John Ginn of Ware, Soldier and Chelsea Pensioner died 1846

When I was a boy in the 1960s, I used to read (among others) the story book (rather than a comic) "The Rover and Wizard", tales of derring-do (in my mind's eye I could have wrestled a crocodile and beaten off a horde of Zulus single handed) to stir the blood of every English boy.  The Napoleonic Wars were featured I remember, and John here could well have been a character in the comic.

John here was great, great grandson to Richard in my last post, born in Ware in 1770 to John and Sarah.

John Ginn was a Labourer, who in 1799 joined the army, specifically the 5th Foot ("the Fighting Fifth") as they were known throughout the Napoleonic Wars.

I first researched this guy more than twenty five years ago, in the microfilmed records at the National Archives, before there were any genealogical websites, before there was an online.  It is still the case that you cannot know the story of this man's time in the army without going to the original records at Kew and I am delighted to have researched the guy and to give him a memorial.  Everybody here has a story, and I see myself as the storyteller.

John Ginn was in the 1st Battalion of the 5th (see series WO12/2296 at the National Archives), and spent the first few years of his time in the army on quiet duties at home and in the Channel Islands.  Things changed in 1805.

It was Napoleon's intention to invade Britain from early 1803 to mid 1805, just as in 1940 it was Hitler's, and luckily both came a cropper.

Napoleon had the Grand Armee of over 180,000 men in the vicinity of the French channel ports in mid 1805, waiting to invade.  But luckily a combination of events in Eastern Europe and Nelson's huge victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, crushing the French and Spanish naval fleets, changed the man's mind.   So the Grand Armee marched away, towards the German states and ultimately their own crushing victory over the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz.

Now until Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) took charge of it in the Peninsular War, in truth the British Army was a sorry thing. It was undermanned, under resourced (most of the money went on the Royal Navy) and was often thrown away in "penny packet" expeditions, where far too few men were expected to achieve far too much.  In truth many of these raids were simply so that the Generals could be shown to be doing "something" to irritate Napoleon.

So it was here.  Whilst the 180,000 strong French Army was marching across what is now Germany, the British got together an expedition of 15,000 men under General Cathcart (below) to land in

Germany and take Hanover, the British King George III coming from the House of Hanover of course, and rather wanting the ancestral home back.  It was all nonsense of course.

The First Battalion of the 5th Foot formed part of this expedition and the British troops loaded on to their transports and sailed across the North Sea.  It was December 1805 and the weather was not great.

John Ginn and about 200 of his mates (not all of the Battalion which numbered about a thousand men) were on HMS Helder.  It was Christmas Eve 1805, and due to bad weather the ship ran aground (the crew were lucky to bring her in at all apparently) on, ironically, Den Helder (above) the very northern tip (now a Dutch Navy base) on the Dutch mainland north of Amsterdam.

This was not great news.  The men scrambled ashore with just their lives.  Holland was under French  control and though there were French troops there, most military forces were Dutch, and though allied to the French, certainly a lot more kindly to the British than the French would have been.  John Ginn was one of 250 men (including the crew) taken prisoner.

Now John Ginn was a strange cove, all 5 foot 6 inches of him (black hair and hazel eyes).   He had an uncanny karma to get himself into scrapes, but the most astonishing luck (someone looked after him) to get himself out of them.  It is a gift I envy.

He and his mates were prisoners until August 1806.  Cathcart had landed in Germany, taken Hanover and (with Russian assistance) won a couple of minor engagements, but his efforts were made null and void by a deal between the French and Prussians (Britain's ally) in early 1806 whereby Hanover was given to Prussia.  Cathcart sailed home with his men in the Spring and it would seem to have been the Prussians and the Dutch who allowed John and his mates to be released.  They were back in Portsmouth by September 1806 (John marked as "POW" for the previous 8 months in the Muster) .

John was scarcely back in England before he was off once again, this time to South America !  How he must have welcomed going to sea again !

In yet another of these dreamed up pocket book ideas (perhaps the generals also read "The Rover"), it had been a pet idea of the British since the 1790s to invade South America and free it from Spanish influence (we were always at war with Spain) give the citizens independence and set up a load of trade deals with the friendly and grateful locals who had been oppressed by Spain for years. Simple.

In 1806, they believed that that moment had arrived when in that year the British invaded and took the colonies at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa (assisted by another John Ginn - see post of 3rd October 2012).  The Navy patrolling off the Cape, extended their naval control as far as South America and a plan was hatched to launch an invasion there, in fact there were two.

The first invasion took place in 1806, and was initially successful,  Buenos Aires fell, save that it turned out that the locals were not so friendly or grateful as anticipated - they did not want the Spanish, but they did  not want the British either, and local militias and Spanish regulars forced a retreat.

Fearing and forewarned of a second British invasion, the people of Uruguay and Argentina (as they became) started to form further trained regiment of militia and armed themselves.  They wanted independence, but they wanted to claim it themselves, which of course they did eventually.

