48. The Wives of John Yate

John Yate (1612/3-1653), of Lyford, Berkshire, is of interest to many Americans because he was the father of George Yate (d. 1691) of Maryland, who has many descendants through his four children. I descend from his daughter Elizabeth Yate Plummer.

Two wives of John Yate are of record.  One was Mary Tattershall (Tettershall), straightforwardly identified in the 1665/6 Visitation of Berkshire as “Mary wife to John Yate of Lyford in Com: Berks” [1].

  Monument to Arthur Chichester and Two of His Wives, Illustrating the Period

The other, less directly identified, was a wife named Elizabeth.  She and her children were named in material relating to the probate of the estate of Thomas Yate (d. abt 1658), of Lyford.  Thomas left a will naming one grandson, John Yate, but appended material in the case stated that he also had George and Elizabeth Yate, children of Elizabeth, as minor grandchildren [2].

It is not clear from secondary accounts of Thomas Yate’s probate whether his grandson John Yate was stated to be the son of his deceased son John.  Nevertheless that relationship can safely be inferred.  The 1623 Visitation of Berkshire indicated in Latin that Thomas Yate had three sons: “Johes” [John], Thomas, and “Willus” [William].  Thomas presumably had no children, for in 1629 he was received at Douay, France, for education as a Catholic priest [3].  William married a wife named Katherine (not Elizabeth) Aylworth, and had several children christened at West Hannay, Berkshire, in the period 1639-1650.  None of them were named John, George, or Elizabeth, the grandchildren named in the probate records of Thomas Yate [4].

Thus Elizabeth must have been the widowed wife of John Yate [Sr.], and he the father of the named grandchildren. Given that conclusion, it is clear why George and Elizabeth Yate were named, but Thomas’ grandchildren by way of William Yate were not.  They were named because they were siblings of John Yate [Jr.], and were therefore, under the doctrine of primogeniture, the closest heirs of Thomas Yate should John fail to leave progeny.

In routine genealogical practice, there is a simple interpretation of situations where there is evidence of two wives of the same man, one a widow.  The one not a widow is presumed to have been an earlier wife, and the widow the last wife.  

From Two Wives, One?

It is puzzling, therefore, that a commonly cited interpretation of the same evidence is that Mary Tattershall and Elizabeth were the identical individual.  The explanation offered is that because Mary was Catholic, she used her mother’s baptismal name of Elizabeth during the time of Cromwell, in order to hide her religious identity [2].

However, that proposal can roundly be rejected on three grounds.  First, the probate record was a court document, requiring unambiguous identification of heirs and their closest relatives.  Under English common law, the use of informally adopted given names in court would not have been permitted without an attestation of the true name.  As the famous barrister and judge Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) explained, a man’s use of a name given either at baptism or confirmation was acceptable, but if he varied from those, “in pleading he must shew his proper name”.  Furthermore [8]:

. . . this doth agree with our ancient books, where it is holden that a man may have divers names at divers times [meaning surnames], but not divers Christian names. 

Thus an unattested use by Mary of the name Elizabeth in the probate case – and it can assumed there was no attestation, or it would have been cited in support of the “one from two” proposal — would have been contrary to law.

Second, the proposal that Mary informally adopted the name Elizabeth assumes that Mary was a politically dangerous name under the Cromwellian regime.  How then to explain that in England during the Cromwellian period (1653-1658) there were over 36,000 births of girls named Mary but fewer than 32,000 of girls named Elizabeth? [5].  Clearly there was no general belief that Mary was a hazardous name. Interestingly, Oliver Cromwell himself had a daughter Mary [9].

Third, if switching names from Mary to Elizabeth was a common occurrence at the time and place, there should be numerous known examples.  In absence of them, and taking into account all three points, I personally believe the “one from two” proposal falls well short of serious consideration.

