(1) Il a/avait une relation avec THOMASIN.
Enfant(s):
(2) Il a/avait une relation avec (Ne pas publique).
Enfant(s):
There is an extant will for a John Gouldsmyth, weaver of Rotherfield, which at first glance looks to belong to the right family. It does contain a bequest to a son named Anthony, but there is no reference
to a daughter named Barbara. Family details are sparse. Initially this seemed not to be the will of a wealthy man, as his monetary bequests - to his wife Thomasin and son Anthony - are in shillings and pence, not pounds. However, he leaves money for the poor and 20d for the bell of Rotherfield church, so it may be that his estate was mainly in his moveable goods and his house - income from which is willed to his wife, along with the said house and moveable goods. The only other beneficiary is
his granddaughter Joan, daughter of John Phillips, who is to receive sheets and a bed-hanging when she is eighteen.
Initially I dismissed this will as belonging to the wrong family. However, if my assumption is correct that Barbara was the child of a second marriage - to Thomasin - then it is possible to make a reasoned case for her absence. On a second reading, given that his son John witnessed the will so was presumably acquiescent to it, it seems more likely that John junior and Anthony had probably already had their portions, and that the bequest to granddaughter Joan was a token for the child of his dead daughter Margaret. If the rest of the estate went to Thomasin, then presumably she could have been relied upon to pass everything on to her own offspring when the time came. Obviously, though, this is hypothesis and can’t be proved although it does seem to present the most likely scenario.
Another John Gouldsmith made a will at Rotherfield in 1614. There is no bequest to an Anthony, but he mentions his father John and calls himself John junior, so the most likely scenario is that this is Barbara Barham’s nephew, dying as a young man of around 24. He names a bevy of sisters: Elizabeth, Joan, Mary, Frances, Jane and Barbara, all of whom can be identified with certainty in the Rotherfield register. Given that the John who died in 1695 couldn’t be John senior to this man’s ‘junior’, it seems probable that john ‘junior’ was grandson to the earlier testator.
There are also Goldsmith wills at Framfield, where Anthony lived in later life. These may be related and may be why Anthony migrated from Rotherfield but none of the testators seem to link obviously to Anthony and Barbara’s family. In addition, Anthony married and baptised a number of children at Rotherfield of whom only his daughter Elizabeth, married to Barnaby Hodgson, is named in Anthony’s will. It seems likely that most of them died young. The various links to Rotherfield through
marriage, baptism and land tenure all tend to confirm that the Barbara baptised at Rotherfield was probably Anthony’s sister.
JOHN GOULDSMITH | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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THOMASIN | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Onbekend | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||