Looking at the first six generations of the Blake Family Chart - Blake Museum Bridgwater

 The chart begins with a Robert le Blake who was a juror at an Inquisition Postmortem according to the Chart at Hungerford Bar 22 Jan 1336. He is said to be of Quemberford Wiltshire. This would be old style of dating so one might think of it as 17 Jan 1337. We are told to look at Note 4. This note reads: The reference to Robt le Blake (1336) was discovered by Sir H Farnham Burke (Garter) who considers this link highly probable. From the Wikipedia Sir Henry Farnham Burke KCVO, CB, FSA (1859 - 1930) was a long serving Anglo-Irish officer of arms at the College of Arms in London. I am assuming the link refers to him being the father of Richard Blague/Blaake listed below his name. There are twelve records for Robert le Blake in the Discovery Search on the National Archives of the United Kingdom website (I did blog this information http://kippeeb.blogspot.com/2018/09/reworking-blake-ydna-website.html 26 Sep 2018. I am going to look at it in a slightly different way and for a different reason and will not repeat all of the references in this blog.  I am toying with the idea of subscribing to British History Online as some items can not be seen on the free site.

1. The first item (Date: 1358) is a Grant (at Echelampton) by Robert le Blake to John Malewayn of all his lands and tenements at Echelhamptone which he had by feoffment of his brother Adam Blake and which were lately Robert de Echelhamptone's. Reference 1720/154. 

Searching on Genuki (fabulous website by the way) Etchilhampton does appear to be this location. It is a chapelry in the parish of All Cannings, hundred of Swanborough, three miles from Devizes. 

Source: https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/WIL/Etchilhampton

Certainly this is the same general area for the Blake family at Calne. Interesting the financial transactions between the Blake family and the Malewayn family in 1358.  Robert le Blake and Adam le Blake are brothers and the date of 1358 is prior to the 1440/1441 date for the arrival of a Richard Blake from Ireland in Salibury, Wiltshire. This is looking interesting and I haven't done other than occasionally look at these records. 

For the twelve records of the search I will eliminate those not in Wiltshire/Hampshire/Berkshire - the oldest one (1272) is from Southorpe, Lincolnshire. 

2. The second item is a bond (at Hungerford) (Date: 1358). Bond (at Hungerford) from Thomas Hungerford and Robert le Blake for payment of £50 to John Malewayn of Echelhamptone. Reference: 1720/152. 

Same as 1 in terms of comments.

3. The third item is a grant (at Calne) (Date 1334). Grant (at Calne) by John de Fynemore to William Rolf of Blakelonde ...piece of arable land in the field of Blakelonde (Blackland). Witd: John le Chamberleyy, Thomas de Takelberwe, Robert le Blake, William Asser, Adam le Schetere, William de Taseworthe. Reference: 1720/120. 

The earlier date is of assistance as Robert le Blake (if the same person) was 21 years or more in 1334. 

4. The fourth item is a Grant (at Stockeleghe) (Date 1347). Grant (at Stockeleghe) by Adam le Chamberleyn of Stokkelegh to John le Glasyere and Isabella his wife, of all his lands and tenements in the hundred of Calne, for the life of the grantor, with reversion of lands in Stokkelegh. Witd: Geoffrey of Castreton, Robert Cauntelou, John Blount, Robert le Blake, Thomas of Roude, Adam le Sheoter, William of Taseworth. Reference: 1720/137.

Continuing reference to date provides proof of life for Robert le Blake (presumably the same individual from 1334 to 1358. 

An item from 24 Dec 1363 refers to a Robert le Blake at Uptone, Herefordshire and earlier we had a reference for a Roger le Blake at Madeford, Herefordshire (a different Blake line perhaps). 

Two items one in 1345 and one in 1364 are from the estate papers of the Walker-Heneage and Button family. The first Robert le Blake is a witness in 1345 for a lease and counterpart involving East Coker, Somerset. This is a bit interesting because it is quite a distance from the Calne/Devizes area of Wiltshire. However in the next case which is a Quitclaim dated at Calne in 1364, Walter de Frene quitclaims to Robert le Blake, of Kemerford, of all those lands, etc. which Silvester Doynel lately held in Bourbach (Burbage) and which after the death of Patrick de Frene his brother late rector of Yatesbury church should descend to him. Reference DD/WHb/813. Interesting and Kemerford/Quemerford is certainly in the area where the Blake family was located near Calne.

