John Vassall
John Vassall was a mariner and shipowner of Ratcliff, in the parish of Stepney on the Thames below London, and later also of Eastwood in Essex. He was a vestryman of Stepney, one of the men who ran the parish. The marriage licences of his family call him a mariner of Ratcliffe in 1594, a mariner of Eastwood in 1619 and a mariner of Stepney in 1625. The licence for his son William's marriage in 1613 calls him a gentleman.
In 1588 he fitted out two ships at his own expense, the Samuel and the Little Toby. He commanded them himself and joined the Royal Navy to oppose the Spanish Armada. Queen Elizabeth rewarded him with a grant of arms, the right to bear a coat of arms. His name and service are recorded on the Armada memorial at Plymouth.
By family tradition his father was another John Vassall, sent into England by his own father from Rinart, or Rinant, by Cany in Normandy, "on account of the dissensions then prevailing in Normandy." The same tradition traces the family back to an ancient French house, the Du Vassall, Barons de Guerden, in Quercy. No record of either generation is known.
He married three times at St Dunstan's, Stepney. His first wife, Anne Hewes, married on 25 September 1569, left no surviving children. On 4 September 1580 he married Anna Russell of Ratcliff, and the Ratcliff estate came to the family through her. She bore Judith, Samuel, William and two sons named John who died as infants. She died on 5 May 1593.
On 27 March 1594 he married Judith, the daughter of Stephen Borough of Stepney and Chatham, the navigator. She was the widow of a Colchester gentleman, Thomas Skott. Their children were Anna, born on 10 January 1595, Rachel, Stephen, Thomas, Mary and Elizabeth.
Two of his sons were named in the royal charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. Samuel was a London merchant and sat in Parliament for London from 1640. He stayed in England. William went to New England, returned, and settled at Scituate in Plymouth Colony in 1635. Stephen became rector of Rayleigh in Essex and died in 1643. Thomas was a draper of St Leonard's, Eastcheap.
He died in September 1625, in the great plague year in London, and was buried in Stepney church on 13 September. His will was proved the same day. To Samuel he left "my great gilt salt," to William "my plain white silver salt," and to his daughter Ann Jones "my great white silver bowl." The rest of his plate went to Judith for her life and then to five of the younger children.
William also had all the fixed wainscot, cupboards and benches of the house in Ratcliffe where his father lived, with the dresser boards, shelves, iron chimney backs, locks and ironwork on the doors and windows, and "the great table of walnut tree now standing in my great parlor." Thomas had the lease of the parsonage of Eastwood and all the Eastwood lands. Judith had the houses in Seething Lane, in the London parishes of All Saints Barking and St Olave's, for her life and then they went to Stephen. She also had his lands at Brookstreet in South Weald, Essex, outright. Mary, wife of Edward West, had fifty pounds. Rachel, wife of Peter Andrews, and Elizabeth, wife of Henry Church, had a hundred pounds each. Judith was sole executrix, and Samuel, William and his son-in-law John Jones were overseers.
Children
Sources
If John Vassall is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "John Vassall (d. 1625)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-vassall-1625-90a90c.