Looking at Jone Blake's will

 Jone Blake was a widow when her will was written 23 Mar 1527. I only received one page when I ordered this will although I will at some point try to find the probate. It was in very good shape; extremely readable although the language is Middle English but none the less I did transcribe it 28 Aug 2013. I re-transcribed it partially yesterday and will complete it today. There were changes; I am more efficient and less tendency to think I see the letters so removed some here and there. So Jone does not name her husband but does name her sons Nicholas and Robert in that order implying that Nicholas is older perhaps. Elizabeth is named first so suspect she is the eldest. She is married but no grandchildren were named. This will is the linchpin that connects Charlou and myself. Fascinating really. We would be 14th cousins coming down from Jone Blake and her husband likely Richard. 

Source: Family Search, Film 186682, A-377, Page 163 
Testator: Jone Blake, widow
Place: Enham, Hampshire, England
Date of document: 23 Mar 1527

[Top]: copie test[ament]

1    In dei no[min]ie Amen the yer of owre lord gode oon thowsand fyve hundredth xxvij the xxiij day of the mon[e]th of marche
2    I Jone Blake wddow w[i]t[h] a hoyll mynde a[n]d goode memo[r]ye maketh my laste wyll and testi[me]nete in thys man[ner] Fyrst I
3    com[m]end my soll unto almyghty gode oure lady saynt marie a[n]d to all the saynts in hevyn and my body to be buryd in 
4    the chyrche or the chyrche lyttyn of saynt mykell of Enahm It[em] I gyff and bequeth unto ye mother chyrche of saynt Swy
5    thnye xij d It[em] I gyff a[n]d bequeth to ye chyrche of Enahm vj s viij d It[em] I gyff and bequeath xxvj s vij d to be dystrybute 
6    unto poor pepyll in peny doyll It[em] I gyff and bequeth unto my curat Sy[r] Rychard Mersser xx d It[em] I gyff a[n]d bequethe
7    to Sy[r] John Batte xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeth to mayntenyg of the mor[r]ow masse prest in Andever xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeth
8    to mayntenyg of Jhs[us] masse in ye chyrche of Andover xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeath unto the p[ri]or of the Freer Augustines 
9    in Wynchest[er] xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeth to Sy[r] John Whyte freer xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeath to ev[er]y of freer of ye
10    sayde Augustynes a[n]y ye prest iiij d and to ev[er]y novesse ij d of ye sayde place It[em] I gyff and bequeth to ye chyrche of Fosket
11    to mayntenyg of ye light before Saynte Jamys and Saynte Sonday xx d It[em] I gyff and bequeth unto my dowghter Elsabet   
12    Mylne xx shepe besyde thoose th[a]t she hathe allredy and oon Cowe th[a]t I bowght of hyr and xiij s iiij d of money and my gretst 
13    pann a[n]d fowre plater It[em] I gyff and bequeth unto my son Nycolas Blake my tabyll in ye hall a[n]d oon clothe callyd ye hallyg
14    a[n]d two yryne racks It[em] I gyff and bequeath unto my son Robert Blake oon yryne broche a[n]d xviij shepe ye wheche 
15    shepe he hath in kepyng It[em] I gyff and bequeath unto Thomas Iesra of Fosket oon yryne broche and the [re]seydew of
16    all my goods moveabyll a[n]d unmoveabyll Above not legate I gyff unto my chyldrne Nycolas Blake
17    Robert Blake a[n]d to Thomas Iesra of Fosket a[n]d ye sayd goods to be devydytt amongys them equaly  ev[er]y oon of
18    them elyke weche It[em] I make my sonys Nycolas Blake and Robert Blake my trew executors and Thoms Iesra of
19    Fosket my sup[er]visor th[a]t he see my last wyll and testament cumplet a[n]d fulfylld a[n]d the foresayd executors to dyspo
20    se for the heylth of my soll as thay shall see moyst expedient these witnesses Sy[r] Rychard Mersser Sy[r] 
21    John Batte Nycolas Blake Robert Blake w[i]t[h] other  
 

