The Curious Case of the Scottish Covenanters

The Battle of Bothwell Bridge

The prisoners were taken to Edinburgh and held on land beside Greyfriars Kirkyard, an area now known as the Covenanters' Prison. Many remained there for several months, until the last of them were transported to the colonies in November. However, a later shipwreck allowed 48 of the 257 prisoners to escape. All those who had taken part on the Covenanter side of the battle were declared rebels and traitors, and the repression during this period has become known as "the Killing Time" in Covenanter histories. A core of hard-line rebels remained in arms and became known as the Cameroonians after Richard Cameron their leader. Cameron was killed in a skirmish at Airds Moss the next year, but his followers were eventually pardoned on the accession of William and Mary in 1689.

 A Personal Connection.

One of the covenanters’ taken prisoner was George James Scott, Laird of Pitlochie, who was born in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland on October 4^th, 1635, the son of Sir John Gilmour Scott of Scotstarvet, Fife, Scotland. George James Scott was a direct ancestor of mine, 10 generations ago. What follows is an account of his fate following his capture.

In 1685, George Scot, Laird of Pitlochie, was given his liberty in Scotland provided he transported to East Jersey many of the Covenanters who had refused to take the oath of allegiance to a tyrannical and profligate ruler. The Province of East Jersey, along with the Province of West Jersey, between 1674 and 1702 in accordance with the Quintipartite Deed, were two distinct political divisions of the Province of New Jersey, which became the U.S. state of New Jersey. The two provinces were amalgamated in 1702. In 1682, the Governor and other Scottish proprietors began the development of Perth Amboy as the capital of the province. In 1687, James II permitted ships to be cleared at Perth Amboy. 

Thus authorized, George Scott proceeded to gather his company from those confined in the tolbooth of Leith. He had to give security to land them there prior to September 1686, and the penalty was to be five hundred merks in case of failure in any instance. In May 1685, Scot chartered the Henry and Francis of New Castle, a ship of three hundred and fifty tons and twenty great guns, with Richard Hutton as master.

On the eve of their banishment, twenty-eight of them signed the following conjunct testimony, bearing:

"That, now to leave their own native and Covenanted land by an unjust sentence of banishment for owning truth and. standing by duty, studying to keep their Covenants engagements and baptismal vows, whereby they stand obliged to resist and testify against all that is contrary to the Word of God and their Covenants; and that their sentence of banishment ran chiefly because they refused the oath of allegiance which in conscience they could not take, because in so doing they thought utterly declined the Lord Jesus Christ from having any power in His own house, and practically would; by taking it, sat, "He was not King and Head of His Church and over them consciences. And, on the contrary, this was to take and put in His room a man whose breath is in his nostrils; yea, a man who is a sworn enemy to religion; an avowed papist, whom, by our Covenants; we are bound to withstand and disown, and that agreeably to Scripture: When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a King over me, like as all the nations that are about me, thou shalt in any wise set him King over thee, whom the Lord thy God shalt choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set King over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. Deut. 17: 14-15.”

They then bore their testimony against the defections of the day, and for preaching in the fields and homes, and then signed their names. 

Names

  1 Adam, Robert   2 Aisdale, William Rev.  3 Arbuckle, John   4 Athernie, Lady   5 Black, John  6  Bovan, Katharine        7 Brown, George            8 Campbell, Daivd 9 Campbell, John          10 Campbell, Robert       11 Campbell, William     12 Casson, John    13 Cavie, Christian     14 Corbet, Andrew 15 Corbet, John             16 Corhead, Agnes 17 Cowan, Barbara       18 Cowan, Marjory         19 Crichton, John          20 Cuningham, Patrick    21 Cunningham, William     22 Douglas, Charles       23 Douglas, William       24 Durie, Isabel           25 Ferguson, Elspeth      26 Ferguson, Janet         27 Ferret, Mary     28 Finlater, Thomas       29 Ford, John        30 Foreman, John  31 Forsythe, James 32 Frazer, John     33 Gamble, Grisel      34 Ged, William    35 Gilchrist, Robert        36 Gilfillan, John  37 Gordon, Annabel   38 Gordon, Bessie 39 Graham, Thomas        40 Gray, John        41 Gray, Thomas       42 Grier, Fergus    43 Grier, James      44 Harris, John      45 Harvie, John     46 Henderson, John   47 Hodge, John     48 Honyall, Charles        49 Hood, Adam 50 Hutchinson, John  51 Jackson, Thomas        52 Jackson, William        53 Johnston, George          54 Johnstone, John          55 Junk, James      56 Kellie, John 57 Kellie, Katherine    58 Kennie, John         59 Kincaid, John   60 King, John 61 Kippan, John 62 Kirkwood, James          63 Kirkwood, John          64 Leslie, Margaret         65 Linthron, Janet 66 Lockhart, Gawen        67 Marshall, John  68 Marshall, Michael      69 Martin, John     70 MccCalmont, William                 71 McEwen, John 72 McEwen, Robert        73 McEwen, Walter         74 McGhie, John       75 McKenman, John       76 McLellan, Andrew     77 McLellan, Margaret          78 McLellan, Robert       79 McMillan, William     80 McQueen, John 81 Miller, Margaret      82 Moffat, Jean     83 Monorg, Gilbert         84 Muir, George    85 Muirhead, James 86 Muirhead, John 87 Nevin, William 88 Oliphant, William       89 Patterson, Andrew          90 Pollock, John   91 Ramn, John      92 Rennie, Marian 93 Renwick, John  94 Reston, James        95 Riddell, Archibald      96 Riddell, Archibald Rev.        97 Rigg, William          98 Russell, Peter    99 Russell, Thomas         100 Scot, Eupham

101 Scot, George  102 Scot, Margaret 

103 Seton, John    104 Shelston, Thomas     105 Sittingtown, James   106 Smith, John 107 Sprat, William 108 Sproull, William       109 Stevens, Agnes         110 Strang, Christian   111 Swinton, John 112 Symington, Janet      113 Targat, John 114 Turnbull, William  115 Turpine, John 116 Urie, Patrick   117 Vernor, John 118 Vernor, Mrs.                   119 Walker, Patrick         120 Wardrope, James      121 Watt, John      122 Whitelaw, Elizabeth        123 Wilson, William       124 Witherspoon, Grizel           125 Young, Robert

The Voyage & History

The ship "Henry and Francis" of New Castle, departed from the port of Leith, September 5, 1685, and arrived at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in the middle of December 1685.

The charge for transportation was five pounds sterling for each adult and to each of those who were unable to pay for their passage was promised twenty-five acres of land and a suit of new clothes on the completion of four years of service; for children under twelve years of age, fifty shillings; sucking children free; one ton of goods, forty shillings. These have been known in American History as "Redemptioners." Many of these passengers had endured much suffering. After some delay, the ship had sailed from the town of Leith on September 5, 1685. We hear of no untoward event until after they had turned the Land's End," when a fever began to prevail with virulence, particularly among the prisoners who had been confined in the great vault of Dunnotter. Many were sick when they came aboard, and the health of the others was endangered by the condition of the provisions laid in by the Captain.

The meat began to putrefy and was not eatable, In a month the fever assumed a malignant type. Few escaped its ravages, and three or four bodies were cast overboard every day. Most of the ship's crew, except the Captain and boatswain, died. Pitlochie, who had freighted the ship, with his lady, died likewise, and so enjoyed nothing of the gain of nearly one hundred prisoners gifted him by the Council, and upwards of seventy persons died at sea.

Death and unwholesome food were not the only evils the unfortunate Covenanters had to encounter; the master of the ship was most cruel to the prisoners. Those who were placed under deck were not allowed to go about worship, and when they attempted it, the Captain would throw down great planks of timber to disturb them and endanger their lives. The ship sprang a leak twice, and frequent storms added to their anxiety, After the death of Pitlochie, the prisoners fell into the hands of John Johnstone, his son-in-law. Captain Hutton began to tamper with Mr. Johnstone and urged him to carry the prisoners to Virginia or Jamaica, either places presenting better opportunity for disposing of them than New Jersey and offered as an inducement to charge himself with the disposal of the prisoners and to account to him for them in the productions of the country. But the wind changed, and they were forced to sail straight for New Jersey. They landed at Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in the middle of December 1685, having been about fifteen weeks at sea. Before going ashore, Johnstone endeavoured to stop them by urging them to sign an agreement to serve four years at that place in consideration of the expense incurred by the departed Scot. This they would not agree to but joined in another protest against their banishment and recounted their harsh treatment during the voyage.

