5

Monk Tree 

JOHN EUSTACE and ROBERTA (10)

 

JOHN EUSTACE. We do not have John’s baptism, marriage or the baptisms of his children. We know from a lawsuit that he had a son named John, and that both of them were butchers in the Buckinghamshire village of Haddenham.[1]

We learn a great deal more about this family from his will, made in 1723. This tells us the names of his wife, three children, two sons-in-law and 11 grandchildren.

From this, we learn that his wife was Roberta.

From the birth dates of their grandchildren, it likely that they began their family around 1680, in the reign of Elizabeth I. They may themselves have been born in the 1650s, when the country was briefly a republic after the Civil War.

John’s will gives the names of three children: Mary, John and Rebecca. There may have been others who did not survive to adulthood.

We know that John the elder became a butcher. Typically, the Eustaces of Buckinghamshire were farmers, but this family were engaged in disposing of the stock that the farmers raised.

He was more than a simple shopkeeper. In his will, he was able to assign £800 to be paid immediately, as well as a house and land.

We first hear about John Eustace on 24 April 1699, with the acknowledgment of his copyhold of lands in Haddenham. The village is in the Vale of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, 6 m SW of Aylesbury town.

The deed tells us that John Eustace held 2 acres of land there: 1 acre in Downhill Field in Runfurrow, and 1 acre in Dollicote of Windmillhill Field near a place called Herton Lane End. [2]

Haddenham is a long, straggling village, with the church and a large pond at one end.

From the 1690s, people in this area were breeding the large white Aylesbury ducks. Those in Haddenham kept them on the many ponds around the village.

On 24 June 1717, John took out a mortgage from Simon Mayne the elder of Dinton, esq. He is described as “John Eustace, the elder, of Haddenham, butcher”.[4]

The mortgage was for 4 acres of land in Goosey Field; 3 lands in Hall Furlong in Windmillhill Field; 1a. in Johns Mead Field in a furlong shooting upon Downeway;  2 a. in Parston Hill, ½ a. in Middle Furlong; in North Mead Field, 2 lands in Hollowwell Hill, 1 land and a ley of meadow shooting upon Acknam; 2 yard lands lying in North Meads, all in Dinton; ; tithes of grain and hay issuing out of demesne lands of manor of Dinton and other lands in Dinton.

Simon Mayne was MP for Aylesbury and lord of the manor of Dinton, a village 3 miles NE of Haddenham. His father, an older Simon Mayne, had been a judge and one of the 59 regicides who signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I. With the Restoration of Charles II, he was tried and sentenced to death, but died in the Tower of London before the sentence could be carried out. His lands were forfeit, but his son purchased a re-grant of them in 1694. It is some of these lands that John Eustace acquired.

It suggests that John did some small-scale farming, as well as his butchery business.

 

John died in 1723, in the reign of the first Hanoverian king, George I.

Burial. Haddenham.
1723 Jul 3  John Eustace

This comes from an index of burials, not directly from the parish register. The month appears to be wrong, since he made his will on 1 Aug 1723.

We would estimate his age to be in his sixties.

 

He left all his household goods and £50 to his loving wife Roberta.

To his daughter Mary, wife of James Franklin, he left £100.

£50 apiece to Mary’s six children: James, John, Joseph, Thomas, Mary and Rebecca, to be held by their father James Franklin until they came of age at 21.

Another £50 apiece for the children of his son John Ewstace: Mary, Frances, Rebecca and John, when they reached 21. His son is to pay over security for this money to the Overseers of the will, George Franklin and Henry Warner.

If any of the grandchildren dies before reaching 21, their legacy, plus interest, is to be shared equally among their siblings.

John says that he bought a messuage, closes, meadow and pasture from his son-in-law John Rosse of Cuddington with a mortgage for £500. His Overseers, George Franklin and Henry Warner, are to pay back £150 of this, and to pay the revenue from these premisses, after deducting interest on the remaining mortgage, to his daughter Rebecca Rosse. This money is to be under her sole control, independent of her husband.

After her death, the money is to go to her son John Rosse. If he dies before her, then to the oldest surviving son, or, failing that, the oldest surviving daughter.

After payment of his funeral expenses and debts, his son John is to receive all the rest of his goods and chattels.

He appoints his son John as his executor.

 

John Eustace senior was evidently a wealthy man. The £800 to be paid out would be about £92,000 today, and this was not the whole of his estate.

His son in-law James Franklin is probably the son of his Overseer George Franklin, who was from the local gentry. His other son-in-law John Rosse was a yeoman.

 

After his death, in 1726, there was a dispute between John Eustace, butcher (son and executor of John Eustace senior, butcher deceased) both of Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, plaintiff, and Simon Mayne junior, Edward Harley and John Vanhatton, defendants. [5] This presumably related to the mortgage that John Eustace senior had undertaken when he bought land from Simon Mayne the elder in 1717. We do not know the nature of the complaint.

John Eustace junior continued his father’s work as a butcher. Nothing is said in the will about the family house, which John junior presumably inherited. It is likely that the widow Roberta continued to live there after her husband’s death.

We do not have a burial date for Roberta Eustace.

  

[1] National Archives: C 11/1730/44
[2] National Archives: D 63/1/26

[4] National Archives: D 63/1/24
[5] National Archives: C 11/1730/44

 

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