| Notes |
- RESEARCH_NOTES:
1. Most of the children are christened in Horsmonden; however, the gaps in christenings are filled by checking next door in Goudhurst parish christenings and burials where we find christening and no burials for the first two and the ninth and tenth children. The second child, Stephen, specifically notes his father Robert Austen is of Horsmonden, which helps tie the christenings to our Robert. Goudhurst parish records begin Nov. 1558, but no marriage is found. Perhaps there was another child or two born before the register books began. There are a lot of Austens in Goudhurst and Robert may have migrated from there to Horsmonden.
2. 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:
"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.
Jane, the daughter of John Austen III, married Stephen Stringer, gentleman, of Triggs, Goudhurst, Kent, in May 1680. They were the parents of Hannah, who married William Monke, whose daughter, Jane, married Thomas May of Godmersham, Kent, in 1729. He had been born Thomas Brodnax but having inherited the estates of his mother's cousin, Sir Thomas May of Rawmere, Sussex, in 1727, he had taken the surname of May by Act of Parliament. A few years later, when he succeeded to the estates of Mrs Elizabeth Knight of Chawton, Hampshire, he again applied to Parliament for permission to change his name from May to Knight. This was also allowed but not before a Member of Parliament wryly remarked, 'This gentleman gives us so much trouble, that the best way would be to pass an act for him to use whatever name he pleases.'[14]
The present magnificent Palladian country house at Godmersham was built in 1732 for Thomas (Brodnax, May) Knight (1702-81). As he also inherited the gift of the living of Steventon when he came into the Knight properties in 1738, he was able to present it to his second cousin, the Revd George Austen, in 1761. But that was not the end of the benefits Jane Austen's family derived from the marriage of the earlier Jane Austen of Horsmonden to Stephen Stringer. Later in the eighteenth century, Thomas Knight II of Godmersham (1736-94) (son and heir of Thomas Knight I), being childless, adopted Edward, one of Jane Austen's elder brothers, to whom Knight's widow, Catherine (Knatchbull) Knight, handed over the Kent and Hampshire properties in 1797.[15]
With Jane Austen's great-grandfather, John Austen IV, we encounter tribulation for the first time in the Austen chronicle. It also serves to introduce his plucky widow, Elizabeth, whose sterling character and strong sense of ·duty towards her orphaned children enabled them to survive a serious social and financial setback. Fortunately a family document, 'Memorandums for mine and my Children's reading, being my own tho'ts on our affairs 1706, 1707, a rough draft in a retired hour', written by Elizabeth Austen, has been preserved; it sheds a revealing light on Jane Austen's paternal forebears.[16] After reading it, one must conclude that John Austen III of Grovehurst, Elizabeth Austen's father-in-law, was not a particularly likeable man.
John Austen IV became the master of Broadford upon his marriage to Elizabeth Weller of Chauntlers, Tonbridge, Kent, in December 1693. (A member of an old Tonbridge family, Elizabeth was a grand-daughter of Thomas Weller (1602-70), chief parliamentary agent for the Tonbridge area during the Civil War. His house had been sacked by Royalists, even though his family later protested he had lamented the unhappy fate of Charles I 'and had as much resentment against Cromwell's usurpation as any of his Majesty's subjects.'[17] Playing the classic role of spendthrift son of tight-fisted father, John made the great mistake of concealing from his wife debts contracted during his carefree bachelorhood, trusting the wealth he would inherit at the death of his father would enable him to satisfy his long-suffering creditors. In the meantime he and his wife lived the good life of persons of their station. They fitted up the old gabled house with handsome furniture, plate and linen, and dispensed generous hospitality throughout the neighbourhood. Meanwhile John Austen IV staved off his creditors sufficiently to keep his personal affairs a secret from his unsuspecting wife. After he had fathered seven children, fate caught up with him in 1704, when he was stricken with consumption. With only a short time to live belatedly he took his wife into his confidence.