When they came ashore, the people who lived on the coast and had not the gospel preached to them, were inhospitable and showed them no kindness. A little way up in the country, however, there was a town (supposed to be Woodbridge), and a minister settled, and the inhabitants were very kind to them. When they learned who the prisoners were and their circumstances, they invited all who were able to travel to come and live with them, and sent horses for the rest, and entertained them freely and liberally that winter.

In the following spring, John Johnstone pursued them and had them all cited before a legal tribunal of the Province. Alter hearing both sides, the Governor called a jury to sit and cognise upon the affair, who found that the pannels had not of their own accord come to that ship, nor bargained with Pitlochie for money or service, and therefore, according to the laws of the country, they were assoiled. Those who had so agreed had their suits come before the Court of Common Rights, and Captain Hutton was remunerated. The prisoners then scattered throughout Eastern Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut, where they were kindly entertained and found employment according to their different trades. At different times the persecuted Covenanters were banished to New Jersey, Delaware and South Carolina, but in the latter part of the seventeenth century this cruelty ceased. At this time no organized society of Covenanters has an existence in New Jersey.

So, my ancestor paid a high price for his pardon, as both he and his wife, Mary Margaret Monpenny Scott, had perished of fever during the voyage. However, several of their children survived to establish the Scott line in the USA, including Euphemia (who had previously married John Johnstone), Captain John Baliol Scott, and James Scott, all of whom ultimately settled in Virginia.

Ken Sims

7 October 2024

Ashbourne Hall

The history of the hall starts with the Cokayne family who are first recorded in Ashbourne in 1150 – they were a branch of a family that lived at Hedingham Castle near Alresford in Essex from the reign of William the Conqueror having come over from Normandy with the De Veres at the time of the conquest. They may have built the Hall or taken over an existing structure when they were put in charge of the Manor of Ashbourne which they held for the next 500 years through the reigns of 22 monarchs. 

Hedingham Castle

From the latter part of the 1200s the manor of Ashbourne belonged to the Earls and Dukes of Lancaster. In 1326 their bailiff was William Cokayne. The Cokayne family gradually assumed more and more responsibilities and became de facto Lords of the Manor while serving their master’s which included John of Gaunt and then the Lancastrian Kings of England.

Drawings of 1547 show a rambling gabled timber framed range of buildings built around a courtyard with a castellated brick gatehouse and possibly a ‘great hall’. This had clearly grown over the years, having been changed and added to with each generation, and by the Hearth Tax returns of 1662 the house had 21 chimneys making it one of the largest private homes in Derbyshire.  

The last descendent of the Cokaynes to own the Hall was the poet Sir Aston Cockayne (1607 – 1683), as a Catholic and supporter of King Charles I during the Civil War, he ran up serious debts. He managed to end up in Marshalsea Prison for debt.  He ended his days living in lodgings in Derby having joined with his son in selling Ashbourne Hall to the Boothby family and other estates in 1671.

In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie declared his father to be King James III in Ashbourne Marketplace during his ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Hanoverian Kings.   On his journey from Scotland, he stayed at Ashbourne Hall and his troops camped in the Hall grounds (now the Town Park) before marching onto Derby.  After 3 days in Derby, his generals persuaded him that they would not be successful and he reluctantly agreed to return to Scotland despite the fact that his Dragoons had captured Swarkeston Bridge over the River Trent, the last major obstacle before London.

The retreating Army looted on their return, and the landlord of the Royal Oak, an Inn by Hanging Bridge over the River Dove which still exists, was shot for failing to hand over his horse.  Some stragglers were captured and hung either from or close to Hanging Bridge on the road to Leek.  Not all locals were hostile, though.  One Scottish soldier who had broken his ankle was sheltered by a local farmer who arranged for some Scottish drovers to take him home once he had recovered.

Legend has it that Bonnie Prince Charlie visited Hartington Hall (now a youth hostel), where he seduced a young girl promising that he would return for her. He never did and her ghost still wanders the rooms looking for her lost love.

Sir John Cokayne was born about 1360 at Ashbourne, he was the younger son of John Cokayne (died 1372), of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, Chief Steward for the northern half of the Duchy of Lancaster, and his wife Cecily, daughter of Sir William Vernon, of Haddon and Harlaston.

Early in the 1380s he married a social superior, Edith (AKA Ida), youngest daughter of Reginald Grey, 2nd Baron Grey de Ruthyn, and his wife Eleanor Lestrange. Of their children, six survived him. Three of Henry VIII’s wives, Catherine Howard, Jane Seymour and Ann Boleyn were all great, great, great granddaughters of Sir John Cockayne of Ashbourne. 

By 1394 he had become Recorder of London, holding the post until 1398, and in 1396 was made a serjeant-at-law. From 1398 to 1400 he followed his father as Chief Steward of the Duchy north of the Trent, an appointment by John of Gaunt who named Cokayne as one of the executors of his will.

In 1400 he was made a Chief Baron of the Exchequer and in addition, in 1405, a Justice of the Common Pleas. He gave up the Exchequer post in 1413.

He made his will on 10 February 1428, asking to be buried beside his wife in the church of St John at Bury Hatley, and died on 22 May 1429, his will being proved in August. His monument in the church has since been destroyed. 

The proceeds of his judicial offices allowed him to acquire country estates, first buying land at Bearwardcote in Derbyshire and then a life interest in manors at St Ippolyts and Radwell in Hertfordshire. What became his principal residence was the manor of Bury Hatley in Bedfordshire, bought in 1417 for 1,000 marks and later renamed Cokayne Hatley.

Lady Edith died on June 1st, 1426, at Cokayne Hatley, aged 56, and Sir John died on May 22^nd, 1429, at Ashbourne, aged 59.

Sir John Cokayne (often written Cockayne) is my direct ancestor, 20 generations ago.

The Scott's of Scot’s Hall

Inside Scot’s Hall

The early Scot’s Hall would have stood between two ages. It was no longer simply a defensive stronghold, yet it was far from a quiet country house. Its great hall was the social heart of the estate: an open-roofed room warmed by a central hearth, where smoke drifted towards roof vents and family, servants and tenants gathered according to rank. At one end, private chambers known as solars offered William and his household a measure of privacy. Outside lay the working world of the manor—barns, stables, bakehouse, brew-house, smithy and dovecote—busy from dawn and essential to the estate’s survival.

The household itself was part family, part office and part training ground. Bailiffs, stewards and clerks kept accounts and enforced decisions; cooks, maids and stable hands sustained daily life; falconers supported a pastime that supplied both sport and game. Some servants were the younger children of neighbouring families, sent to learn manners, administration and the habits expected of the gentry.

Meals made rank visible. The family might eat white bread, roasted meat, fish and strong spiced wine, while poorer households relied more heavily on coarse bread and pottage. Food was served on wooden boards or trenchers and eaten with knives and fingers. Clothing spoke just as loudly: fine wool, fur-lined cloaks, pointed shoes and elaborate headwear displayed prosperity, though sumptuary laws attempted to keep every rank dressed within its appointed bounds.

The Work Behind the Grandeur

Scot’s Hall may have looked imposing, but its prosperity depended on relentless attention. Wheat, barley and oats had to be sown, harvested and accounted for. Sheep had to be managed, the wool clip supervised and merchants bargained with. Kent’s position—close to London and connected to ports such as Dover and Sandwich—gave landowners unusual access to markets, but opportunity created paperwork. Manorial rolls recorded rents, labour, harvests, disputes and debts, and a poor season could make even a substantial household feel precarious.

Leisure also served practical ends. Deer parks, rabbit warrens and falconry provided recreation while adding fresh meat to the larder. Religion, meanwhile, ordered the calendar and shaped the family’s idea of remembrance. Supporting the parish church through gifts, glass, chapels or prayers was an act of faith, a public statement of status and an investment in how the family would be remembered.

