46. How Young was the Mother of George Yate of Maryland (d. 1691)?

Recently I described evidence that George Yate of Maryland (d. 1691) was the son of Elizabeth White, daughter of Richard White and Catherine Weston, and a descendant of King Edward III of England (see 43. The Maternal Ancestry of George Yate of Maryland (d. 1691)).  The most important evidence for the Yate-White relationship was the following, for which references were given in the blog entry.

1.  Jerome White, son of Richard and Catherine Weston White, called George Yate his “cousin” in Mar 1666/7, several years prior to George’s marriage.  Jerome himself was a Dominican lay priest and was unmarried.  Therefore the relationship was between Jerome and George.  Also, the use of the word “cousin” to denote “nephew” was common at the time.

2. Jerome had a sister Elizabeth who could have been George Yate’s mother, which would make George the nephew of Jerome.  George’s mother is known to have been named Elizabeth.

3. Given the well-understood White-Weston ancestry, no other close Yate-White relationship appears plausible [1]. 

4. George Yate could have been named after George White, the brother of Jerome and Elizabeth White.

5. George Yate’s daughter Elizabeth Yate Plummer named a son Jerome.

A Chronological Issue

In two posts responding to the evidence, user lionheart0317 raised an issue over the age of Elizabeth White, and suggested that she was too young to plausibly have been George Yate’s mother.  The crux of the matter is that in a 1999 article in the Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin [3], James Duvall Trabue quoted from a list of recusants in co. Essex, England, giving the ages of two of the children of Richard and Catherine White.  One was George White, “12 yeares old”, and the other was Elizabeth White, the putative mother of George Yate, “10 years old”.  Although the list was undated, in the Visitation of Essex in 1634 [4], George White was stated to be 6 years old.  According to lionheart0317, this would mean that Elizabeth White was 4 years old in 1634, and born in 1630.  George Yate, however, was a Maryland juror on 2 Mar 1664/5, and therefore — it was argued — at least 18 years old at that time. Since that means he was born no later than 1646/7, Elizabeth was at most 17 years old when she is proposed to have mothered George Yate. Lionheart0317 considered this a chronological improbability.

In fact lionheart0317 understated the case. In colonial America the minimum juror age was 21, not 18 [5].  So just how young was George Yate’s mother, if she was Elizabeth White?

If we start with the 1634 Visitation of Essex, we know that George White was age 6 in the latter part of that year.  That’s because a death date was recorded in the visitation pedigree, as 9 Aug 1634.  George was therefore born no earlier than 10 Aug 1627 (i.e., he could have been one day short of age 7 on 9 Aug 1634, the earliest date on which the pedigree could have been recorded).

Elizabeth White’s age was stated in the recusant list to be two years less than her brother’s.  If he was born as early as 10 Aug 1627, she could have been born as early as 11 Aug 1628.  Thus, assuming the earliest possible birth dates, on the specific date 10 Aug 1639, George would have just turned 12, and Elizabeth would have been 10 (i.e., one day short of age 11).

So what is the maximum age Elizabeth could have been to have a son, George Yate, who was at least 21 on 2 Mar 1664/5?  That places his birth date no later than 2 Mar 1643/4, making Elizabeth, who we just saw was born no earlier than 11 Aug 1628, no older than 15 years of age. 

In my earlier post, I implied that Elizabeth may have married John Yate sometime between Apr 1642, when the White family received a pass to go to France, and Sept 1642 when a “Mr. Yates” and “his Wife” received a similar pass [9]. This was on the assumption that “Mr. Yates” and “his Wife” were John and Elizabeth White Yate. If so, Elizabeth could have been no older than 14 at marriage.

An Important Discovery

In an attempt to further identify the “Mr. Yates” of the Sept 1642 pass, I very recently reaccessed the record and made what I think is an important discovery. Legislative passes to France were infrequent at that time, yet on 9 Sept, two were issued consecutively. One was to Yates and wife, and the second was to “Lord Roper” and “his Lady”, also to go to France [9]. “Lord Roper” was John Roper, 3rd Baron Teynham, who in 1615 married the 14-year-old Mary Petre [10]. She was the great-granddaughter of Edward and Frances Neville Waldegrave — as was Catherine Weston White, making the two women second cousins [2, 3].

As the saying goes, “What are the odds?” I had suggested that “Mr. Yates” was John Yate, and that “his Wife” was Elizabeth White, daughter of Richard and Catherine Weston White. Now it was discovered that another pass to France, issued consecutively the same day, went to the second cousin of Catherine Weston White. Surely this was not coincidental, and the two passes were issued to relatives leaving England. Indeed, it seems quite possible that the Yates pass was only taken up by the House of Lords because of the relationship to Lord Roper. The earlier pass to the Whites had been issued by the House of Commons.

