13. NICHOLSON

Bray Tree

GEORGE NICHOLSON (13)

 

GEORGE NICHOLSON. Geoffrey Nicholson was the only man of that surname raising a family in the Lincolnshire village of Horkstow in the 1590s and 1600s. In the previous generation, there is also just one Nicholson family – that of George Nicholson. It is reasonable to assume that Geoffrey is George’s son.

We have no firm confirmation of this, but in 1567 there is a baptism for a son of George Nicholson whose name is hard to read. It could be Geoffrey (or Gefphrey, as it was sometimes spelt).

The Horkstow registers go back to 1556. George’s first child was baptised in 1562, so his own baptism would be too early to appear. It was probably in the 1530s, when Henry VIII was still on the throne. He would have grown up in the turbulent years when the crown passed to the firmly Protestant Edward VI and then to the equally fervent Catholic Mary I. By the time George married, probably around 1560, Elizabeth I was on the throne.

Horkstow is a village 2 miles south of the Humber and 3 miles SW of Barton upon Humber. Most of the people of Horkstow were engaged in farming, and it is likely that George was too, though we cannot be sure.

We do not have a record of George’s marriage, or the burial of his wife. Parts of the early register are faded.

We have what is probably an incomplete list of the baptisms of George’s children. The dates in the register seem to carry over from one year to the next, finishing in mid-summer.

Baptisms. St Maurice, Horkstow.
1562 Nov  John
1564/5 Jan 19  William
1566 Apr 9  Agnes. Agnes was buried on Jul 10.
1567 Jul 1  Elizabeth
1568  Aug  a son, possibly Geofphrey
1571/2  Jan 27  Edward
On 22 Jan 1571/2 we have the burial of Jennet, daughter of George Nicholson.
And then, five days later, on 27 Jan 1571/2 we have the burial of Edward, son of George Nicholson, who must have died at birth.

St Maurice’s is one of a handful of churches in Britain dedicated to this Egyptian soldier-saint, though he is very popular in mainland Europe, for example, at St Moritz.

The Horkstow church dates from the 12^th century. In the time of the Crusades, the Knights Hospitaller appointed the vicar.

Horkstow is one of the “Low Villages” in the coastal plain south of the Humebr. It is famous for the traditional Lincolnshire song “Horkstow Grange”. This tells of a fight between the farm’s tyrannical foreman, John Bowling, and the waggoner, John ‘Steeleye’ Span, from whom the 20^th-century folk group took its name.

We have not found George’s burial.