The Chapel and the Children

William died on 5 February 1433, although some accounts give the year as 1434. He asked to be buried in the church at Brabourne, where he had been responsible for rebuilding the Perpendicular-style Chapel of the Holy Trinity, south of the chancel. In time it became known simply as the Scott Chapel. Stone, prayer and family memory met there: the estate-builder had secured a place not only in the soil of Kent, but in its sacred landscape.

Isabella survived him and later married Sir Gervase Clifton, treasurer of Henry VI’s household, who resided at Brabourne. William’s own line continued in two notable branches. His son and heir, Sir John Scott, maintained the principal family at Scot’s Hall. Another son, William Scott, who died in 1491, became lord of the manor of Woolstan and founded the Scotts of Chigwell in Essex.

The family story is therefore larger than the career of one man. It is the story of a manor assembled through inheritance and alliance; of a household sustained by wool, grain, service and record-keeping; and of descendants who carried the name into new places. William Scotte’s world has disappeared, but its outline remains—in old manorial traditions, in the church at Brabourne and in the memory of a Kentish family that learned how to turn land into legacy.

The Old English Roots of the Scott’s Name

The name originates from the Old English word scotti, which was originally used by the Romans (Scoti) to describe Gaelic-speaking raiders from Ireland who settled in what is now Scotland.

• Derivation: It comes from the Late Latin Scottus, meaning a "Scot" or "Gaelic speaker."
• The Irony of the Name: Interestingly, the name was rarely used by people living deep within Scotland to describe themselves. Instead, it was a label given by English speakers to people of Scottish descent who moved south of the border, or by people living in the Scottish Borders to distinguish those of specific clan lineages.

The Border Reivers

The history of the name is inextricably linked to the Scottish Borders (the frontier between Scotland and England). The Scotts were one of the most powerful and "notorious" clans of Border Reivers.

• The Reiving Lifestyle: From the 13th to the 17th centuries, the Scotts were a "riding clan" involved in constant cross-border raids, cattle rustling, and feuding.
• The Clan Chief: The primary branch of the family was the Scotts of Buccleuch. Over time, they transitioned from fierce warriors to high-ranking nobility. The current Duke of Buccleuch remains the hereditary chief of Clan Scott.

Historical Significance

The name carries a heavy weight in literary and political history:

• Sir Walter Scott: Perhaps the most famous bearer of the name, this 19th-century novelist and poet is credited with "inventing" the modern image of Scotland (including the popularization of tartans and kilts) through works like Ivanhoe and Rob Roy.
• Spread and Variation: As people migrated, the name became common throughout Northern England, Ireland (particularly Ulster), and eventually the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Lewknor

The name of the village evolves through old legal and ecclesiastical records, providing a clear map of its linguistic roots:

• 994 AD: Leofecanoran (Saxon Diplomatic Codex)
• 1086 AD: Levec(h)anole (Domesday Book)
• c. 1160 AD: Leovechenora

The Old English Core

The name is a compound of two distinct Old English components:

1. Leofeca: A pre-7th-century Anglo-Saxon personal given name. It is a diminutive or affectionate derivative of the name Leofa, which literally translates to "dear" or "beloved."
2. Ora: An Old English topographical term meaning a "bank," "shore," or "hill slope."

Literal Meaning: Taken together, Lewknor translates directly to "Leofeca's slope," referring to a specific hill slope along the Chilterns belonging to an early Saxon landowner.

History of the Surname and Gentry

The transition from a place name to a hereditary family surname began in the generations following the Norman Conquest, when the land-owning gentry tied their identities directly to their manors.

Early Records

• 1211 AD: The earliest administrative mention of the surname appears with a Henry de Leucnore, who held estates in Oxfordshire.
• 1273 AD: The Hundred Rolls of Oxfordshire record Geoffrey de Leweknore during the reign of King Edward I. The "de" (meaning "of") was later dropped as the language shifted from Anglo-Norman French to Middle English.

Rise of the Sussex and East Anglian Branches

While originating in Oxfordshire, the Lewknor family expanded its influence significantly into the southeastern counties of England, particularly Sussex and later Suffolk, establishing themselves as highly influential members of the landed gentry.

• Medieval Knights & Sheriffs: By the 15th century, the family was deeply embedded in regional governance. As seen (above) Sir Roger Lewknor served as the High Sheriff of Sussex multiple times during the turbulent reign of King Henry VI and the Wars of the Roses. The family intermarried with major noble houses, including the Camoys family.
• The Elizabethan & Jacobean Court: By the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the family split into prominent political and literary branches:
  • Sir Lewis Lewkenor (c. 1560–1626) was a prominent courtier under James I, serving as the Master of the Ceremonies. He was an accomplished translator whose 1599 English translation of The Commonwealth and Government of Venice is widely believed by scholars to have been a key source text used by William Shakespeare when writing Othello.
  • Sir Edward Lewknor (1542–1605) established a powerful seat at Denham Hall in Suffolk. He became a fiery leader of the Puritan gentry within the English Parliament, aggressively advocating for religious reform and pushing back against episcopal authority.

3. Spelling Variations

Because surnames developed long before standardized spelling, phonetic variations are incredibly common in parish registers. As family lines drifted from Oxfordshire to Sussex, Kent, Surrey, and London, regional dialects fractured the name into several variants:

• Lewknore and Lewkner
• Leuknor and Leukner
• Lackner and Leakner
• Lucknor and Lockner
• Lackney and Lockney (further corruption found in later parish records)

Today, the surname in its original spelling remains exceptionally rare, retaining its stark historical footprint tied to that single Anglo-Saxon hillside in Oxfordshire.

The surname Dallingridge

The surname Dallingridge (historically also spelled Dalyngrigge) is of English locational origin, derived from a specific geographic feature and minor place name native to the county of Sussex.

Derivation and Etymology

• Geographic Origin: The family and name originated from the manor or area of Dalling Ridge (or Dalingridge), located in the parish of West Hoathly and near East Grinstead in West Sussex.
• Etymological Structure: The name merges a locational or habitational base with the Old English suffix or element ridge (referating to a long, narrow hilltop or elevated stretch of land). The "Dalling" portion points to an early settlement or family grouping associated with that ridge, rooted in Old English nomenclature. As feudal surnames developed in medieval England, landowners and prominent local families frequently adopted the specific name of their ancestral manor, estate, or geographic holding as their surname.

Historical Background

The Dallingridge family established themselves as notable landowners and gentry in Sussex from at least the 13th century, beginning with foresters of Ashdown Forest. Members of the family rose to regional prominence through military service, marriage alliances, and politics. Most famously, Philippa Dallingridge's great-uncle, Sir Edward Dalyngrigge, built the iconic Bodiam Castle in Sussex in the late 14th century after receiving a royal license to crenellate the property. 

The Buist Family

What Was in a Name?

The name itself keeps some of its secrets. One persuasive explanation links Buist with Boyce and the Old French bois, meaning “wood”—perhaps first describing someone who lived beside a forest. The name would have arrived in Scotland following the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Other suggestions point north to Norse or Viking influence, It may stem from the Old Norse personal name "Búi," which translates to "dweller" or "homestead." In this context, the name would essentially mean "someone from the homestead."

Some older sources suggest a derivation from the Gaelic word buas, meaning "boastful" or "proud," implying it began as a nickname for a confident or bold individual.

Interestingly, some historians point to the heavy trade between Fife and the Netherlands during the 1600s. The Dutch surname Buis or Buijs was common at the time, and because Fife ports like Dysart were known as "Little Holland," it is possible some "Buists" were originally Dutch merchants who settled on the Scottish coast.

No single theory has been proved for every branch, and that uncertainty is part of the charm: the name may carry echoes of conquest, woodland, homestead, workshop and harbour all at once.

A Name the Clerks Could Not Quite Pin Down

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, spelling was flexible and a surname was often written as it sounded. Buist ancestors and their neighbours therefore appear in records as Boyst, Boist, Bust and other variations. One of the earliest well-known entries is Laurence Boyst, who served on an assize in Fife in 1521. A Cristine Bust was recorded in 1584; parish registers note the christening of Charles Buist at Dunfermline in 1568 and Andrew Buist there in 1608. These scattered lines are small, but together they show a family name taking firm root in Fife.