William II, Prince of Orange, and his Bride, Mary Stuart

Child Brides in 17th-Century England

Yet how likely was a 14-year-old bride in 17th-century England?  In spite of the existence of Mary Petre, who as we have just seen married at 14, it may be assumed they were uncommon. Nevertheless they were not unheard of.  In fact in researching the question I was surprised to find a Wikipedia article devoted to the specific topic, “List of Child Brides” [8].  It names a number of upper-class British examples of young brides in the 17th century:

1. Lady Margaret Sackville, age 14, m. 1629 to John Tufton, 2nd Earl of Thanet

2. Mary, Princess Royal, age 9, m. 1641 to William II, Prince of Orange

3. Mary Scott, 3rd Countess of Buccleuch, age 11, m. 1659 to Walter Scott of Highchester

4. Jane Needham, aged about 14/15, m. 1660 to Charles Myddelton

5. Anne Scott, 1st Duchess of Buccleuch, age 12, m. 1663 to James Crofts, 1st Duke of Monmouth

6. Lady Anne FitzRoy, age 13, m. 1674 to Thomas Lennard, 15th Baron Dacre

7. Lady Charlotte Fitzroy, age 13, m. 1677 to Sir Edward Lee

8. Lady Mary Tudor, aged 13, m. 1687 to Edward Radclyffe, 2nd Earl of Derwentwater

Of course these were very upper-class – but then Catherine Weston White was the daughter of the Earl of Portland [7].

There is also this, referring specifically to 17th-century England, and with no reference to social class [6]:

Theoretically, it was possible for two people to marry very young. The minimum legal age was 12 years for women and 14 years for men.

Evaluating the Evidence

Again, in Apr 1642 the White family was granted a pass to travel to France [7].  Essentially they chose voluntary exile over religious persecution in a country on the brink of civil war.  Under stress, one of their last acts before departure might have been to wed their eldest daughter to a fellow English Catholic, namely the future George Yate’s father, John Yate.  That would have saved her from potentially unmarriageable status as an exile.  The 14-year-old age of the bride, or even less, would have been no impediment in a country where the minimum marriageable age was 12. 

On the one hand, we have what seems to be strong evidence that George Yate was closely related to Jerome White, and a sufficiently well known White-Weston pedigree to seemingly render implausible anything other than a connection via Elizabeth White.  Such a connection appears supported by the two passes issued on 9 Sept 1642.

On the other hand, we have evidence that if Elizabeth White was George Yate’s mother, she was very young when married, no more than age 14.  Should the latter be considered to overturn the former? 

Speaking for myself, I don’t think so, given that marriage at that age was both legal and sometimes practiced.  However, one of the strengths of The Genealogist’s Craft is that all are free to evaluate the evidence before arriving at their own conclusion.  Perhaps in the process, new records will be discovered that will shed further light.

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Notes:

[1] James Duvall Trabue argued that the relationship might have been based on the marriage of George Yate’s great-great-grandfather Thomas Yate to Frances White, of the “Swanborne Whites”, stated without attribution to be related to the Whites of co. Essex (the family of Elizabeth White).  However, there is no evidence for such a marriage.  Thomas Yate’s son Francis did have a wife named Frances White, but George Yate descended from Francis through his other wife Jane Tichbourne (The Omnibus Ancestry: 785 Documented American and European Lines, 2020).  He therefore was not related to Jerome White by that route.  Also, any such relationship would require additional generations of White descent to reach common ancestry, and surely would have been far more distant than anything Jerome White would have referred to as  a cousin relationship.

[2] Mary Petre was not, however, the sister of the John Petre who m. 1681 to Frances White, daughter of Richard and Catherine Weston White (Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin, v. 40, p. 14, 1999). Mary was the daughter of William Petre, 2nd Baron Petre (Cokayne, op. cit.), and while she had a brother John Petre, of Margaretting, co. Essex, his will was proved in 1670, long before the 1681 marriage (information retrieved from https://www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk/Result_Details.aspx?DocID=325536, 2020). It appears, however, that the two Johns were kinsmen (information retrieved from https://groups.google.com/g/soc.genealogy.medieval/c/gorw5AGwu7E/m/MkMfmdA3YQ0J, 2020).

[3] Maryland Genealogical Society Bulletin, v. 40, pp. 3-25 (1999).

[4] W.C. Metcalfe (1878). The Visitations of Essex. London: Mitchell & Hughes.

[5] Eakle, A.H. (1984). American court records. In A.H. Eakle and J. Cerny (Eds.), The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing Co., pp. 151-214.

[6] Information retrieved from https://www.phil.muni.cz/angl/thepes/thepes_02_02.pdf (2020).

[7] The Omnibus Ancestry: 785 Documented American and European Lines (2020).

[8] Information retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_brides (2020).

[9] In my earlier blog entry, as well as in The Omnibus Ancestry (op. cit.), the reference for the 9 September pass was mistakenly given as Journal of the House of Commons, v. 5, pp. 344-5. Please note that the correct reference is to Journal of the House of Lords, v. 5, p. 344.

[10] Cokayne, G.E. (1953).  The Complete Peerage.  London: The St. Catherine Press Ltd., v. 12, part 1, p. 681.

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Picture Attribution

“William II, Prince of Orange, and his Bride, Mary Stuart” by f_snarfel is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0