Source: https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/Wiltshire#bbox=-2.0296693527698437,51.394565897890516,-1.9496693527698596,51.45856601385026&q=&date_from=0&date_to=9999&scale_from=&scale_to=

Were Kenerford and Quemerford the same place? Wikipedia again has a history of the spelling of this now suburb of the town of Calne. "Early variants of the name include Camerford (1204), Kenerford (1`226-1228), Qemerford (1240-1245), Cameresford (1292), and Quemerforde (1294)" (Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names (Oxford, 1936), pp. 359 and 296. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quemerford#cite_note-Ekwall-1

Moving forward and we have Robert le Blake at Quemerford in 1364 receiving eventually a Quitclaim after the death of another person in Burbage. However that doesn't help me with when do we first see Robert le Blake in the Calne area of Wiltshire.  This item continues proof of life for a Robert le Blake from at least 1313 to 1364 since he was probably at least 21 in 1334. Other than as noted these items are from the Money-Kyrle Family Estate papers at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

An item dated 1363 and Robert le Blake is a witness once again for a Grant (at Bromham) by John de la Roche, knight, to John atte Halle of Whetham .... . Bromham is in the general area of Calne/Devizes. 

An unknown dated document in Suffolk but there was a known Blake family in East Anglia. 

The Pipe Rolls of Wargrave, Berkshire (1301-2) did not list a Robert le Blake but this scenario just discussed dates him from 1313 to 1364 thus far with the 1313 a calculation based on his being at least 21 in 1334. But he would have been a young child and not listed on the Pipe Rolls if he is indeed of this family at Wargrave, Berkshire.

Doing a search just on Robert Blake yielded a little more information.

In 1386  a Grant to Joan widow of Robert Blake and John her son of all the land  in Shawe by Savernake by Robert Devenyssh which he acquired from John Wyleye and Robert in Echelhampton. Reference: DD/WHb/2025. This gives us a known deceased Robert Blake in 1386 (and if he was born in 1313 he would have been 73 if he lived until 1386). 

Is this John Blake I the Member of Parliament for Calne in 1381, 1884 and 1385. He died in 1395 leaving at least one son John Blake II who likewise served in Parliament in 1415. The History of parliament online website mentions that he inherited some of the family property at Blacklands. He is noted as being of Quemerford on this page.

Source: https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/blake-john-ii-1388

Back to the Blake Family Chart at the Blake Museum Bridgwater:

:Although we find the son of Robert le Blake to be John mentioned with his mother in the record DD/WHb/2025 the chart has a Richard Blaque as the son of Robert le Blake. It is obvious that Robert le Blake is at Quemerford and hence the Calne Blake line. But who is Richard Blaque alias Blake of Wiltshire?

Searching British History Online (BHO) I find a Richard le Blake at Severn Stoke in the County of Worcestershire at Naunton and the land dealing in this case was in 1275. In 1276 Nicholas le Blake, John le Blake, Thomas le Blake and Richard le Blake paid subsidies at Naunton. Apparently Nicholas le Blac appears on the Gt. Roll of Pipe, 204 Hen. II (Rec. Com.), 157). Source: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/worcs/vol4/pp192-197

Searching the Discovery catalogue I found five references to a Richard le Blake. and it is Staffordshire where he apparently holds land next to an individual involved in a land deal. 

The earliest record in BHO was 1290 and dealt with alien merchants in Winchester. A Richard le Blake, burgess of Shoreham (Sussex) appears to be a debtor to to Alien Merchants. Reference C 241/14/70. 

Dated 21 Sep 1313, Feoffment by Thomas le Blake of Wabburleye to Joan his daughter of a place of land there between the land which Alice his daughter held by his gift  and the land Richard le Blake formerly held (Warwickshire). Reference E 40/8214.  Another set of items found at British History Online (https://www.british-history.ac.uk/ancient-deeds/vol4/pp34-46) A.6474 - A grant by Richard son of Thomas le Blake of Watburleye  ....... . Two other references are for Buckinghamshire. 

