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Previous Chapter 13.A : A link back to Wotton?

Section 13 : Around Sherston

Chapter 13.B

John of Sherston

Sherston is a village in western Wiltshire where it borders on Gloucestershire. From at least 1641 there are Brush families in and around Sherston in both Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. This chapter looks just at John, his son and a property but there were some other Brush appearances during the same period, covered in chapter 13.C .

In 1641 the Wiltshire Inquisitiones Post Mortem mention, in passing, a John BRUSH, broadweaver of Sherston Magna, as bringing a "sortia" of wood to Giles James from Silkwood, Sherston. In the previous chapter I dscuss the possibiity that John might have come from Wotton under Edge in Gloucestershire.

The next known BRUSH reference is in 1649 which we will assume { though,as ever, this may not necessarily be the case} to be to the same John "broadweaver of Sherston Magna" recorded in 1641. John BRUSH, a weaver of Willesley, pays 8 pounds and ten shillings to George Noade, husbandman of Westonbirt for a "messuage or tenement" (house and outbuildings) , orchard, garden, a one acre close of meadow land and half an acre of arable land. The plot of arable land is part of a Common Field called the north Field and is from the other parcel of land which is "neare adjoining to Westionbirt".

Willesley is a hamlet within Sherston parish - right on the north western boundary where it joins to Westonbirt which is a separate parish within Gloucestershire.

This purchase is interesting on several counts. The deed of 1649 is just one part of a sequence of documents recording the ownership of this landholding over a period of years . From a family history perspective it firmly establishes John as falling within the yeoman class. £8-10-00 was a [ good sum - comparators] . The amount of land is very small by agricultural standards. It is not enough land to support a family - it is more than a garden but is not a field.

Cost of things in 1625: http://web.archive.org/web/20110426174649/http://www.littlewoodham.org.uk/research/mark.htm Money websites : http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/current/howmuch.html

However the property was not being purchased by John as a family home. It was subject to a 99 year lease (lease for three lives) which had been granted to Nicholas Goodenough and would therefore seem to have been a property investment though it is unclear who gets the rents while the lease subsists. The Goodenough family is mentioned in the Guide to Sherston's parish church, The Church of the Holy Cross, as an established Sherston family

Nor did John take the property in his own name and for his own benefit. The house and land was to be held by trustees for the benefit of his son, John the Younger. The trustees were Nathaniel Deverell of Wilsely (sic), a yeoman, and William Shrewsbury, a clothier of Wortley in the parish of Wotton under Edge - which is two interesting coincidences for one person. The land being put into trust lay between two field sections of Thomas Deverell who is presumably a relative of Nathaniel. The document is a "feoffment of property" executed only by Noade rather than an Indenture. At one time, a century earlier, the trust or use was being used as a device to enable property to be passed to younger sons who would not get property by inheritance but it is unclear why it should be used at 1649 when it was possible for a father to determine by his will that part of his estate should not pass to the eldest son.

Most of the material from this period is about John but there are isolated references to others with the BRUSH name as discussed further in chapter 13.C . In 1657 - first birth at Sherston of child of William and Elizabeth.

Eleven years after the purchase of the Westonbirt property, in 1660, the property is conveyed to John F8, the younger, the son of John F3 by an indenture. [ check if the reference to being a broadweaver of Sherston is really to John F8 or to John F3] If we assume that this occurs on or soon after his 21st birthday when he becomes of age and able to hold property in his own name then this puts his birth c.1639 . If when John F3 was 40 - maybe older than we would normally assume.assume but perfectly possible My father's notes identify John F8's mother,the wife of John F3, as Susanna [ how and why? Any references other than her death in 1669? - did this describe her as John's wife?] THIS COULD FIT WEL WITH JOHN AND ALICE OF STRATTON/SOMERFORD KEYNES In 1668 John F8 buys an additional acre of arable land for £5, described as being in the "Common Field of Willesley". He is now described as being of Didmarton, which is a separate parish, but just a couple of miles down the Bath road from Willesley. Although land prices may have risen since 1649 the comparison with the price paid for the house, meadow and half an acre makes me wonder if the earlier transaction with its trust arrangement was a "soft" family deal - could the "vendor" George Noade have been for example the father of Susanna? Assuming that the main Willesley property was still let ( there was years left of the original 99 year lease) was this also purchased as an investment? [ the 1668 purchase is made from Philip Sebourne ( a family name which incidentally makes many appearances in the Wotton registers|) Had previously also owned the land bought from Noade. In that earlier deed he is identified as a goldsmith. Later Philip BRUSH the goldsmith??? ] In 1669 Susanna dies and is buried at Sherston. Was she the wife or widow of John F3?

