22. CARY-BOZON

Sampson  Tree

 WILLIAM CARY and MARGARET BOZON (22)

 

SIR WILLIAM CARY was the elder son of Sir John Cary of St Giles on the Heath, north of Launceston, and Philippa Archdeacon. He was born in 1300.

His mother died when he was 3 and his father the year after. His grandfather had died in 1303. The number of deaths around that time suggests a possible outbreak of plague.

William inherited the Cary estates while still an infant, though he would have had to wait until he came of age before taking possession of his inheritance.

The Carys had been based in Devon since at least 1198, and have no connection with Castle Cary in Somerset.[1]

 

MARGARET BOZON. Alternative versions of her name are Marguerite and Bozume. Her father was Richard Bozon of Clovelly. William and Margaret’s son John is said to have purchased the manor of Clovelly later in the 14^th century. We presume it was previously in the hands of Margaret’s family.

Her mother was Margaret Chappis, from a Clovelly family.

She was born around 1304 in the final years of Edward I’s reign and lived the rest of her life under Edward II, dying just as Edward III came to the throne.

As far as we know she was an only child.

Clovelly is a picturesque fishing village straggling down the cliffside in North Devon, 11 miles west of Bideford.

The lords of this manor were unusual in having the right to inflict capital punishment.

 

Before the two were adults, famine struck Europe in 1315. Failed harvests because of cold winters and wet summers caused millions to die of starvation, while cattle perished from murrain. Acute hunger brought a wave of crime, infanticide and even cannibalism.

1315 famine and cattle disease [1]

 

William and Margaret survived this to marry in 1324, in their early 20s. Margaret is sometimes said to have married Andrew de Yelverton of Rackheath in Norfolk, but this is a confusion with another woman of that name.

 

They had one son, John, born in 1325.

 

Margaret died in Bristol in 1327, aged 23. We do not know what her connection was with this town.

 

William died in 1330 in Bideford, aged 30. It may have been business in Clovelly that took him to North Devon.

 

The two did not live long enough to see the Black Death that devastated the country in 1348-9.

 

Their son John inherited the Cary estates at the age of 5, in a similar way to his father’s early acquisition of them.

 

[1] http://www.advsolutions.com/carey/castlecariresearch.htm
[2] https://britishfoodhistory.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/wittenburg-bible.jpg