The Second Invasion commenced in early 1807 and the British after a fierce action by the 40th, 95th and 87th Foot took Montevideo.  In May, General Whitelocke (below) arrived to take command together with reinforcements,  these included the "Fighting Fifth"

 Whitelocke had two weaknesses, the first was he was slow to make a decision, the second that he underestimated the nature of the fight he was up against.

The plan was to move on Buenos Aires, but he hesitated, a delay that gave the defenders time to prepare. And thinking that he had little to fear from the local militias, he divided his forces into no less than 16 columns.

The problem was that the British infantry were equipped with muskets, not rifles, they did not know the terrain and were trained to fight in line in open combat, not skirmish in the streets of a city.

So when the British entered the streets of Buenos Aires things did not go well for them.  Militia men had set up mobile barricades all over - they trapped them in front, they trapped them behind, they fired at them from above and below and locals threw cooking pots of boiling water and oil down upon them. There was even a militia unit of 600 african slaves.  Men got seperated from each other, had no idea where they were, nor the location of their mates.  The confusion (over about five days) was so great that not a few men deserted and stayed in South America, as many as 1,500 later forming a regiment that joined the locals and later fought for their independence.

The fighting lasted for several days as I say, the most intense being on 4th and 5th July when the British took 1000 casualties, one of them being John Ginn who was wounded on the 5th.  He was badly wounded in the right hand, rendering it useless.

The British lost the battle for Buenos Aires and the campaign.  The men retreated to Montevideo and the Royal Navy.  Whitlocke was later court martialled and dismissed from the army.

Now John, were he here to tell you, would agree that he and ships never got on.  If the extremely superstitious Royal Navy men had know his history, they would likely have considered him more of a "Jonah" than a John and never let him on board.

John was put on board the HMHS (His Majesty's Hospital Ship) "Alexander" at Montevideo, along with quite a few others of the wounded and the ship sailed for home.

It is pretty obvious that the ship was carrying back some munitions of the homeward bound army, because on 22nd November 1807, somewhere in the mid Atlantic, the ship blew up !

John was below decks and the explosion did not touch him.  But the ship was on fire, listing and sinking.  John could not use his right hand and the ship was now at an angle and in trying to get up the steps to the top deck, we know that he fell some distance.  He broke his right thigh bone  and so damaged his right ankle that the foot was splayed out at an angle for the rest of his life.

There were some unrecorded heroes there that day (and John's "Guardian Angel") because men from another ship came to the burning and sinking vessel in Atlantic seas to see if they could get anybody off.  Only 21 men were saved - John being one of them.  The Muster record is so cool as to be chilling "which he was removed before she was lost".

John came home on another hospital ship, never rejoined his regiment and was obviously still sick in early 1808 when the army granted him an out pension as a disabled veteran.  He obviously was in no condition to work and must have had a hard time of it for a few years, living on a pittance in some lodging or other.

In 1812 he returned to the army, obviously disabled and only fit for garrison duty.  He was in the 5th Royal Veteran Battalion for two years until 1814 which was disbanded when Napoleon went to Elba.  When Napoleon escaped, John was back to the fray again, being enlisted in the 8th Royal Veteran Battalion and finally discharged from the army in 1816 when he was 46.  By the time he was discharged his old regiment the 5th Foot (with whom he served for nine years) had another nickname in the army "The Old and Bold", a name which might be applied to John.

I knew pretty much all of the above by 1995, but there was no trace of what happened to John after 1816.  You hear so many stories of disabled old soldiers begging in the streets, that I hoped that had not been his fate - but this story has a happy ending.

Years ago, I discovered that there a namesake of this chap in a renowned British military institution - but the age given was totally wrong.  A fellow researcher said "it cannot possibly be him" but it was.

                               Royal Hospital Chelsea 

The records of Royal Hospital Chelsea for old soldiers (where the "Chelsea Pensioners" reside) are not online, but in 2015 I turned them up at the National Archives in Kew.  John Ginn, formerly of the 5th Foot was only 50 (so they may have fiddled his age to get him in) but in 1820, obviously too disabled to look after himself, John petitioned the Chelsea Board to let him in, and they accepted him.

The Hospital was built in 1692 to the designs of Sir Christopher Wren, and remained unaltered for 300 years, only recently having some internal alterations.  The men lived then and do now, in Long Wards (John was in Long Ward 10) where each man had a room in a long corridor, not very spacious and known as a "berth" with their uniform on a peg outside the door where also sat each man's military chest with their belongings etc (below).  They obviously all messed together for food etc and recreation.

John lived at Chelsea for twenty five years.  The stories that he and his mates must have recounted to each other would have filled a million weekly editions of the "Rover".  It is my loss that I will never get to hear them.  John Ginn died in Chelsea in 1846, he was 76.

