10. BUSHELL-ROGERS

Baker Tree

JOHN BUSHELL and JANE ROGERS (10)

 

JOHN BUSHELL. My maternal grandmother was Jane Bushell Baker. We have traced our Bushell ancestry back to the little village of Monkton in the Isle of Thanet in the 17^th century.
The Bushell surname first appears in the Monkton registers in 1663, shortly after the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II. That year, there are two marriages for John Bushell. One couple is John Bushell and Margaret Fox, the other is John Bushell and Jane Rogers. Both brides and grooms are from Monkton.
This tells us that the Bushells had been in Monkton for some time. This was not just a single nuclear family.

It is the second couple that links us to Richard Bushell in the next generation.
Marriage. St Mary Magdalene, Monkton.
1663 Oct 16  John Bushell of Monkton and Jane Rogers of Monkton.

The parish records do not go back far enough for us to know their parentage.

The village of Monkton lies of the south-west edge of the Isle of Thanet, which forms the north-east tip of Kent. It lies just off the Canterbury-Ramsgate road. To the south is the River Stour.

The likelihood is that John and Jane were born shortly before the Civil War. Unfortunately, the Protestation Return for Monkton has been lost. This would have given us a list of the adult males in Monkton in 1641.

The Civil War broke out the following year, between King Charles I and Parliament. Thanet was at variance with rest of Kent in having low-church Parliamentary sympathies.
The vicar of Monkton at the time was, however, the High Church, Swiss-born scholar Meric Casaubon, who was also vicar of neighbouring Minster and a prebendary of Canterbury Cathedral. He was ejected in 1647 and replaced by the low-church Roger Stancombe.
Casaubon retired to Oxford, where he refused to acknowledge the authority of Oliver Cromwell. Notwithstanding this, Cromwell asked him to write an impartial history of the period. Casaubon declined.
After the Restoration of Charles II, the Puritan vicar, Nicholas Thorowgood, was, in his turn, ejected, but Casaubon chose not to return.

John and Jane had grown up during the war and the Puritan Commonwealth that followed it. It was in the changed circumstances of the 1660s that they married and began their family.

We have three baptisms for children of John and Jane Bushell.
Baptisms. St Mary Magdalene, Monkton.
1664 Sep 4  Thomas
1666 Nov 4  John
1673 Jul 1  Richard

These are from indices of baptisms, not the original registers, which have only survived from 1700. So, there may be other children, whose baptisms are not in the indices.

In 1671, we have the will of John Bushell, husbandman. This meant that he had a small farm. This is clearly not John himself, who was still siring children. It could be his father, or the husband of Margaret. It does, however, give a hint of his likely occupation. One of his sons became a yeoman, farming on a substantial scale, so it is likely that John was either a husbandman or a yeoman.

For the first time in this family, we have a scan of the parish registers for Jane’s burial.
Burial. St Mary Magdalene, Monkton.
1708 Dec 12  Jane wife of John Bushell

In September of that year, there was a burial for John Bushell snr. But if that was our John Bushell, Jane would most likely have been recorded as “Jane Bushell widow”.

It is more likely that our John’s burial is the following:
Burial. St Mary Magdalene, Monkton.
1719 Oct 6  John Bushell