Thomas Ginn of Great Hormead d. 1545

Thomas Ginn was the third son of his parents, Henry and Katherine Ginn of Anstey.

In 1538 he married Elizabeth Brand, daughter of Thomas Brand snr, the most  major Yeoman farmer in Great Hormead.

The scrivener Barlie (writing in the reign of Elizabeth the 1st) tells us that upon this marriage Henry of Anstey purchased the tenement or smallholding farm in Great and Little Hormead known as "Margery Smiths" a holding of nearly 40 acres and gave it to Thomas as a wedding gift.

Thomas then was a Husbandman.  He is mentioned in both the Forced Loan of 1542 and the Lay Subsidy of 1545 (Tax records at the National Archives) so was certainly not poor, as only 8 out of about 30 Great Hormead householders had to pay the Forced Loan.

"Margery Smiths" scarcely changed and the Hormeads' historian Christine Jackson informed me many years ago that it later became known as "Mutton Hall Farm", the Tudor farmhouse (partly ruined) surviving into the 1890s when it was pulled down.  A map of the farm of the early 19th century is reproduced below.

In the Tudor period and later it was of course common for epidemics of disease to strike without warning, we have of course seen was happened to John Ginn of Aston, Tom's cousin.  Well, unfortunately plague struck Hertfordshire in 1545.

It seems likely that it was Thomas who caught it first.   Plague is not a pleasant way to die.  It strikes quickly causing great swelling of glands and much pain.  Mercifully the victim is generally delirious within a short while.  It seems clear that Thomas had no opportunity to make a Will.  Within a couple of days Elizabeth caught it.  She called a clerk (a scrivener) to her bedside, a certain Henry Smith who was not the Vicar.  We can imagine the clerk, rather scared to say the least, tramping across the fields from the road, up to Margery Smiths (it was fairly isolated).  The Will is rather short, doubtless cut down to bring the clerk's stay to as soon a conclusion as possible.  The introduction (if the probate copy is accurate) is also rather garbled, almost as if the clerk was hurrying so much he tripped up over the words.  Luckily, the essence is there, a good Catholic, Elizabeth only thought of her soul and the children at the end.  She was buried 6 days after her husband, having left all she had in goods and chattels to her children - to see them "to be brought up honestly"   Both husband and wife were in their thirties.

By the time of her death Thomas Brand senior had died, and  Elizabeth left the care of her three young children to her brother Thomas Brand jnr, a prosperous yeoman and George Hawke, another Hormead farmer.  As it was, two of the children  (Thomas and Agnes) were to die young but the eldest, Henry Ginn, is my ancestor and that of many others.