In 1662 a John BRUSH "of Shireston" (which is believed to be Sherston) married Marie PAIN "of Didmarton" at Ashley in Gloucestershire (1) (just a few miles 9 miles NE of Sherston, on the other side of Tetbury). Purely as an aside; I wonder why John and Marie went over to Ashley to get married? Was it Marie's family parish even though she was now living (as a servant?) in Didmarton?

Sara, daughter, of John and Mary BRISH was baptised in February 1670/1 at Didmarton (This is indexed incorrectly in Ancestry as 1637). Nothing more is known of Sara.

Apparently the Bishop's transcript; just two entries in the year.

It seems clear that this John is not the same man as John F8, as discussed below. Nor, probably, John senior F3. So we will designate him F7 and speculate that he was a cousin of John F8.

On 4 April 1676, at Holy Cross Church , Sherston an Ann BRUSH F9 marries Timothy Deveral. We have no indication exactly who Ann was. She could be a sister of John F8 and if she was born five years after John in, say, 1644 this would make her 32 at marriage. There is however a possibility that she was a cousin . Given the vagaries of 17th century spelling it seems highly likely that husband Timothy DEVERAL is related to Nathaniel DEVERELL who was one of the trustees for John F8's property and Thomas DEVERELL who owned the land next to the Willesley property. There was a DEVERELL family living around this time in the Charfield area - close to Wotton under Edge .

In or before March 1677(8) John F8 marries Margaret Hillier and executes a marriage settlement of the Willesley property with her father Francis Hillier. The settlement document dated 21 March 1677(8) refers to the marriage as already having been solemnized. Francis Hillier pays John an unspecified amount of money in return for which John transfers [ all his property in Sherston/Willesly ] to Francis to hold as trustee. Francis is to hold the land for the benefit of John during his lifetime, then for the benefit of Margaret if she survives him and then for the benefit of John's heirs. The intent is to protect the interests of Margaret and of her children.

Three months later on 4 June 1677 a John dies and is buried the following day in Sherston. This short sentence is quite an unusual one; from records of this period we very rarely know the date of death as well as the date of burial. Another John is buried in nearby Tetbury in 1679. We do not know which of the Johns these were. As well as the three mentioned already, there was a fourth John F24 who had been born in 1661 - a son of William of Dufton.

But on 5th February 1680 Francis HILLER, widower, marries Mary, widow, at Westonbirt. Which suggests that it was John F7 who died in 1677 or 1679. This entry has been shown as a marriage to Mary BRUSH in several editions of this history but that is not entirely clear. Ancestry index it as Mary BRITH but from the spelling on the same page of 'parish' it is clearly Mary BRISH, as was the entry at the birth of Sara. This would not be the only time in this history when BRUSH and BRISH are mixed up.

The registers of Westonbirt also record the baptism on 20th February 1680(1)of Anne the daughter of Mary Brish "of Dufton" and "the reputed child of William Alloway of Luckington in Wiltshire". Desite the coincidence of names and timing this would seem to relate to Mary the daughter of William of Dufton (rather than to the widow of John) who later marries Samuel Wallis in Westonbirt in 1687.

It is tempting to assume that Francis the widower is the same man as Francis the father of Margaret. But that appears not to be so.

What do we make of these facts and how might they hang together?

The Hillier family are mentioned in the Guide to Sherston church as having tombs in the churchyard, rather than mere headstones, and the family continues to farm in Sherston today - over three centuries later. There are also plenty of Hillier references in the Westonbirt registers and in nearby Tetbury.

A Francis Hillier dies in Tetbury in 1685 - but unfortunatly for our story he names his wife as Margaret - a marriage from 1677?. However, there is a set of documents from 1690/1 relating to the less substantial estate of a Francis Clarke 'als' [alias?] Hiller or Hillier of Westonbirt. The widow is named as Mary which fits well with the 1680 marriage.