Marks on the Land

There is also a wonderfully practical Scots connection. A buist could be an owner’s mark placed on sheep or cattle, and a “buisting-iron” was used to apply it. This does not prove that the surname began as an occupation, but it gives us an irresistible picture of rural life: animals moving across a Fife field, each bearing the sign that told the neighbours exactly whose flock it was.

Buists Beyond Fife

In later generations, bearers of the name travelled far beyond Scotland. George Buist (1805–1860), a journalist and scientist, became editor of the Bombay Times, a predecessor of The Times of India. Robert Buist (1805–1880), a Scottish horticulturist who settled in Philadelphia, built a celebrated nursery business and helped make the poinsettia better known in the United States. They are not presented here as proven members of our direct line, but their lives show how widely the old Fife name eventually travelled.

And so the family story runs from George’s birth in seventeenth-century Dunfermline to Catherine’s wedding in Ceres in 1789, and onward into the Scott family. The surviving facts are brief—names, dates and places written by long-ago clerks—but read together they become something warmer: a story of deep local roots, changing spellings, open seas and a name carried from ancient generations down to my own.

The Dickson’s of Cameron:

Robert’s Changing Scotland

Robert was still a boy when the Jacobite Rising of 1745 shook Scotland. The decisive fighting was elsewhere, and there is no evidence that Robert took part, but the rising and its defeat formed part of the atmosphere in which his generation grew up. Government authority tightened, old loyalties were tested, and Scotland entered a period of rapid political, intellectual and economic change.

As Robert moved into adulthood, the country associated with the Scottish Enlightenment was taking shape. Great ideas were being argued in Edinburgh and the universities, including nearby St Andrews, while change arrived more quietly in parishes such as Cameron. Traditional runrig fields gradually gave way to enclosed farms, crop rotation and new equipment. The transformation promised greater productivity, but it also altered leases, work and long-established patterns of village life. Robert’s lifetime may therefore have spanned two rural worlds: the old communal rhythms of his youth and the more commercial farming landscape of later decades.

What the Dickson Name Carried

The surname Dickson is a patronymic: it originally meant “son of Dick,” with Dick being a familiar medieval form of Richard. Richard itself comes from Germanic elements associated with power and strength, so the name carries an old echo of a “strong ruler.” The “-son” ending is characteristic of Lowland Scotland and northern England, where the name also appeared in forms such as Dixon, Dixson and, in some records, longer related spellings.

Family and clan traditions connect some Dicksons with Richard Keith and the medieval Keith family, and later with the riding families of the Scottish Borders. Those stories belong to the wider history of the surname rather than proving the ancestry of this particular Cameron branch. Even so, they offer a vivid backdrop: border country, shifting loyalties and names written differently by successive clerks. One early form of the surname appears in records associated with the Ragman Rolls of 1296. Centuries later, people identifying with the Dickson name also adopted the motto Fortes fortuna juvat—“Fortune favours the bold”—and heraldic imagery that includes a hand grasping a sword.

That martial heritage is dramatic, but Robert’s branch is easier to picture in the fields of Fife than on a raiding horse. Their endurance was likely expressed in ordinary ways: getting a crop through bad weather, keeping a household supplied, helping neighbours at harvest and preserving family ties from one generation to the next.

From Robert to Margaret Ann

From down that line came Margaret Ann Dickson of Clermont, St Andrews. Her surroundings joined country and town. St Andrews was already ancient, known for its university, and religious history, while the neighbouring parish lands remained thoroughly agricultural. Margaret Ann’s life would have been shaped by both worlds: the close relationships of rural Fife and the wider traffic of a historic town connected to the coast.

On 6 December 1818, at Cameron in Fife, Margaret Ann Dickson married George Scott. She was twenty-nine years old. George had been born on 24 January 1796 in Kilconquhar, another Fife parish to the south-west. Their marriage joined two families whose lives were rooted in the same compact corner of Scotland.

It is easy to imagine the winter setting, but the record gives us the most important facts: the place, the date and the couple themselves. However modest the ceremony may have been, it marked a decisive moment in the family story. George and Margaret Ann went on to have six children in Fife. With each birth, the names Scott and Dickson moved forward together into another generation.

The World Their Children Inherited

Their children entered a Scotland changing faster than the one Robert had known. Farms were more organised and commercially minded; roads and markets were improving; literacy was becoming increasingly useful; and towns were growing. Yet many older customs remained. Families still relied upon kin and neighbours, the seasons still governed rural work, and the kirk continued to record baptisms, marriages and burials.

Those parish records are precious to family historians, but they are not complete. Entries could be missed, damaged or written according to the habits of an individual minister or clerk. Spellings varied, ages were sometimes approximate, and not every event was registered. That uncertainty is part of the search. A change from Dickson to Dixon, or a slightly different date, may be a clerk’s choice rather than evidence of a different family.

The Thread That Remains

What survives is more than a chain of dates. Robert M. Dickson’s birth around 1737 places the family in Cameron before the last Jacobite Rising. Margaret Ann Dickson’s marriage in 1818 carries that line into the nineteenth century. George Scott’s birth at Kilconquhar adds another Fife parish to the map, and their six children turn two ancestral threads into a growing family.

The fields have changed, the farms have changed and the roads to St Andrews are no longer the roads Robert knew. Yet Cameron remains a real place: gently undulating country, burns running eastward and the old pull of St Andrews nearby. To follow the Dickson family back there is to recover not only names, but a landscape and a way of life.

And perhaps the old motto suits this quieter history after all. Fortune did not always arrive as glory. Sometimes it was a harvest safely gathered, a child entered in a parish register, a marriage remembered, or a family story carried far enough into the future for a descendant to tell it again.

Pearson: A Fife Family in Unsettled Times

James arrived six years after the monarchy had been restored under Charles II. The celebrations were already fading. Bishops had returned to the Scottish church, unauthorised Presbyterian worship was forbidden, and people across the Lowlands were being forced to decide how openly they would defend their faith. We cannot know which choices the Pearson household made, but we can be certain that the question was never far away.

The struggle had begun long before his birth. In 1603 James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne, joined the two crowns and moved his court south. Edinburgh lost the daily bustle of royalty, but the old Border country gradually became safer. Farms and trade had room to recover—although royal government, now more distant, remained determined to shape the worship and loyalties of its northern kingdom.

In 1638, when Charles I tried to impose a new prayer book and greater religious uniformity, thousands of Scots answered with the National Covenant. They swore to defend Presbyterian church government against royal interference. The quarrel ignited the Bishops’ Wars and then merged into the wider Wars of the Three Kingdoms. Lowland parishes supplied men, money, horses and grain; ministers carried enormous authority; and ordinary families learned that arguments over bishops and kings could empty a byre as quickly as any bad winter.

By 1650 Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army had invaded Scotland. Defeat at Dunbar, followed by defeat at Worcester in 1651, brought occupation and forced incorporation into the English Commonwealth. Marching troops requisitioned food and imposed taxes, yet the occupation also brought a measure of internal peace, more regular legal administration and freer trade with England. These were the contradictions into which James Pearson was born: order carried at sword-point, opportunity shadowed by loss.

As James grew from boy to young man, tension sharpened. Presbyterian field meetings—conventicles—were outlawed, and the most defiant Covenanters, including the Cameronians, faced military pursuit. The brutal repression of the 1680s became known as the “Killing Time.” Fife lay outside the south-western heartland of the fiercest persecution, but news travelled by market, kirk and roadside. A family did not need to witness an execution to understand the warning behind it.

Then, in 1688, the political weather turned. James VII of Scotland—James II of England—was deposed, and William and Mary took the throne. By 1690 the Scottish Parliament had abolished bishops and secured the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. For many Lowland families, decades of persecution seemed at last to have ended. For others, especially displaced Episcopalians and royal loyalists, a new grievance had begun.

