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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On staying with a friend, Andy Worman, in Norwich, I was writing his genealogy out for him, a full map of his ancestors, on various bits of paper. On a trip to the sea we passed through his mothers ancestral village of Hempnall, a place of so many fond memories for him and his brother, Hugh. Many of their relatives had lived there cousins, aunts and uncles, for which they'd all been known locally as the 'second royal family'. Some of them did indeed have an attitude of being important. And yet now not one remained in the village. Andy and Hughs grandfather was well respected in the village, ginger haired, doing good works, not strong enough to be sent to war, and he being a Methodist and a lay preacher. On looking more at their genealogy, I saw that one ancestor, Henry Howe and his son in law, George Wigger (who was a silk weaver) had run the Half Moon Inn on King Street in Norwich. George Wigger had got into some scrapes in his time which were duly recorded in the papers; his being attacked by a lad on King Street; and a drunkard in the pub bashing the eye of Georges wife, knocking her to the ground. One thing about staying with Andy was his mountains of books. In one book it was reorded that in olden times colic pains in ones tummy were thought to be due to a snake having got in there, either through the swallowing of snake spawn or due to one having climbed in through ones open mouth while sleeping.
In one Norse legend, a King Olaf Tryggvason used brute force to christianise the heathen Vikings of Iceland, one story about him confronting a particularly staunch Icelander. I do know from my mothers strong Viking DNA analysis that we have Icelandic Viking connections during those times of transition from the old beliefs into the new religion imported from the Near East. This staunch fellow was tortured and yet still would not give up his spirituality, at which point a snake was pushed down his throat by the Christian converts who applied red hot irons to its tail to force it in. This snake, according to the story, later thrust its head out through the Icelanders abdomen with the poor fellows heart between its jaws. This was enough to get the other Icelanders to leave behind their beloved traditions and to embrace the new Christianity. Some famed monks, Cosimas and Damien, were renowned for getting snakes to leave the bodies of colic sufferers. They are also known to have performed an early transplant, taking the leg of a dead 'Negro' and putting it successfully onto a church servant who had been suffering gangrene. This man was able to live many years more with one black leg and one white. I was researching more of my Norfolk lot, the Beans, Sextons, Gayes and Presses of Bacton, Knapton, Easton, Mundlesey, Blakeney, Sidestrand, Gimmingham and North Walsham. My Sarah Gaaze of Paston, when married as a Sexton in Knapton, was a spinner of yarn, quite an old time pastime of the women of that region of Norfolk; even the term spinster for an unmarried woman derived from this activity. Before the Industrial Revolution, families were themselves 'industrious' utilising their creativity to generate income outside of labouring for employers. And in Norfolk, the area around North Walsham where my ancestors lived had since the 12th century been a place for its yarn and cloth, with weavers even having relocated here from Flanders, this being the Dutch community of Belgium, who were most skilled in this regard. With my Banes of this region having long been tailors, and my Bean ancestors being spinners, they were likely part of this Dutch derived community. Sarah was actually prosecuted, at the same time as many other women, for reeling false yarn, the 1700's being a time of the overseeing of legislation, which led to thousands of prosecutions. For this Sarah had to pay a fine. It was thanks to these Dutch and Walloon 'strangers', as they were known, that Norwich became the wealthiest city in Britain second only to London, a third of the cities population being made of these refugees. Queen Elizabeth 1st had invited so many more over during the 1560's, they being protestants escaping the Spanish Inquisition. Not only did they enrich Norfolks mercantile trade, but they are also known for bringing along their pet canaries the nickname to this day for the Norwich football team. This huge wealth died out as a consequence of the mechanised Industrial Revolution. As I also read, those canaries sang to the workers as they weaved, for when their machines made a noise the canaries would reply and keep them company throughout the long hours. The first Flemings had come to escape large scale floods. Then of course later they were escaping religious persecution. Many came from Leper in West Flanders. The English welcomed them and they were well disposed to them. As one new settler wrote home, if you were to come to Norwich you would never think of returning to Flanders. 'Bring two wooden dishes to make butter' was the advice, as the British at that time only ate pig fat.
I was absorbed in another genealogy, for Ollie, a friend from sixth form days who I had recently reconnected with on facebook. Stuart Alcock was his full name. In his family there was a story about them being related to Howard Carter who had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. As I saw from my research, Ollie's was a family full of illegitimacies from way back to a Susan Stagg who had been locked up for being a lewd woman. She had a whole brood of little fatherless kids, being a pioneer single mother. Such rebellion carried all the way down to modern times, with the men of the family marrying girls who already had fatherless children. Even Susan's daughters and granddaughters had followed this trend.
One tragic family story, as always there was at least one, was of Ollie's ancestress, Louisa, newly married with a baby, who aged 20 fell down some stairs and died, which was said to be due to an epileptic fit. Ollie's mother knew of this and had told him that after Louisa died her husband, Robert Carter, caused a scandal by running off with a 16 year old. And there was the usual stuff one finds, like families getting fined for not sending their children to school. The Carters of the family may or may not have been related to Howard Carter who found the tomb of Tutankhamun, but it is to be seen that one member of the family was given the middle name of Phoenix. The only thing was, although all did have links with Swaffham, Howard Carter's people were rich and Ollie's were all pool labourers; so maybe all was but wishful thinking. One could not know, and then were there not plenty of anonymous biological fathers in this Norfolk family, so maybe... At Thorpe Market I showed my friend Leander my ancestors grave and a write-up I had brought along about the life of this ancestor, Joseph Mason. And in the empty church I gave a sermon 'Consider the lilies...'
My friends Dale and Audrey had begun tracing their family trees, an idea seeded in them by occasional visits to their house of Mormon elders. Dale had sussed out he was from fishermen Topsoms in Devon. Looking in bookshops with them I got into reading a book myself about tracing the family tree. My lover, Andy, knew already that he was descended from George Washington and the Tolpuddle Martyrs. We all visited a Norwich graveyard so Dale could see his grandparents burial place. When my mum phoned she was telling me what she knew of the family history, of crofters from the Shetland island of Burra and of a London tailors son who ran off with the maid. Along with the Topsom's, I was off to London, arriving at St Catherine's house to delve into the past of our ancestors. This was not much help, as one only had access to the indexes and had to pay £5 for each of the certificates, along with correctly supplied information. Still I could suss out a bit, like that my nanny Eileen's parents had to get married, she having been born around the same time that they got married even!!! We looked through lots of books there till it was throwing out time. On visiting Harwich I visited my granny Isabelle and asker her lots of questions about herself and her parents for my family tree quest. At my parents some days later in Burnham Beeches my godparents Chris and Carol came to visit with Great Aunty Connie, my granny Isabelle's sister. Connie had a keen memory, so I questioned her all about her parents (my great grandparents) and their parents too, and got loads of useful information for my genealogy file. I spent the next morning writing up notes on the family history. Back in Dovercourt, I now grilled my nanny Eileen and pop George for information regarding their family trees. Somehow, through nan's partial reluctance, I got to feel her father was not really her father!!! But how to find out for sure!!! Back in London, Audrey and I spent another day in St Catherine's House, trying to suss out more about our family trees. Then we went to the Census House and I found the 1881 record of my great great grandparents house in Plumstead, Alma House as it was called, which told me that my ancestor Richard Bane had been born in Norfolk; how exciting, as it was in Norwich that I currently lived. Back in Norwich I visited the local studies department in the library to check out their genealogy stuff. They had the Mormon register from which I found out more about the Inksters in the Shetland Isles. Visiting my nanny again I got to look at old family photos and I took some to get copies of.
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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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