 I will be cleaning today and will add to this re-transcription as the day passes. The changes are very small mostly cosmetic as my reading has improved in the last decade for sure. I now think that Thomas Iesra is her son as well which hadn't occurred to me earlier. Since he is supervisor he is perhaps older which makes sense as her surname is Blake. I must have a look for a will for Thomas Iesra. Fascinating all these new thoughts. Some of the names in this will are the same as in later wills in the family. That may or may not be an assistance. I also never compared it with Richard's will which I will now do probably tomorrow between cleaning. Not mentioning grandchildren does concern a little but it is only 1527 and William (Nicholas' eldest son) died in 1582 and that is 55 years later and he does mention grandchildren. I shall have to have a look at Robert's will once again and those of his sons. I have transcribed all of them (both PCC and Winchester wills as well). 

My eavestrough has pulled away in one spot and a nail is popping so found this company that my Insurance Company has in their system that does repairs so we will see how that goes. I do hate owning a house but life just flows and one  must go with the flow. I will be owning for a while longer. It is nice to have this option in my Insurance Company recommending an agent and the quote came quickly and is reasonable given the current state of the value of money and he is coming tomorrow. That sounds really ideal. I will see if I can book him to come and clean the upper eavestroughs when it stops raining. The lower ones my daughter cleaned for me. She bought this gadget that you just stand on the ground and run it along so we might do that but having someone do the upper ones is better I think. Pulling down like that might be a problem. But it works really well for lower eavestroughs - a really good brush. 

My sister is  now in Long Term Care which I was sad to hear but her life became very complicated with her falls. I am so glad that I went to see her in 2018 when she was still herself. Going to see her now would be really difficult as I have to fly into Halifax and then figure out how to get to Prince Edward Island. So not doing that; sad to say. She is 86 now. We passed like ships in the night when I was a child mostly because I was a withdrawn child keeping to myself; living in the attic and writing my stories and reading so many books. We had more conversations in adulthood after we were both married and had children than we ever had as children (I was six years younger and a walking dictionary). Prayers continuing that she is comfortable. 

Nearly time to start cleaning and will do the Solitaire Puzzles first. It took me about an hour to figure out this setup for the company that will repair my eavestrough. 

Continuing to look at Robert Blake

 A beautiful Sunday and Church in a bit. Keeping to myself pretty much these days although everyday I am in conversation with my daughters. That is being 80 I think. Life is busy for them but they take minutes out of their day to be with me which is very kind of them. I appreciate it very much. Yesterday I wondered if I was getting a cold (I haven't had one in probably ten years of more) but I am wondering if I am using too many of my lemon (sugar-free) candies. My mouth was dry with the appliance that the dentist recommended so did that to keep the moisture level up. But I no longer use the appliance (I think I may have stopped grinding my teeth perhaps) and possibly I no longer need the lemon candies to a large extent. We will see how that goes. 

Yesterday I spent time looking for the gedcom that I uploaded to World Connect. Indeed I did find it but I added the wills and items after uploading I think perhaps as they do not show up in the gedcom file. Too bad but it was a long time ago and I was still on that learning curve for sure. It also resulted in my looking at the work of another Blake researcher who had linked back to Jone Blake who left her will in 1527 and was the mother of Robert, Nicholas and Elizabeth. Her line was going back to Robert and I never really thought about it at all but now I want to clarify all of this material. Unfortunately Charlou Dolan passed away in 2024 which I have only just realized. I am not the most frequent correspondent for sure but I do know she was somewhat suspicious of some of the connections and had done all that she was going to do a number of years ago as she moved to a different family. I do have all of her work and it is excellent. Nicholas was named in the will of Robert but not as a brother; he was a witness. However, Nicholas left his will in 1547 so thinking he was the brother of Nicholas sounds reasonable but at the time I was still a newbie when we were corresponding and I did not really think about Robert being anyone else at that time or even right up until yesterday. But is he the son of Robert Blake; that is really the question I think at this time. When I bought all of these wills from the Hampshire Record Office they had been probated in Winchester Diocese and were perhaps not available for purchase from afar (I purchased them around 2012 to 2014 I think). I could check that actually as I tend to keep receipts and things. The children mentioned by Robert who left his will in 1542 are named as such by Charlou. But these children are older than one would expect compared to the children of Nicholas although I need to really make some tables of all this information.

