Notes:
1.This
chapter has recently been revised .you will note that Thomas’s wife‘s
name as been altered from Dorothy to Eleanor Bingham the corresponding family
tree in chapter five has also been altered accordingly, these alterations are
due to the fact that I have found that the source of my original
information
has proved
to be suspect so I have reappraised this section and based it upon my original
research notes.
2. Some confusion can be caused in
these later years as to families place of abode , this was due to the fact,
that the churches of Hilton, Buckland Newton, and Mappowder being so close together. Did from time to time over the
years transfer the ceremonies of
weddings christenings and funerals with
each other .
The reason
for this being, that at times being very small villages, that they did not have
sufficient congregations to support a
rector of their own. This pattern still appears to be the case at the present
time.
Thomas
of
Buckland Newton
Born
1651
Married
Eleanor Bingham 1678
Thomas
appears inherited the
Biggest
part of the Buckland Newton Farm from his uncle Richard as well as a small
amount of what was left of the Hilton land
They had
five sons, these were William. Bingham, Stroud, Cornelius, Charles, Robert and
John.
Although
the Binghams were a very prosperous family, like most such families they did
have a poorer branch, and Eleanor does appear to have come from this
branch.
It would seem Thomas’s family fell upon
hard times, since on the Apprentice returns for Dorchester, they were described
as being poor boys.
They were
apprenticed to local tradesmen, and sponsored by the parish. They all appear to
have settled down in Dorchester and now and again according to the records some
went into business on their own account, and became very respected local
citizens.
The most outstanding
success story is that of John who was apprenticed as a cutler in Lyme Regis and
after his apprenticeship finished moved to Portsmouth
John IV of Portsmouth &
Chichester
Born1697
Married Mary Watts
D
c1727
Niece
of Isaac Watts the hymn Writer
After he
moved to Portsmouth he appears to have combined his skills as a cutler with
that of silversmith, and he started his own business, and he became quite
prosperous.
He had a son also named john, who later lived
in Chichester and between them they set-up the Portsmouth and Chichester Bank.
John the son afterwards moved to Dorking in
Surrey and started a branch of the Bank there; he also was a founding member of
the Presbyterian Church in the town.
Johns move to the town of Dorking was the
beginning of the” Surrey “branch of the family:
To carry
on the subject of apprentices I have included the following report on the
behaviour of apprentices at a slightly earlier date, than that which our
subjects were learning their trade.
Indentures were a legally binding document to
be signed by either the boys parents or legal guardian, and as a lot of these
apprenticeships were sponsored by the parish as I mentioned earlier, there was
a clause in their agreement to the effect that they should regularly attend
church, if not they would be brought before the justices to answer for their
wrongdoings.
One of the subjects mentioned in this
document, a member of our family was not in the strictest sense an apprentice,
but a servant whose parents, probably
had to sign a similar binding agreement.
Extract from
published transcript of Dorchester Borough records: 1634
The young people were a constant worry. They were drinking
too much, and this led them into many other kinds of trouble. Drunk or sober,
they were all too likely to miss church on Sundays, or to misbehave when they
got there. Many things besides
Mr White's sermons beckoned them in the spring or summertime.
Young Michael Colliford spent a Sunday afternoon picking nuts, 'till six of the
clock'. Andrew Fooke and Robert Gillctt went with their sweethearts to
Bockington 'to eat milk and cream, Fooke gallantly paid Katherine Goodfellow's
fine for missing church. There were some incorrigible absentees. The servants
Anne Chaldecote and Margaret Richardson were well known to be 'continual slack
comers; Thomas Tanner, a brewer's apprentice, missed five Sundays in a row.
Trouble during church services was almost usually the fault of
noisy young people. The sidesmen were supposed to keep them in order a 1634
case notes, how they 'passed forth and came in to view such as were disorderly,
but their pomposity was
likely to provoke youthful ridicule. John Hooper, a butcher's
apprentice, sat 'with his hat on his head and laughed and flouted' at them as
they paraded around the church. On some Sundays the sidesmen must have been
busy. Giles Morey stuffed dirt down the neck of William Pouncey, and Richard
Hoskins spat at one of the other boys; Henry Greene was charged with 'laughing
and talking and walking up and down. There was always a good deal of unseemly
whispering and jostling, and it sometimes got out of hand. During one sermon in
1634, epithets like 'lousy rogue' and boys from quite respectable families
exchanged ‘lousy bastard’; young George Allambridge bit Lawrence Derby in the
back. On a later Sunday John Hoskins was seen to 'pull Richard Butler out of
his place and strike him a box in the ear'. The penalty for such juvenile hooliganism
was usually a whipping.
I
have not yet been able to trace the wrongdoer on our family tree.
William V
Also
married a Eleanor
Born
1679
Died
1733
One son Robert, was the only result of this
Marriage which was probably due to the fact that any others that were born,
could have died in infancy. The intriguing aspect is that if he had not
survived into adulthood, the entire Dorset branch of the family as it is today
would never have existed.
We
now go to Robert to continue the Dorset line Home