♀Agnes Atwood

Agnes Atwood (died about 1591) was the wife of Robert Whitfield, a gentleman of Worth in Sussex who held copyhold land at Wadhurst, in the Weald near the border with Kent. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Jane Whitfield.

Family

She is said to have been the daughter of William Atwood of Kent, and she and Robert had two sons, Thomas and William, and five daughters, Margaret, Frances, Jane, Sara and Joan. She was buried at Worth on 20 September 1591, and the parish register names her as the wife of Robert, gentleman. Eleven weeks after her burial, when Robert made his will on 6 December 1591, he left ten shillings apiece to his five daughters and to his sons’ wives, Mildred and Mary, and made his son Thomas his executor, but he named no wife.

Notes

The heralds’ pedigree

Apart from her burial at Worth, Agnes is known only from a pedigree of the Whitfield family in Harleian MS 6164, fol. 13b, which Henry F. Waters printed in Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2, p. 1353: “Robert Whitfield 2 son, living 1577 = Agnes Atwood dau. of William Atwood of Kent”. Below the couple it sets Thomas Whitfield of Mortlake in Surrey, who married Mildred, daughter of Henry Manning of Greenwich; William, “2d son”; and the daughters Margaret, Frances, Jane, Sarah and Jone. The same table makes Robert the second son of a Robert “who came out of the North 80 years since and dwelt at Wadhurst”. It is a heraldic pedigree compiled from the family’s own account, not a parish or probate record, so her parentage, her marriage and her motherhood of the seven children rest on it alone. It gives her no dates, and no baptism, marriage or will of hers is known. A later compilation, Douglas Richardson’s Royal Ancestry, vol. III, p. 271, is cited for the same parentage of Jane Whitfield.

Her husband’s will

Robert Whytfeld of Worth, gentleman, made his will on 6 December 1591, and it was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 16 February 1597 (1597/98) (abstract in Waters, vol. 2, p. 1345). It names no wife. It gives “unto Myldred and Mary, my son’s wives, unto my daughter Johan Baker and unto my four other daughters, viz., Margaret, Sara, Jane and Frauncis … ten shillings”, and makes “Thomas Whytfeld my son” sole executor. Mildred was the wife of Thomas; Mary was most likely the wife of William Whitfield, vicar of Mayfield, whose own will of 15 October 1610 names his wife Mary. Agnes had died by then: the Worth register records her burial on 20 September 1591. The will does not name the mother of Robert’s children.

Her burial

The Worth burial register, in a typed copy of the page (FamilySearch, England, Sussex, Parish Registers, 1538–1910), has for 20 September 1591: “AGNES WHITEFFEILD wife of ROBERT gent.” That is eleven weeks before Robert’s will of 6 December 1591, which names no wife. A FamilySearch family-tree entry gives her dates as 1522 to 1587; the 1587 death is contradicted by this burial.