At last I was making advances in my Norfolk ancestry. In regard to the Bane's-Beans-Beanes I had never got further back than Thomas Bean of Thorpe Market having a father Richard Bane from Northrepps. From various documents I now sussed Richard was born in Trunch in 1677. Trunch, yes, so many Banes and Beans had lived there, there had to be a connection really; all are related somehow. So, Richards son, Thomas, my ancestor of Thorpe Market, it was he who had begun the tailoring trend in our family, carried on down through the generations, but as for his own father, Richard, he was a maltster. A maltster is master of the beginning of the brewing process, soaking in general barley in water to make malt. This barley would be raked on the ground for a few days until germination began, by which the starches were converting into sugar, at which point all was roasted; the longer it was roasted then the darker the malt, lightly for a pale ale. This was big business, as just about everyone drank beer, making for the maltster a great deal of money. Richard Bane had two wives, firstly Mary Cubitt, and then my ancestress Rachel Bayfield, also from Trunch, but lately living with her family in Gunton. Rachel was from a non-conformist family, following a Christianity separate from the established church, for which she was baptised in an independent chapel in a countryside barn near Bradfield. In accordance with the marriage license details she and Richard intended to marry at Norwich Cathedral, in the chapel of St Luke. I've always loved Norwich cathedral and its grounds leading down to the river. The marriage record itself seems to suggest another church was the venue, St Mary in the Marsh, which was in the Cathedral Close nearer to the river. There is no contradiction there, as I discovered. St Mary in the Marsh was pulled down in 1564, the parishioners taking their font with them into that very St Lukes chapel within the cathedral, now being permitted their worship there. St Luke's chapel was one of several chapels radiating out from the apse of the cathedral, and was quite small. So my ancestors did marry in Norwich cathedral; how amazing. I would have to visit this at some point; hopefully. And Richard and his wives graves, I'd discovered to be in Trunch, seeing transcriptions of the writing on their monuments. Richard's two wives, Mary and Rachel, were buried together. Ah, I love family and love my ancestors, hence why I'm so fascinated with the detective work of getting to know something of who they were. This is ancestral worship, part of my spirituality. In connecting with them they become present for me and I honour them. I continued to make so much progress with my Bane's of Trunch, finding the 1680 will of Richard the maltster's grandfather, Robert Bane, who was a worsted weaver. This was thanks to another weebly site dedicated specifically to the history of Trunch, so helpful, and such a kindness to have shared. Some sources reckoned the Bane surname to be of the Huguenots, but as I saw my Banes were in Trunch even prior to the infamous Saint Bartholomew's Day massacre. The first Trunch baptism for my family which I'd found was intriguingly far back for a typical parish register, for John and Marjorie's son Richard in 1560. The Bartholomews Day massacre was in 1572, and it was only in 1560 that the first French Huguenot church was established in a private property by followers of John Calvin, the same year our first recorded Trunch Bane was baptised. Flemish settlers, on the other hand, had been coming to Norfolk since medieval times, bringing along their pet canaries, and notably their skills to do with the wool trade, which brought immense prosperity to the land. It can be seen that my ancestors were indeed involved in the cloth trade. As a worsted weaver Robert would have at least benefitted from the skills brought by the Flemish settlers, 'strangers' as they were known, if not also having their blood within his veins. Not that my mother and I had Dutch DNA. We had plenty of Viking though, for which one would accord more to the theory that the Bane surname derived from the language of Pictish tribes in their description of blonde and fair skinned people. Robert Bane, the worsted weaver, he was born in 1603 and died in 1680, his body infirm, but his mind still sound, offering his soul into the hands of God Almighty. He made sure to give monies to all his grandchildren, who at that time were still teenagers. The mention of all beneficiaries within the will was so helpful for understanding more the Bane family at that time, as it was so with the other wills of the Bane family. I was thrilled with the discoveries I was making. Like, I had got back with them to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, and that fascinated me, as it seems such a vastly distant time and yet really was not so long ago, in consideration of the family generations. I'd got back that far before, on my Shetland line, to the royal Scottish King James V, cousin to Elizabeth Tudor, both sharing the same grandfather, Henry VII. Royal connections get dismissed as being too distant, for which they are considered to be irrelevant, but they may be closer than one realises, and really all are relevant; all are family. Of my mothers parents therefore, both the lineages I have traced back to Tudor times; not so with any of the other lineages. Because most record keeping fails to take one that far back. As Tudor history was so very compelling this was great to for the second time connect my people back to such times, firstly to the royals and now to the country folk. Looking at the world my first recorded Banes would have been familiar