Does this help me prove that the Richard le Blak who received the right to set up a market in England in 1274 was the ancestor of the John Blake mentioned with his mother Joan? The question remains who was Robert le Blake. Was he the son of the Richard le Blak who applied for a license to establish a market? By the time of the possible birth of Robert le Blake before or by 1313, Richard le Blak would have been in his 40-50s perhaps since he was likely an adult in 1274. Robert naming one of his sons Richard might be anticipated but it was John who was the  member of parliament for Calne living at Quemerford and it does seem strange not to have him on this chart actually.

But I do have a sort of date scheme for Robert le Blake (born before or in 1313 and died before or by 1386. Moving on one might say to Richard Blaque alias Blake said to have married Anne daughter of William Cole. Looking online one sees dates such as 1331 for this marriage but that is impossible since we have determined a likely date range for Robert.

I would actually like to bypass this entry and move on to Henry Blake marrying Elizabeth Dorrant/Durrant.  Looking at a quick search one discovers that a number of sites basically ignore Richard Blaque marrying Anne Cole and they have Henry Blake marrying Elizabeth Durrant in 1353. There is actually a Memorial for Elizabeth (Durrant) Blake at St Mary the Virgin Churchyard in Calne showing her year of death as 1425. Would Henry, as a son of Robert le Blake, fit into this time frame?

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/241577186/elizabeth-blake

The Discovery catalogue has just one result in 1400-1499 for Henry Blake and it is in Leicestershire. 

Moving on to William Blake (said to have married Elizabeth daughter of Thomas Power) and my searches using William Blake and Quemerford and Quemberford did not reveal any land deals with the Blake family that could be utilized for dating purposes. There are several reasons perhaps. This Blake line was simply not political and maintained their property at Quemerford over a long period and there were no transactions dealing with the property and the particular male Blake members did not get involved in any types of transactions where they were witnesses. Where the information on the marriages comes from I have no idea but I am not in place to do those kind of searches which involve records not online. The  next Blake day I will pull out some of my CDs and see if I can find anything there. At this point I do not see a link between the Richard le Blak at Wargrave and the John Blake I and John Blake II who served as Members of Parliament in the late 1300s and early 1400s. Looking at the Bellett family to come and that will be for the next research day as well.

Robert Blake at Quemberford who married Avice (Wallop) Malwyn widow and the surname is curious having found the earlier records between the Blake and the Malewayn family  in the 1300s. Also for the next Blake day which is Friday.  

Is it possible to have so many generations in a family in 120 years but I am still working on the dating of each individual.

Teatime soon and Latin lessons.

Somerby's errors still reverberating in Blake family research

I strongly suspect that Horatio Gates Somerby had no idea of how far reaching his genealogical frauds would eventually be. At a bare minimum sixteen books have been published on the Blake family of Boston (can be seen at the New England Historic Genealogical Society Library in Boston) which either use his results or contradict those results. For the most part though these books accept Somerby's work as correct and simply connect their families back to the information which he created in the mid 1800s.

Usually his connections were back to royalty but in the case of the Blake family, he took them back to the Blake family of Calne, Wiltshire known to be there in the late 1200s. He did this by connecting them to the Andover Hampshire Blake family (my own line) with a fraudulent marriage between William Blake and Mary Coles giving them children Humphrey, Nicholas and Alice. In reality, Nicholas at Enham, Andover, Hampshire was the son of a Mr. Blake (forename unknown thus far) and Joan Blake (his widow). Joan Blake (widow) left a will in 1527 where she mentions her children Robert, Nicholas and Elizabeth (married to a Mr. Mylne). No mention of a Humphrey. Nicholas and Robert in their turn also left wills mentioning their children and the witness to Robert's will was Nicholas (Robert died in 1542 and Nicholas in 1547).

