5

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THOMAS WIITHAM and ELIZABETH KNIGHT (9)

 

THOMAS WTHAM. We first meet Thomas at his wedding in 1739, when he is a farmer in the village of High Easter, 7 miles north of Chelmsford, the county town of Essex.

We have registers for High Easter going back to the mid-17^th century, and some results from the 16^th century. There is no evidence of Thomas having been born there.

The first record we have of Withams in the parish is the clandestine marriage in 1735 of Ann Witham to Francis Wyatt tailor, both of High Easter. This is only four years before Thomas’s similar marriage. The names, dates and type of marriage point to Ann being Thomas’s sister. This appears to be a family that had moved to High Easter after the children were born.

Ann’s marriage is followed in 1736 by the burial of another Ann Witham. We may speculate that this is Ann and Thomas’s mother.

In 1746, we have the burial of John Witham senior, whose age gives him a birth date of 1670. He is a likely candidate for Thomas’s father.

The age on Thomas’s tombstone is hard to read, but it appears to make him born around 1704. No suitable baptism has been found for him.

Whenever he came to High Easter, it was here that he met Elizabeth Knight.

 

ELIZABETH KNIGHT. We know from her gravestone that Elizabeth was 83 or 85 when she died in 1794. This gives her a birth date of 1710-11 or 1708-9. The second of these matches a baptism in High Easter.
Baptism. St Mary the Virgin, High Easter
1708 Aug 1  Elizabeth daughter of Simon and Phoebe Knight.

Her mother was Phoebe Quilter.
Elizabeth was the youngest of their five children and their fourth daughter

Although she was of a High Easter family, by the time of her marriage she had been living in neighbouring Good Easter long enough for it to be her parish of settlement.

The couple were married, not in High Easter or Good Easter, but near the Fleet Prison in London,.

Clandestine Marriage. Fleet Register, Burnford Register.
1739 Mar  Thos Whitham of High aster Essex Farmer B&
Elizth Knight of Good Aster Spr.

“High Aster”  and “Good Aster” are High Easter and Good Easter.

A legal anomaly meant that marriages in and around the Fleet Prison in London could be performed without the usual banns or licence. They were also usually cheaper than the traditional parish church wedding. They were very popular in the 17^th and early 18^th century. It is estimated that in the 1740s some 6000 Fleet marriage were performed. The practice was ended by the Hardwicke Marriage Act of 1753.

John Burnford, Clerk, kept his own register of clandestine marriages at the Fleet. He lived at the upper end of Half Moon Court, at the Hand and Pen and Noah’s Ark, next Ludgate. It is his handwriting that records Thomas and Elizaeth’s wedding.

1739 was remembered for its particularly severe winter. Rivers iced up. Farming must have been almost impossible in the frozen ground.

The Withams raised their family in High Easter.

Baptisms. St Mary the Virgin, High Easter.
1740 Jul 27  Thomas. This first Thomas was buried on Nov 11, aged 3 months.
1741 Nov 13  Elizabeth
1743 Mar 18  Thomas.
1746 Nov 9  John
1748  Jan 1  Edward
1751  Jul 14  Ann

High Easter takes its name from an Anglo-Saxon word for a sheepfold. The clay soil grew mostly wheat, beans and barley.

The mid to late 18^th century was a time of growing prosperity for Essex farmers, and for arable farmers in particular. The fast-expanding population of London led to a huge demand for food – wheat for bread, barley for beer, and oats for horses – as well as meat. Rotation of crops led to increased yields. There were improvements in ploughs, drills and threshing machines.
It was a time when the size of farms was increasing. Labourers, who had previously had a small amount of land to feed their families, now found themselves landless, and hit by rising prices.
We do not know the size of Thomas’s farm, but he probably benefited from these changes.

We know from his tombstone that Thomas died on 11 April 1780.
Burial. St Mary the Virgin, High Easter.
1780 Apr 14  Thomas Witham.

His tombstone is now lying on the ground. It has a round top and shaped shoulders. The inscription reads:
(In) memory of / Thomas Witham / who / departed this life April 11 178(0?) / aged (76?) years.[4 lines illegible.]

Elizabeth lived to see the French Revolution of 1792 and the start of the war between Britain and France that followed it. She died 14 years after Thomas, on 27 June 1794.

Burial. St Mary the Virgin, High Easter.
1794 Jul 1 Elizabeth Witham.

The description of her tombstone makes it clear that he shared this with Thomas.
The inscription reads:
“In memory (of) / Elizabeth the wife of / Thomas Witham / who departed this life / 27(th) June 1794 / aged 8(3 or 5) years / (four lines of verse illegible).

 

NEXT GENERATION: 8. WITHAM-HARWOOD

PREVIOUS GENERATIONS: 10. KNIGHT-QUILTER

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