Richard Ginn, Shoemaker and Innkeeper of Ware died 1697

Richard here is neither son of the Richard in my last post, not do I believe that he is related to him.  I am confident that this chap was born in Stevenage, likely in 1638 to Richard Ginn (and Ann his wife) , Yeoman of Stevenage who died in 1646.    He is thus not a descendant of William Ginn of Aston d.1520 nor anywhere close a relation to just about everybody else in this blog.

What he is though, is the ancestor of the Ginn family of Ware that had Ginn descendants alive in the 1800s and 1900s, and is to my knowledge the only Stevenage  Ginn to do so.

Richard Ginn was a Shoemaker.  He arrived in Ware in the late 1650s and either arrived married to a Mary or married her when he arrived.  The Ware registers are lost for the last few years of the 1650s.  My suspicion is that he arrived with a little money from the start (he may have come into his inheritance in 1659 when he was 21) as in the 1663 Hearth Tax he had a house in Ware with three hearths.

Many of the Stevenage Ginns were involved in Inns and Innkeeping, from the early 1500s onwards.  In fact I have in the past divided them up into groups using property and pub names by way of identification e.g "The Ginns of the Falcon".  Not surprisingly then, in 1669 Richard bought himself an Inn.

If you walk own to Ware from the Hertford Road (as I have done many times) you pass through what is called Amwell End.  If you had done so before the railway arrived in Ware, you would have encountered two pubs, "The Spread Eagle" (which is still there but post railway on a different site) and "The Cock".  Richard Ginn bought a 999 year lease of "The sign of the Cock" from John Hilliard, Maltster of Ware for £50  in 1669 (70515-70535 HRO).   But  Hilliard had an option to buy it back for £150, so in 1671 Richard Ginn enfranchised it, ie he bought the freehold for a further £71.  It was now his in its entirety.  The family were to hold it for nearly forty years, though for some of that time it was tenanted, ie they did not run it themselves.  The pub was there until about 1900, but at the moment I am struggling to find a photo - there is likely one at Hertfordshire Local Studies Library.

The family seem to have led a steady uneventful life, then in May 1686 Mary died, she was likely about 53.  Richard remarried another Mary shortly afterwards, though whether formally (ie in church rather than just by declaration) seems unclear, as I cannot find the marriage entry.   He had a further two children by her.

Richard Ginn died in 1697, he was about 60 I would say.  He left a will (ERO and below) which is the original ie bears his signature.

Richard and the two Marys had thirteen children, a baker's dozen:

Richard  - was born in 1663.  His father set him up with a house in Great Amwell and left him one shilling in his will of 1697 as a consequence.

Richard here married twice, Isobel Swan in 1684 when he was just 21 and an Ann (marriage not traced) thereafter.. I do not know what the guy did for a living but I do know that he was seen as a Quaker (only the third English Ginn man so identified) and I am sure attended the Quaker Meeting House at Hertford which is the oldest one (built 1670) still standing and is below.

He died at Great Amwell in 1707 aged 43, likely of smallpox or consumption.  Interestingly he was buried in Great Amwell churchyard below and not a Quaker burial ground.

Ann Ginn died at Great Amwell in 1714.  She was in her 50s I would guess and obviously had been a widow when she married Richard as she had grandchildren of the name of Curlewis not yet of age (people of this name at Thundridge and Cheshunt and Waltham Abbey) and Cook.  Her son in law was Thomas Curlewis.   The interesting thing is that there was a family called Curlewis at the relevant time who attended the Quaker Meeting at Hertford albeit not those named in her will..  She left a will (ERO) which is the original and below

Joseph - born in 1665 and died same year of the Great Plague.

Ann -  born in 1667 - likely after Richard's mother.  She is not mentioned in her father's will and there is no marriage entry traced

Benjamin - born 1687.  He is the ancestor of the later Ware Ginn family

Edward - was born in 1671.  Received one shilling in his father's will of 1697 so had been set up.   He married a Mary (marriage not traced) in circa 1700 and is believed (no record) to have had a Richard circa 1702, Sarah in 1705, Elizabeth 1708 and Isobel in 1710 (married Thomas Brace in 1733)  Ned died in 1738 aged 67.  I have no idea what he did for a living.  Assumed son Richard was a Bargeman on the River Lee and married an Elizabeth Archer in London in 1722 but there is scant record after that.

Mary - there were three.  Two died in infancy and the third was born in 1672.  She was alive unmarried in 1697 aged 25.  Was left a share of the proceeds of the pub sale in 1707 but  I have no idea if she was still alive then or what happened to her.

John - there were four.  The surviving John was born in 1675 and was a shoemaker.  He was left his father's house and shoemaker's stock in trade in 1697.  His father clearly valued him. With his stepmother Mary he sold "The Cock" in 1707 as per the terms of his father's will (70515-70535 HRO). He was then described as a shoemaker of South Mimms.  I knew all this 25 years ago.  I was never able to trace the guy.  South Mimms is on the Herts/Middlesex border and the registers were not available at the HRO nor on the International Genealogical Index and he was completely untraced until I was preparing this post.  Although the South Mimms records are still not available, the Greater London Burial Index has him as dying in South Mimms in 1763 when he would have been 87.  It gets better, because the Land Tax has a John Ginn at Cobb's Yard in South Mimms in 1770 - so this guy is a "live one" and on my "to do" research list.