Faced with an appalling situation, Elizabeth proved under duress to be a strong and practical woman. She acted promptly, hoping her wealthy father-in-law, who by her own account 'was loath to part with anything', would assist her. At first the crotchety old man, who disliked his daughter-in-law, reluctantly agreed to help, but after the death of his son in September 1704, he withdrew his promise. Elizabeth then offered her most valuable household goods for sale; but as this hurt the pride of 'Father Austen', as she called him, the sale was cancelled and he again agreed to help satisfy his son's creditors. Once more Fate intervened, for John Austen III died in July 1705, after a brief illness that 'seiz'd his brains'. He was buried beside his son in St Margaret's Church, Horsmonden, beneath a massive stone slab carved with the Austen coat of arms.
When his will was read Elizabeth had the mortification of learning that although her eldest son, John Austen V, had been amply provided for, her other six children were only minimally remembered. Undeterred, she took matters into her own hands and by prudent management of the Broadford estate and the sale of her more valuable possessions, by 1708 she had not only paid off most of her husband's debts but was on the lookout for an advantageous situation in a town that would enable her to supervise her younger children's education, there being no school in Horsmonden, '...for I always tho't,' she wrote, 'if they had Learning they might ye better shift for in ye world, with yt small fortune was allotted 'em.'
Luck was with the courageous widow, for when she learned that the schoolhouse in nearby Sevenoaks (she wrote it 'Sen'nock') needed a housekeeper, she let Broadford and took the job on the understanding that her children would have free instruction from the master rather than her receiving a salary. Interestingly, the master turned out to be Elijah Fenton (1683-1730),[18] a minor Augustan poet and excellent classical scholar who was later to assist Alexander.Pope with his translation of 'The Odyssey.'[19]
By February 1721, when Elizabeth Austen died and was taken back to Tonbridge for burial, she had successfully placed all her surviving younger children in positions to provide for themselves. John Austen V, her eldest son and the young squire of Broadford, with whom she had no concern, had already been sent by his grandfather's executors to Cambridge, where he was admitted as a fellow commoner at Pembroke College.[20]
Francis, her second son, had been apprenticed to a London attorney and later became a successful and wealthy Sevenoaks solicitor. Thomas, the third son, was articled to a London haberdasher but later practised as an apothecary in Tonbridge. Robert, the fifth son, died, unmarried, of smallpox. Stephen, the sixth son, had been apprenticed to a London stationer and later set up as a bookseller and publisher of religious and medical books at the sign of The Angel and Bible in St Paul's Churchyard. The daughter, Elizabeth, married a man named Hooper, presumably the George Hooper who was later a prominent Tonbridge attorney.[21]
William Austen, the fourth son and the grandfather of Jane Austen, merits fuller treatment, but unfortunately little is known concerning him other than the factual information contained in parish registers, legal documents, and on his gravestone in Tonbridge Church.[22] Born at Broadford on 3 February 1701, he received his education at the still flourishing Sevenoaks Grammar School, founded early in the fifteenth century by Sir William Sevenoak, an associate of Sir Richard (Dick) Whittington and his predecessor as Lord Mayor of London in 1418-19.[23] In February 1718 William Austen was articled for a fee of £115 10s. 0d., to William Ellis, a Woolwich surgeon. After completing his apprenticeship, he set up, like his brother Thomas, as a surgeon in Tonbridge, where he practised successfully until his death at the age of thirty-six.
Meanwhile, he had married twice. His first wife (Jane Austen's grandmother) was Rebecca, widow of Dr William Walter of Frant, East Sussex. She and Dr Walter were the parents of William Hampson Walter, the half-brother of Jane Austen's father and in time the father of Philadelphia, who later recorded the first known description of Jane Austen as a young girl.
Rebecca (Walter) Austen was a daughter of Sir George Hampson, 'Doctor of Physic' of the City of Gloucester, where he was buried in St Michael's Church in September 1724. He was descended from Henry Hampson, who lived at Brodwell in Oxfordshire during the reign of Henry VIII, and was also a grandson three times removed of Sir Robert Hampson (d. 1607),[24] a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company of London, and an alderman and sheriff of London, who was knighted by James I at ·Whitehall in July 1603.[25] Two of Sir George Hampson's other daughters deserve mention. The first, Catherine Margaret, married John Cope Freeman I, and later showed great kindness to William Austen's three orphaned children. The second, Jane, was the wife of Capel Payne, son, grandson, and great-grandson of mayors of the City of Gloucester, which city he also served as town clerk from 1723 until his death in London in 1764. Jane Payne was also a Woman of the Bedchamber to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha from the time of the latter's marriage in 1736 to Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales, until 1767.[26] She was present at the birth of George III in June 1738.