The interesting part of Somerby's creations is that he may have seen the Pedigree Chart which I have mentioned earlier and is located at the Swindon and Wiltshire Record Office (can be purchased from them as images at a very reasonable cost). However, the furtherest back ancestor he names as Robert de Blakeland and the chart shows Richard Blague/Blaake/Blake as being the furtherest back. The interesting question for me is were these men the same person? Robert de Blakeland is a bit of a red herring in all of this. He is supposed to have paid a subsidy in 1286 on Blakelands (now Blacklands near Calne Wiltshire). I haven't pulled up that information yet to look at it. All in Latin and my skills are at best rather weak in Latin so it has waited whilst I improve.

How to rid the world of Somerby's errors though is an interesting dilemma and one that has been discussed in The American Genealogist (TAG). Fortunately, the author Paul C Reid has written an article in 1999 exposing the fraud of Somerby with the Blake family and others. Clifford L Stott in the NEHGS Register has written an article on Humphrey Blake and his descendants also mentioning the fraud of Somerby. By constantly writing articles and blogging on these errors it may yet be possible to undo the fraudulence of Somerby's genealogical forays. That he did it solely for money, is perhaps the greatest crime of all. To have done it innocently could at least be understood by future genealogists but simply to make money is such a crime perpetrated against all of us who try to do a competent job of our family history.

I am often having to deny people who write me asking for a genealogical descent chart particularly for William Blake and Mary Coles who never existed as far as I am able to determine. Certainly William Blake is not listed as a son of Robert Blake and Avis Wallop his supposed parents. His supposed children William Blake and Robert Blake along with their widowed mother are not in the Andover Hampshire area living on supposed Wallop estate (Eastontown). There is a Robert Blake at Enham just as there is a Nicholas Blake at Enham but they are the sons of Joan Blake (widow) and forename unknown Mr. Blake. It is the son of Nicholas Blake, William who first notes himself as living at Eastontown in his will. Nicholas and his wife Margaret have only four children: William the eldest, Edmund (minor at the time of his father's death in 1547) and two daughters Alice married to Mr. Godwyn and Elizabeth married to Mr. Monday. Edmund does have a son Steven but I have not been able to trace this line down. William's line is very large at Andover; he and his wife Elizabeth (unknown) have ten children. Robert, brother to Nicholas, is married to Agnes (unknown) and they have six sons.

My initial thought was that all of the Blake lines at Andover traced back to these two men, however the pedigree chart at Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office gives another William Blake also at Eastontown but married to Avice Ripley. Since the eldest son of William (John) married a Margaret Blake daughter of William Blake I was not surprised to find that there could be another Blake family at Andover and I am pursuing this notion that there was another William Blake there at the same time as William son of Nicholas since William does name his wife as Elizabeth. Could they be the same William? It would mean that his eldest son John married his half-sister Margaret. I doubt that happened. It was frowned upon by the Catholic Church and it is unlikely that one would record it on a Pedigree Chart.

My strongest suspicion is that there is a small error in connection on the chart and that Margaret was the daughter of William Blake and Avice Ripley and able to trace her line back to the Blake family at Calne. John who is shown as connected to this marriage was actually the son of William Blake and Elizabeth also of Eastontown (there were several farms at Eastontown according to ancient maps) but the connection back for him was to William and then Nicholas and unknown Blake married to Joan (widow in 1527). The Visitation which was used to create the chart is somewhat unclear on the parentage of William and it is from these Visitations that the chart was created.

The desire to have the male Blake line go back directly to the Calne Blake family may have been just too tempting (the female Blake line through Margaret definitely did do so I believe). Hence this small error crept in and allowed the descendants to use the coat of arms of the Wiltshire Blake family which included the Blake/Baynard/Bellet/Durrant family crests. It was Richard Blake Esquire, Captain of the Trained Bands in County Middlesex in 1662 who first used this crest on his Visitation although by then the Baynard crest had been forgotten and assumed to be an unfinished Blague/Blake crest. John is correctly identified as the progenitor of the family from Essington, County of Southampton. The Visitation is also signed.

How to prove that I am correct is the mystery at the moment. I am searching out material to either support my hypothesis or eliminate it. That is all that we can do as the successors of Horatio Gates Somerby's frauds.