Elizabeth - came from the second marriage in 1690.  She was alive in 1697 and received a share of the sale of the pub per the will..  No idea if she was alive in 1707 to receive it though as she is untraced.

Dorothy - also from the second marriage in 1692.  Received a share of the pub sale in 1707.  She stayed a maid and died in Ware in 1764 aged 72.

Richard Ginn, Cromwellian Trooper of Ware died 1683

Richard here, son of Richard in my last post, has always been a very interesting chap to research.  I have been researching him for over thirty years now, and there is still a lot that I do not know.

Richard was born to Richard and Beatrice (nee Gilderson) in 1617, the year that William Shakespeare died.  His mother died when he could barely walk and his father remarried the widow Alice Hare in 1623.

Charles the 1st (1600-1649) was a closet Catholic.  A Scot (and thus King of England and of Scotland - the countries were not yet joined) he married Henrietta Maria of France, a devout catholic, and the scene was set for trouble both  Protestant England and Protestant Scotland.

Charles attempted to change certain church rituals in the late 1630s to move them closer to those of Rome.  This caused uproar, and in Scotland led, in 1639, to what was called The Bishops War with England

Charles could not raise an army to serve abroad (and Scotland was abroad) without Parliament voting him the money, and Parliament would not, but he had residual Royal powers that empowered him to impress an army, as his father had (see Henry Ginn in the Thirty Years War - post of 19th July 2012 ) in 1625.

The problem with impressment was that money would be short, he could not recruit the Trained Bands (what passed for a "regular army" in England) and the men impressed were generally those chosen by each parish "the drunks, rogues and rascals" allegedly.

So long ago that I have lost the note book, I discovered that Richard Ginn of Ware was impressed for the English Army in 1639.

The English army raised numbered about 15,000 men plus a few smaller units and in general were led by inadequate officers.  The conscripts were largely untrained, and because many of them were not from the Trained Bands (and thus could not get access to their arsenals) they were poorly armed, often with only bows and arrows. Many as it happened sympathised with the Scots and were thus  unruly and morale low.   By contrast the Scots were led by professionals and their clansmen used to fighting - mostly each other !

 It is said that the Bishops War was setting the scene for, even the beginning of, the English Civil War that officially kicked off in 1642, the Scots and Parliamentary English against Charles the 1st and his Royalists.  

So with a quick bout of training the English army marched to Berwick upon Tweed on the Scottish borders, where they were met by Charles the 1st who immediately declared he had made peace with the Scots, not wishing to risk immediate defeat.  Thus was the calibre of this man, which obviously impressed itself on Richard Ginn.

Richard returned to Ware and in about 1641 he married a Jane, the marriage entry is lost.

Now Jane Ginn was a bit of a scold, a lively piece, she turns up in the Hertfordshire Quarter Sessions records a couple of times, mostly commenting on the morals (or lack of them) of other women of her acquaintance !

But she and Richard settled in Ware and had a son, also Richard in January 1643 who died shortly afterwards. At this point they were childless.  Then  things turned a bit lively, even for Jane.

The English Civil War kicked off in the summer of 1642 when Charles the 1st raised his standard at Oxford, and after a slow start he began to gather a large army.

It is difficult to tell this story in the context of a blog post, but the Eastern counties of England (including Hertfordshire) and, crucially London, declared for Parliament.  The Eastern counties clubbed together and formed the Eastern Association, which with London by and large supplied most of the men and money for the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War.

So what you had initially were, on the Royalist side a lot of aristocracy and gentry who had weapons and knew how to use them, (some like Prince Rupert being professional soldiers) against a Parliamentary mish mash of minor gentry, yeomen's sons and tradesmen who had scarcely wielded much more than a pen or a pitchfork in their lives.

After a series of actions which were indecisive or went badly for Parliament, the parliamentary side began to sort themselves out.  

The Eastern Association raised an army under the Earl of Manchester.  Other generals, Waller, the Earl of Essex and, in time, Oliver Cromwell also were put in charge of armies or serious commands.  At various times Parliament could have three armies in the field all over England, together with troops for garrisons in major towns or strategic points.

Sir John Norwich of Brampton in Northants was born in 1613.  He was scarcely older than Richard.  He was made a Colonel of Horse by Parliament in 1642, and in the summer of 1643 this guy turned up in Hertford marketplace, I know it well, and raised his standard to enlist a regiment of volunteers to be known as Sir John Norwich's Regiment of Horse.

