Ancestors

John Warner

John Warner was a husbandman of Much Waltham in Essex, the parish also called Great Waltham. A husbandman was a working farmer, a rank below a yeoman, who often held his land on a lease rather than owning it. John Warner did. The chief thing he had to leave was the lease of his farm, with the stock and cattle on it.

He made his will on 23 May 1584, "being sicke in bodye and troubled with Disease but perfect in remembraunce." He asked to be buried in the churchyard of Much Waltham, the churchyard of St Mary and St Lawrence. He signed with his mark. His widow proved the will on 9 September 1584, so he died that summer.

The will provides for a wife and nine children. To "Margarett my wyfe" he left the lease of the farm "with the stocke and Cattells as it is nowe." If she married again before the lease ran out, the farm was to pass to his sons Edward and Andrew. He gave those two four of his best horses as well. Half his movable goods were to be shared equally among "my fyve daughters and my foure sonnes."

His son Thomas had ground of his own. He received "the least shott of Barley in Stonecrofte," two seams of wheat, and "the ploughinge of half the ground he hathe this year and the next." A shot was a section of an open field, Stonecroft was the field's name, and a seam was a horse-load. Edward and Andrew had five pounds each, payable within five and six years. His daughter Margery had six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence, payable at her marriage or at twenty six. Elizabeth had three pounds on the same terms, and Margaret three pounds at twenty one or marriage. Joan had three pounds and "one wennell calfe," a weaned calf, "to be brought vpp vntill it be wth calfe."

He remembered three grandchildren by name. "Thomas Warner the sonne of John Warner my sonne" was to have a quarter of barley, or the money to buy one, when he reached the age of ten. So the boy was under ten in 1584. Ursula, John and Agnes, "three of the children of my daughter Emmerston," had three shillings and four pence each. Thomas Saward and Christian Casse had the same sum, with no relationship stated.

Everything else went to Margaret, whom he made sole executrix, "hoping that she will be good vnto her children and myne according to the truste I repose in her." The witnesses were Richard Pond, Thomas Blower and "John Warner junior," his son.

His son John was by then married to Mary Purchas, a tanner's daughter of the same parish. John later settled at Hatfield Broad Oak as a yeoman, and John's son Andrew went to New England in 1633. His son Thomas stayed at Much Waltham as a husbandman. When Thomas lay dying in May 1613, his brother John and John's son Andrew were two of the three men who heard his last wishes.

His own parents are not known. The 1919 family book found a Thomas Warner witnessing the will of William Briggs of Waltham in 1553. Because Thomas was the name of both a son and a grandson of this John, the book called that Thomas his "probable" father. It is no more than that.

If John Warner is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "John Warner (d. 1584)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-warner-1584-86cc06.