14. PETTY of Embsay

Riley Tree

 EDWARD PETTIE and MARGARET (14)

 

EARLY PETTYS of Embsay. Jack Priestley’s ancestry has three families of Pettys in the Skipton area. One originates in Storiths, a hamlet above Bolton Abbey on the River Wharfe. Another is in Kildwick, a village four miles south of Skipton. We find the third in Embsay, Embsay Kirk and Eastby, which were then rural townships in the parish of Skipton, some two miles NE of the town.

We have traced this third lineage back to Edward Pettie, who was raising a family in Embsay in the late 16^th century.

Embsay lies in hilly country, near the Aire Gap through the Pennines, an important trading route. It was an arable farming community, traditionally growing oats, with some wheat, rye and barley. It is closely associated with the adjacent hamlet of Eastby.

The researcher Gillian Waters has found that there were no Pettys listed in the Embsay area in 1473.[1] There were, however, three in Halton, between Embsay and Bolton Abbey. William Pety was paying eight pence rental for a parcel of land with a waste toft [the site of a homestead]. Agnes Pety held one messuage and a toft with land and meadow, paying fourteen shillings and a penny for the rent. And the widow of John Pety was holding one messuage with intake and other customary land and meadow of the messuage, paying eleven shillings. This suggests that the Petty family were well established there. The Embsay Pettys may well be an offshoot of this Halton family, but we have no confirmation of this.

The Pettys appear to have moved into the Embsay area in the late 15^th or early 16^th century. The earliest that Waters has found is John Petty ‘of Estby’ [Eastby]. In 1513 he fought for Lord Clifford as a bowman against the Scots at the Battle of Flodden. A Scottish army had marched across the River Tweed into Northumbria, but was soundly beaten by Henry VIII’s troops. The Cliffords were lords of Skipton Castle.

He is probably also the John Petty recorded in the Loan Book of 1522 in ‘Emsey and Estby’, where he held lands or goods worth five shillings a year. Again, in 1543, John Pety is recorded in the Lay Subsidy Rolls as holding lands or goods in ‘Embsey and Estby’ worth four pounds and eight shillings.

In the same Loanbook of 1522 Robert Petty is recorded as holding lands worth twenty-six shillings and six pence, again in Embsay and Estby, and held of Bolton Abbey.

The Priory of Bolton Abbey was a major landholder in this area. It had been founded in Embsay in 1120, before moving further east to its present site.

Robert and John Pettie are again recorded in Embsay in 1538, in the Bolton Priory rentals. Robert Pettie held a farm of one tenement and two bovates of land for nine shillings per annum. (A bovate was 15-20 acres, depending on the fertility of the soil.) John Pettie paid eleven shillings and three pence for a farm of one tenement with appurtenances. They both held their lands by leases granted on the eve of the dissolution of the monastery in 1539.   

Following the dissolution of the monastery, the land was purchased by the Clifford family, lords of Skipton Castle.       

Robert Petty and John Petty are almost certainly related, perhaps as father and son, or brothers. They appear to be reasonably well-off farmers.

Edward Pettie of Embsay was probably born in the mid-16^th century, so these could be his grandfather and great-grandfather, though we have no confirmation of this.

 

EDWARD PETTIE. We then jump more than half a century to the baptism in Skipton of Mary, daughter of Thomas Pettie ‘of Embsay Kyrke’ in 1599. The Skipton registers start in 1592.

Thomas was probably then in his twenties.

There are so few Pettys recorded in Embsay around this time that it is highly probable that Thomas is the son of Edward Pettie who was buried in Skipton in 1615.

Burial. Holy Trinity, Skipton.
31 Jan 1614/5  Edward Pettye of Emsey

He did not leave a will, but in April 1615 administration of the estate of ‘Edward Pettie late of Embsay in the diocese of York deceased’ was granted to ‘Margarete Pettie, relict of the deceased’.

 

MARGARET. The marriage between Edward and Margaret would have taken place too early to be included in the surviving Skipton registers, as were the baptisms of their children.

All we have is the grant of administration for Edward’s estate, and Margaret’s burial.

Burial. Holy Trinity, Skipton.
1621 Apr 19  Margarett Pettie of Empsy Widdowe.

We have scant evidence of this couple. They would have been born in the Elizabethan era and lived to see the accession of the Stuart dynasty with James I.

The evidence points to Edward coming from a prosperous farming family. He was almost certainly a yeoman farmer.

 

[1] http://www.bgwaters.co.uk/petyt3.htm