Ancestry Pre Parish Records

Route 1: My oldest recorded ancestor – ‘John of Penkestle’, father of Nicholas, possibly son of Robert

The Dissolution of the Monasteries, 1536-1541, led to the destruction of parish records.  Nicholas (b1568) is the last ancestor for whom we have a baptism record on which a father, John, is named.  I have >90% confidence that Nicholas is my ancestor and 95%-99% confidence that his descendents are my ancestors.  I can only be 60% confident about which John who was living in the parish at the time is Nicholas’ father.  No records exist for John’s birth but through a process of triangulation, acccounting for all contemporaneous John Sweets – using taxation, muster rolls, baptisms, marriages, deaths – I have built a life story which supports the most probable candidate.  Mention of a 3-lives lease at Penkestle also helps to strengthen his claim.

I’ll call him “John of Penkestle” to help differentiate him.  John of Penkestle was born between 1500-1519, appears in the 1535 and 1569 muster rolls.  The age for a muster was 16 to 60 years old.  At 16 he had no skill listed (e.g. archer). 

Records refer to a “John of Penkestle”, a farm within a stone’s throw of Lords Park Farm, on Bodmin Moor.  My ancestral Sweet family remain linked to Penkestle until the 1700s.  William (1608) married Mary Coyler, in what is referred to as Coyler’s Tenement at Penkestle.

There are other Sweets who are “generational” contemporaries and are likely to be siblings or cousins to John of Penkestle.  Some or all (Nicholas, Raphe, William, Richard, Stephen, Thomasine) may be descended from:
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Robert b1470-90s, 1525 subsidy roll, 1535 muster roll, archer
Stephen b1480s, 1522 military survey
or William b1470-80s, 1522 military survey, 1525 subsidy roll  

They are all linked by the Foweymore muster rolls, lease / tenancy records, St Neot parish and family connections between wives (marrying women within the same family – Reed, Rowe, Parnall, Tapprell, Cowlinge, Goord).  My preferred candidate for father of John of Penkestle is Robert Sweet because of the timing and length of a legal dispute relating to Tredawle Moor between Robert and John.

John of Penkestle’s contemporaries, potential siblings or cousins

Route 1: Nicholas & Elizabeth Cowling
My 10X GGP born in Elizabeth I’s reign

My 11XGGF, John of Penkestle, married a woman called Elizabeth some time between around the 1540’s.  They are likely parents of John b1549, Jane b1555, Stephen b1557, Bennet b1560, Maryn b1563, Nicholas b1568, Thomas b1571 and Orphew b1573. Elizabeth died in 1573, probably in childbirth (Orphew). They also had at least 1 child who died in infancy, Pasca (d1570) and she may have been Nicholas’ twin sister.  All the children were born in St Neot parish where Penkestle Farm was located.

John of Penkestle may have relied on his eldest daughters Jane (13) and Maryn (10) to raise 3 year old Orphew, 4 year old Thomas and my 10X GGF, 5 year old Nicholas, even as they grieved the loss of their mother. I have no record of Jane marrying but a Maryn married Cleere Gourd in 1584.  More of them later…

My 10X GGF, Nicholas, married Elizabeth Cowling in 1603 in St Teath.  They are parents to my 9X GGF William (b1608)  who married Mary Coyler in 1629.  

As with Nicholas’ own mother, his 1st wife Elizabeth Cowling dies in 1621, shortly after giving birth to Elizabeth in 1620 who also dies in 1621.  They lost several other children – Edward 1606, Edward 1612, possibly Jone or Jane too.

After Elizabeth Cowling died in 1621, Nicholas was left with William (b1608) who was old enough to look after himself, Charis (b1618) and Thomasine (b1620) who were still too young to be left (aged 3 and 1 respectively).  So Nicholas married Grace Pulpe in 1625 in St Neot.  She was considerably younger than him – by now he was 63, she was 22.  She is cited as a widow in 1659, which indicates Nicholas’ likely time of death.  Grace had 2 children from Nicholas – Thomas (b1625) and John (b1626). 

