910. F.G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life, Morals and the Church Courts, Chelmsford, 1973. Jean Fox, 'Seal, Kemsing and Ightham, 1560 to 1650', Arch. Cant., cxii (1993), 213-51. K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village, Terling 1525-1700, London, 1979. E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, The Population History of England, 1541-1871, London, 1981. Michael Zell, 'Population and Family Structure in the Sixteenth- Century Weald', Arch. Cant., c (1984), 231-57. 263