Preparation for Kew

With just a couple of months to go before we travel to London and my one day at Kew I am starting to plan my time there. I had been thinking I would look at the 1911 census but the free time on Find My Past has meant that I have looked everything up that I had planned for all of my lines. My families are very small relatively speaking in this time period.

I did discover that none of Ellen Taylor's sisters married. They were school teachers in Ashton under Lyne. Her older brother did not have any children and her younger brother does not appear to have any children. That means that my Family Finder testing may not find any leads to these cousins. For the remainder I verified that Elizabeth Blake married to Allen died in childbirth in 1909. Charles Blake is also listed as dead by his parents when they reported their children born and living but he was very much alive in Africa! I found all of my grandmother's half siblings on the census and her parents/stepparent. That really doesn't leave me with anything else to look up on the census as I managed to capture all the Siderfin and Pincombe entries as well.

My next area of interest is wills and I wonder how many I can look at in one day. I have now made a list of all the wills that would likely interest me and others of only partial interest. I have highlighted the 54 with red that I especially want to see so that will be my research at Kew. I also have another 20 items that I want to look at so will need to get a Reader's Ticket when we arrive in order to order these items and hopefully I might get to see some of them before the end of the day. We have six free days in London but I only want to spend the one day at Kew. I also want to go to the College of Arms to look at the Blake crests. I have never been very interested in Crests but I have now found that the Blake family at Eastontown when they moved to Surrey used a crest that included the Billett, Durant and unknown (labelled so by the transcriber) crests by quarter. Since this is the first instance that I have knowledge of where a descendant of the Nicolas Blake family at Andover used the crest of the Blake family of Wiltshire including the Billett and Durrant family, it is of particular interest as I have not yet found anything on paper other than published books on the Blake family that clearly prove the connection between the Andover Blake family and the Calne Blake family. I am curious why they do not have the Wallop crest quartered as well but it may be that indeed my line comes from a brother to the Robert Blake who married Avis Wallop and whose images are forever recorded in a sketch held by the British Library.

We also want to take a tour of Buckingham Palace and visit a number of other museums/repositories including the Temple Church and environs. Friday is reserved for a visit to St Mary Magdalen Church at Bermondsey where my Beard, Buller and Hemsley families worshipped. St Olave is now gone as is the cemetery where my Buller family was buried. The Beard and Hemsley families were buried at St Mary Magdalen. I am curious if the St Olave is a hint for me to look for my Buller line there earlier. Perhaps we might get to the London Metropolitan Archives as well.

My husband has now found his 2x great grandmother known to be born in England around 1820 by the census. She is Mary Anne Abbs and she was baptized in 1819 at Aylmerton Norfolk. Now that he has a recent English ancestor he will likely have some items that he wants to look at as well. A trip to Norfolk might be too much this time but will save for another time.

There are many many museums that we want to visit in London as well. Yesterday the Queen was here in Ottawa and we went to the 12 noon celebration of Canada Day which she was attending. Amazingly we walked from the bus up to Parliament Hill and stood at the crowd control barrier right across from the stage set up on Parliament Hill. There were a lot of people already there but we just happened to have a place right at the barrier. The police cleared the road between the crowd barrier and the gates of Parliament Hill so that we had a clear view of all the activity on the hill including the arrival of the Queen and Prince Philip by Landau although they turned before they went in front of us. But then we could see them as they walked up the red carpet with a fairly good view (about 500 feet). Then as they left they drove right in front of us (about three feet away) as we waved enthusiastically with our Canadian flags to greet our Monarch. She was amazing doing so much at 84 years of age (and Prince Philip at 89). Hopefully she was pleased with the turnout; I have never seen so many people downtown at Canada Day noon show. There were large video screens and an excellent sound system so that we could see everything going on very well aside from being able to actually view the Queen with our eyes. God Bless Queen Elizabeth and God bless Canada. The person beside us had been at the crowd barrier for 2 hours before we arrived. We chanced to arrive just as a man left with his young children. Probably he found it too tiring to stand there with the children and the spot became ours. Amazing!