| Bishops Nympton lies just nine miles to the west of Oakford village and is
on the southern edge of Exmoor in Devon. Two hundred years later the soil of
the area was described as a 'gritty kind of earth', over 600 feet high, hilly
exposed and mainly scrub and heath except for sheltered valleys. A farmer's
life must have been hard. The village of Bishops Nympton plays an important
part in one of the early families of Loosemores. No direct link has been found
between that family and the medieval Loosemores of Oakford or with the other
branches that established themselves during the period prior to 1500 ,when
parish registers and lay subsidies provide evidence of their existence. The ancient route to South Molton and on to the sea at Barnstaple passed near the Loosemore homestead in Oakford, and skirted Bishops Nympton so it would be the natural migratory route for any young Loosemore leaving Oakford in search of new land.
From the Parish Registers we learn that William and his wife Agnes had three children, Johan, John and Robert. We are uncertain as to the age of William, but we know that his will was proved in 1539 (which was unfortunately destroyed during the bombing of Exeter in 1942). After his death Agnes continued to occupy Kerry's Cott until presumably the eldest son John became of age to take over the tenancy in his own right, confirmed by an entry in the 1543 lay subsidy giving him a possible birth in 1524. Agnes - widow of William, as was customary, married again in 1544 to a Lawrence Partridge of Molland. JOHN LOOSEMORE - LIFE, DEATH AND HIS WILL John then occupied Kerry's Cot and married Joan Moll the daughter of Henry Moll, possibly in 1549. We are now in the region of conjecture. The first children were born before the records of the registers of Bishops Nympton exist. The most probable order in which the children were born was John, Agnes, Sidwell, Henry, Johan, Andrew and Robert. The last was buried on 27 January 1562/3, just one day old, and his mother Joan three days later. This uncertainty is because of the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, which means that dates between January 1st and March 25 before 1752 may refer to the either year i.e. 1562 or 1563 . John, left with 6 children, married again the same or next year to Emote Gorton. Two children were born of this union, Gregorie in. 1564 and Peter in 1568. Agnes was married to John Westeren in 1568, Sidwell married Peter Bowden in 1572/3 and Henry married Ursula Gosse in 1576/7 and Johan married .---.Domeade. . At this time John was the relatively prosperous for in 1577 and the year of his death, 1583, his property was valued at £11 with a tax of 11s. This marriage of 20 years was broken when John died and was buried on the 10th September 1583. His will has been preserved, possibly because it was disputed. Emote, now left with two sons Gregorie, 19 and Peter 15. John made provision for them for his will expressly states: I will that my sonne Henry shall permitt and suffer Emote my wife and her sonne Gregory to dwell in the now belonging to my tenement for one whole yeare next after my decease without paying any rent for the same and also shall allow her pasturage herbage grassfield giving haye and howse roome winter and sommer for two kyne and twelve sheepe to be ordered no worse than my sonne Henrys. Emote was left furniture and bedding, silver spoons etc and John's best riding beast, gelding or mare which she should prefer. Peter is not mentioned, though he is included as one of the beneficiaries. John Westeren was left 8 bushels or rye and 8 bushels of oats, Agnes his wife and John's daughter an heifer, ten shillings to John and 20 shillings to Elizabeth their children.. Johan Domeade, his daughter was left 6s 8d and to each of her children a lamb. Henry was to continue in Kerscott and was left ploughing gear, ploughing gear and farm wagons. The will is of interest as it shows in the type of farming that was performed. Henry's children were to receive 6s 8d each. All the rest of his estate was to be divided into 3 parts. The one to be given to Emote his wife and the other two thirds divided among his sons Henry, Peter and Gregory. Is there significance in that the words of 'my sons' exclude the eldest John though he is referred to as his son in another section? Gregory was made the sole executor of the will. Although the will was dated 10th July 1583 and John died and was buried on 10th September 1583, the will was not proved until February 1590/1 in the senior Prerogative Court of Canterbury. There must have some dispute, which may have centred around the provisions concerning John his eldest son. John's will contains the paragraph: Whereas my sonne John Lousmore brought unto me of the gifte and bequoth of his grandfather Henry Moll a brasen crock and half a dozen silver spoons and for sheetes and other stuff that was sold to the value of seven poundes I give him eight pounds of lawfull English money. Also a bolster, a pair of blankets , a doublet, six sheep and a heyfer of two years age And so mine Executors and Administrators to be clearly discharge of all the stuff which he brought into my cuustody etc. Does this wording and the fact that younger son Henry inherited the tenancy indicate that John was the son of Joan Moll born soon after the marriage and not the natural son of John, or does it imply that he may have been the son of a previous marriage of Joan Moll and took the name of Loosemore.? Both Johns, father and son, appear in the Muster roll of 1569 as pikemen. The latter died and was buried on 16th September 1592. There was no indication that he had married. So we now follow the fortunes of : HENRY LOOSEMORE. Henry was 24 years of age when he married Ursula Gosse on the 29th January 1576/7, and probably lived at Kerscott with his father and mother-in -law Emote and her two children Gregory and Peter. During the next six years three children were born to Ursula, Samuel on 28th November 1577, Emote in April 1780 and William on 19th March 1581/2. Although there were provisions in the will for her to remain in Kerscott, (I use its modern name) , she remarried four months later to Thomas Burges to live in Twitchyn. Henry's family grew and on 15th May 1584 John was born, then Christopher, and then twins Peter and Gregory on 25th May 1589.
