Sir Francis Baildon and his nine page will

I transcribed the will of Sir Francis Baildon when I was first learning paleography. It was an enormous challenge for me at the time but I struggled through it five years ago. The last few days I have redone my transcription and I am amazed on the one hand that I did so well at the time and astounded, on the other hand, at my errors!

My husband has an interest in this will as one of his ancestors was Daniel Belding who married Elizabeth Foote 10 Nov 1670 at Hartford Connecticut (CT). Their daughter Sarah (born 15 Mar 1682 at Hatfield CT) married Benjamin Burt 19 Oct 1702 at Deerfield Massachusetts (MA).  During the raid on Deerfield of 1704 they were taken to Montréal and their first son was born there (Sarah was seven months pregnant for that trek through the snows of winter - it must have been a frightening experience). They were repatriated and on the return voyage their son (my husband's ancestor) Seaborn was born ( 4 Jul 1706 at sea). Continuing to come down Seaborn married Susannah Lobdell but the date and place of marriage are not known to me. Their son Benjamin Burt married Rebecca (surname unknown) and their daughter Sarah was born Jan 1771 at Ridgefield CT. We visited the cemetery at Ridgefield but couldn't find their gravestone (it was a dreary wet day and we couldn't find it; must return one day). Sarah married Philip Crouse 8 Apr 1791 at Queensbury New Brunswick (this is my husband's loyalist line). Their daughter Rebecca Crouse married Isaac Allen (another loyalist line) 8 Apr 1816 at Keswick New Brunswick. Their last child James C Allen was his great grandfather (born 24 Dec 1832 at Millstream New Brunswick). James Allen married Hannah Catherine Parlee (another loyalist line) 17 Jul 1856 at Burford Canada West (now Ontario). Their youngest daughter Margaret Evelyn Allen was born 3 Nov 1880 in McLean Township Ontario and she married Horace Lorenzo Link (loyalist line that came directly to Ontario in the early 1780s) 25 Nov 1903 at Audrey North West Territories (now Saskatchewan). His mother was born in Saskatchewan but they returned to Ontario when she was six weeks old in 1906.

That traces the line down from Daniel Belding and to work backwards now the parents of Daniel Belding were William Belding and Thomasine Sherwood who married at Wethersfield CT. The father of this William was said to be Richard Baldon (Balydon/Baildon) married to Margaret Ackrenden 9 Dec 1622 at Heptonstall West Yorkshire Riding (England). The possible father of this Richard Baildon was Sir Francis Baildon and mother was Margaret Goodrick who were themselves married at Ribston Manor West Yorkshire riding.

This is where the two questions enter. I found a book online "Concerning some of the Ancestors and Descendants of Royal Denison Belden and Olive Cadwell Belden by Jessie Perry Van Zile Belden. Printed for private circulation by J. B. Lippincott Company Philadelphia 1898. An interesting book in light of the articles published lately concerning the impossibility that Richard Baildon was the son of Sir Francis Baildon. Further on from this is the difficulty with William the supposed son of Richard born in America. In this book the only two sons mentioned are Samuel and Thomas. This appears to be another debate within the articles published on the Baildon family. Was William a son of Richard Bayldon? The one comment in the book mentioned earlier in this paragraph that catches my eye is on page 72 of this book (can be downloaded from Internet Archive) where I quote a quote from William Poley Baildon, F.S.A. and he was a member of the Council of the Archaeological Society of Yorkshire. The question that might remain in my mind is who was William Paley Baildon. Looking at the publication, William Paley was a barrister and had been collecting information on the family for twenty years searching through parish registers, court records, etc in Yorkshire. He created the pedigrees that are in the book.  The quote follows:

"There is only one family of Bayldon; all persons bearing that name by inheritance must have sprung from the Yorkshire manor of that name. Richard Bayldon, son of Sir Francis Bayldon of Kippax, baptized May 26, 1591, was the only Richard, so far as I know, who would have had money to spend in the purchase of land, as Richard of Wethersfield did."

Now that doesn't prove that this Richard is the son of Sir Francis Baildon. Once I am happy with the transcription of the will (my husband will put that on his blog) than I will proceed to work on the Postmortem Inquisition that he also purchased from the National Archives. Certainly the will leaves one breathless with the extent of this man's holdings but also as I transcribed it I realized the tremendous responsibility placed on his children to carry out his many transactions and to follow through with his legacies. All of this to begin five years after the death of Sir Francis Baildon. His death was in 1623 so the duties would have begun to fall on Richard in 1628 presumably. The actual value of the estates of Sir Francis Baildon at his death does not appear to be as substantial as they appear on the will. His debts were large apparently and so the children would have had to bear this debt along with their legacies and balance it all out. This Richard had also made application to leave England in 1613 so perhaps felt with the dissension around him concerning King and Parliament and the responsibilities of the estate of his father that he might do better in America. I think that attributing this Richard to Lawrence Baildon when no baptism exists is perhaps questionable and that is the tone of later researchers in this family.

When next we are at Kew, I shall try to spend some time looking at all the Baildon material there to see if a stronger case could be made for Richard Baildon at Wethersfield being the son of Sir Francis Baildon. I will also look at the other Baildon families in Yorkshire although we have read through the Heptonstall Parish Registers. Always though one must bear in mind that the tendency in the 1800s was to try to link back to an illustrious family in Europe and that tainted many of the genealogical studies of colonial families produced in the United States in that time period. Plus there is still the query about William being the son of Richard; the name Baildon is uncommon and Belding/Belden equally uncommon. However, I shall not delve into this mystery as it is my husband's mystery and not mine! I just transcribed the will and that is my big part in the Baildon mysteries.