Peace in the kirk did not put bread on the table. During the 1690s, cold, wet summers and punishing winters brought repeated crop failures remembered as the “Seven Ill Years.” Seed rotted, grain prices rose and hunger spread through a countryside already burdened by debt, feudal obligations and outdated farming methods. The crisis killed many Scots and drove others from their homes. James Pearson, now in his thirties, would have known that survival depended upon thrift, neighbours, weather—and luck.

That is the setting in which we should imagine him—not as a figure posed neatly in a family tree, but as a working Lowland Scot. His days would have been measured by daylight and season; his community by the kirk, the farm and the market; his security by the next harvest. Royal proclamations made in Edinburgh or London reached him eventually as taxes, rules, rumours, conscription or scarcity.

Even his surname carries an older journey. Pearson began as a patronymic: “son of Piers.” Piers was the Old French form of Peter, from the Greek petros, meaning “rock” or “stone.” Brought into wider use after the Norman Conquest, the name passed down through generations until a description became a hereditary surname.

Medieval clerks wrote the name as they heard it—Pierson, Peerson, Pyerson and other variants—before spelling settled. A Walter Pierson appears in the Sussex Subsidy Rolls of 1296, and the name later became especially common in northern England. Across the Anglo-Scottish borderlands, a country long associated with raiding families known as Border Reivers, it travelled north into Scotland and outward with migration to Ireland and the American colonies.

A century after James Pearson’s birth, the name reappears clearly in our own family record. On that December day in 1786, Ann Pearson stood with James Dickson in Cameron and joined two family lines. The entry is brief, but behind it stretches a much larger inheritance: the Crown and the Covenant, armies on the road, hunger in the fields, worship defended at great cost, and generations who endured long enough for their names to reach us.

The Pearson story is therefore more than a chain of dates. It is the story of ordinary people living through extraordinary change—people whose private choices were made beneath the pressure of public events. We may not know James Pearson’s voice, his occupation or the exact shape of his household, but the world around him allows us to see the courage his generation required. The old meaning of the name offers a fitting final image: a family line, like stone, weathered but still standing.

The Bremner's - a voyage into the past.

The Bremner story begins, as so many family stories do, with a marriage and a leap into the unknown. On 4 December 1857, Agnes Bremner—my great-great-grandmother—married James Scott at the Church of Scotland in Cameron, Fife. Less than two years later, the young couple packed up their lives and set out for New Zealand with their children: one-year-old George and seven-month-old Agnes Elspeth.

They sailed from Glasgow aboard the Sevilla on 19 August 1859. Ahead lay 103 days at sea, with no intervening port call and no quick way home. The voyage brought the family terrible sorrow: baby Agnes died aboard the ship on 4 October. When the Sevilla finally reached New Zealand on 2 December 1859, Agnes and James stepped ashore carrying both the hope of a new beginning and the memory of the daughter they had lost along the way.

Agnes had been born in Leuchars, Fife, in 1836, but the family trail reaches much farther north. It can be followed back to John Bremner, born around 1630 at Wester, near Wick in Caithness. Wester was—and remains—a small rural place, about ten kilometres northwest of Wick, set in the broad farming country of Scotland’s far northeast.

It is easy to imagine the landscape John knew: open skies over flat coastal fields, the small freshwater Loch of Wester fed by the Burn of Lyth, and, not far away, Sinclair’s Bay and the restless North Sea. Local roads led south towards Wick and north towards Keiss and John o’ Groats. Beneath and around those fields lay traces of people who had lived there long before the Bremners—Neolithic burial places, later settlements and medieval strongholds standing above the sea cliffs.

Even the name Bremner carries a journey within it. Family-name histories connect it with Brabant, the former duchy in the Low Countries, now divided between Belgium and the Netherlands. The old term Brabanter meant a person from Brabant. Over generations, as speech and spelling changed, forms such as Brabener and Brabner appeared, eventually giving rise to the familiar northern Scottish name Bremner.

The name’s arrival in Scotland is associated with the medieval trading world that linked Scotland and the Low Countries. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, skilled weavers and other artisans from Brabant were encouraged to settle in Scotland and contribute to its growing textile trade. In time, related surnames appeared across the country, while the spelling Bremner became especially common in Caithness and Aberdeenshire. In the north, Bremner families were also associated with Clan Sinclair.

Old records rarely offer tidy, consistent spelling, so the family may appear as Brimner, Brymner, Bremar or Brabner. One early example is Walter Brabneir, recorded in Aberdeen in 1463. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Bremners were established as a recognisable family group in the Highlands, some serving as retainers to the Earls of Caithness.

Across the centuries, then, this is a story of movement: from Brabant to Scotland in the distant past, from Caithness to Fife, and finally from Glasgow to New Zealand. The surviving names and dates give us the outline, but the places supply the colour—the northern loch and windswept fields, the church in Fife, the long ocean crossing, and a young family beginning again on the other side of the world. Agnes and James’s courage, and the loss they endured on the way, remain at the heart of the Bremner family story.

The Black Family: A Thread Through Fife

Margaret had been born in 1774 at nearby Kilconquhar to Robert Black and May Scott. Kilconquhar lay a little inland, beside its loch, in a parish of fields, woods and small communities. In Margaret’s lifetime the district depended heavily on agriculture, while weaving also helped many local households earn their bread. A journey between Kilconquhar and Pittenweem was not far in miles, yet it carried Margaret from the inland world of the parish towards the bustle of the coast.

May Scott’s own story keeps us in Kilconquhar. Born there in 1751 to Alexander Scott and Rachel Rob, she remained connected to the place until her death in 1819. Through Alexander, the trail reaches back another generation to Mary Spowart, also recorded as Mary Patterson or Scott. Mary was born at Clackmannan on 29 August 1685, the daughter of Thomas Spowart and Mary Russell. With her, our path leaves the Black surname for a time and invites us to follow the Spowart line next.

What Was in the Name?

The name Black carries a small historical joke. In medieval English, similar-sounding words could point in opposite directions: blæc suggested someone dark-haired or dark-complexioned, while blāc could mean pale, bright or shining. As spellings drifted and surnames settled into fixed forms, the clues blurred. Our earliest Black ancestor may therefore have been notably dark—or notably fair. The name remembers a description, but has misplaced the portrait.

That uncertainty matters because Black did not begin with one founding family. It arose independently in different communities as a nickname and, in Gaelic-speaking areas, sometimes as an English rendering of dubh, meaning dark or black. Forms such as Black, Blacke and Blake could overlap in old records, and emigrant families sometimes adopted Black as the English equivalent of surnames with a similar meaning. A matching surname is a clue, not proof that two people share the same branch.

Scottish tradition associates some Black families with clans including Lamont and Maclean, but a clan connection cannot be established from the surname alone. For this family, the stronger evidence is more intimate: Margaret in Pittenweem, her parents in Kilconquhar, and the chain of baptisms, marriages and burials that links one household to the next.

A Name Carried Forward

Famous bearers would later give the name a wider glow—among them the eighteenth-century Scottish chemist Joseph Black, known for his work on carbon dioxide and latent heat—but our story is not a catalogue of celebrated strangers. Its interest lies in ordinary people moving through real places: a daughter born beside Kilconquhar Loch, a bride standing in Pittenweem, and a line of mothers carrying the family into the next century.

Stand at Pittenweem harbour today and the details help the years fold together: boats still shelter behind the harbour walls, the cave still waits above the shore, and the East Neuk’s villages still sit close enough for a family story to wander from one to another. The paper trail may twist, and the old spellings may argue among themselves, but the route is clear. From Margaret Black and Francis Bremner, through May Scott and Mary Spowart, this branch of the family leads us steadily deeper into Scotland—and into the next chapter.

The Spowarts: A Scottish Family Story

Spowart has never been a common name. Its strongest early associations are with Fife and neighbouring Clackmannanshire, where generations of Spowarts lived within a comparatively small area. The most widely accepted explanation is that the surname grew from the Older Scots word powart, meaning a tadpole, with an added “s” at the beginning. If that is right, the name probably began as a nickname—perhaps affectionate, teasing or simply descriptive—before settling into a hereditary surname.

Not everyone has been satisfied with so humble an origin. Because the name is unusual and appears near the Fife coast, older traditions imagined a sailor or merchant arriving from the Low Countries or Germany—perhaps even a survivor of a shipwreck—and leaving behind a name related to Spautz. Another theory linked Spowart with a maker of spurs, bridles or other horse tack. These are appealing stories, but neither has the linguistic support of the Older Scots derivation.

