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Previous Section 4: Gloucestershire
1454 - 1623
Previous Chapter 4.E : Early Gloucestershire conclusions
This single-chapter section is very rough and contains a great deal of speculation. More work is needed but, for the moment, it serves to flag up the existence of a number of individuals outside the main areas where there were BRUSH families.
A generation earlier, 36 years before John and Joan married in Uffington near xxx , in 1589 ( as discussed in section x)William BRUSH married Alice WRIGHT at Bury near Huntingdon. Applying the 25 year formula to him we are looking for a birth around 1564. William T503(3), son of John, was born at Tewkesbury in 1565. A second neat coincidence. Bury is about 20 miles from Stamford, and the two towns are roughly equidistant from the larger city of Peterborough. The only other reference we have around this time to a William getting married is to William G?? married in 1583 at Ampney Crucis . As considered earlier , if he were William T503 he would have been only 18 at marriage.
9 miles south east of Bury, the other side of Huntingdon, is Over in Cambridgeshire. Alice BRUCH married Thomas FISHER at Over in 1583 and the formula gives her birth date as c1563 - one year away from William of Bury. Just one more little coincidence. Or, if she had married young at 17 she could even be Agnes T16(3) daughter of Humphrey. But is BRUCH a variation of BRUSH or of Brook? ( cf same spelling at Swallowfield - see also Ch xx ) Continuing a few miles further east a Susan BRUSH marries in Cambridge itself in 1591. ( someone in east anglia - john? marries a susan so is this remarriage?) There are also some very early references to BRUCH in the area just north-east of Bedford
Moving in a circle around Huntingdon there are three further entries in the registers of Graveley. John is buried in 1600 at Graveley, Ellen buried in 1607 and Margaret married in 1637 - which the formula puts her birth at c1617 - which is frankly not a great fit with either Humphrey's marriage in 1589. If we go wild and suggest that John died 1600 was John T502 then he was about 65 years old which is reasonable enough. Certainly if John moved to the Huntingdon area prior to, say, 1570 (at which time he was about 35) with his children that would explain the slight difficulty of a brother and two sisters marrying in the same area.
Also a ref to John at Bassingbourn (10 miles SW of Camb'ge) in 1614 - more on slip ?? IT is POSSIBLE THESE ARE ALL ERRORS FOR BUSH ?? Also in 1607, a Robert BRUSH gets married at Rockingham, near Corby in Northamptonshire. Rockingham is about 13 miles from Stamford and 25 miles from Bury. There is however no obvious Robert BRUSH birth at Tewkesbury in the 1580s. If he is connected, the 25 year formula would put him c1582 as an early birth in generation (4). There are a series of register entries at Rockingham over the next xx years but these add nothing to the thread of this particular chapter.
Lastly we have a marriage at Crick in orthamptonshire in 1642. Crick is some 20 miles west of Rockingham. In 1642 Lewis BRUSH marries Frances Wright. Now Lewis is not a common name and it is one of the conveniences of genealogy that unusual names tend to run in families. Our 25 year formula, +/- 5 years puts Lewis's birth around 1594-1604. If he was just 20 at marriage he could have been baptised at Tewkesbury just after the break in the registers started but it is more likely that he was born somewhere else since the registers up to 1603 at Tewkesbury are complete .
Lewis at Bisley?
Going back one generation we are looking for a male born 1564 - 1584, who we might guess to be a son of Lewis T4(2). There are two candidates who fit: Richard T22(3) born 1570 which would make him aged 54 when Lewis married at Crick and George born 1572 leaving a 52 year gap between his birth and the marriage of Lewis. Richard seems to have a well-documented family born at Tewkesbury between 1592 and 1603. George on the other hand is a mystery; one of our 1604 loose ends. It is tempting to postulate that George, the younger son of Lewis the elder, moved east away from Tewkesbury, married at a time and place unknown and fathered Lewis the younger.
That members of the Jury is the sum of the evidence of a link between the BRUSH families of Tewkesbury and those appearing in the South-East Midlands over a 40 year period from 1589 to 1629. It is circumstantial evidence and does not satisfy the test of proving a link beyond reasonable doubt but, taken together, I suggest it is sufficient to meet the civil standard of proof of the balance of probabilities. Bear in mind the golden premise "everybody has to come from somewhere". At the very least it is the starting point for a working theory.
How might we piece the bits of the jigsaw together into a rational story? First a few rather tenuous non-genealogical links.
Stamford & Bury are linked, roughly by the main English north-south route , the Great North Road (now the A1). Stamford, Rockingham and Crick are in a rough line NE- SW heading towards Tewkesbury.
Bury is very close to, and served, the great abbey at Ramsey and Tewkesbury was also a large abbey site. Both were Benedictine monasteries so may have had links but the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII at 1540 which is 2 generations before William appears at Bury. Richard T1 of Tewkesbury was a tenant of the Abbey.
In the case of Lewis and William all we have is a marriage record. We know only that they got married in Crick and Bury; we do not know they ever lived there. John appears to have stayed near Stamford at least for a few years and Robert seems to have settled in Rockingham but does not appear to have been born there. It may simply be that the women they married came from these towns and villages and it certainly seems that the 20th century convention of marrying in the home parish of the bride also applied in earlier centuries. We do not know whether it was the husband who travelled and met his wife away from Tewkesbury or whether the wife travelled and met their husband at Tewkesbury. The three most likely links [ all I can think of] and reasons for travelling across England are firstly to get work, secondly in the course of work ( presumably as a trader, as a carrier, as an itinerant craftsman or in some sort of service with a more prosperous family) or thirdly to go and live with other members of their extended family -maybe to learn a trade, or maybe upon being orphaned?
One additional oddment is that there are only two recorded instances ( pre ???? ) of the name Lucy ( which on at least one occasion is spelt "Lewcie" ) . One is the daughter of Humphrey in Tewkesbury, baptised 1576, and the other is the da
ughter of of Rockingham, baptised .Cloth trade? See refernces to Tetbury in chapter and to the Yorkshire group Shoe trade? - where does this come from; also suggested in Bruges corresp Big rich families?
If all this is the case, and the children of Lewis move away, which John married Eleanor?
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