Robert Ginn of Wyton and Houghton d. 1596

Robert Ginn here was the second son of the Robert Ginn of Anstey (d. 1587) mentioned in my post of 25th June 2012.  He moved from Hertfordshire and via his two sons established the Ginn families of Huntingdon and Ely.

In 1559, one year after Queen Elizabeth the 1st took the throne, Robert married Elizabeth Cooke at Anstey and they had four children there, the couple moving to Huntingdonshire in about 1570.  The relocation almost certainly resulted from the influence/connections of Robert's sister Elizabeth who had been living in neighbouring Hartford in Huntingdonshire since 1563.  There s some question that Elizabeth Cooke came from the Cooke family of Great Chishill in Essex,  just over the border.

His move is documented in various Certificates of Residence (for the purpose of the Lay Subsidy - I reproduce one here) and in the court case between the Ginn and the King families of the 1580s where he is named as a "Yeoman of Wyton"

The place in which the couple were located by 1588 (the year of the Spanish Armada) is known as Wyton cum Houghton, oddly one village, one manor but two churches.  It was and is effectively one village spread out in two hamlets on the one road and is a few miles from both Hartford and Huntingdon.

But there is strong evidence that when they first moved from Hertfordshire they moved to St Ives some few miles from Wyton and Hpoughton, because there is a court case in the Court of Requests (     ) dating from 1589 (when Robert was described as of Houghton, but dealing with events much earlier.  And there is a burial in St Ives.  I will tell the tale.

A Thomas Hutton died in 1558, he was of Fenstanton which is on the other side of the River Ouse from St Ives.  None of this is documented as none of the parish records survive for this period. He left a widow Alice and a single daughter, Joan.  This is important, you will need to concentrate.  Tom Hutton left all of his land and property to his widow Alice for life (should she not remarry) and then he entailed it (this is vitally important) to the legitimate issue of his daughter and their descendants.  In other words, the property could not be disposed of by any descendant but had to follow the blood line of descent, one after the other,  Entailment is now done away with in English Law (I am a lawyer) but up to the Victorian period it  was a bit of a legal curse, and its problems are mentioned by Charles Dickens in "Bleak House" and by Jane Austen in "Pride and Prejudice" no less.

In 1558 (the year Queen Elizabeth 1st came to the throne) Joan Hutton was the wife of a John Marriott.  They had no issue. Alice Hutton was soon dead or remarried.  Joan Marriott (nee Hutton) then remarried a Thomas Herdman.  Jane and Tom Herdman had at least two sons, Thomas jnr and William.  Joan then died (there is no mention of Thomas Herdman Snr) leaving her two blood issue, Thomas Herdman jnr and William Herdman.  It is alleged that Thomas Herdman jnr then sought to break the entailment, because he sold the property (which he couldn't) to our Robert Ginn.

We know all this because of a Robert Marbury and his wife Charity of Fenstanton, they were the one suing Robert Ginn in 1589.  There appears to be no surviving marriage for Robert to Charity and there is no evidence of any issue, but as the court case says, in "her young and tender years" (I am guessing that Charity was in her 40s in 1589) Charity had married William Herdman, Joan's second son.  And, Robert Marbury having got wind or Thomas Herdman jnr's alleged breach of the entailment, was "flying a kite " to see if her could allege that Robert Ginn and Thomas Herdman jnr had participated in a fraud and deliberately broken the entailment whereupon the property should have gone to Charity Marbury.  If Charity had had issue by William Herdman then I think Marbury might have had a case, but she didn't and, as a consequence my view is that Marbury did not have a leg to stand on.  For the record Robert Marbury died at Fenstanton in 1610 and Charity in 1612.

Now there are two interesting pointe here.  Robert Ginn argued (correctly) that all this had happened "before I came to this country" (by which he means county or locality - Elizabethan horizons were quite narrow) and that he knew nothing of Thomas Hutton, Joan or the history and had bought in good faith.  And the second point was what the property at stake was, because it was chiefly an Inn "the White Horse" at St Ives, which was "hard by the bridge foot at the end of the bridge..........lying within the compass of the parish of Fenstanton"

                 John Speed's map drawn in 1607 which shows the area

Unfortunately, the parish registers for neither Wyton or Houghton have survived for this period and there do not appear to be Bishop's Transcripts. This made it impossible to know what children were born after he and Elizabeth arrived and led to speculation.  It was not thought that any records survived that might show what was happening in Wyton cum Houghton and research pretty much stalled in 1992.