with, it is likely that John and Marjorie were children when Henry VIII forcibly shut down the monasteries, shrines, friaries and convents, places the general folk would have made pilgrimages to and been greatly inspired by; thus the folk love of communing with sacred relics and seeking of miracles in holy settings was now denied to them. I myself feel my ancestors old fascination for such things; it has revived a little in me. And so I studied up about the dissolving of the monasteries and of sleeping sickness outbreaks, of priors who resisted the dissolution being hung, drawn and quartered as 'traitors', and of many monks and nuns being given pensions. In Henry VIII's time the ex monks and nuns were forbidden to marry, in Edward VI's time they were permitted to marry, in Mary I's time those marriages were annulled and the pensions ended, and in Elizabeth I's time the marriages were once more legitimised and the pensions restored. The destruction of relics, holy crosses, saintly icons and Mother Mary statuettes was brutal; surely this deeply hurt the people. The deities of Mother Mary, such as at holy Walsingham, also in Norfolk, which all would have visited on pilgrimages, Walsingham being the most venerated site in Britain (I've been there and loved the place), were taken in a cart to London and destroyed, reckoned to have been burnt in Thomas Cromwell's garden, with no witnesses attending. One of those Mary's, also destroyed, was a black Madonna of Willesden, in London. Some stories profess the Mary's were hidden and substituted, one (the Mother Mary of Ipswich priory) being smuggled into Italy. The people, who'd had their Mary's everywhere, in chapels, churches, and pilgrimage places, who ever chanted 'Our Lady of Walsingham pray for me; Our Lady of Ipswich pray for me; Our Lady of Willesden pray for me', now had the divine feminine with its ancient links to goddess worship, always on a folk level in the hearts of the people, denied to them; her healing, her mercies, miracles, the protection of old and sick, the feeding of the poor, the vast sacred communities which were like villages unto themselves; all gone. Priories were burnt to obtain the lead, stones and paving slabs were pilfered for new projects, ancient books were used for toilet paper, or roofs simply fell in due to neglect. Walsingham was close to where my Norfolk ancestors lived and they would have gone on pilgrimage there, maybe on horseback, maybe walking, as had thousands of others, including royals and aristocrats; even Henry VIII visited there twice with his Spanish Queen Catherine. That which at one time Henry revered he later destroyed, his wives, the sacred places of Britain, even his very pal Cromwell who directed the dissolution of the monasteries on his behalf, this being in anger at Cromwell having encouraged him to marry the repulsive Ann of Cleaves. And our ancestors would have observed such madness and to survive would adapt again and again and again. The old ways would not be passed onto their children. All would be forgotten.
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It was in beginning to read a book passed onto me by a neighbour 'Revelation' by C J Sansom, a thriller set in Tudor times, that I came upon a reference to a barber surgeon of Cheapside who fashioned false teeth, recycled from dead people, and set into wood, detachable and quite the French fashion. Ok, now this was interesting, as I had just been, in my genealogy research, noting this very profession of barber surgeon to be in my own London based Aylward family and with my Bunney lineage too. I'd assumed this to be olden terminology for a hairdresser and not looked more into that. But now, as I realised, caring for ones hair and shaving off stubble was but one part of a barber surgeons role. Indeed they did dentistry too, as the book had referenced, and more than that, as the very word surgeon suggested they also performed surgery, and bloodletting, either with leeches or the cut of a razor, and they were called upon to care for soldiers wounds in battle. And where were the actual doctors in such times; well, they were more about providing intellectual insight rather than hands on practicalities. This was a fascinating subject really, although somewhat gory and demanding of ones trust, as maybe it still is with medical matters today, and anyway, when one is desperate one surrenders regardless, even if it is ones limb being sawn off to avert gangrene. Body snatchers, such as the resurrectionists, would raid graveyards and in this way provide corpses for surgeons to practise on. Such a profession was surely not for the faint hearted. The Aylwards of London did appear to have a penchant for this, at least as far back as a Thomas Aylward of the late 1600's. My ancestress Ann Aylward had a brother, John Godson Aylward, who apprenticed in 1768 to their uncle Robert Aylward, although at such a late date the surgeon aspect had finally been separated from the work of a barber. Uncle Robert himself though, born in 1720 in Bermondsey, trained to be a traditional barber surgeon from the young age of 13, in 1733. And what I found most interesting was the discovery that Ann Aylwards husband, Robert Bunney, my direct ancestor, had himself begun an apprenticeship as a barber surgeon when a teenager, even though he later changed course and became a cooper instead. The apprentice information matched up to him entirely, the correct place, time, name of father (William Bunney), all revealing this was indeed his earliest career choice. He would have been 14 when beginning his apprenticeship in 1743, his guide and teacher being Samuel Hucks, who was also a skilled