John Bodington, apothecary, and the Byne and Greene families

My recent explorations of the Byne and Manser families of Sussex began with the discovery that the maiden name of my 7 x great grandmother, the wife of London citizen and goldsmith Joseph Greene (1677 – 1738), was Mary Byne. Born in 1683, Mary was the daughter of Sussex-born London citizen and stationer John Byne and his wife Alice. Besides Mary, John and Alice had four other children who survived to adulthood: John, Alice, Magnus and Thomas.

John Byne senior died in 1689 at the age of about thirty-eight years, while his widow Alice would live for another forty-one years, dying in 1738. Alice’s maiden name seems to have been Forest. Her husband John’s will bequeaths ‘the sume of five pounds of lawfull mony of England to buy her mourning’ to ‘my honoured Mother Mrs. Anne Forrest Widdow’. However, I’m fairly certain that Anne was John Byne’s mother-in-law, rather than his mother. In his will of 23^rd June 1698, William Forrest, a yeoman of Badsey in Worcestershire, left money and property to Alice Byne and her children. Although William describes Alice as a cousin, other sources suggest that William was actually Alice’s uncle, almost certainly her father’s brother.

Parish church of St James, Badsey, Worcestershire

In his history of the Byne family, Walter Charles Renshaw mentions a case in Chancery in 1716-7, which set my 8 x great grandmother Alice Byne against her own son John, described as a mariner. John’s case against his widowed mother was that her uncle William Forrest had in his will left all his lands in Badsey to Alice for life ‘with remainder to her son John Byne in fee’, bequeathing his estate personally between them. John’s complaint was that his mother had felled and converted to her own use a large amount of timber on this land. I’ve requested a copy of the Chancery documents from the National Archives and hope they will shed some light on Alice’s family background.

Renshaw concludes that the remainder of John Byne in this property at Badsey must have been sold at some point, since in his will dated 25^th March 1728 and proved on 17^th April in the same year, a certain John Bodington of Stepney, a London citizen and apothecary, ‘made a devise of his reversion in freehold lands at Badsey expectant on the death of Alice Byne’ (Renshaw, page 152). In a footnote, Renshaw mentions that John Bodington ‘appointed Joseph Greene of London, goldsmith, one of his executors, and gave a legacy of £10 for mourning to Mary Greene his wife.’ Renshaw adds: ‘Probably these are the persons of those names mentioned in Alice Byne’s will’. They certainly are. Renshaw seems unaware that Mary Greene’s maiden name was Byne and that she was the daughter of Alice Byne and her husband John, though this should have been clear from Alice’s will, which refers to Joseph as her son-in-law.

The case of John Bodington is intriguing. Why did he name my 7 x great grandfather Joseph Greene as an executor of his will? And how did he come to have an interest in Alice Byne’s property in Badsey? Did he know Joseph because of a connection with Alice and her family, or vice versa? And then there is the Stepney connection, which immediately made me sit up and take notice, for of course Joseph Greene was born in Stepney, the son of Ratcliffe mariner Captain William Greene. I’ve now obtained a copy of John Bodington’s will and discovered that he actually lived in the hamlet of Ratcliffe, where Joseph was born and lived as a child. Since Bodington describes Joseph as a ‘friend’, it is at least possible that they were neighbours when they were children.

1615 map showing St Dunstan’s church, Stepney

I’ve started to identify entries in the parish register at St Dunstan’s, Stepney, where he was buried, that appear to refer to John Bodington, apothecary. Intriguingly, I’ve also found the record of a marriage at the same church, on 31^st January 1638 between John Bodington, a barber-surgeon, and a Margaret Greene. Was this the later John Bodington’s father, the similarity in their occupations confirming the link between them? And was Margaret a relative of my ancestor Joseph Greene, possibly explaining the connection between the two men?

I plan to begin my search for answers to these questions by examining the will of John Bodington, apothecary. It’s one of the longest, most detailed, and certainly most unusual wills that I’ve come across. Watch this space.

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The Byne family and the Sussex connection

The will of my recently-discovered 8 x great grandfather John Byne, citizen and stationer of Tower Hill, a transcription of which I reproduced in the last post, provides a useful starting-point for exploring the history of the Byne family. In his will, written in 1689, John lists the names of his five children – or rather, those who were still alive at that date: John, Alice, Mary, Magnus and Thomas. Of these, we know that the two daughters – Alice and Mary – were still living in 1733, when John’s widow Alice composed her own will. The younger Alice had been married to Thomas Bouts and was herself a widow, while Mary (my 7 x great grandmother) was married to goldsmith Joseph Greene.

I’ve drawn a blank when it comes to records of John and Alice’s three sons, and it’s possible that their absence from their mother’s will means they had died by the time she wrote it. John Byne junior might be the ‘man drown’d in the Thames’ who was buried at St Botolph’s, Aldgate, on 17^th August 1726, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.