Many of the men that joined up came from Hertford and Ware (you can trace their names in the Muster) and Richard here was of course one of the men that enlisted **

                            Parliamentary trooper

Norwich managed to recruit three troops, each of about 90 men, thus about just short of 300 men all told. I even know the arrangement which was as follows

Colonel's Sir John Norwich's Troop - Sir John Norwich assisted by Lieutenant Nicholas Deane and Cornet John Edwin. There were three corporals, a trumpeter or two and 113 men in total in this troop.

Captain Thomas Brudnall's Troop - Captain Thomas Brudnall assisted by Lieutenant John Holmes and Cornet Joseph Barber.  There were three corporals, a couple of trumpeters and 88 men in total in this troop.  By early 1645 Brudnall was a Major in the regiment.  In late early 1645 the Cromwellian Association say that  Brudnall was replaced by Oliver Ingoldsby of the Buckinghamshire Ingoldsbys.  Oliver's mother was a Cromwell and he was a cousin of the Oliver Cromwell and brother of Richard Ingoldsby one of those who signed the Execution Warrant for Charles the 1st.  Oliver became a Major under Norwich, joined the New Model Army (below) in spring 1645 and was killed at the siege of Pendennis Castle in 1646.

Captain Thomas Moulson's Troop - Captain Thomas Moulson assisted by Lieutenant Simon Ayloffe and Cornet Robert Fitzwilliams.  There were three corporals, a couple of trumpeters and a total of 71 men in this troop.

 Each troop was divided into three squadrons of about 25- 30 men and each squadron was given a Corporal  (an officer - but - the term was in development - "non commissioned") to manage it.  The Corporal scouted ahead, managed the squadron and its duties each day, arranged for it's food and lodging each night.  Richard Ginn was made a Corporal of one of the squadrons of Captain Moulson's Troop.

Moulson's Troop had a square red flag (cornet) emblazoned with a white scroll and it's motto "Pro patria lacerata pugno" the literally pugnacious - "A torn fist for my country"

The Parliamentary forces were effectively divided into three groups.  Firstly there were the field armies - the men that we would call "the regulars" the men who marched all over the country fighting the main battles.  Then there were the auxiliaries, the men who joined units that were to fight outside their county of origin, but usually used for garrison duty or on patrol.  Then there were the Trained Bands or the Militia, the "home guard" if you like, they were often part time and only required for defence in their home county and there was often a lot of trouble if they were asked to serve elsewhere.

Norwich's men were initially (until August 1644) in the auxiliary forces.  Due to the amazing survival of a booklet from 1652 ** which is in the Bodleian Library in Oxford no less (and has Richard's name in it) I know that that the Regiment were embodied and started active service on 17th October 1643.  The pay list survives for the year ending on the quarter day 25th March 1644 and the troops were on active service for every day and the accounts of the cost of the Regiment show that the principal weapon (they each also had a sword and a brace of pistols slung either side of the front of their horse) was a harquebus, a form of matchlock carbine, below.

We know that when the Royalists took Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire, Norwich's Regiment were ordered to garrison Hitchin and patrol the area to guard the approach to Hertfordshire and London.  Norwich used the opportunity to recruit Buckinghamshire men and those from Bedfordshire and later Northants, his home county, to form further units which were brigaded with the Hertfordshire men. At times he commanded 500 Horse.

Richard Ginn and his mates were later used to garrison and patrol the approach to Godmanchester.

Things get interesting in  the summer of 1644, because Parliament ordered Norwich to take his regiment to Abingdon in Oxfordshire, which was close to the Royalist centre of power at Oxford and which changed hands between the Cavaliers and Parliament several times during the First English Civil War (1642-6).    Norwich refused - he said that his men were under the jurisdiction of the Eastern Association and, specifically, were part of the Eastern Association Army and thus under the orders of the Earl of Manchester (below).

By 1644 the divisions in the Parliamentary faction were beginning to show.  There were the moderates like Manchester who felt that the King was the King and Parliament would at some point have to come to terms with him.  On the other side were the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell who felt that there was no chance of coming to terms with Charles, he would either have to be deposed or killed, likely both.

So when Norwich refused an order he created a rift.  Parliament said "fair enough"  and ordered Norwich's regiment into the field army of the Earl of Manchester in August 1644.

It is impossible to tell this story in the context of a blog post, and interested readers will have to explore further, but as part of the Eastern Association Army it is clear that Sir John Norwich's Horse were at the the stand off at Donnington Castle in the Autumn of 1644 and the Second Battle of Newbury where they charged under the command of Oliver Cromwell, Cromwell being Manchester's subordinate at that battle.

The Second Battle of Newbury was not a great triumph for Parliament.  They outnumbered the Royalists but made a mess of the use of the terrain and Cromwell's charge, for once, failed.  The three Parliamentary army generals quarrelling and competing , Manchester, Waller and the Earl of Essex, sealed the fate of the battle and ultimately led to the creation of the New Model Army (below).

The rifts between the Parliamentarian factions boiled over after Newbury and the Cromwellian supporters won.  It was decided that all of the aristocratic leaders like the Earls of Manchester and Essex were out and the men who believed in the War "they know for what they fight and the fight for what they know" were in.  The exiting motley of armies with different commanders were to be reformed with the best men  as the New Model Army, highly trained and motivated and in uniform regiments and under one man, Fairfax.

