William was the eldest son of his father Henry (d. 1615 - see post of 6th July 2012 ) but neither his father nor his grandfather seem to have liked him much and he was therefore largely disinherited. Ironically, he is the only Ginn of his siblings to be known (without doubt) to have Ginn descendants alive today, so his genetic inheritence has triumphed at least ! And he has one other claim to fame among the Ginn family as we shall see.
By 1587 it was clear that the Spanish intended to invade England
and in April of that year Francis Drake was ordered to attack the Spanish
fleet, the episode that he described as merely “singeing the King of Spain’s
beard”. Events were moving swiftly and
the English were pretty desperate.
The Tudors did not have a standing army, relying on a small
number of mercenaries and the muster of “able men” of the population between 16
and 60. Faced with a professional army
such an almost feudal levy would have been a laughing stock and so it was
decided to select a nucleus of the most promising “soldiers” from each village
and train them intensively, by 1588 such training took place twice a week.
Each parish was required to furnish these men with arms,
armour and side-arms, the financial burden falling on the villagers at large
for some weapons and on specific gentlemen and yeomen for others. It was also envisaged that the “men of
substance” in a parish would provide riding horses for some of the soldiers and
carthorses for the wagons to carry supplies.
It was in 1587 that William was initially selected for the
‘Trained Band” as it was known, but then he only had a bow (an already obsolete
weapon) as the village had not raised sufficient funds for the required
firearms. During the winter of 1587/8
the government became alarmed and orders were issued to raise extra funds, by
April 1588 William being a trained Caliverman in Therfield’s band of 16 men: 6
pikemen; 6 calivermen; 1 musketeer; 1 bowman and 2 men armed with the black
bill.
A Caliver was a sort of light-weight musket and the 6 armed
with that weapon together with the one musketeer were collectively known as the
“Shot”, the best armed and thus most valuable soldiers in any fight with the
Spaniards.
The special nature of the Shot made the government issue
further orders that they alone of the Herts Trained Band should be issued with
riding horses in the event of an actual attack, the aim to get them to any meeting
point without delay. In Anstey “widow
Ginn” - William's grandmother Agnes, was provisionally ordered to supply a horse and in Therfield seven named
yeomen were given the job, doubtless they little thought that the day of real
need would come. How wrong they were.
On 30th
May 1588 the Spanish Armada sailed from Lisbon,
storms forcing a delay so that it did not get into the Bay
of Biscay until July.
English scout ships had monitored its progress and towards the end of
July the Earl of Leicester was ordered to gather an army of men at Tilbury, it
being thought that the Spanish might enter the Thames estuary with the
intention of marching on London. It is
known that various county trained bands assembled at Tilbury, one of them
certainly being Hertfordshire’s, the plans so carefully set out in surviving
documents being put into operation at the close of July (HRO 6990; 8283 &
9531) all the details now published in one volume by the Hertfordshire Record
Society (ed. Ann King).
So while the English fleet engaged the Armada in the Channel,
the various bands began to assemble at Tilbury, William and the mounted
Hertfordshire Shot being presumably some of the first to arrive. In early August Leicester invited to Queen to
address her troops and she came down the Thames
in the state barge. Clad in armour and
mounted on a fine white horse the Queen rode through the ranks of soldiers,
dismounting and striding up and down amongst them, careless of her safety there
being not a few Catholics within the bands. She then gave the great speech, the one for
which she has been remembered through the centuries, even by Hollywood:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of
our safety to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes, for fear
of treachery. But I assure you, I do not
desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear..... I have always so behaved
myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the
loyal hearts and good will of my subjects.... being resolved, in the midst and
heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down for my God and for
my kingdom, and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust, I know
I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and body of a
king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or
any Prince of Europe shall dare to invade the borders of my realm....
Even as Elizabeth spoke the
Armada was being defeated and fleeing into the North Sea.
The next day word came by messenger and
to the cheers of the army the Queen returned to London. I have no doubt that William spoke of this
adventure for the rest of his long life, and well he should.
William did not marry until 1591, his bride, Elizabeth
Baucock, coming from an old Anstey family. Her father (John) was a Husbandman however and
she could have brought little to her husband financially. When her father died in 1598 (will ERO) he
left only £3 to each of his unmarried daughters, 20s to Elizabeth and her married sister, Joan.
As I say, William was largely disinherited. I obviously have no
idea why this was, but do know that William did not take this lying down
because in 1616 he petitioned the Rectory of Therfield manor to get the
disinheritance overturned, presumably doing the same elsewhere. He was not successful.
William Ginn died in 1636 - he was 83. There is nothing in surviving manorial papers
to suggest any copyhold property passing to his sons, though he had at least
inherited the ability to live a long life from his Ginn ancestors. Elizabeth
predeceased him in 1633 - she was 76.
William and Elizabeth had a good number of children:
Henry - died in the Thirty Years War - see next post
Robert - died unmarried in 1639 aged 44
Sarah - married Robert Baucock
Arthur - alive in 1650 aged 51 as mentioned in his Uncle Arthur's will of that year-not traced-yet. He may be the Arthur Ginn who died at Barkway in 1668 - he would have been 69.
William - to be mentioned later
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