Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy

John Austen

Male 1560 - 1621  (~ 60 years)


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  • Name John Austen 
    Christened 26 Apr 1560  Goudhurst, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Gender Male 
    Buried 5/05 Mar 1620/1  Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Person ID I4931  Petersen-de Lanskoy
    Last Modified 27 May 2021 

    Father Robert Austen,   b. Bef 1538, , Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 27 May 1603, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 65 years) 
    Mother Elizabeth,   b. Bef 1540, , Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 24 Jul 1608, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 68 years) 
    Married Bef 1560  , Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F2220  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family 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 
    Children 
     1. John Austen,   c. 1 Aug 1585, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 30 Sep 1650, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 65 years)
     2. Jeffery Austen,   c. 2 Jun 1588, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 19/19 Mar 1636/7, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 48 years)
     3. Benjamin Austen,   c. 16 May 1591, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   d. Bef 27 Aug 1638, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 47 years)
     4. Robert Austen,   c. 27 Oct 1594, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 1645, Brenchley, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 50 years)
     5. Joane Austen,   c. 10 Jul 1597, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location
     6. Francis Austen,   c. 11 May 1600, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 15/15 Mar 1687/8, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 87 years)
     7. Peter Austen,   c. 3 Oct 1602, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 19 Dec 1638, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 36 years)
     8. Thomas Austen,   c. 9 Dec 1604, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location,   bur. 7/07 Jan 1630/1, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location  (Age ~ 26 years)
     9. Richard Austen,   c. 9 Dec 1604, Horsmonden, Kent, England Find all individuals with events at this location
    Last Modified 28 May 2021 
    Family ID F2219  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Notes 
    • RESEARCH_NOTES:
      1. Here is a link to a photo of the famous brass effigy of Joane Berry: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52219527@N00/1771794916/ -- verified in person by myself 9 Sep 2015 (sits in the center aisle just back of the crossing of aisles under a rug):
      The effigy reads: Beneath her effigy is a larger brass plate stating: "Here vnderlyeth the body of Ioane Berry daughter of Ieffry Berry sometime of the parish of Midley and wyfe to Iohn Austen of this pish [parish] of Horsmonden beinge of the age of 36 yeares who depted the 9th of Decemb: 1604 and left behind her 8 sones and one davghter. Vidz: Iohn Ieffry Benjamin Robt Ioane Francis Peter Thomas & Robid [sic - i.e. Richard] of wch two last she died in childbed often vtteringe these speaches let nether husband nor chidren nor land nor goods separate me from tie [thy] my God."
      From the Internet accessed 19 Aug 2015: "John Austen of Goudhurst, Kent, married Joan Berry in 1584. Among their many descendants was was one of England's finest writers, Jane Austen and two brothers who became Rear Admirals of the British Fleet. Although John has usually been regarded as the ancestor of the family it is now thought that his great grandfather was William Astyn of Yalding. Descendants may have migrated to Ramsgate and Loose in Kent. The West Kent branch became wealthy through wool and cloth, purchasing Broadford and Grovehurst at Horsmonden."
      To see these estates, look at this link: http://austenfamilies.weebly.com/john-austen-of-goudhurst-m-joan-berry-1584.html