Conclusion: Two Wives

The conclusion therefore appears solid that John Yate had two wives.  From chronological considerations it is almost certain that his eldest son, also named John, was the son of the first wife Mary Tattershall.  Thus John [Sr.] was chr. Jan 1612/3 [6], and Charles Yate, the son of John [Jr.], was b. 1658/9 [7].  That places the birthyear of John [Jr.] about 1636, and the marriage of John [Sr.] and Mary about 1635.  Both dates may have been earlier.  If Thomas Yate made no provision for his grandson John’s minority in his 1654 will — and none are mentioned in secondary accounts [2, 6] — then John [Jr.] was probably born no later than 1633, placing the marriage of John [Sr.] about 1632.

The second wife was Elizabeth.  I have previously argued that her marriage occurred in 1642 (see “46. How Young was the Mother of George Yate of Maryland (d. 1691)?“).  Her children were George and Elizabeth Yate, and she was her husband’s widow.

The Yates and many other intermarried families are covered in the new 4th edition of The Omnibus Ancestry: 785 Documented American and European Lines (2020).  The book is available through this link to Lulu.com.  

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Notes:

[1] Rylands, W.H. (1907). The Four Visitations of Berkshire. London: The Harleian Society, v. 1, p. 292.

[2] National Genealogical Society Quarterly, vol. 64, pp. 176-180 (1976).

[3] Burton, E.H., & Williams, T.L. (1911). Catholic Record Society, The Douay College Diaries, Third, Fourth and Fifth, 1598-1654. London: J. Whitehead & Son, v. 1,  p. 280.

[4] FamilySearch, LDS church (2020). 

[5] Ibid, using as search terms the exact first name “Mary” (or “Elizabeth”), the exact birthplace “England”, and the birth year range 1653 through 1658.  Naturally, there are some duplicated and/or dubious entries, but the larger point remains.

[6] Richardson, D. (2011). Plantagenet Ancestry. Salt Lake City, Utah: private print. 

[7] Charles Yate d. 1696, age 37, and his father John [Jr.] d. Jan 1671/2 (W.N. Clarke, Parochial Topography of the Hundred of Wanting. Oxford, Eng: J. Parker and G.B. Whittaker, p. 122, 1824).

[8] Coke, E. (1832). The First Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England. London: J. & W. T. Clarke, L. 1, C. 1, Sect. 1, 3a.

[9] Information retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cromwell,_Countess_Fauconberg (2020).

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Picture attribution:

“File:ArthurChichesterMonumentEggesfordChurchDevon.jpg” by own photo is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

43. The Maternal Ancestry of George Yate of Maryland (d. 1691)

The new 4th edition of The Omnibus Ancestry: 785 Documented American and European Lines (2020), has been simultaneously released with this blog entry.  Besides extending existing lines and correcting errors, it has 166 more lines than the 3rd edition.  Many of the new lines, but by no means all, concern the maternal ancestry of George Yate.  The book is available through this link to Lulu.com.

George Yate (ca 1643?-1691) immigrated to Maryland by March 1664/5, and from 1670 to 1684 served as Deputy Surveyor for Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties.  Because he named several of his land tracts after locations in Berkshire, England (e.g., Lyford, Ufton’s Court, Denchworth, and Padworth Farms), his paternal ancestry was deduced some time ago to derive from a Yate family of Lyford, Berkshire.  This was confirmed when a probate record of the estate of Thomas Yate of Lyford, dated 1658, named George Yate as a minor grandson.  He and his sister Elizabeth were then wards of their mother Elizabeth Yate.  From this it was possible to conclude that George was the son of John Yate, who was deceased as of the writing of his father Thomas’ 1654 will [12].  However, his maternal ancestry through Elizabeth has heretofore been unknown [13].

Yet in March 1666/7, Jerome White, Surveyor General of Maryland, called George Yate “my cousin” [1].  That was several years before George married Mary Wells Stockett, whose first husband Thomas Stockett died in 1671 [2].  The relationship was therefore between Jerome and George, and not between Jerome and George’s wife as often claimed.  Furthermore, in 1667 White was surveyed “Portland Manor” [7, 10], thereby identifying as the Jerome White who was the son of Richard White, of Hutton, co. Essex, England, by his wife Catherine Weston, daughter of Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland [8].

