13. FUYN

JOHN FUYN  and ?WYLMOTT (13)

 

JOHN FUYN is the first of this unusual surname to appear in a Rose Ash register which begins in 1591. In Devon, the name is chiefly found in the north of the county. Variations include Fuyan, Fuin, Fuine, Fuinge, Fuen, Fuens Fuins, Fuing, Fuings and Fewings. In the 17th century the F was often written as ff. The meaning of the name has not yet been found.

John’s first known son, Abraham, became a weaver, so perhaps this was John’s occupation.

Rose Ash [1]

John had a child christened in Rose Ash in 1592, nine years before the death of Elizabeth I. Since this was not his first child, John may have been born soon after 1558, when she took the throne, or even earlier, in the reign of her sister Mary Tudor.

Rose Ash is a North Devon village on high ground 6 miles SE of South Molton.

 

?WYLMOTT. There is a burial for Wylmott ffuyn in 1602, followed by a seven-year gap in the ffuyn baptisms. She is not said to be John’s wife, but since there appears to be no other family of this name in Rose Ash, and one of John’s daughter’s was named Wilmott, it is probable that she was.

 

The couple seem to have had children before 1591, when the register begins. In 1604 there is a burial for their daughter Poliner, whose baptism is not recorded in this register . It is also quite possible that they had a son John, born in the 1580s.

We know of four children baptised in Rose Ash in the last decade of the 16th century.

Baptism. Rose Ash.
1592  Fuyn, Abraham  s. of John  Apr 14
1593(4)  ffuyn, Oliver  s. John  23 Jan
1597  ffuyn, Johan  d. John  23 Oct
1599(1600)  ffuyn, Wilmott  d. John  14 Jan

Nine months before Wilmott was baptised, there is a burial.

1599  ffuyn, John  2 Apr

Since there only appears to be one family of this name in the parish, this could be John’s father. Or it could be that Wilmott was born posthumously and that this is John himself.

There is a similar doubt about the next burial.

1602  ffuyn, Wylmott  25 Apr

This is not the child Wilmott, who grew up to marry in 1621. It could very well be her mother, or possibly her grandmother.

Two years later there is another burial.

1604  ffuyn, Poliner  d. John  22 Jun.

The likelihood is that this is an older daughter, born before the register started.

The ffuyn christenings begin again in 1609, after a gap of nearly ten years.

Baptism. Rose Ash.
1609  ffuyn, Katherine  d. John  24 Dec

If it was John’s father who died in 1599, and his wife in 1602, then this could be the child of his second marriage. More probably, this John is his son, born sometime in the 1580s.

There are no further baptisms in Rose Ash for children of John ffuyn.

 

Their son Abraham began a family in Rose Ash in 1615. In a document of 1634 he is listed as ‘Abraham Fewen of Roseaish, weaver’. He and ten other men had bought tenements in ‘the manor of Roseaishe’ and covenanted to share the payment of a 34s rent in proportion to their holdings. Abraham is the only one of these eleven who is not a yeoman. This may indicate that craftsmen formed a small minority of the Rose Ash community compared with farmers. A more probable reason is that few craftsmen could afford to own land, and Abraham was more prosperous than most. His name comes last of the eleven, which probably means that he paid the smallest share.

In 1618 his sister Johanna married Anthonie Zeale alias Eames, who may be an ancestor of Mary Zeale born half a century later, and thus of another branch of the Sampson family.

Oliver married in 1620 and Wilmott in 1621.

 

[1] https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/372270737375_/Postcard-Rose-Ash-near-South-Molton-Devon-thatched.jpg

 

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