So in April 1645 all of the Eastern Association Army regiments were "reduced" some men likely went home, but most went into the New Model Army which was now the only field army,  or went into garrison duty.  Officers apart, it is impossible to find out what happened to any individual.

I do not believe that Richard joined the New Model, because although he was clearly away from Ware for three years, save for short periods mostly in the winter when the records suggest he was billeted in Hertfordshire, he was back home in Ware at the end of 1646, or at least I think he was.  Whilst the First Civil War ended in 1646, the New Model continued as a unit, it was not disbanded.

A more plausible scenario is that he stayed with Sir John Norwich.  Contemporaries of Sir John suggested he was a fine soldier and very popular.  I have been unable to locate a portrait. The Naseby Battlefield Project tell me that Norwich was effectively demoted because of his loyalty to Manchester.  In April 1645 he was made the Commander of Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire, his home county (below)

We know that Norwich was allocated some troopers and infantry to garrison the Castle - did Richard follow him ?    The Royalists with their main army advanced towards Rockingham and subsequently Naseby in June 1645 and some of the Parliamentary troopers of various units fell back piecemeal on Rockingham and with "his own troop" Norwich is said to in total have accumulated 500 cavalry in his garrison.

Mike Ingram of the Naseby Battlefield Project tells me that research that his group have been doing, including metal detecting cavalry pistol balls and studying contemporary accounts (his work written up in 2018) suggests that Sir John Norwich and his 500 men played a significant role both before and at the end of the Battle of Naseby.

The New Model Army turned up at Naseby in June 1645.  Norwich had bravely taken his 500 cavalry, leaving his foot to garrison Rockingham/ to shadow and harass the Royal Army.  The New Model crushed the royalist army at Naseby, and  Charles 1st gathered his remaining cavalry including those of Prince Rupert, raised his standard  and made a stand on and around Moot Hill (below)

The cavalry of the New Model were engaged elsewhere or their horses blown, but Sir John Norwich and his men engaged the King's cavalry including his Lifeguards here, there are spent cavalry pistol balls all around.  Standards were taken.  Naseby was won and the First English Civil War effectively over.  

Was Richard at Naseby ?  We will never know.  I think it likely.

Richard would seem to have been back in Ware in 1646, at least by the end of that year.  He had had a daughter Elizabeth in May 1644 and apart from short visits would not have seen home much.  But the army paid him 17s 6d a week which was not bad.

He and Jane continued to have children, at least another four and then all settled down.

I sadly have no idea what Richard did for a living, a workman of some kind possibly a Brazier.  He had one hearth in 1663, so likely lived in a cottage he did not own.    Jane died in 1680 and Richard in 1683 aged 65.

Richard and Jane had six children

Richard - there were two - the first died in infancy and the second was born in 1649 and is untraced.  He may have died in infancy, the register in the second half of the 1650s is lost.

James - died infancy

Sarah - born in 1654 - she is untraced

Jane - she sadly died of the plague in the Great Plague of 1665 - she was 17.  Her burial entry is marked "P" for The Pest.

Elizabeth - born in 1644 is untraced

**  Richard's service is mentioned in Musters recorded in Alan Thomson's "The impact of the First Civil War on Hertfordshire 1642-7" (Hertfordshire Record Publications) and SP28 130 Part II (National Archives) and in a remarkable booklet by William Bagwell in 1652 (published on the order of Oliver Cromwell) which dealt with alleged non payments from the Hertfordshire Committee towards the payment of the wages of Norwich's regiment in 1643/4,

Acknowledgements:  I am indebted for information supplied by the Cromwellian Association and, in particular, that provided by Mike Ingram of the Naseby Battlefield Project.

The origins of the Ginn family of Ware

So far, the posts in the blog have been just about exclusively those relating to Ginn men and women descended from William Ginn of Aston who died in circa 1520.  But, as mentioned in the Introduction to this blog, there were other Ginn families in Hertfordshire that cannot be shown to be or certainly were not descendants of William, though they are likely relations - and one such family is the first (post 1600) Ginn Family of Ware.

Three Ginn men, Richard, William and Nethaniah all seem to have come into Ware in about 1615.  The fact that they arrived at broadly the same time suggests that they could have been brothers, though there is absolutely no evidence of that.  They do not seem to be ancestors of nor related to (in my view) the second Ginn family that arrived in Ware in the 1650s, but more of that later.

All three of these men married, although William died immediately afterwards and although Nethaniah lived until 1669 , his sons died in infancy and only two daughters lived to marry.  So, effectively,  the first Ginn Family of Ware are descended from this Richard, he being born in about 1585.  So who was he ?