Nicholas, in his will, refers to the individuals who appear in the Berkshire Blake wills but this Robert does not in his will. I do have this theory about the Blake family in Berkshire being descendant of the le Blak family of Rouen, Normandy and eventually ending up in Calne as the founder Blake family there. Given their status I suspect that they were descendant of the Rouen family which had come to England in 1274 to setup a market. That one finds the le Blak family at Wargrave near Windsor is so very interesting and that they gradually moved to Calne fascinating actually (just  need to prove it beyond a doubt). Socially speaking the Blake family at Calne were at the "top of the ladder" so to speak in the 1300s and they continue at that social level through several centuries at least until the disagreement between the Blake family of Calne (refusing to accept a knighthood from King Charles I in the 1630s (need to check that date)) and they were basically chased off from the Calne area it appears for their refusal. Their manor house was demolished. 

But I digress. It does make sense that they are all related in this time period as there are not a lot of records for the Blake family in the Andover area this early (i.e. early 1500s) and the frequency of particular forenames does tend to give one the impression that this is one family. Looking at the Calendar of Patent Rolls for Blake between 1323 and 1452:

1323	Faxfleet	le	Blak	Simon	Hampshire		Edward II
1343	Westminster		Blake	Robert	Hampshire		Edward III
1352	Westminster	la	Blake	Alice	Hampshire		Edward III
1352	Westminster	le	Blake	Walter	Hampshire		Edward III
1352	Westminster	le	Blake	Henry	Hampshire		Edward III
1389	Clarendon Manor		Blake	John	Hampshire		Richard II
1389	Clarendon Manor		Blake	John	Hampshire		Richard II
1392	Windsor		Blake	Thomas	Hampshire		Richard II
1394	Westminster		Blake	John	Hampshire		Richard II
1402	Westminster		Blake	Andrew	Hampshire		Henry IV
1405	Westminster		Blake	John	Hampshire		Henry IV
1421	Westminster		Blake	John	Hampshire		Henry V
1452	Westminster		Blake	George	Hampshire			Henry VI

 The entries are rather interesting although do not in this list give the location in Hampshire but the presence of the le Blak in Hampshire most intriguing and the forenames of the family members also interesting. There are really not very many items in this list. As an aside the Le Blak family at Wargrave appears to move towards Hungerford and then Calne through the 1300s after they received the right to set up a market in England in 1274 (they were from Rouen, Normandy as mentioned). Robert, John, Thomas are all names seen in this Blake family at Andover. Alice la Blake is likely the daughter of Richard Le Blak (or a descendant) who applied for the license to set up a market. Alice la Blake is mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of 1301 at Wargrave. My thought is that she married into the family at Andover that then took on her surname as they did not have one which was pretty typical of the times in England at the end of the 1200s and into the 1300s. The advantages to  having a marriage between a Briton and a Norman are large for sure in that time frame. 

So more thinking and considering the work of Charlou as I know she did a great deal of research but she did not have all the original wills for this family at Andover as I received only points from these documents from her. I do believe this is all the same Blake family (the la Blake family would be associated by marriage rather than being related) but will continue considering how to fit them together. Richard Blake does identify one of his sons as Robert and another son appears to be Nichi on the will which I interpreted as Nicholas (a daughter is mentioned but not names (she was Elizabeth)). I will continue looking at the wills to ensure that I have gleaned everything from them that is helpful. 

Robert (he appears to spell his name as Blayke but I do not think he wrote the will himself as the writing in English at the bottom is not quite the same but I am not an expert for sure). Robert is the father of Richard who left his will in 1521 and he did name Thomas and Richard as his sons so it does make sense that Robert is the son of Richard since Richard mentions his eldest son Robert. But the ages of the children seem to be not quite as expected so need to review that. Nicholas' sons William and Edmund appear to be younger than the children of Robert although William did leave his will in 1582 (35 years after his father passed). I guess I am a knitpicker but perhaps we all benefit in the long run from the knitpicking!

Washing clothes now and then breakfast and Church. Somewhere in between I will do the Solitaire puzzles of the day. God is in the Heavens watching and waiting for us to do the right thing to have that uplifted plain of peace where all can live in happiness. 