cooper, reverting to that trade himself. Why did they both change tack? I imagined the dissecting of animals and human cadavers to be somewhat off-putting for young Robert, but in reality times were changing, doctors pressuring for the prestige of surgery for themselves, such as that in 1745, just two years into Robert's apprenticeship, the barber surgeon combination was rent asunder, from which date barbers were no longer to exercise their medical skills; all was ended. Hence why Robert would have switched to learning of Samuels barrel and cask constructing skills instead. What would Robert have been learning in those two years of his youth. the apprenticeship should have lasted for seven years. During that time he would have sutured wounds, set broken bones, assisted in surgical care, bloodletting and other medical procedures, along with pulling teeth, shaving and hair dressing. Human dissections would take place in the company of other barber surgeons at the official Barber Surgeons Hall on Monkwell Street, the only company building to survive the Great Fire of London in 1666 due to a buffer zone created by the surrounding herb garden, the herbs from which would be used in their medicines. Doctors would class this old profession as quackery in time, although actually they were highly trained, their origin having been as assistants to monks in the earliest days of monastic Christianity, seen as pioneers of medical healing and surgery, which anyway would have preserved and advanced centuries of accumulated folk healing and care for the sick. So many days I had been trawling through genealogy records, getting no joy, wondering if there was anything more to learn of my family at all, and then *boom*, there it is, my Robert Bunney had as a teenager begun training in the understood medical care of his time, in the curious profession of the barber surgeon; only for his course to be thwarted by a historical change of roles, by which he instead became a cooper, taking on a different set of his teachers skills, which in turn he would teach to his son Robert the Younger, whose daughter was Hannah Aylward Bunney, who interestingly herself became a nurse at the Sailors Hospital in Greenwich. And a friend wanted me to come out for the day, but I was making too great a discovery in my genealogy. Looking to old newspapers I found some interesting stories in relation to the barber surgeons. The barber surgeons were ever busy and were regarded as important persons. They shaved, dressed hair, drew teeth and bled most of the people at regular intervals. In time past the letting of blood was regarded as a cure-all for any ailment, phlebotomy as it was called, and the people had great faith in this. One article talks of live music being provided for waiting customers, whether lute, violin or even bagpipes, reckoned to be so that the groans of those being seen to would be drowned out. And while ladies would be bled they were soothed and diverted by story telling. Tooth drawing was a painful affair with the crude instruments of the time (it's scary enough even now). In the ballad of the death of Robin Hood it is said that when he took ill he was bled by a prioress who so hated him for his crimes that she bled him to death: 'And hers was the deadliest sin, For she blooded him in the vein of the arm, And locked him up in the room, There he did bleed all the live long day, Until the next day at noon' In 1765 one poor woman of Petticoat Lane was indeed bled to death by a barber surgeon (of little skill) who did a blood letting on one of her arms, cutting into her artery. Before proper assistance could be secured she died. It became kind of a threat to be 'shaved, blooded and have your teeth drawn by a barber surgeon'. In 1738 when the trade was still commonplace and respectable, a story was published about a barber surgeon in Bermondsey who fell foul of the law, no name given, but that was where the Aylwards lived and worked. This barber surgeon and his wife were locked up for two months in the Southwark Bridewell, this being a house of correction, all due to a scam. An 'artful slut' had one day come into their shop complaining of sickness and desiring to be relieved by bleeding. Scarcely had she been punctured when she 'shammed a fainting fit' and upon recovery desired a 'dram' to support her spirits, which they naively fetched for her. And she demanded a second drink, upon declaring the great benefit she had received by the first. She then informed on them to the authorities, the husband having received money from her for one dram and the wife for the other. Thus they were convicted of selling spirit liquors contrary to an act of parliament, and were ordered to the Bridewell to receive their punishment. One job placement for a barber surgeon was put out by a 'nervous invalid' requesting someone of good education and cheerful manners, to eat and ride with him, and to shave and dress him. The payment was high for the time at £50 a year. As it was commented 'the medical profession is looking up'. In one story of 1756 a man among a drunken group of butchers in a pub, for them having found themselves in the company of a notable barber surgeon, proposed all of them should be blooded, which was soon agreed to, sixpence a piece collected from the butchers. The barber surgeon took from each a good quantity of blood, after which the same man to have proposed the blood letting suggested each should next have a tooth drawn. None other agreed to this; their courage had by now left them.
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AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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