Route 1: William & Mary Coyler
9X GGP living through Civil War

William had to adapt to the arrival of his father’s very young wife, Grace, who was only 9 years older than him, and in addition, the arrive of 2 new half siblings, both male.  

William’s life would have revolved around the farmstead where his father held a 3-lives lease, which William was destined to inherit.  He cemented his right of tenancy in Penkestle and may have expanded his or the family’s share of the property by marrying Mary Coyler of Coyler’s Tennement, Penkestle, in 1629 (in St Neot Church).  William then held a 3 lives lease with 1 life remaining after his own, for a portion of living space and land at the property which he then handed down to his son John (b1629), but he may also have appended a new 3 lives lease to the property through his marriage to Mary.  Click on William’s records to see a map of the farmsteads known to be occupied by Sweet ancestors.

William appears in Hearth Returns in 1664, alongside his son John, but there appear to be no protestation returns (1641) for his generation in St Neot.  The Fowey Coastal Sweets, living in Sweetshouse, Redmoor, near Withiel, found themselves right in the heart of an infamous Civil War battle, written about by Daphne De Maurier in the King’s General.  Fighting came close to the Fowey Moor Sweets at Braddock Down but perhaps the marshy bleak nature of Bodmin Moor protected them from too much incursion!

Route 1: John & Ann Isak
8X GGP from Civil War to Tea

John Sweet 1629 was a child in the midst of the Civil War and other key historical conflicts. Civil War had ramifications for him and his father, William. Would his father be press-ganged? Would there be conflict with neighbours on opposing sides (royalists, parliamentarians) or, worse still, with their landlords? How would they manage if their livestock was taken to feed hungry soldiers, their wives and daughters threatened with rape, their crops trampled on and destroyed?

John was one of just 2 surviving children.  He had a brother, Thomas, but his sister, Rebecca, died in infancy.  His own parents, William and Mary, who are named on his baptism certificate, lived to a good age.  William died in 1674.  Mary died in 1687.  So John may have had caring responsibilities or at least had to work a living for both his wives, children and his parents.

John’s first wife, Ann Isak, is my 8X GGM.  She was born in 1612, so older than her husband John, and by the time they married in 1654, she was 42 years old.  They had just one son together, John in 1655 and she died in 1671.  Isak is variably spelt Isack, Isacke, Isake.  Her siblings were Agnes (b1610), Grace (b1611) and Francis (b1616).  Her father, Johannis Isak (b1567), married Elizabeth Ottram in 1594, but Ann’s mother was his 2nd wife, Rose Duranse (Durant) whom he married in 1606.  They were a St Neot family, so it is highly likely that Nicholas and her father, Johannis, knew each other quite well.

A year after Ann’s death, in 1672, John (b1629) married for a 2nd time, to Dorothie Rogers in St Neot.  He may have been anxious to insure his descendency against the risk of child mortality, with diseases and political upheaval all around.  John and Dorothie subsequently had 4 children – William (b1673), Joseph (b1677), Grace (b1678) and Walter (b1681).

The remainder of the Penkestle 3 lives lease did pass on to his son, John (b1655) but it had been much reduced during his father William’s lifetime and ended up expiring and being transferred out of Sweet control in 1719.

John b1629’s will, released in 1708, bequeaths: John b1655 40 shillings, Joseph ?pounds, Walter 6 pounds. He also mentions his daughter Grace and his 2nd wife, widow, Dorothie, who was bequeathed 2 pounds and 10 shillings a year if she did not remarry.  What he bequeathed to William is illegible but William died a year after his father’s will was released.  Thomas, from his 1st marriage, is not mentionned in his will as he predeceased his father (in 1683).  Also mentionned is Charles, who is likely to be his daughter Grace’s husband, Charles Pedler.  40 shillings is the equivalent of 20 days skilled labour.  Walter inherited more – the equivalent of a cow, a horse, some wheat and wool or 66 days of skilled labour.  However Walter would not have inherited a property lease.  Walter shared tenancy of Tremaddock with his brother William in the 1700s and they may have thrived well enough for Walter to get some form of education – he was a parish clerk and ‘yoeman’ by 1726.