William and Rebecca Austen were the parents of four children, all born in Tonbridge. The first, Hampson, a daughter, was born in 1728 and died in 1730, while the fourth child, Leonora, another daughter, was born in 1732 and was still living in 1770.[27] Philadelphia, the second child, played a significant role in the Austen family during Jane Austen's childhood and young womanhood. She was born in 1730, went out to India in 1752, and married there an elderly surgeon, Tysoe Saul Hancock. The Hancocks subsequently returned to England, and Philadelphia died in London in 1792. Her only brother, George (Jane Austen's father), was born on 1 May 1731, and died in Bath in 1805. He and his sister Philadelphia will be treated at greater length in the next two chapters.
Shortly after the birth of her daughter Leonora, Rebecca Austen died on 6 February 1732, at the age of thirty-six. At that time Jane Austen's father was less than a year old. In May 1736 William Austen married for the second time, his bride, Susannah Kelk, being thirteen years his senior. Earlier biographies of Jane Austen and even the privately printed "Pedigree of Austen" give Susannah's maiden name as Holk, but the original Tonbridge marriage register and the marriage settlement between William Austen and herself entered into in April 1736 agree that her surname was Kelk.[28] The marriage settlement also indicates that both parties were fairly well off; Susannah had property of her own, while William Austen not only owned a substantial home in Tonbridge, but also possessed other property there.
William Austen's second marriage ended abruptly a little over a year later. He died on 7 December 1737, when Jane Austen's father was six years of age. His three surviving children were left as wards of his elder brother, Francis, the prosperous Sevenoaks solicitor. William Austen's widow, who family tradition says was not well disposed towards her step-children, outlived him thirty one years, dying in 1768. Her will contains no mention of her three step-children. She was buried beside William Austen, his first wife and their infant daughter Hampson, beneath a large gravestone in the north aisle of Tonbridge parish church.[29]"
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.
14. "AR (1962) 'The Sources of Jane Austen's Kentish Ties', Canon S. Graham Brade-Birks.
15. "Letters" (74.1) 500.
16. "AP," 3-16.
17. Hoole, Gilbert P., "The Priory and the Red House in Bordyke," n.d., 4.
18. Information supplied June 1977 by A. R. Tarnmadge, Headmaster, Sevenoaks School.
19. "DNB," VI, 1186-7.
20. "Pedigree," 5.
21. "Pedigree," 3, 5, 6.
22. "Pedigree, "11-12.
23. "DNB," XVII, 1214.
24. Baddeley, John James, "The Aldermen of Cripplegate Ward 1276-1900" (1900) 57.
25. "Burke's Peerage" (1970) 1227-8.
26. Information supplied April 1977 by Sir Rabin Mackworth-Young, KCVO, HM Librarian, Windsor Castle.
27. "AP," 43.
28. Hoole, Gilbert P., "Tonbridge Associations of Jane Austen's Family" (1977) 2.
29. Hoole, "Tonbridge Associations," 3.
3. Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450: A Database of Names of those Receiving Pardons, taken from Calendar of Patent Rolls Henry VI 5 (1909) pp. 338-374 accessed from https://familysearch.org. This spreadsheet of about 3449 persons was created by Merton Historical Society in September 2014, and is accessible at http://www.mertonhistoricalsociety.org.uk/index.php?cat=morden&sec=!rebels
For more detail on this listing and the event see http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/007%20-%201868/007-03.pdf
Austen:
Thomas Austyn, Nortlyng, Sussex, clerk
William Austyn, Wittresham, Kent, yoman
|
Chris & Julie Petersen's Genealogy
Bef 1538 - 1603 (~ 65 years)