Jerome and George were not first cousins, however, for the first and last names of all four of Jerome’s grandparents are known, and there is no possibility that any of them were also grandparents of George.  Any such relationship would have had to be through George’s mother Elizabeth [9].  But Richard and Mary (Plowden) White, Jerome’s paternal grandparents, had no daughter Elizabeth as of ca 1614 and 1634 [14].  The maternal grandparents, Richard Weston and Frances Waldegrave, did have a daughter Elizabeth, but she married in 1623 to John Netterville, and predeceased him [3].

However, George Yate could have been Jerome White’s “cousin” if by cousin Jerome actually meant nephew.  At the time such usage was common, and there are many known examples where “cousin” meant nephew, including several in The Omnibus Ancestry (see the Dickinson, Martin (James), Shircliffe, and Whittamore Lines).  Jerome had an older sister named Elizabeth of about the right age to be George Yate’s mother [4].  In April 1642, she was included in a pass to France issued to her parents and siblings, approved by Parliament [5] – presumably an attempt by the Catholic family to escape a religiously repressive England on the brink of civil war.  I believe that about this time Elizabeth married John Yate, perhaps an attempt by the family to save her from an unmarried exile’s fate.  Intriguingly, a “Mr. Yates” and “his Wife” were also issued a pass to France, in September 1642 [6].  Whether or not those were John and Elizabeth, and whether or not their children were born outside the country, George was their first child, born ca 1643? [11].  Assuming his mother was Jerome White’s sister, George was Jerome’s “cousin” – i.e., nephew.

Importantly, the name of their son is itself supporting evidence for the marriage between John Yate and Elizabeth White.  Specifically, Elizabeth White’s eldest brother was George White, providing a source for the name.  George White was the presumptive heir of their father Richard White, and he did in  fact succeed to and sell the Hutton estate [15].  He was also the heir of the childless Jerome White, and sold Portland manor to Lord Baltimore sometime after 1676 [10].

Finally, Elizabeth, daughter of George Yate, married Thomas Plummer, and named a son Jerome Plummer [16].  The name manifestly derived from Jerome White, who because of the Yate-White marriage would have been Elizabeth’s great uncle.

Assuming the circumstances sufficiently establish, as I believe they do, that George Yate was a son of Elizabeth White and great-grandson of Richard Weston, 1st Earl of Portland, he had extensively traceable ancestry including multiple descents from King Edward I and King Edward III of England.  For those, and for Richard White’s surprising academic career and association with Galileo, see the new 4th edition of The Omnibus Ancestry: 785 Documented American and European Lines (2020).

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Notes:

[1] See J. Kilty, The Land-Holder’s Assistant and Land-Office Guide, p. 158 (1808), where a document is transcribed instructing that land “be laid out by my cousin George Yate”.  It was signed by Surveyor General Jerome White.  Writing on the back of the document, Charles Calvert instructed “Captain Burges” and Richard Ewins, “you may cause George Yate to lay it out accordingly”, and gave the date as 13 Mar 1666.  Today this would commonly be stated as 13 Mar 1666/7, given that at the time, the new year began on 25 Mar.

[2] Information retrieved from https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stockett-9 (2020).

[3] Dictionary of National Biography, v. 40, pp. 234-5 (1885-1900).

[4] In the 1634 Visitation of Essex (see W.C. Metcalfe, The Visitations of Essex, 1878), her oldest brother was named as George White, age 6 – i.e., b. 1627/8.  Elizabeth was shown as the oldest daughter.  If she was older than George, she would have been b. ca 1625?.  John Yate, her inferred husband, was bap. 1612/3, and George Yate was b. ca 1643?.

[5] Journal of the House of Commons, v. 2, pp. 516-518.

[6] Ibid, v. 5, pp. 344-5.

[7] Information retrieved from http://genealogytrails.com/mary/annearundel/lordsofthemanor.html (2020).

