Richard here was one of the "Band of Brothers" post (see August 9th 2012) until now, but discovering that he had more descendants than first thought, then in 2024 extracting some documents that I had first seen thirty years ago, I thought that I would create a separate post for him.
Richard is what I call a "ghost" in that there is no parish record showing that he even existed. But the guy was born in circa 1544, married, had apparently quite a large family and was at least in his 6os when he died having lived a full life for the time. The only way you can know that he existed at all is through secondary sources.
Richard was one of the sons of William Ginn of Great Hormead who died in 1568 leaving a will- see post of 26th June 2012 .
I knew as early as 1990 (from the will of his brother Jonas of 1605) that Richard had married and had a family and was nor far from Standon, and there were realistically only two places he could have gone where there were no surviving parish records for the period, and the favoured and most likely was Stocking Pelham, and that is where he went.
He likely married at Stocking Pelham in the early to mid 1570s, I obviously know nothing of his wife, and the implication (his brother's will again) is that the couple had a good sized family, although I only know one name.
Richard Ginn was a Tailor. He is in the 1583 Muster Roll for Stocking Pelham and starts to appear as a Juror in the Manorial Court Records that survive for a couple of decades of this period (Cambridge Archives 488/ )
Although he was a Tailor, the fact that he appears in the Manorial Roll indicates that he was a copyholder and owned his own cottage, although I do not know the name of the tenement nor where this was.
Stocking Pelham is a tiny parish, no more than one mile square and there were only about thirty households there then, a mere 150 souls live there now.
Life in a a Tudor village would seem very strange to us. There was little in the way of a centralised Law and Order then, the rules and customs by which you lived your day to day life were set down by the Parish and the Manorial Court and essentially the community in which you lived. You were not allowed to cause discord by leaving debris on the highway, you did not cause a disturbance or trespass and the sense of community was such that if you had a plough or oxen you may have to lend them to a poorer neighbour at sowing time, help with his harvest later in the year. There was church going and a sense of community unknown now, but the flip side of that was that everybody knew their neighbour's business and had an opinion on it, and in an age where English people were far more loud and aggressive than they are now, disputes were often settled by violence, many men went armed with at least a knife, a yeoman a sword.
Whilst most of the Stocking Pelham Manorial records are in Latin (as they were supposed to be pre 1733) it is evident that the men of the Manor were having meetings and discussions at the Manorial Court and were setting down the rules and regulations by which they were to live. And these have survive and are in English. And fascinatingly to mark their agreement the rules were set down and underneath the men inscribed their names and signatures.
Pigs for example roamed pretty freely in a Tudor village. Most people had them. They lived on scraps and rubbish and were cheap and provided salted pork and smoked bacon in the winter when life was hard, and ready money if driven to market in November which was the traditional culling time. The peasant had the right to turn his pigs onto common land and into the common woods and thickets to eat acorns and other nuts and fruit in season (the right of "pannage"). And pigs were obviously marked to identify them and commonly a herder (perhaps a boy from the village) would be employed for few pennies to keep the common drove in check - for a large rooting pig could be destructive. And for this reason they were given painful nose rings for much of the year.
Looking after the pigs
Stocking Pelham had rules about pigs. You can see below the "minutes" if you will of the Manorial Court discussion on them and other matters signed by Richard Ginn and the other men at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Here is a partial transcription
We saye that everie man that keeps hoges in thys parysh that they kepe them rynged between hollentyde and mydsomer and for everie hoge that is tak unrynged in that tyme he shall leve (levy ie pay a fine of) ............iiiid
Hollontide was an archaic expression foe All Saint's Day or 1st November. A Festival, when there was merrymaking, bonfires, ghostly stories (in that think Halloween) and when countrymen would slaughter animals in readiness for winter when animal food was scarce and thus they could no longer afford their livestock. Midsummer was also a festival (think Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream) also known as St John's Day or 24th June when people went a bit mad with drink, dancing and things that outraged the church!)
The surviving manorial rolls end in 1591 and then there is a thirty year gap. Richard was still in the 1591 records. He is known to have been alive (and presumably still in Stocking Pelham) in September 1605 (when he would have been about 60) because he was left £5 in the will of his brother Jonas. Whether his wife was alive is unknown.
The children of Richard and his wife (or wives)
Harry (Henry) - is the only one I know by name. In Jonas' will he leaves a cottage in Standon to "Harry Gynne of Chessune (Cheshunt) my brother Richard Gynne's son". Harry Ginn was in Cheshunt by 1598. See post of 9th August 2012
Others - these people have plagued me for well over thirty years. Jonas left twenty shillings to be divided by "the reste of my brother Richard Gynne's children to be equally divided between them when they come to the age of twenty one yeares"
I have speculated long and hard as to who these were. There are no surviving Stocking Pelham parish registers and scant manorial rolls. They could be the Richard, Nethaniah and William who turn up in Ware just after 1600 - perhaps following their brother Harry down that way) (see post of 1st August 2020) and if so this guy's grandson, also Richard, fought in the English Civil War. It is all speculation - clues are elusive and it is doubtful the truth will ever be found.