The surviving paper trail begins in the early seventeenth century. On 14 June 1614, William Spowart appeared as a witness at Kirkcaldy Church in Fife, one of the earliest known written records of the surname. In an age when spelling depended largely on the ear and habits of the clerk, the same family name could appear as Spoward, Spouert or even Pourit. Those shifting spellings can make genealogical research difficult, but they also preserve something of the voices and accents of the people who first recorded the family.

Our own Spowart line is traced to William Spowart, born in Clackmannan in 1610 and believed to have died there in 1680. In November 1635 he married Elizabeth Janet Condie. Their lives unfolded close to the family’s historic heartland, in a parish where names such as Spowart, Scott, Paterson and Condie recur through the old registers. A later bearer, Thomas Spowart, was born in Clackmannan in 1665; within another generation, Mary Spowart would carry the name into the Scott branch of our family.

Clackmannan Tower, Clackmannan.

In later centuries, branches of the family moved beyond this compact Scottish homeland. One especially vivid chapter unfolded at Berwick-upon-Tweed, the border town where the River Tweed meets the North Sea. Brothers Robert and Philip Spowart became familiar local figures through the ferry service between Berwick and Spittal. They replaced the steam paddle ferry Susan with motor boats—the Border Chief in 1907, the Border Maid in 1909 and the Border Pride in 1912—and in 1923 added the “Red Buses,” creating an early integrated transport service for the town and surrounding district.

Philip Spowart also served his community in public life, becoming mayor of Berwick-upon-Tweed three times, in 1935, 1936 and 1937. His story is far removed from the sparse parish entries of seventeenth-century Clackmannan, yet both belong to the same unfolding family history: a rare Scottish name carried through marriages, migrations, changing occupations and changing times.

For us, the line leads back to William Spowart and Elizabeth Janet Condie, married in Clackmannan in 1635. The Spowart chapter begins with an uncommon name and several intriguing possibilities; the next chapter belongs to Elizabeth and the Condie family from which she came.

The Condies:

A Name from the Landscape

Long before family historians could search a database, a surname often answered a practical question: where are you from? The strongest explanation for Condie is a Scottish habitational one. The name points towards the lands of Condie in southern Perthshire, near Forgandenny and Forteviot. The old placename has not vanished entirely; it still echoes in the Path of Condie and Condie Wood.

Imagine a traveller leaving those lands in the Middle Ages. In the next settlement he might be known simply as the man “de Condie”—the man from Condie. In time, the little word de could fall away while the place remained attached to the family. Spelling, meanwhile, was wonderfully unruly. Clerks wrote what they heard, producing Condie, Condy, Cundie, Cundy and Conady, among other forms.

The paper trail offers a few tantalising stepping stones. A John de Conady appears in Perth in 1414. A John Condy was recorded as a tenant at Fruchy in Falkland in 1541. By 1572, a David Condie, described as an Edinburgh man, appears in Dunfermline records. These people cannot automatically be claimed as members of our branch, but they show that the name was alive in central Scotland before, during and after Robert’s supposed lifetime.

There are other possible origins, too. Some scholars connect Condy and similar names with the Old French and Middle English word for a conduit—a channel or pipe carrying water—so an early bearer may have lived near a notable watercourse. Another branch may reach back to places called Condé in northern France, whose name refers to a meeting of waters. The theories differ, but they share a fitting image: streams converging, separating and continuing onward, much like family lines themselves.

Robert of Clackmannanshire

If the family trees are broadly right, Robert Condie entered the world around 1515 in or near Alloa. He grew up beneath the broad presence of the Ochil Hills, in a county small in size but rich in traffic, farming and feudal loyalties. Stirling lay to the west; the River Forth carried people, goods and news; and Clackmannan Tower stood as a stone reminder of the Bruce family’s local power.

Robert’s Scotland was not a quiet backdrop. James V was king for much of his youth. The Reformation transformed the country during his middle years, and Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France in 1561. We do not know what Robert thought of any of it. He may have farmed, traded, worked an estate or practised a craft. The surviving family tradition tells us far more about his place in a lineage than about the texture of his ordinary days.

Later genealogies give Robert a wife, Grace Christine Cumime—sometimes rendered Cuming—and sons named George and Alexander. The shifting spelling should not surprise us; names travelled by ear as often as by ink. Still, these relationships should be treated as clues awaiting documentary support rather than settled fact.

That distinction matters. It is tempting to fill an empty space in a pedigree with certainty, especially when an ancestor stands at the edge of the record. A more honest—and in many ways more compelling—picture leaves some mist on the hills. Robert can remain the earliest known figure in this family tradition while the search continues for parish, legal, estate or charter evidence that might bring him into sharper view.

The Baron in the Neighbourhood

The grandest claim attached to Robert is also the one that demands the most caution. Some online trees suggest that his father was Sir David Bruce, 7th Baron of Clackmannan. The geography makes the idea feel almost irresistible: Robert is placed in the same district, at roughly the right time, under the shadow of the Bruce barony.

Sir David himself is much better anchored in historical records. In September 1497, his father resigned the lands and Barony of Clackmannan in his favour, and a Crown charter confirmed the succession. He married Janet Blackadder, daughter of Sir Patrick Blackadder of Tulliallan. Their recorded family included John, Edward of Blairhall, David of Green, Robert and Patrick. Sir David’s position also brought local privileges, including authority for an annual fair at Clackmannan around the Feast of St Bartholomew.

Yet the records identify the baron as Sir David Bruce, not Condie-Bruce, and the commonly listed children do not establish Robert Condie as his son. Proximity is not parentage, and repeated online pedigrees are not independent evidence. The proposed link may prove true, partly true or simply the work of an enthusiastic compiler joining two nearby families.

For now, Sir David belongs in our story as an important neighbour and a possible connection—not as a proven father. That is not a disappointing conclusion. Good family history is not a parade of famous names; it is the patient art of discovering which stories the evidence can carry.

What the Name Carries

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Condie name remained firmly associated with Perthshire, while other families and landholders—including the Oliphants of Condie—added new chapters to the district’s history. Individual Condies moved, married and made homes elsewhere, taking the name beyond the place that may have created it.

Our own story reaches back, with reasonable confidence, to early modern Scotland and, with family-tradition confidence, to Robert Condie around 1515. Beyond him, the path narrows. There are inviting signposts—a Perthshire placename, early Scottish records, Clackmannan’s Bruce family—but no bridge should be crossed merely because we wish it were there.

Perhaps that is the best inheritance this old name offers. The Condie story is not finished and sealed; it is an invitation. Somewhere in a charter, testament, kirk-session minute, sasine, rental book or estate paper, another small fact may be waiting. Until it is found, we can tell the story with warmth and imagination while keeping a clear line between what is recorded, what is reconstructed and what is still only possible.

A family tree is strongest not when every branch looks grand, but when every branch is honestly grown.

The Havills: From Devon to New Zealand

John Havill and an Important Marriage

William’s grandson, John Havill, brings another intriguing turn to the story. Born in 1595, John worked as an agricultural labourer. On 25 September 1626, at All Hallows in Goldsmith Street, Exeter, he married Ellinor Beaton Churchill.

That marriage joins the Havill line to Ellinor’s family and opens the door to another collection of histories and stories. For now, it stands as a reminder that a family tree is never really a single tree. Each marriage grafts one history onto another, bringing new places, occupations, loyalties and legends into the lives of later generations.

What Is in the Havill Name?

The surname itself is generally understood to be Anglo-Norman and habitational—originally identifying someone who came from a particular place. Name scholars connect it with places in Normandy such as Hauville in Eure and Hauteville-la-Guichard in Manche. Hauteville can be read as “high settlement” or “high estate.”

Over centuries, clerks wrote names as they heard them, and spelling was anything but fixed. The family name appears in forms including de Hauteville, Hauville, Havell, Hovell, Havile and Haville. The resemblance between these forms tells us something about the name’s long journey, although it does not by itself prove descent from any particular medieval noble family.