[8] A transcription from the Journal of the House of Commons (v. 2, pp. 516-518) gave the name “George Jerome”, but those were actually two sons.  See note 10, indicating that Jerome bequeathed property to his brother George.

[9] George Yate’s mother is often said to have been Mary Tettershall, daughter of George Tettershall [Sr.].  Indeed, during the 1665-6 Visitation of Berkshire, George Tettershall [Jr.] named as his sister “Mary wife to John Yate of Lyford in Com: Berks” (see W.H. Rylands, The Four Visitations of Berkshire, v. 1, 1907).  Yet there can be little doubt that John Yates’ widow was named Elizabeth, for she was the mother of Thomas Yate’s underaged grandchildren George and Elizabeth Yate in 1658 (National Genealogical Society Quarterly, v. 64, pp. 176-180, 1976).  This conundrum has a simple solution: John Yate must have married twice, his first wife having been Mary Tettershall, and his second wife and widow having been Elizabeth.  This conclusion is supported by the relatively late marriage of John to Elizabeth, apparently in 1642 when John was about 30 years of age.

[10] It is said of Jerome White that he “came to Maryland in about 1661 and left late in 1670”, and that he “was a Catholic who had lived in Rome and probably had been educated there” (see E. Arnett, R.J. Brugger, & E.C. Papenfuse, A New Guide to the Old Line State, 1999, 2nd ed.).  In Maryland, he may have been responsible for the “baroque axial plan” of the city of St. Mary’s, a design largely developed in Italy (see R. Bennett, Settlements in the Americas, 1993).  In 1673, in Modena, Italy, he played a role in the marriage of Mary of Modena to the future King James II of England.  Thus “the Bishop of Modena did not deem it advisable to perform the marriage ceremony himself, — ‘so a poor English Jacobine was found, Brother to Jerome White'” (M. Haile, Queen Mary of Modena, 1905).  The “brother” [actually uncle] was Thomas White (Md. Historical Magazine, Spring 2015, p. 115), alias Thomas Blackloe, a Dominican priest and prominent religious author (information retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_White_(scholar), 2020).  Jerome himself was a Dominican lay priest, and became a chaplain of Mary of Modena (The Catholic World, v. 33, p. 762, 1881; also R. Palmer, The Life of Philip Thomas Howard, O.P., Cardinal of Norfolk, 1867).  It is said he was gifted a jewel by a relative of Mary, which he subsequently bequeathed to a sister (information retrieved from https://www.geni.com/people/Frances-Petre/6000000019362767656, 2020).  Jerome died childless in 1677 (information retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquinsicke, 2020), leaving his Maryland manor to his brother George White, who sold it to Lord Baltimore (E. Putnam, The Governor’s Council of Md., 1634-1689, thesis, 1969).

[11] The second and apparently last child was named Elizabeth (National Genealogical Society Quarterly, v. 64, pp. 176-180, 1976).

[12] Ibid.

[13] Writing in Plantagenet Ancestry (2011), Douglas Richardson implicitly rejected the contention in National Genealogical Society Quarterly – by pointedly not mentioning it — that Elizabeth was the same person as Mary Tattershall (Tettershall), a known wife of John Yate of Lyford.  I completely agree.  Richardson left Elizabeth’s surname blank.

[14] W.C. Metcalfe, The Visitations of Essex (1878).

[15] P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of the County of Essex, v. 2, p.195 (1768).

[16] For Jerome Plummer, and for the discussion and resolution of misunderstandings about the Plummer ancestry, see the Plummer Line in The Omnibus Ancestry.  It is not true that Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Plummer, was the daughter of Mary Wells by Mary’s first husband Thomas Stockett.  Elizabeth also did not marry the Thomas Plummer who d. 1694/5.

[Postscript 25 Oct 2020 — Please note that [6] gives an incorrect reference. Instead of Journal of the House of Commons, v. 5, pp. 344-5, the correct reference is Journal of the House of Lords, v. 5, p. 344.]