Well the sad truth is I do not know, but there are two schools of thought as to his origins:

One, the Broxbourne theory, is that these lads came into Ware from neighbouring Broxbourne (whose registers do not survive for this period) as I know through the odd will that there were Ginns in Broxbourne in the 1500s.  This family itself had likely originated from Ware, as I also know that Ginns were present in Ware from about 1450-1550, and the family used the name Richard.  But my suspicion is that this theory "does not run".

Secondly, the Stocking Pelham theory, is that Richard Ginn came into Ware from Stocking Pelham.  A Richard Ginn of there, a Tailor, had property there (see post of 9th August 2012 ) and is known from the will of his brother Jonas (the SP registers also do not survive for this period) to have had a substantial family there in the 1570s through likely to 1600 or so.  Jonas, who died in 1605, also tells us that Richard's son Harry (who had a son Uriah as opposed to Nethaniah)) went into Cheshunt  (considerably further from  Stocking Pelham than Ware) and given that SP was a tiny hamlet, the boys may have felt compelled to move out.  My suspicion is that this theory runs.

Both theories are conjecture, there is is no evidence either way.  So what do we know of this first Richard ?

Well the first Richard was a Brazier, that is he made items of brass.   And he married twice, Beatrice Gilderson of Stanstead Abbotts (likely daughter of George and born Roydon in 1596 - I know this area well) in 1616 (by whom he had his only child) and the widow Alice Hare of Broxbourne in early 1623.  For some reason both marriages were at the small but beautiful Widford Church nearby, Richard and his brides seeing the wall paintings from 1500 that are still there today.

And that is pretty much it, we do not know when Richard died nor does there appear to be any burial record of either wife.

As for the only son, also Richard - see next post

Samuel Ginn or Gean of the Royal Navy and Greenwich died 1790

I would have loved to have sat and had a pipe and a pint with this guy in a Greenwich pub, as he had a few tales to tell did Sam.  He was in the Royal Navy before Captain Cook.

Sam was the brother of George in my last post, and son of William and Catherine in first post of  28th June 2020.  The first miracle is that he survived infancy, as he was orphaned with his siblings at the age of seven.

Who cared for Sam is a mystery.  He may have initially been taken in by relations, but he most likely was handed to the parish poor law officials (see below) as we know that ultimately they took responsibility for him.

Sam does not have a surviving baptism record, and nor does he have a surviving apprenticeship record, but what does survive, by some miracle, are a series of documents in the records of the Royal Navy that document his early life.  I have never come across anything quite like it.  Without the Royal Navy I would never have traced him.

                              Greenwich circa 1750

In his teens Sam Ginn was apprenticed to a Greenwich fisherman, Richard Wilkinson.  We know this, because Richard tells us in an affidavit he swore many years later.  He even went to the lengths of getting the parish clerk to check the baptism register at St Bartholomew the Less church so as to give the Navy and us full details of Sam's birth and parentage.

There is no doubt but that Sam was apprenticed out by the parish, that is he somehow survived until his teens and was then, about the age of fourteen (1731) apprenticed out under the Poor Laws to Richard Wilkinson.  We know this, not only because Wilkinson involved St Barts in his evidence above, but because whereas a normal apprenticeship lasted for seven years, until 1767 a parish apprenticeship lasted until the boy was a man of twenty four.   So Sam was effectively "sold" by the parish and bound to Wilkinson (who did not have to pay him  money and provide him nothing but his keep) for ten years.  What an existence.

What is worse, is that Wilkinson himself then effectively sold Sam to the Royal Navy, probably in the early 1730s.  He gave the Navy Board the original apprenticeship indenture (which I think may still be at the National Archives - I am looking into it) and expected each ship that Sam served on to forward the whole of Sam's wages to Wilkinson - you could not really make this story up !

So what we have here is Sam entering the Royal Navy in his teens.  It is impossible to research  "other ranks" in the Navy before the Crimean War (mid 19th century) because sailors did not have a "career" as such, ie did not sign up for a length of service until then.  The navy man was recruited for any ship and any voyage that might take him on and might then be ashore for a time.  So when a ship recruited, Sam would have joined the crew, when it finished it's voyage it would have paid him off and he would have been ashore until the next ship took him on.  So without knowing the ships ("chicken and egg") you cannot trace the man in the ship's muster and log records.  And the Royal Navy had a heck of a lot of ships.

But what I know at the moment is that Sam Ginn thrived in the Navy.  By 1739 there is reference to him being made a Boatswain ("Bosun") ie what was termed a "standing officer" being the best seaman in the crew save for the Ship's Master (ie the man - not the Captain - who effectively managed the ship).  There are a couple of warrants or appointments concerning this surviving and I am looking into what ships they relate to - as a Bosun was appointed to a ship.

But, ironically through the actions of Wilkinson, I know that in 1741/2 Sam Ginn was on board HMS Romney.  We know this because the Paymaster at Portsmouth (God bless him) had been so affronted upon seeing the Indenture and being told that he could not pay Sam ("now on the Romney") that he got himself in "a passion" said Wilkinson and defaced the indenture, paid Sam directly and sent the Indenture back to the Navy Board.