Historically, the name became strongly associated with the West Country, especially Devon. Centuries later it travelled with emigrants to North America and New Zealand. In our branch, that enormous movement can be told through one young passenger: Thirza Havill, leaving Devon aboard the Corona and stepping ashore in Otago.

The Thread That Connects Us

From William in sixteenth-century Uffculme, to John and Ellinor in seventeenth-century Exeter, to Thirza crossing the oceans in 1874, the Havill story is one of continuity through change. The settings shift from river valley to sailing ship, from Dunedin streets to Wellington, but the thread remains unbroken.

Perhaps that is the real gift of family history. It turns dates into departures, marriages into meetings, and signatures into acts of courage. It reminds us that our ancestors were not simply entries in a register. They were people making choices with no knowledge of us—yet those choices made our lives possible.

And so the Havill name, carried from Normandy into England, rooted in Devon and borne across the sea to New Zealand, continues its journey in the stories we remember and pass on. 

The Royston Thread

The Royston Line

The research follows Thankful Royston through John Royston, born about 1475, to an earlier John Royston of Torquay, who is recorded as marrying Elizabeth Taylour in 1474. This is the point at which the paper trail begins to thin. Spellings vary, dates sometimes overlap, and later family trees do not always agree. Even so, the names point consistently eastward, toward Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, where Royston was both a place and, increasingly, a surname.

The Kingdom of Portugal.

I wasn’t actually looking for this connection, so it was a bit of a surprise when I clicked on John of Aviz, and the software said he was a direct ancestor of mine. I was like ‘what, but he was Portuguese!’ But you just never know what climbing through the family tree is going to turn up!

I must confess, I know very little about Portugal, let alone those who used to rule it. I have never given it much thought, and then there is the language barrier. Like the language, its history seems complicated. But, like all histories, there are stories to be told. Here is one:

The Monarchs of Portugal ruled from the establishment of the Kingdom of Portugal, in 1139, to the deposition of the Portuguese monarchy and creation of the Portuguese Republic with the 5 October 1910 revolution. They all came from a single ancestor, Afonso I Henriques. Prior to the independence of Portugal, his house ruled the feudal County of Portugal, of the Kingdom of Galicia. When Afonso I Henriques declared the independence of Portugal, he turned the family from a comital house to royal house which would rule Portugal for over two centuries. When much later his successor Ferdinand I died in 1389, a succession crisis occurred, and Ferdinand's daughter Beatrice of Portugal was proclaimed queen and her husband John I of Castile proclaimed king by the right of his wife. But this was not to last.

Ferdinand I was the son of Pedro (Peter) 1 who ruled Portugal from 1357 to 1367 and died aged 46. Before he was made king he married Constance of Castile, a Castilian noblewoman on 24 August 1340 in Lisbon. Constance bought Inês de Castro to Portugal as her lady-in-waiting. Inês was the natural daughter of Pedro Fernández de Castro, Lord of Lemos and Sarria, and his noble Portuguese mistress Aldonça Lourenço de Valadares. Her family descended both from the Galician and Portuguese nobilities. She was also well connected to the Castilian royal family, by illegitimate descent.  

The prince (Peter) fell in love with Inês and started to neglect his lawful wife, endangering the already feeble relations with Castile. Moreover, Peter's love for Inês brought the exiled Castilian nobility very close to power, with Inês's brothers becoming the prince's friends and trusted advisors. King Afonso IV of Portugal, Peter's father, disliked Inês's influence on his son and waited for their mutual infatuation to wear off, but it did not.

Constance of Castile died in 1345. Afonso IV tried several times to arrange for his son to be remarried, but Pedro refused to take a wife other than Inês, who was not deemed eligible to be queen. Peter's legitimate son, future King Ferdinand I of Portugal, was a frail child, whereas Peter and Inês's illegitimate children were thriving; this created even more discomfort among the Portuguese nobles, who feared the increasing Castilian influence over Peter. Afonso IV banished Inês from the court after Constance's death, but Peter remained with her declaring her as his true love. After several attempts to keep the lovers apart, Afonso IV ordered Inês's death. Pêro Coelho, Álvaro Gonçalves, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco went to the Monastery of Santa Clara-a-Velha in Coimbra, where Inês was detained, and killed her, decapitating her in front of her small child. When Peter heard of this, he sought out the killers and managed to capture two of them in 1361. He executed them publicly by ripping their hearts out, claiming they didn't have one after having pulverized his own heart.

Peter became king of Portugal in 1357 (Peter I of Portugal). He then stated that he had secretly married Inês, who was consequently the lawful queen, although his word was, and still is, the only proof of the marriage. Some sources say that after Peter became king of Portugal, he had Inês' body exhumed from her grave and forced the entire court to swear allegiance to their new queen: "The king [Peter] caused the body of his beloved Inês to be disinterred, and placed on a throne, adorned with the diadem and royal robes. and required all the nobility of the kingdom to approach and kiss the hem of her garment, rendering her when dead that homage which she had not received in her life..."  

She was later buried at the Monastery of Alcobaça where her coffin can still be seen, opposite Peter's so that, according to the legend, at the Last Judgment Peter and Inês can look at each other as they rise from their graves. Both marble coffins are exquisitely sculpted with scenes from their lives and a promise by Peter that they would be together até ao fim do mundo (until the end of the world).

Whether (and how much of) this is fact and how much legend, the story has been immortalised in plays, poems, song and opera, in Portuguese, Spanish French and English, ever since.

Inês de Castro and Peter I had the following children, who were legitimized by Peter I on 19 March 1361:

• Afonso, died shortly after birth.
• Beatrice, married Sancho Alfonso, 1st Count of Alburquerque and was thereby the great-grandmother of Ferdinand II of Aragon.
• John, Duke of Valencia de Campos, claimant to the throne during the 1383–85 Crisis.
• Denis, Lord of Cifuentes, claimant to the throne during the 1383–1385 Crisis.

Just to confuse matters, enter João (John) I who was born on 11^th April 1357, and who reigned as King of Portugal from April 6^th, 1385, to 14^th August, 1433. He was the illegitimate child of King Pedro (Peter) I of Portugal, and Teresa Lourenço, daughter of a Lisbon merchant. In 1364, at 7 years old, John was made Grand Master of the Order of Aviz, henceforth becoming known as John of Aviz. His reign was the result of the dynastic crisis following the 1383 death of Ferdinand I. Ferdinand's widow Leonor Telles was disliked by both the nobility and the commoners for having left her first husband and for having had their marriage annulled in order to marry King Ferdinand. Ferdinand's designated heir was their only surviving child Beatrice, married to John I of Castile who claimed the throne in the name of his wife, but under the Treaty of Salvaterra that had been the basis for John's marriage to Beatrice, the unpopular Leonor was left as Regent until such time as the son of Beatrice and John would be 14 years old.

In April 1385, amidst popular revolt and civil war, the Cortes of Coimbra declared John, Master of Aviz, as king John I of Portugal. John of Aviz's rule became established fact with the Portuguese victory in the Battle of Aljubarrota on 14 August 1385, where he defeated John I of Castile. A formal peace between Portugal and Castile would not be signed until 1411.

 To mark his victory, John founded the Monastery of Santa Maria da Vitória, known as the "Batalha Monastery" ("Battle Monastery"), whose chapel became the burial place of the princes of the new dynasty of Aviz. The descendants of King John I were still also Masters of Aviz, though at times that title passed to one descendant of John and the Crown of Portugal to another. The title of Grand Master of the Order of Aviz was permanently incorporated into the Portuguese Crown toward the end of rule by the House of Aviz, in 1551.

The House of Aviz would rule Portugal until its fall in the 1580 to the Philippine Dynasty. This period of Portuguese history saw the ascent of Portugal to the status of a European and world power. The conquest of Ceuta in 1415 was its first venture in colonial expansion, followed by a great outpouring of national energy and capital investment in the exploration of Africa, Asia and Brazil with the founding of colonies to exploit their resources commercially.

To my utter astonishment, it seems that João (John) I, King of Portugal may have been my direct ancestor, 20 generations ago.

How so?