 

 

Splashdown

The most wanted to hear words yesterday and there it was splashdown, crew all safe and well. Congratulations to NASA on this wonderful accomplishment. What an honour that a Canadian was one of the crew. The three Americans and one Canadian were a great team to watch on the television - they did great and thank you. The President has announced that Mars is next and more power to this project as well. It is wondrous to see this happening in my lifetime. I was a young child when Yuri Gagarin went into space and now old with this successful moon orbit - the greatest distance that Homo sapiens has ever been into the universe. I believe that mankind can and should keep trying to improve the world and to head out into the universe. It is all here; God made it all eons ago and it continues to evolve. God's hesitancy to permit us the knowledge of good and evil was to protect us but now He enjoys watching us do the right thing - He gave us commandments to live by and then sent His son Jesus to bring us the two commandments just to make it so much easier for us to understand - Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. We could find peace then and our efforts to improve the world and explore the universe would be ever more effective. 

Worked on the Blake book yesterday and the first wills. They are a block of wills with Robert Blake's will the oldest and then wills of his sons - Richard, Robert and Thomas  - followed by the wills of his grandsons (there are a couple of wills by the wives of these men as well that are helpful). I did have this five generation chart coming down from Robert on World Connect but it has been gone now for awhile. Fortunately I retained it and perhaps will add it to my website at some point. 

I am also back to my Latin studies after a bit of an hiatus as I moved from Duolingo (which was excellent but tended towards modernism) and I need the Latin from the Roman times to really help me to read all of these wills thoroughly. So Mango Languages is now my tool to improve the Latin I have already learned. Although it would have been nice to study Latin in my youth I preferred to train in Business Practice (since I had to choose) so that I would have a skill for my summer jobs when I was working in my teen years (I was only twelve when I went to High School so pretty young for sure but I did have thoughts on how to survive since my father had been through a bankruptcy when I was a child). It was most beneficial my business training as I worked at that type of thing for several years until I worked using my Chemistry background in the hospital laboratory in my late teens. But the skills of Business Practice which included typing and book keeping have stood me in good stead all of my life. Children in school need to have a good variety of skills learned during their years of study - the future is hard to predict really I think in terms of training up the children of the future. They must have excellent managerial skills though - all of them whether they are going into trades, business or other fields. Streaming children at a young age is I think inappropriate. Don't permit time to be wasted in the classroom; the children are there to learn skills and acquire knowledge. They need to learn as much about the many subjects as they can; as many skills as they are able to learn and utilize to prepare them for a world that will be different. 

 Nothing new learned from reading the will of Robert in the Latin as I have not done that for awhile. I am doing a word by word translation now and not that different from what I did earlier; my transcription is just smoother that is all. Good for the brain to do language studies I think. Keeps the brain cells active and busy. 

Drinking tea and must do my solitaire puzzles - they are a real brain wake up for sure. I do excellent first just for the challenge of jumping right in to do the hardest thing.  

 

 

Remembering Edward

 It is five years today since we lost Edward; it seems like yesterday and yet it also seems a long time ago. Life has changed all around us. Because he did not wish to be forgotten we have talked about him and tried to keep some of his research alive with the website. I respond to all of his mail and gradually we have found new homes for historical items that he collected for his various families. I am still in that process with a number of boxes of original material. It is a slow process to do that. 

Edward was born 16 April 1943 at the farm which is in Burford Township, Brant County facing the Highway (which divides Oxford and Brant Counties) and the village of Princeton (Oxford County) where Edward grew up after they moved from the farm into the village when he was about two and one half years of age. His father died in a farm accident when he was  two years and two months of age. He was a very sensitive child and cried when his father was mentioned and so little mention of his father for many years around him and as an adult he didn't want to be forgotten like that and he has not been. Edward has done so many wonderful things in his life and perhaps his greatest gifts to the world aside from his lovely daughters was his research still cited all these years later. He did some groundwork on Cobalt for his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry which has proven to be baseline work often cited in other people's work. That he did not become a scientist because of the lack of jobs at the time (true for all of his classmates as it turned out) was somewhat of a sorrow to him but he retrained and earned his Masters in Library Science and was employed at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada for nearly thirty years contributing greatly to the ordering of knowledge in a systematic way making online retrieval an actual ability and readily available. He retired in 2004 and spent the next seventeen years working on his genealogy for his family uncovering an amazing story which he related several times at meetings. Rest in Peace dear Edward and know that your children and grandchildren remember you well and will never forget you nor will your many nieces and nephews. We were married 54.5 years and this year is sixty years since we married. 

