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