But where the alternative name of Clarke fits in I have no idea. But it is not the only reference to this dual name. There is for example a 1660 reference to a William Clarke als Hiller. The fascinating article referred to in chapter 13x mentions in a footnote that the Clarke and Hiller families were related by marriage. It also records how insular the Westonbirt world were. "Between 1596 and 1691 there were fifty-one marriages at Westonbirt, involving persons with only sixtytwo different surnames." Many of those names also appear in the records of the surrunding villages.

What are the possibilities? Mary cannot be the widow of John F8 as he and Margaret are still alive and having chidren in the 1680s. It seems probable that Mary the widow was Mary Pain who had married John F7. But she could also be the older widow of John F3 or of another unknown BRUSH.

John and Margaret

John F8 and Margaret (nee Hillier) seem to have had 10 children of whom at least 3 died while still infants . [ FWB lists eight - one of whom is unnamed - but in his will of 1724 (buried 1725) John leaves money to 7 children and since at least three died young … ]

unnamed son bap sher 30 mar 1684; https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/61187/images/45582_263021009496_1184-00012

One of these entries is the death of Giles in 1685. The name Giles appears only a very few times in the BRUSH history. The others are from Tewkesbury and Brockworth a century earlier. The register entries we have up until 1685 are at Sherston. Did John F8 return from Didmarton to Sherston after his father's death?

The next entry occurs in 1686 at Westonbirt. There are two copies of this register, presumably the register itsef and the bishops transcript. One shows the 1686 baptism as Sarah, the other as Hester. The register itself shows Hester and the transcript is presuably careless copying. There are four baptisms on the page and two of the others are also Sarah.

Of the surviving children there were two sons, JohnF29 and Richard F35, and two daughters; Hester (of whom we know nothing more except a brief mention in the story at chapter 13.x ) and Margaret who marries John BEALL in Sopworth, Wiltshire in 1705(6). Sopworth is the adjoining parish, about a mile and a half west of Sherston and Willesley. Since the convention ( though not a universal practice) is that daughters marry in their family parish does this mean that John and Margaret had moved from Willesley/Westonbirt sometime after 1686? On balance, probably not; both Margaret and John F8 are later buried at Westonbirt in 1717(8) and 1725 respectively.

We do not know when Richard was born ( sometime around 1680? ) but he marries Mary EDWARDS in 1713 at Hawkesbury in Gloucestershire. Again, the family is not travelling very far - less than five miles south-west from Willesley and they appear to remain in Hawkesbury. We know of only one child, Richard F45, baptised at Hawkesbury in 1714.

In 1736 Richard F35 and Mary seem to fall on hard times. Just to illustrate the erratic nature of spelling in official records the name appears as BRUSH, Brish and Briche. [ vestry minutes detail ]

The existence of the oldest son John F29 appears only from legal documents concerning the family property at Willesley and it appears that he had died before 1748. There are references in the Churchwardens accounts at Sherston which could refer to him ( but could refer to his [cousins] John F24 or JohnF43) and he was presumably still alive in 1736/7 when his younger brother Richard was in need of parish funds ( and presumably had not therefore acquired the family property ).

Richard F35 has several dealings with the Willesley land in the period 1748 to1753 but at that point the land is [ transferred ] to a Harry Witts for £100 at which point the remaining connection with Willesley is broken.

Both in 1735 and 1748 and to 1753Richard is referred to in the deeds as "Yeoman or Upton, par Hawkesbury".

His son Richard F45 marries in Hawkesbury in 1736, to Sarah RUSSELL but there is no record of any children and Richard F45 dies in 1747(8) age 33. A family tree on Ancestry shows Richard and Sarah having a daughter Mary born c.1738 at Hawkesbury who marries Nathaniel Tandy at Hawkesbry in 1759.

Richard F35 survives his son but dies, at Hawkesbury in 1754. What happens to the £100 he got the year before from Harry Witts and the rest of his estate we do not know - his surviving daughter(s) Hester and/or Margaret?.

This marks the end of the BRUSH lines descending from John F3, 155 years after the suggested birth date of 1599.

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