When John 1 of Castile fought John de Aviz for the Portuguese crown in the Battle of Aljubarrota , he naturally enlisted the help of the Spanish for his army. John de Aviz however, enlisted the help of the English for his, and prevailed. As was the custom back then, he cemented this alliance by marrying off Lady Beatrice Fitzalan Fettiplace Van Portugal Gilbard (born De Pinto, Beatrix of Portugal, Countess of Arundel) to Sir Henry Gilbard, of Schodochurst, Kent. That line continues down through the Taylour, Royston, Cruese and Churchill families to arrive at the Havills and ultimately the Scott’s, ending with my Grandmother Ethel Jackson Scott.

Ken Sims

17 December 2021

Mosteiro de Santa Maria da Vitória, Portugal.

The Northam's of Devon.

The Chilcotts of Devon

In June 1858, when she was just eighteen years old, Thirza married William Havill, a young plumber's apprentice. They were married at St Mary Arches Church, on Mary Arches Street in Exeter. Their marriage marked the beginning of a family life that, although it began in England, would eventually take them halfway around the world.

William and Thirza started a family, and by the late 1860s they had five children. William worked as a plumber, but tragedy struck the family in 1869 when William died. Thirza was only about thirty years old and was suddenly left to raise four children without her husband.

For a young widow in Victorian England, this must have been an extraordinarily difficult time. Whatever private struggles she faced are largely hidden from the records we have today, but we can see the circumstances she was living in. By 1871, Thirza and her children were living in Clyst St Lawrence, a small village northeast of Exeter.

Somehow, over the next few years, Thirza made the remarkable decision to begin a new life on the other side of the world.

A new beginning in New Zealand

In 1874, Thirza and her children became part of the great movement of people leaving Britain for a new life in New Zealand. They travelled under the assisted immigration scheme, which helped ordinary working families make the long journey to the colony.

Their ship was the Corona. The Corona left London on 22 May 1874 and arrived at Port Chalmers, near Dunedin, on 28 August 1874, after a voyage of about ninety-two days. Contemporary New Zealand government records describe the Corona as carrying hundreds of government-assisted immigrants. The official report recorded 388½ statute adults and noted that on the voyage they had been generally healthy, with the ship being found clean and well-ventilated on arrival.

For Thirza, however, this was far more than simply an entry in an immigration report. She was a widowed mother travelling with her children from everything familiar in Devon to a country thousands of miles away. The voyage itself must have been an extraordinary experience. The route from Britain to New Zealand took immigrants far out into the Atlantic, around the Cape of Good Hope and across the southern oceans. In 1874, such a journey meant weeks at sea, with no possibility of simply turning back or contacting family at home.

When the Corona finally reached Port Chalmers on 28 August, Thirza and her children had arrived in their new homeland. They were now New Zealanders in the making. The scale of immigration into Dunedin at this time can be glimpsed in contemporary newspaper reports. The Otago Daily Times reported that hundreds of immigrant families and single people were being accommodated in the Caversham Immigration Barracks after the arrival of ships including the Corona. Many quickly found employment or accommodation in Dunedin.

Life in Dunedin

Unfortunately, the surviving records tell us much less about Thirza's life in New Zealand than they do about the dramatic journey that brought her there.

At some point after her arrival, she was recorded as working as a machinist. This is an interesting glimpse into her life because it shows that Thirza was not simply dependent upon others. She was earning a living and contributing to her family's support.

In 1875, only a year after arriving in New Zealand, Thirza married again. Her second husband was William Hutchings, a contractor and carter who had been born in 1840 at Henley, in Suffolk, England. Thirza was about thirty-six years old at the time of their marriage. The couple had a daughter, Eva, who was born in 1875,
the same year they married.

And so, after the loss of her first husband, the upheaval of widowhood and the extraordinary journey from England to New Zealand, Thirza began another chapter of family life in Dunedin. There is something particularly striking about her story. Within the space of only a few years she had experienced marriage, motherhood, widowhood, international migration and remarriage. She had crossed an ocean and established herself in a completely new society.

The years that followed

William Hutchings died on 25 October 1891. Thirza lived for another nine years. She died in 1900, at about sixty years of age. By then, the young widow who had left Devon with five children had become part of a growing New Zealand family. The journey that began in Exeter had carried her descendants into a new country and a new generation.

We may never know exactly what Thirza thought as she stood on the deck of the Corona in 1874, watching England disappear behind her. We do not know what she hoped for, what she feared, or what she imagined life in New Zealand would be like. But the decision itself tells us something. She had already endured the loss of her first husband and the responsibility of caring for five children. Rather than remaining where life had become difficult, she took the enormous step of starting again in a distant land. Her story is therefore not only one of migration. It is a story of family, loss, courage, hard work and starting again. And because she made that journey, her story eventually became part of ours.

The Chilcott Name

The story of Thirza also takes us further back, into the history of the Chilcott family name. Chilcott is an English surname particularly associated with the West Country, especially Somerset, Devon and neighbouring counties. Historical surname research describes Chilcott as a variant of Chilcote, a habitational name connected with places called Chilcott or Chilcote. In other words, the name probably began as a way of identifying someone by the place they came from or were associated with.

Our family history traces the Chilcott’s back to a John Chilcott, born in Exeter, Devon sometime in the late 1700’s. He married Sarah Glare there in 1808 and they had two sons and a daughter, John born in Tiverton, Devon in 1809, Mary Ann born in Ashburton, Devon around 1810, and William, born in Plymouth, Devon in 1813.

The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names records Chilcott, Chilcot and Chilcote as related forms and shows that the surname was strongly concentrated in Somerset, Devon and Dorset in the nineteenth century. It also records early examples of the name, including Baldwin de Chillecota in 1169 and later forms such as John Chilcott in Somerset and Robert Chilcot in Devon in the seventeenth century.

The exact meaning of the original placename is less certain. One established interpretation derives Chilcote/Chilcott from Old English elements associated with cild and cot, broadly relating to a young person or dependent and a cottage or small dwelling. There are also older place-name theories, so it is probably safest to say that Chilcott is an ancient West Country placename surname
rather than assigning it one definite literal translation.

Over the centuries the name appeared in several forms, including: Chilcott, Chilcot, Chilcote, Chillcott, and Chylcote. This variation was quite normal before spelling became standardized. The different spellings do not necessarily represent different families; they can simply reflect the way a name was heard and recorded by different clerks at different times.

For our family, the name has a particularly appropriate history. It began in the English West Country, remained closely associated with Devon and Somerset, and was eventually carried across the world by people such as Thirza Harriett Elizabeth Chilcott. Her journey transformed the name from one rooted in the
villages and towns of Devon into a name that would become part of a New Zealand family.

Remembering Thirza

Today, we know only fragments of Thirza's life.

• We know when she was born.
• We know the names of her parents.
• We know that she married William Havill when she was eighteen.
• We know she became a mother to five children—Charles William Henry, Sarah, Thirza, George and Emma—and then a widow when they were still at different stages of their young lives.
• We know that, with five children to care for, she left England.
• We know that she sailed aboard the Corona and arrived at Port Chalmers in 1874.
• We know that she worked as a machinist.
• We know that she married William Hutchings and had another daughter, Eva.
• And we know that she died in 1900.

But between those facts lies a whole human life. There were probably ordinary mornings, difficult days, family celebrations, worries about money, friendships, work, illness and countless moments that were never written down. Perhaps that is what makes family history so compelling. The records give us the framework, but within that framework lived a real person.

Thirza was a young woman from Exeter who became a wife, a mother, a widow, a working woman, an emigrant and, eventually, a New Zealand wife and mother. Her life crossed an ocean, but more importantly, it connected generations. And every generation that followed became part of the story she began when she stepped aboard the Corona in 1874.

Thirza's story is especially remarkable because her journey to New Zealand was a family journey. She did not leave Devon alone. She carried with her the lives and futures of Charles William Henry, Sarah, Thirza, George and Emma, five children born in England who would become part of the next generation of her family's history in New Zealand. Her decision to emigrate therefore changed the course of not just her own life, but the lives of all five children who travelled with her. Perhaps that is what makes family history so compelling. The records give us the framework, but within that framework lived a real person.

The Hoars of Devon: A Family Story