Then in 2020 I received a shock, because better indexing of surviving records online meant that I discovered that Hunts Archives had at least some records of the manor from 1587 until Robert's death. 

Robert Ginn owned land in both Wyton and Houghton, and clearly, also elsewhere locally in Hunts but also retaining a little land in Anstey (after his father's death) which led to the Certificates of Residence as he was potentially liable to pay tax on lands in two counties.

                                             Wyton church

There are various entries for Robert in the Houghton and Wyton manorial court book.  

Robert Ginn died at Wyton in 1596 - he was about 67.  Letters of Administration were granted to Elizabeth (National Archives) with an estate in goods and chattels alone in excess of £500.   An Obitus for Robert was entered in the Manor Court Book - Elizabeth took his land under widow's rights, but immediately transferred it to Robert jnr. See below.  There was also a court case, this unknown until 2024. In the Court of Common Pleas in Westminster Hall in London.  Robert had lent money to his nephew Thomas Harding (son of his sister Elizabeth - see post of 25th June 2012) of Hartford in Hunts nearby.  And also to another nephew - Robert Ginn of Anstey.  It shows how intertwined all the lives were, even after Robert had left Anstey in 1570.

Elizabeth was finally traced in 2020, she went to live in Huntingdon after her husband died, living either with her daughter Sarah or son Thomas, she died in Huntingdon in 1606, aged about 75 I would say.

Robert and Elizabeth had a number of children:

Robert - the heir who went to Ely - see later post

Thomas - who died in Huntingdon - see later post

Sarah - was known to have married someone with the surname Whittlesey, pretty much at the start of my research in 1991.  The only way I knew this was through the will of her brother Thomas.  Sarah was alive in 1636 aged 75.

I never expected to find out any more, and then in 2020  - I discovered whom she married, she married William Whittlesey of Huntingdon, St Marys in about 1596, almost certainly just after her father died and she was likely allocated her marriage portion.  They had  four children, William 1597, Ann 1598, Elizabeth 1599 and Barbara 1603.  In 1603 Sarah was 42 and Barbara was her last child.

William Whittlesey/Wittlesey jnr was friendly with his uncle Thomas Ginn gent, a Burgess and Alderman of Huntingdon - see post of  4th September 2012.   William is mentioned in Tom's will and was a witness to a deed of 1623 involving Tom -- see below

In the will of Richard Cannon of Hertford of 1603, William Whittesey's nephew in law via Richard's marriage to Elizabeth Ginn, William snr was referred to as a Gentleman, he died in 1617.

William Whittlesey jnr married circa 1622 and had four children, Jane 1624,William 1627, Alice 1629 and Arthur 1631.  They continued to live in Huntingdon until 1631, but thereafter I cannot trace them. Jnr was obviously alive in 1636

Arthur - one of whom died in infancy in 1569. Another, "son of Robert" (it can only be this man) is mentioned in Anstey records in the Hertfordshire Muster records for the late 1580s. I have always though Bob returned to Anstey briefly after his father died in 1587, likely to mind his lands. Arthur would have been about 17.  No further record has been found of him and he is not mentioned in his bro Tom's will - so I have assumed died young.

John -  John was buried at St Ives in 1573 in infancy.

Henry - was unknown to me - a total shock in fact - when discovered in 2020. The only record I have of him dates to 1595 - he would have been in his early 20s.  He took a house and land in Houghton and Wyton called "The Pepper Yard"  - but immediately transferred it to Dad.  See below.  If you made it to your 20s (difficult) at this time, you had a fair chance of making it to your 40s.  He is not mentioned in brother Tom's will but may have been estranged from him.  I hope that he lived on and turns up again. He may, just may be the father of Robert Ginn of Barham (not far from Huntingdon) who is in the Protestation Return for Huntingdon of 1641 and who in turn may well be the ancestor of the Ginn family of Southoe and Eynesbury (see my blog Ginn genealogical gleanings online) all speculation on my part !

Mary - I cannot know from direct evidence (baptisms) of children born after 1570 as none survive.  I rely on secondary sources.  There is some question that a  Mary was born to this couple who married a Thomas Bownest in London (likely her cousin) in 1614.  See post of 10th June 2023