12. BELSEY-ELSETER

Cory Tree

JOHN BELSEY and MARGARET ELSETER (12)

 

JOHN BELSEY was the youngest of the four surviving sons of Thomas Belsey and Joan Hawkinge. His home was the village of Tilmanstone, four miles west of Deal, where his father was a yeoman.

Baptism. St Andrew, Tilmanstone.
1578 Nov 3  John Belse.

The Tilmanstone register at this time does not give the name of the father or mother. We know John’s parentage because the list of Belsey baptisms starting in 1565 comes straight after the marriage of Thomas Belsey and Joan Hawkinge in 1564.

John was the eighth of ten children, but a sister had died before he was born, and a brother died when John was three.

John followed in his father’s footsteps, becoming a yeoman.

 

MARGARET ELSETER. Margaret’s parents were Roger Elseter of Tilmanstone and Christin Saunders of Alkam, six miles to the south

Baptism. St Andrew, Tilmanstone.
1580 Jul 27  Margaret Elseter

Margaret was the youngest child in a family of six or seven. Like John, she grew up in her father’s parish of Tilmanstone

 

The couple were married in 1604, the year after Elizabeth I died and James I acceded to the throne. 

Marriage. St Andrew, Tilmanstone.
1604 Oct 8  John Belsey and Margaret Elseter

The baptisms of five children followed. 

Baptisms. St Andrew, Tilmanstone~
1606 Sep 7  Thomas
1607 Feb 25  Martha
1610 Sep 30  John
1614 Apr 24  Nicholas
1616 Jul 7  Leonard 

When John’s father died in 1616, he left £10 to each of John’s brothers, but all his lands and tenements in Tilmanstone to John, whom he also made his sole executor.[1] It is likely that he had already helped John’s brothers set themselves up with farms.

In 1636 he gave his consent to the marriage licence of his son Leonard, who was then a 20-year-old husbandman living in Littlebourn. 

John and Margaret lived long enough to see the country plunged into civil war, and the advent of Cromwell’s Republican Commonwealth.

There are two Belsys in the 1642  Protestation Return for Tilmanstone – William and John. John’s sons had either died or gone to live in another parish. 

We believe that John’s father, Thomas, and his mother Joan, came to Tilmanstone from elsewhere, but John and Margaret spent their whole lives in Tilmanstone.

Burials. St Andrew, Tilmanstone.
1654 Jul 2  Margaret the wife of John Belce.

John wrote his will in March 1655. He died the following year, on 13 Jun 1656.
1656 Jun 24  John Belsey

John’s will was not proved for another six years.[2] Church courts had been suspended during the Commonwealth and only resumed after the Restoration of 1660. His will was proved in May 1662.

Although he is said to be a yeoman, his bequests are modest. He leaves his son John and a grandson two tenanted properties and a small amount of land. There are minor cash bequests to other family members. He may have already given lands to his other sons.

 

[1] https://ryders.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/9-Belsey-Other-Kent-Familes.pdf
[2] https://ryders.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/9-Belsey-Other-Kent-Familes.pdf