      2. FHL book 942.23/H3 K2c "St. Margaret's Church Horsmonden, An Historical and Descriptive Acccount," by Anthony Cronk, 3rd ed., by the Friends of Hrosmonden Church, Horsmonden, Kent, 1995, pp. 38-40, 50-51:
      "Other significant changes were now taking place in Horsmonden, which are commemorated in the memorials and registers of the parish church. From being engaged almost exclusively in food production and forestry the inhabitants suddenly found their lives transformed by the advent of two important industries which had sprung up in their midst, clothworking and ironfounding. Both were destined to flourish here for a century before departing, in obedience respectively to powerful economic forces, into other regions of the realm.
      Woollen manufacture, like brickmaking and hop-growing, had received considerable impetus in Kent through the influx of Flemish refugee victims of religious persecutions in their own country. Cranbrook was rivalling Canterbury as a centre for the newly imported technical improvements in the esoteric arts of fulling, weaving and dyeing. Wool had become the 'staple' or most important rural commodity.
      We know that Walter Sycotte, a fuller of Cranbrook, leased two mills, called Broadford Mills, in Horsmonden, which were the property of Henry VIII, but it was not until the time of John Austen of Broadford, who died in 1620, that the place became famed for the manufacture of Kentish broadcloth. It was mainly a cottage industry, and several of the weavers' timbered houses still survive around Capel Cross. Broadford house itself is one of those lovely clothmasters' residences with which this part of the Weald abounds. They were termed 'halls' and served a twofold purpose, combining the funcitons of private house with office and warehouse.
      Side by side in the name of St. Margaret's are the graves of John Austen ad his wife. The brass of the latter consists of a charmng effigy of the lady in hat, ruff, and gown, 18 in. X 7 in., with a foot inscription 20-3/4 in. X 9-1/2 in., as follows:
      "Here vnderlyeth the body of Joane Berry davghter of Ieffery Berry sometime of the parish of Midley and wyfe of Iohn Avsten of this pish of Horsmonden beinge of the age of 36 yeares who depted the 9th of Decemb: 1604 and left behind her 8 sones and one davghter vidz: Iohn Ieffry Beniamin Robt Ioane Francis Peter Thomas & Robid of wch two last she died in childbed often vtteringe these speaches let nether hvsband nor children nor lands nor goods separate me from the my God."
      Above the effigy, the widower's engagingly oblique ascription:
      Amice si quaeris tvmvlvm quis convecit ipsum
      Fvit Iohannes mevs maritus nomine Austen."
      John Austen's own brass on the adjoining grave has suffered from the traffic of many feet, but is still legible:
      "Here lyeth the body of John Avsten bvryed the 5 day of March Ano Dni 1620 and left behind him 8 sonns and one davghter."
      To the stone ledger a further inscription has been incised for his son Francis:
      "Here lyeth interred the body of Francis Avsten of Grofehurst in the parish gent one of the sonnes of John Avsten who was bvried the 15th day of March 1687 and in the 89th year of his age.
      It was under Francis Austen that the Horsmonden cloth industry reached its zenith. He purchased Grovehurst with its apppendant manors from Henry Whetenhall, a lineal descendant of the de Grofhursts... The house adapted as another 'hall' for his trade, in addtion to Braodford.
      This was the family, let it be noted, from which sprang the immortal Jane [Austen, the writer] ...
      Came the dawn of the Hanoverian epoch, and Horsmonden was once more an exclusively agricultural community.
      Kent as a county was never noted for particularly vast estates, but the wide diffusion of rights in the soil which now followed the feudal system was now coalescing. The yeoman freeholders, whose holdings had been uneconomically fragmented by the Kentish system of inheritance, gavelkind, or equal division among male co-heirs, were giving way to the building up of medium-sized estates which could allow a certain rationalization in the size and compactness of agricultural tenancies. The land of Horsmonden, apart from that belonging to certain ecclesiastical and scholastic foundations, was gathered into the hands of three families of minor gentry. The Marriotts in the south were the successors of the City merchant draper Beswicke. The Austens, whose prosperity had originated from the cloth industry, were seated at Broadford. (In the nineteenth century they built a monstous mansion called Capel Manor, now mercifully demolished.) The Courthopes who derived their wealth from interests in the iron industry ...
      This was the squirearchial triumvirate of a social system which was to survive through the eighteenth, nineteenth, and into the beginning of the twentieth century in the same three families. On their ownership of land rested their social prestige. Under them lived a comfortable class of agricultural tenants. An American visitor to Horsmonden in 1850 wrote in some surprise that 'the farmers who occupy and cultivate the land have not a freehold estate in it. They occupy it as tenants under short leases; either from year to year, or for seven, fourteen or twenty-one years. They pay an annual rent ... and often continue to occupy the same land, as tenants, from father to son. There are not fifty acres in Horsmonden the freehold of which is owned by the men who either cultivate or superintend the cultivation.' ...
      Our 1850 chronicler goes on to observe that 'below the farmers there is a much more numerous class -- the farm laborers; of whom some farmers employ five, ten or fifteen. They recieve for wages 10s a week. Whether married or single, their food is not furnished by their employers but they board themselves. With the ten shillings the laborer must support himself and his wife, and six children if he has them and that in a county where provisons are dear. They seldom rate meat oftener than once a week, and many not once a month'."

      3. 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..."

      CHRISTENING:
      1. Online Goudhurst Church record:
      Christening entry says: April 1560 - baptized the 26 daie ___ sone of Robert Austen." Apparently the priest forgot to enter the name. It can only be for John considering the other children are accounted for and 1560 was the estimated date based on the marriage record.. The parish records begin 1558.

      BURIAL:
      1. See notes above from the book "St. Margaret's Church Horsmonden, An Historical and Descriptive Acccount," by Anthony Cronk.