Section from Rocque’s 1746 map of London, showing St George the Martyr and Marshalsea prison

I thought I had found Magnus, the youngest son, living in Southwark, but on further investigation it turns out the dates don’t match. That person is more likely to be John Byne senior’s brother Magnus, also mentioned in the will. On 24^th November 1690, a young apothecary named Magnus Byne declared his intention to marry Jane, daughter of Joseph Dakin, a cheesemonger. Both were living in the parish of St George the Martyr, Southwark. Jane was only fifteen, so she needed her father’s consent, while Magnus was twenty-five, which means he was born in about 1665. Three days later the couple were married at St George’s church. Some of their children’s christening records give Magnus Byne’s address as ‘ by the Marshalsea’, the notorious debtors’ prison off Borough High Street, north of the church of St George the Martyr (see map above).

Over the next twenty years or so, Magnus and Jane Byne would have at least fifteen children, very few of whom survived infancy. They had two sons named Magnus (in 1691 and 1693), both of whom died within a couple of years. They had three sons named John (in 1700, 1701 and 1708), all of whom died in the first year of life. There were two daughters named Sarah (born in 1697 and 1705): the first died when still a baby while the second lived for three years. Anne was born in 1703 and died in 1704, Mary lived from 1706 to 1709, Jane from 1708 to 1709, and Henry from 1710 to 1712. There was another Jane, born in 1713, who may have survived: she was probably the last child to be born and I haven’t come across a record of her burial. Elizabeth, born in 1695, and George, born in 1704, may also have survived to adulthood.

Marshalsea prison in 1773

Magnus and Jane must also have had a son named Joseph, since a property transaction preserved at the Essex Record Office describes him as their ‘son and heir’. Perhaps he is the nameless ‘sonne of Magnus Byne’ who was christened at St George’s in 1698? The archive document, written in 1734, describes Jane Byne as the widow ‘of Magnus Byne of St George the Martyr, apothecary deceased’, so obviously Magnus must have died before that date. This mean that the Magnus Byne ‘from the Borough’ who was buried at St George’s in 1743 must be someone else of that name: perhaps yet another son whose christening record I haven’t found?

Is it possible to determine whether Magnus Byne, the Southwark apothecary, was the brother of John Byne, stationer of Tower Hill? If we search for a Magnus Byne born in about 1665, then we find a child of that name christened on 8^th January 1664 at Clayton in Sussex, the son of Magnus and Sara Byne. Clayton is a small village at the foot of the South Downs, six miles north of Brighton and not far from Lewes.

Parish church of St John the Baptist, Clayton, Sussex (via Wikipedia)

Magnus Byne of Clayton also had a son named John baptised on 11^th March 1651, a date that would certainly fit with what we know of my 8 x great grandfather, making him about twenty-five years old when his first child was born. My only slight hesitation is that the mother of the Magnus Byne born in 1664 was named Sara, whereas John Byne’s will gives his mother’s name as Anne. However, it’s possible that Magnus Byne senior of Clayton was married more than once.

I’ve found evidence of a number of other children born to Magnus Byne of Clayton, besides John and Magnus junior. Ann and Edward were both christened in 1643, Stephen in 1647, a second Edward in 1649, Anna in 1663, and Sarah in 1666.

I believe I’ve also found the will of Stephen Byne, who appears to have been an ‘upholder’ or upholsterer in the same part of London – the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate – as my 8 x great grandfather John. This document seems to confirm the family’s Sussex connection and I’ll share my transcription of it in another post.

Analysing the 1733 will of Alice Byne

Yesterday I posted a transcription of the last will and testament of Alice Byne, my newly-discovered 8 x great grandmother. When Alice wrote her will in 1733, George II was in the seventh year of his reign and Robert Walpole was Britain’s prime minister. In this post, I want to discuss what light Alice Byne’s will can shine on her own life and on the lives of her relatives.

We learn that in 1733, when Alice wrote her will, she was still living in the parish of St Botolph, Aldgate – most likely in the family home at Tower Hill where she and her late husband John had been living in the 1670s and 1680s.

In addition, we learn that Alice owned property in a number of other locations. She held freehold property in Distaff Lane, and also in the parishes of St Margaret Moses, Friday Street, and St Nicholas Cole Abbey. We’ve come across the Distaff Lane property before. When Alice’s granddaughter Mary Gibson – widow of John Gibson and daughter of Joseph Greene and Mary Byne – wrote her will in 1788, she mentioned ‘all that my messuage or tenement and premises with the appurts used as a sugar house and situate in Little Distaff Lane London’, so presumably she was the eventual inheritor of this part of Alice’s estate. (Little) Distaff Lane ran south from Cannon Street (see map below). The same property is also mentioned in the will of Mary Gibson’s unmarried daughter Sarah, written in 1789. The property obviously continued to pass down through the Gibson family, since it is referred to in the 1826 will of Mary Catherine Gibson (widow of Bowes John Gibson, Mary Gibson’s son – and Alice Byne’s great grandson), who writes of ‘having purchased my son William Henry’s and my daughter Elizabeth’s shares in the freehold premises in Distaff Lane’.