Henry had a long married life of 44 years disturbed by two incidents which later led to litigation after Henry had died'. In or about the year 1616, a Jane Drawkins of Knowstone, a servant of John Kerslake, imputed Peter Loosemore as being the father of her base child. Jane is described as a woman of lewd and wicked conversation and behaviour. Emote, Henry's daughter, had married John Kerslake in 1621 so the incident must have been an embarrassment to the family. The child would become a burden on the Parish of Knowstone so by order of the justices and some parishioners, Peter was to pay for the upkeep of the child. Henry stood surety for his son to the amount of £20 pounds. It was agreed that one Nicholas Hill should take the child as an apprentice for a sum of £7 per annum until she reached the age of 21 years. There is a suggestion that the bastardy order could have been challenged but Henry was keen to preserve his and the family's good name and the outcome was agreed clarelie and absolutelie to discharge and keep harmelesse the said Henry Loosemore and Peter his sonne. In the second incident, Richard Leerwell of Combe Martin had 'placed money intended for his daughter, Katherine, marriage portion in a tenement called Maytowne' in Kentisbury, a neighbouring parish, in anticipation of her marriage to a Richard Crocker Unfortunately Richard died before the marriage took place. Here John Loosemore comes into the story. Whether for love or convenience John became her suitor and a meeting was held between the two families to arrange a dowry.. The meeting was held in Richard Leerwell's house and was attended by Henry, William and John Loosemore, Richard Vicary; Richard , Johanne and Nicholas Leerwell(son) and Richard Richards, clerk. (Priest). Upon agreement the marriage was concluded the same or the next day. Later, in or before 1625 there was to be uncertainty as to the provision of the dowry. Of the other three sons of Henry, little is known. There is no evidence that Christopher was married and his name does not feature in the parish lay subsidy returns though a Christopher is mentioned in the Protestation return for the adjacent village of Molland. Peter also appears in the Protestation return for Bishops Nympton in 1642 when he would have been 53 years of age. The eldest son of Henry, Samuel who probably occupied Abbotts Park, became the head of a famous family of organ builders and notable organists and composers of church music, which will be the subject of the next chapter. William, the second son of Henry moved to an adjoining parish of Twitchen, where he was described at his marriage in 1613 as 'gent' John the third son was the subject of another incident in Henry's life later to involve litigation. Gregory, the twin of Peter, seems to have moved to Twitchen where his uncle Gregorie was living possibly at the home of his mother and stepfather Thomas Burges . (refer to the family tree below). Henry died in 1621 and his will was proved on 23rd January 1622. Presumably his wife Ursula continued to live at Kerscott but died just four years after. Henry may have been a careful and wary man but the contents of his will mentioned in later legislation leads one to suppose that either he was a poor farmer or was financially unsound. Not only was the bond of twenty pounds for his son Peter's misdemeanour passed on to his son John, but he paid £7 to have the base child taken as apprentice to a Nicholas Hill. In his will he left money to the poor of Bishop's Nympton, twenty shillings to eldest son Samuel, twenty shillings to his daughter Emote Kerslake, seven pounds to both Christopher and Peter and a legacy to Gregory, and . John's daughter Ellyn was left twenty shillings. His son John was to receive the rest of his goods and chatells. It is stated in a deposition by Katherine, John's wife, who outlived him , that Henry's debts amounted to more than his personal estate so John was burdened with the deficiency. It is uncertain how long Kerscott or Abbotts park remained in possession of the family after Henry's death. JOHN LOOSEMORE Henry's son John, was baptised on the 15th May 1584. Details of the events leading up to his marriage have already been given, but we do not know the date of the marriage, which took place in Combe Martin and registers do not exist for that period. It may have been, by a custom at that time, a 'marriage by arrangement' as a priest was present at the meeting prior to the marriage. There is an early reference to John in that in 1613 he was a churchwarden of Bishop's Nympton Church. It was in that same year that we have the first record of a child born, Ellen, who was baptised on the 30th November 1613. Unfortunately there are gaps in the registers over that period and the next child, according to the registers, was baptised on 4th September 1625. A gap of 12 years that is very