I think one of the joys that Edward acquired through life was my actually becoming interested in genealogy which he had been active in since his mid teens. He collected items where ever he went and when we bought a a car about eight or nine months after we were married we went everywhere looking for items to help to tell the story of his families. As I worked away yesterday on the Blake book I always find my mind traveling back to our times together. I had always helped to find items for him but he knew I wasn't really interested in genealogy but when I was he was thrilled and the retirement years saw us spend enormous amounts of time in New England, New York in particular although our travels took us to many places in the United States. But now I was looking occasionally at items that belonged to my studies. But it was my interest in DNA that he particularly was happy to see flourish once again as he wanted to use my knowledge of DNA to learn more about his Kipp line with the yDNA. It was a fun time acquiring all of that information and with the arrival of autosomal DNA testing he was able to prove his research in a meaningful way because so many of his American cousins tested their atDNA. It was amazing and he enjoyed it so very very much. He had a group of about a dozen cousins who tested for him and it will be all of this information that I use to create the phasing of his grandparents. A project that I will begin shortly and set aside one day of each week to probe the data and see what I can come up with. 

Yesterday saw more work on the Blake book as I begin the genealogical charting. Right now I am in the process of putting together the information on Robert Blake who left his will dated 16 Dec 1521 living at Enham near Andover, Hampshire. He names a number of Blake individuals in his will that I must sort through once again refreshing my memory of that time when I did the work way back in 2014. That will continue today. I have related the interesting information that I have acquired on a Richard Blake who appears on the Emigrants Database 1330-1550 arriving at Salisbury, Dorset in 1440/1441 and  his ethnicity is stated as Irish. Determining the earlier ancestry of Robert Blake at Enham has been something I nip in and out of through the years but now this is the time to try and sort it into the beginning of the Genealogical Chart for Blake at Andover. 

Time for breakfast, the day moves quickly.  

The last day of cleaning for the week

 The last day of cleaning and it is the top floor. It will be nice to be finished and have a couple of working days before I clean again. My logic in cleaning is that I never have to do panic cleaning; that was very logical in the past but perhaps less consequential in the present. Being 80 does have its perks as my desire to go shopping is always pretty much nil unless I need something. By doing my morning exercises for one hour every day I always feel like diving into the day as it turns out which is also great when you are 80. I think 80 is a turning stone and one should let it be. Time to move away from too much absorption in anything really. Just enjoy the fact that God is in the world and a part of the world but not visible to us. He is just there; always watching and waiting for us to do the right things. His commandments just two to make it easy - Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbour as ourself. I do not claim to be perfect in that regard; I am human and we do have our weaknesses but striving to reach that goal is always good. 

In the aftermath of Easter we have so much to think about and contemplate. In Canada it is time for spring and slowly but surely the snow is leaving us and the spring flowers have burst forth - the snowdrops tend to be first (lovely tiny intricate white flowers on a green stem) and they greet the world once again reminding us that there is more to come. They are aptly named as they often come up through a pile of snow. The leaves of the crocuses are up and soon the flowers will appear once again. I was looking for buds yesterday on the tree at the front of our yard and perhaps they are swelling just a little. It is a huge tree and I would like to keep it another year anyway. I did not plant it; the city planted it and I suppose one of these days they may take it down as it is very very large now. I will likely get it trimmed this year once the leaves have burst into the open. That way I can see the branches that have died through this past winter. Thank you God for the beauty of the world around us. We are blessed. 

Yesterday I worked once again on the Blake book and preparing to start the Genealogical Charts coming down from Robert Blake who was likely born in the mid 1400s and as a very elderly person left his will in 1521 remembering his sons and in particular he notes that Richard is to receive his farm and property at Enham. Richard will only live a short time longer and his property will pass to Nicholas (his likely son although the order for these sons escapes me thus far - Robert and Nicholas and an unnamed daughter in his will but she was likely Elizabeth.  The spelling of Nicholas is somewhat unusual in his will but Robert is clearly spelt out. I think Robert is younger because Nicholas inherits the property at Enham. An interesting family this Blake family of Enham near Andover. 