Section of Rocque’s map of 1746, showing area of London where Alice Byne owned property

As for Alice’s other London properties, St Margaret Moses was a parish in the City of London (though the actual church was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and not rebuilt) and Friday Street runs parallel to Distaff Lane. The church of St Nicholas Cole Abbey was also destroyed in the Great Fire but rebuilt and stands in what is now Queen Victoria Street, just south of Distaff Lane. As can be seen from John Rocque’s map (published only eight years after Alice Byne’s death), all of these properties were in the heart of the City of London, close to St Paul’s (see map above).

Alice also owned what she describes as ‘all that my meadow’ in the village of Badsey in Worcestershire ‘which I purchased of Elizabeth Badsey and Richard Badsey her Son’. Badsey is about two miles east of Evesham. Apparently there have always been people in the village whose surname is the same as the name of the village. There were a number of people with the names Elizabeth and Richard living in the area at this time. At this stage I’m not sure whether this means that Alice had a family connection to Badsey (for now, her origins remain obscure) or whether it simply reflects a business transaction.

Enclosure map of Badsey, Worcestershire

What can we infer from Alice’s will about her family’s circumstances in 1733? We know that she and her late husband John had five children who were still living at the time of the latter’s death: John, Alice, Mary, Magnus and Thomas. However, only the two daughters are mentioned in the will: Mary (my 7 x great grandmother) who was married to Joseph Green, and Alice, the widow of Thomas Bouts. This suggests that John, Magnus and Thomas were no longer alive, but further research will be necessary to confirm this.

Alice’s will confirms what we already know about the family of her daughter Mary (my 6 x great grandmother). In 1733 she had been married to Joseph Green for twenty-two years, but by this date only their daughter Mary was still living. In 1729 Mary had married John Gibson. The three Gibson daughters mentioned in the will – Mary, Jane and Elizabeth – would have been very young at this date. The youngest of them, Elizabeth, my 5 x great grandmother, was christened on 17^th May 1733, only three months before Alice wrote her will.

As for Alice Byne’s other surviving daughter Alice, she had married Thomas Bouts in 1733. I’ve found a record for the christening at St Botolph’s in 1708 of ‘Tho Boote’, son of Thomas and Alice of Tower Hill, but so far no trace of Anne’s baptism (it’s probably hidden behind one of the variant spellings of Bouts, which are almost as many and diverse as those for Byne). I’ve found land tax records for Thomas Bouts in various parts of London, including Portsoken, which is a district in the eastern part of the city, near Aldgate. In 1710, a Thomas Bouts was included under the heading ‘weavers’ in an electoral register of London liverymen. To date, I’ve found no record of Thomas’ death. However, we know that his widow Alice would die in 1760 and be buried at St Botolph’s on 20^th April: the parish register describes her as being ‘of St Olave Southwark’, so this may indicate where she lived in her old age and provide a clue to the whereabouts of her daughter Anne.

As I’ve learned from examining other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century wills, the word ‘cousin’ can cover a multitude of relations and is no guide to the exact connection with a testator. I assume that ‘my Cousin Elizabeth Byne Spinster’ was a relative of Alice’s late husband John, perhaps his sister, but confirmation will have to wait on further investigation of the Byne family tree. ‘My Cousin Anne Payton Widow’ could be any one of a number of people living in London and elsewhere at this time, and once again further research will be needed to establish her identity and precise relationship to Alice Byne. As for ‘my Cousin Jemima Rix (Wife of Leonard Rix of Bow Lane London Barber)’, I’ve discovered that, on 16^th September 1722 John, son of ‘Leonard and Gemima Rix’ was christened at the church of St Mary le Bow. Someone by the name of Leonard Rix is listed as a Stationers’ Company apprentice in London at this period: although the person mentioned in Alice Byne’s will was supposedly a barber (perhaps a barber-surgeon?), the fact that John Byne was a stationer points to a possible link. ‘My Cousin Alice Elliot otherwise Burroughs’ was obviously a significant figure in Alice Byne’s life, since she receives not only a weekly payment of two shillings from the latter’s estate, but also ‘the Sum of Ten pounds ….to cloath her in a decent manner’. However, more information is needed before I can be sure of this person’s identity or her relationship to Alice Byne. Finally ‘my Cousin Richard Boulton the Elder’ is perhaps the person of that name who is listed as paying land tax in the parish of St Botolph Aldgate in 1741 and 1742, but once again there are a number of people with the same name and further investigation would be needed before determining which one was Alice Byne’s relation.