unusual, suggesting that other births occurred before or between these years. In the years 1620 - 1625 John Loosemore was assessed at £5 and £6 for goods, so it seems that up to six years before his death he continued to farm. Although family fortunes had declined he still possessed a satisfactory income, in spite of a statement made by Katherine mentioned above. In 1625, John and Katheryne brought a complaint against her brother Nicholas Leerwell concerning the possession of the tenement Maytown in Kentisbury after the death of Helen Crocker. By this time both Richard Leeerwell and Henry Loosemore had both died. On the Loosemore side it was understood that Richard Leerwell was to give her £200 at the marriage and also confirmed her right to the tenement Maytowne upon the death of Hellen Crocker. On the Leerwell side they alleged that the £200 was in lieu of the right to the tenement. The statements of witnesses present at the meeting where the dowry was agreed and their statements are preserved among Chancery depositions. The outcome of the dispute has been lost. John died and was buried on 8th December 1630 and one of his daughters was buried 13 days later. Unfortunately his will was among those lost in the bombing of Exeter. The Christmas must have been a very sad one for Katherine, his widow. During the early seventeenth century the parish registers had been kept as loose pages in the Parish chest and when they were discovered and an attempt was made to put them in order parts had been destroyed my mice and others were unreadable. However we get a single glimpse of John by the records that remain. We know that in 1613 he was a churchwarden as his name was mentioned in the baptisms for that year with Richard Conighant, Vicar, and John Bowden Warden. Some records for later years have been lost THE PROBLEM OF HENRY grandson of Henry. There was a custom to name the first born male child of a family from the father's father. Accordingly we have two young Henry's born about the same time; Henry the son of Samuel born C1605 and another Henry born before 1611 (?). It is the latter who presents the problem., Who was his father? John, who was disinherited by old John, died in 1592 and there is nothing to suggest that he ever married, nor had a son. William, Henry's second son, William, lived in Twitchen where we know only that he had three daughters from the records of their deaths, and John, Henry's third son who married Katherine in the circumstances mentioned above. We have been unable to find the date of the marriages of John to Katherine nor can we find the record of the baptism of the problem Henry. We do know that this Henry married an Elizabeth, though the record of the marriage cannot be found, but we do know that the first child of the marriage was Jane, baptised on the 30th September 1627. From this we may reason that Henry was born before 1611. At that time it was legally possible for a youth to married at 14 years. So it is possible for the wedding date of John and Katherine to have been C1610. However in John's father Henry's will in 1621, the young Henry is not mentioned though his sister born in 1613 is left twenty shillings. We know too that Henry died 21st February 1680\1. We are left with three possibilities: 1. Henry was the son of William of Twitchen and returned to Bishop's Nympton to raise his family 2. Henry was the natural son of John, but for some reason was excluded from his grandfather's will. 3. At John's marriage to Katherine, she was already pregnant, by Richard Crocker or even by John, which would account for the marriage taking place without delay. This may have accounted for old Henry not recognising him in his will as had happened nearly 40 years before, in John's will dated 1583 and referred to above. It is the third possibility that is accepted in this record Henry became very important for the survival of the Loosemore line in Bishop's Nympton and this we follow in Chapter 5 KATHERINE, widow of John. We do not know the contents of John's will but we may suppose that his financial position had deteriorated, for within the year, in 1631, Katherine made a complaint in Chancery against Robert Pollard, Henry Viccary, Phillip Morris, Jane Drawkins, and Francis Hill that they were demanding the payment of the bond entered into in the first instance by Henry in 1616/7 and taken over by John in 1622 in respect of the base child born to Jane Drawkins. Katherine stated her poor financial position and in contrast the girl was apprenticed to Nicholas Hill who had left a good estate to his wife Fraunces. Furthermore Peter the reputed father of the girl was still living in Bishops Nympton. Judgement was awarded against the defendants. The next year Katherine was married to Bartholomew Courtenay. We leave this branch of the family to follow the fortunes of SAMUEL LOOSEMORE John's eldest brother. |
