Mary is the last of the ancestors of Lady Diana, Princess of Wales that carried the Blake surname. Her marriage 20 Feb 1653 at St Paul's Church, Convent Garden, London marks the change of her surname to Newland and the rest of her ancestry is well known. Mary's parents were Thomas Blake born at or near Eastontown near Andover and Dorothy Mayowe. But Thomas lived and died at Finkley, Hampshire (which is close to where Eastontown was).
William (d 1582) was I think the only "large" landowner in the Andover Blake family (his will of 1582 is extensive). For instance my ancestor Richard was a draper in the City of Andover with the 50 pounds which he was left in the will of William (1582). Younger sons did not always do even that well. Thinking about it and searching through documents is yielding some good thoughts and information that blends with it. I do suspect that William was married twice just by the way his will reads. But it would have been too early for the Parish Registers.
A quick search of the Hampshire Archives yielded a couple of interesting items and one in 1602 which is the bargain and sale of a tenement called Smithers in East Enham, Andover (this is close to so-called Eastontown). This lists William Blake of East Town, Hants (William Blake junior (son of William d 1582)) as one of the individuals involved. Going in deeper this leads to a later case mentioning that the lands formerly belonged to Nicholas Blake.
Today was meant to be a Pencombe day but I decided my eyes just needed a little longer rest before I did the Inquisition Postmortem. So I have watched the Ash Wednesday Service on the TV and dawdled about with some of this Blake material.
Mind you in the overall picture does it actually matter whether you descend in the male or the female line of a family. I also think that people achieve what they achieve. My great grandmother's cousin Sir John Carling was a very active busy person at the time of Canada's founding and he certainly deserved to be rewarded and remembered for all of that work.
As well, although I did publish the Siderfin Book widely I do not intend to publish the Blake book in the same manner. Correcting Somerby's errors on Nicholas Blake is my prime object and taking the family backwards and forwards in time the other aim. The author who wrote "The Ancestry of Diana Princess of Wales for Twelve Generations" already recorded his thoughts - Richard K. Evans. I was simply enhancing on them. Amazingly this Andover line is an ancient Hunter-Gatherer line that successfully like the Terry family and several others in the North Hampshire area around Andover/Basingstoke survived in that area for thousands of years and share a good run on the SNP line way into the past showing ancient relationship. It is fascinating and my grandfather's insistence that his line was always at Andover most interesting. I think in the future these Hunter Gatherer lines will be very important. They were the explorers; the ones who dared to follow the wild animals to the edges of the known earth. What drove them? Why didn't they stay in the Levant and become farmers?
The Pincombe book though I will publish widely. The study that I inherited included both the Pincombe and the Pinkham families of Devon. The Pincombe family in the early 1700s started to use the Pinkham spelling in some of the lines (no idea why). Tomorrow Pencombe again and the Inquisition Postmortem.
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