Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy

John Austen

Male 1585 - 1650  (~ 65 years)


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  • Name John Austen 
    Christened 1 Aug 1585  Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Buried 30 Sep 1650  Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I4938  Petersen-de Lanskoy
    Last Modified 27 May 2021 

    Father John Austen,   c. 26 Apr 1560, Goudhurst, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 5/05 Mar 1620/1, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 60 years) 
    Mother Joane Berry,   b. 14 Feb 1565, Midley, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. 9 Dec 1604, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age 39 years) 
    Married 14 Sep 1584  Lydd, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F2219  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Joan,   bur. 24 Aug 1614, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Married Abt 1605  Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Last Modified 28 May 2021 
    Family ID F2224  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • RESEARCH_NOTES:
      1. The book "A Goodly Heritage -- A history of Jane Austen's family," by George Holbert Tucker (1983), Chapter 1 (pp. 15-23): "The Austens of Kent" with notes (p. 213). Note that our line of descent is through the third son of John Austen I whereas Jane descends from the fifth son Francis. The following is a shortened excerpt from the first chapter; however, see the notes of the earliest Austen in my database for the full transcription:
      "Jane Austen came of a goodly heritage. By birth, and with the added gift of genius tempered with amused ironic detachment, she was the ideal delineator of her particular class - the English country gentry of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. On her father's side she was descended from six well-documented generations of respectable Kentish land­ owners who had gradually achieved eminence in their corner of England by way of the broadcloth trade.[1] That, and iron­ working, had been the leading industries of the Weald of Kent for many generations. The Leighs of Cheshire, her mother's family, were much more aristocratic. Not only was their social position higher than the Kentish Austens', but their distinguished pedigree, extending back into the mists of the Middle Ages, had ramifications that connected them with some of the most memorable names in English history.[2]
      Many years after Jane Austen's death, in an undated letter to his nephew, the Reverend James Edward Austen-Leigh, her brother, Henry evaluated his paternal ancestry thus: '...it is no scandal to say that my aforesaid relations of West Kent never raised any alarming fears of their setting even the Medway on fire.'[3] Significantly, he did not feel it necessary to draw a contrast between his Austen and Leigh backgrounds.
      The Weald of Kent, the home of Jane Austen's paternal forebears, derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning forest.[4] It is now used to denote that part of England lying between the North and South Downs, including a fair-sized part of West Kent, a greater part of Sussex, and fragments of Surrey and Hampshire.[5] For centuries before the Roman occupation of Britain it was an almost impenetrable woodland, traversed only by ancient trails, inhabited by robbers, wolves, wild boar and deer, and regularly visited in season by swineherds to fatten their flocks. The region remained remote even after the Romans brought their legions and made roads. But by the sixteenth century, when Jane Austen's ancestors rose to prominence there, much of the timber had been felled, and the area was dotted with clearings, where farming, cloth-weaving, and iron-smelting activities clustered around the square-towered medieval churches that still grace the Wealden countryside.
      The surname Austen, variously spelled Austen, Austin, Astyn, and Awsten, before standardization settled on the first two, is still fairly common in the Weald.[6] The 1978 Tunbridge Wells telephone directory, covering a radius of a little less than fifty miles including much of the Kentish Weald, listed fifty Austen families and seventy-one Austins. Both surnames are diminutives of Augustine, the Old French version of the Latin Augustinus, the usual Middle English form of a saint's name.[7] The saint in this particular instance was St Augustine (d. AD 604), the 'Apostle of the English' and first Archbishop of Canterbury, whose name often was shortened to St Austin.
      Jane Austen's confirmed paternal ancestry begins during the reign of Elizabeth I .with her fourth great-grandfather, John Austen I of Horsmonden, Kent, who was born around 1560 and died in March 1620. Reputable genealogists, including Sir Anthony Wagner, Clarenceux King of Arms, have speculated that John Austen I of Horsmonden was a great-grandson of a William Astyn, who lived at Yalding, a Wealden town a few miles to the north of Horsmonden. His will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in 1522, during the reign of Henry VIII. However no conclusive proof for this assumption has so far been established.[8]