Over near Basingstoke there are other families that share the same y-DNA with this Blake family (not exactly the same but obviously also Hunter-Gatherers arriving in the British Isles as much as 8,000 to 12,000 years ago is the thought with these families also tracing their lines back into the 1500s in this area). Interestingly they settled into this lovely area of the British Isles. Our first trip through in 2008 revealed a lot of farm land and an openness on this road heading towards London and the next trip through in 2016 revealed acre after acre of solar panels and the green fields of England were being greened instead of burning fossil fuels. Just eight short years made such a change; I marveled at it actually. In 2008 my cousin Ivan was still alive and we spent a couple of days with Ivan and his wife Pat traveling about Dorset, Hampshire the first day and then the second day we went to Somerset and Devon all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. It was amazing to stand on the beach looking out and knowing that thousands of miles away was Newfoundland the gateway to Canada. I will always remember that moment with my cousin standing there, chatting and looking. He had never been to Canada and I said you should come and visit us. We had been corresponding for over twenty years then back and forth. Unusual for me to keep up anything like that for so long but my mother had wanted a book about the family for my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary in 1988 (and we just sort of fell into keeping up with each other after that). My parents asked my husband actually to write it for them and he said of course but it was me who looked everything up  in the Library at the Church of the Latter Day Saints reading room. It was also me that typed it and put it together. Edward managed it sort of and his interest level was not really high on that as he was pursuing his Kipp family at that time (and as he talked about this book on my family that he was writing his mother asked him to work on her family). It was cute actually and he did start to look at the Link-Allen family that was his mother's birth family. This family proved to be fascinating linking him back to all sorts of interesting people who had been at the forefront of many of the American Royal Colonies in their formative years. All that lost over time although he did start soon enough that he could tell his mother about some of her ancestors before she passed away in 2000. 

My world has shrunk over this past six months since I turned 80; I seldom come out of my shell now and my concentration has increased once again back into my books that I want to write. The retreat seemed to have brought that forward quickly; the dogs were my constant companions as were the cats. The fish just sort of looked at me as I fed them every day. The world around me was totally different and I have to say that it was good for me to do that retreat. It wasn't really meant as one but it became that for me. It told me that I am 80 now and it is the time for me to commit to doing these projects that I want to complete and so the rest of my thinking has disappeared into the past other than helping to grow Canada. 

What did I think of another Conservative MP crossing the floor? I say congratulations for recognizing that we have to put our shoulders to the grindstone and get this moving and it will take 100% cooperation by Parliament to get it done as quickly as possible. If the Conservative that I voted for here wanted to do that he would have my 100% support. An election would cripple the progress that has been made thus far. Knowing that what you needed to happen quickly can make a big difference. When we built the railroad from ocean to ocean back in the late 1800s it took such dedication on the part of Parliament to get it done. Canada is a stable out-looking country that has always been part of the world and shared in its wonders and its tragedies. The First Nations here have always been our guides through life whether they think that or not; we look to them to show us the way to maintain Canada and to make the future of Canada the best that it can be. They are of this land with thousands of years of knowledge that we do not have. My grandfather used to say that; one can not learn the ways of a country without knowing the peoples who have lived there through time. He was thinking of England of course when he said that but as I remember the things he used to say to me I realized how much like the First Peoples of Canada my grandfather was because his people had lived for so long in England and likely within a couple of kilometres of Andover or in Andover itself all of that time. It wasn't until he moved to Eastleigh near Southampton that he left his birth area and went to work on the railroad. Opportunity and desire to travel took him to Canada in 1913 to work for ten years on the Railroad. It was his intention to go back home but World War One decimated the Canadian population and they needed all of those men to stay that would and he did. Then six grandchildren kept him here after his wife died and so I, as a child, had the treat of knowing my grandfather who lived with us until I was six and then decided to be nearer his mates from work and passed away two years later although I still saw him very often as a child even then. I missed him for a very long time after he passed and thought about him all of my life carrying his memory in my mind as I too traveled through life. 

 Tea all drank and must do my solitaire puzzles. On to the day.