HMS Romney was a 50 gun 4th Rate ship of the line built in 1708.  She had been given a major refurbishment and relaunched in 1726.  Above is a model of a 1720 built (HMS Falkland) 50 gun 4th rate the model now in Greenwich Museum.  In 1742 the Romney was commanded by Thomas Grenville (later captain of HMS Falkland above and killed at the Battle of Cape Finisterre in 1747), after April 1743 by Henry Godsalve.

Now the interesting thing is that Sam obviously knew that Richard Wilkinson was coming after him, because when you research the Muster and Paybooks of HMS Romney 1740-1745 (ADM 33/352 at the National Archives) you find that Samuel Ginn is now Samuel Gean and had signed on as an Able Seaman, not being able to get a "ticket" as the Bosun.   Sam was not illiterate, this was an attempt to disassociate and distance himself from Richard Wilkinson (see muster entry below)

The British were pretty much always at war during the 1700s, and at this time we were embroiled in the War of Austrian Succession (don't ask) and (having a German King) were on the side of the Austrians, the old enemies being France and Spain.

HMS Romney was stationed at Port Mahon in Menorca (below) as part of the Mediterranean Fleet.

She patrolled the area around there and the Straits of Gibraltar, and in March1743 the Romney sighted a Spanish treasure ship, a ship with a very valuable cargo, some estimated it at nearly £150,000 sailing from Veracruz to Cadiz..  The ship was taken, Grenville was promoted up a notch, but more important, to Grenville and all of the crew at least, was the prize money.

The Admiralty down valued the prize, which must have infuriated the crew, but Grenville received about £30,000 getting a fair chunk of the pot.  A quarter of the pot was shared between the other ranks, and the ship having a full complement of 300 men, leads me to the conclusion that our Samuel here received between £50 - 100.  Sam's luck had turned.  The men would have lined up to receive the money in gold paid into their hats on the drumhead, and knuckled their forelock on receipt..

Godsalve now became Captain, but things went down a notch for all concerned in February 1744.  The British were blockading Toulon in France where a Spanish squadron had taken refuge.  France, not officially at war with Britain, was on the Spanish side and secretly planning an invasion of England.

Command of the  British Mediterranean Fleet had been given to a Thomas Matthews who had not been to sea since 1736 and had never had command of anything bigger than a squadron.  Second in command was a man called Lestock who could not stand Matthews, so things were not set to go well from the start.

The British Fleet attacked the Spanish who came out of Toulon attempting to escape.  The British outnumbered them, but Matthews muddled his signals to the Fleet and on a day with little wind the British fleet was scattered all over the place and could not "form line" and concentrate their numbers so as to crush the Spanish.  Lestock had a squadron, which included HMS Romney, but seeing Matthews in difficulty, Lestock smirked and held his ships back - some five miles (!) from the main British force.

Matthews knowing the situation was critical, seeing the Spanish escaping and the French fleet gathered in Toulon, engaged the Spanish with those ships he could bring to line, too few, and was given a mauling, upon seeing which the French fleet sailed out and finished the job.  The Royal Navy were accustomed to constant success, the public ("Hearts of Oak") disgusted, Matthews was dismissed the service and Lestock court martialled.  I think we can guess the words Sam Ginn and his mates uttered on the fiasco.

                             The plan of battle at Toulon

Sam Gean as he now was came home.  At the moment I am not sure if he ever went back to the Navy again.  He certainly went back to Greenwich where he quite likely used his prize money to buy a boat.

Sam married three times.  In February 1745 he married Mary South at Greenwich St Alphege by Licence, saying that he was 28.  Mary died in 1759 or thereabouts and in 1760, also by Licence (below) Sam married Elizabeth Scanlan which you can see bears his signature.

Elizabeth died in February 1776, and in November of that year Sam married a Mary Moore, again by Licence. 

As I say, we do not know if Sam returned to the Navy after 1745, the fact that there were no children from any marriage leaves the question open, but we do know that by the 1750s at least Sam had bought a boat and set himself up as one of the Greenwich Fishing Fleet, who sailed the east and south coasts of England and trawled their catch. They sold their fish at Ship Stairs and at the Greenwich Market which was set up in 1700 and is still active and on the same site today.

At some point Sam bought a house in Cold Bath Row in East Greenwich.  He is in the Greenwich Land Tax of 1780 as a property owner.  Bank of England records also show that by 1781 he had acquired a few stocks and shares. You have to admire the guy, from having less than nothing, Sam made lemonade from the lemons that life had given him.  

Sam Ginn or Gean  "Mariner" in the register, died in 1790, he was 72.  He left a will (PCC) calling himself "as Gentleman" and leaving everything he owned to Mary..  He is buried at St Alphege Greenwich which is today as it was built in 1712 and still known as "The Mariner's Church".  Mary remarried a William Wheatley of Greenwich in 1797.