      John Austen I married Joan, a daughter of Jeffrey Berry of Midley, Kent, in September 1584. After bearing him eight sons and one daughter, she died in December 1604, in giving birth to twin sons, Thomas and Richard, who survived. She is buried beneath the nave of the sandstone church dedicated to St Margaret of Antioch in Pisidia, that stands in lonely Gothic dignity some two miles from the present village of Horsmonden. Her gravestone bears a brass representing a Jacobean lady, her hands clasped in prayer, wearing a great beaver hat and a high, pleated ruff. Above her effigy is a small brass plate with a Latin sentence that roughly translated says: 'O friend, if you seek the grave of the one who prepared it, it was John my husband by the name of Austen.' Beneath her effigy is a larger brass plate recording, among other things, that Joan Austen 'DIED IN CHILDBED OFTEN VTTERING THESE / SPEACHES LET NETHER HVSBAND NOR CHILDREN NOR / LANDS NOR GOODS SEPERATE ME FROM THE MY GOD.[9] It is not as dramatic as Jane Austen's last words, 'I want nothing but death', but its sincerity and directness expresses the deep-rooted, unpretentious piety that characterized Joan Austen's famous descendant. ·
      John Austen I outlived his wife by' sixteen years, and is buried beside her. His will shows he was a man of means, owning property in both Kent and Sussex. He was succeeded by his eldest son, John Austen II (1585-1650), who, dying without issue, was succeeded by his eldest surviving brother, Francis (1600-88), Jane Austen's third great-grandfather.
      John Austen I had been content to fill the role of a prosperous farmer, but by the time his surviving sons reached maturity they began to designate themselves as 'clothiers', that is, the fabricators of woollen cloth. Kent had been famous for its broadcloth since the fourteenth century, at which time Edward III invited Flemish weavers to come 'into our kingdom of England for the purpose of working wools there and otherwise exercising their mystery'.[10] Many of these Flemish weavers settled in the Weald of Kent, where water for finishing the heavy cloth was plentiful. By the fifteenth century the occupation of clothier had become so profitable that the fortunes of many former agricultural families like the Austens had been made in wool. The clothier provided the capital and the wool for the over-all operation, and the broadcloth, woven on looms by skilled weavers in cottages surrounding the clothier's more pretentious dwelling, was then processed in workrooms attached to his house. After that it was sold to London factors, who distributed it throughout England and on the Continent. For centuries Kentish broadcloth enjoyed an enviable reputation, but by the early eighteenth century, when Jane Austen's ancestors had turned to other occupations, its production was practically extinct in the Weald, the manufacture of finer types of cloth having shifted to other parts of England, particularly the Cotswolds. Even so, the industry had built up fortunes and a sturdy independence in many Wealden farming and sheep­ breeding families.
      Daniel Defoe has this to say concerning the social class from which Jane Austen's paternal ancestors were descended:
      "These clothiers and farmers, and the remains of them, upon the general elections of members of parliament for the country, show themselves still there, being ordinarily 14 or 1500 freeholders brought from this side of the county; and who for the plainness of their appearance, are called the gray coats of Kent; but are so considerable, that whoever they vote for is always sure to carry it, and therefore the gentlemen are very careful to preserve their interest among them."[11]
      In this connection it is interesting ro note that in a book formerly owned by Jane Austen and now belonging to the Jane Austen Memorial Trust,[12] in commenting on a woollen works at Wootton-under-Edge 'belonging to Messrs. Austin' someone has written 'A branch of the Austens - the "Gray Coats of Kent" ', showing that the Hampshire Austens were well aware of their Wealden clothier background.[13]
      To return to the Austen chronicle: it was Francis, the younger son of John Austen I, who acquired the two many-gabled, half­ timbered Tudor manor houses (still extant) of Grovehurst and Broadford near Horsmonden in 1647, that were subsequently occupied by many generations of his family. At his death in 1688 Francis left a handsome inheritance to his only son, John Austen III, Jane Austen's great-great-grandfather, who was born around 1629 and married Jane Atkins of Brightling, Sussex. By her he had two sons, John Austen IV and Francis who died young, and three daughters, Jane, Ellen, and Anne. Only John Austen IV and his sister Jane had any direct connection with Jane Austen's family. In the case of the earlier Jane Austen, the benefits were unforeseen, but long-lasting...
      Notes:
      1. "Life and Letters," 1.
      2. "Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage (19670 1480; and "DNB," XI, 879.
      3. "AP," 18.
      4. Crouch, Marcus, "Kent" (Batsford, 1966) 95.
      5. Kaye-Smith, Sheila, "Weald of Kent and Sussex" (Robert Hale, 1953) 1.
      6. "Pedigree," iii.
      7. Cottle, Basil, "The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames" (1967) 38.
      8. "Pedigree," iii.
      9. Cronk, Anthony, "St Margaret's Church, Horsmonden" (1967) 38-9.
      10. Kaye-Smith, 153:
      11. Defoe, Daniel, "A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-7)."
      12. Warner, Richard, "Excursions from Bath" (1801).
      13. Chapman, R. W., 'Jane Austen's Library', Book Collectors' Quarterly, XI (July-Sept 1933) 32..."