♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes (buried 7 June 1582) was a widow of Henlow in Bedfordshire, England, who outlived her husband, the husbandman^W William Tilly, by three years; at her burial the parish register entered her as “widow, an old woman”. She was the twelfth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Robert Tilley (died 1612/13).

Family

William Tilly married Agnes, and they had a son, Robert, and two daughters, Mary and Alice. Both daughters were married before their father died: Alice to William Sheffield, and Mary most likely to William Warde, a tailor, and both households had children baptized at Henlow in the 1570s. William was buried at Henlow on 21 January 1578/79^W, and Agnes spent her last years as his widow.

Last years

Agnes made her own will on 1 June 1582. She is said to have remembered “Willyam Sheffeilde my sonne in lawe and Alice his wife”, Thomas Younge as another son-in-law, and “Agnes Warde, the daughter of Willyam Warde”, most likely her granddaughter. Six days later, on 7 June 1582, she was buried at Henlow.

Through Robert, Agnes was probably the grandmother of John Tilley^W and Edward Tilley^W, two brothers who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. John, baptized at Henlow in December 1571, was ten when she died; Edward was baptized there in 1588. Both brothers died in the first sickness at Plymouth. John’s daughter Elizabeth survived and married John Howland, and Roger’s line runs through her.

Notes

Where the family is known from

The burials of Agnes and William are entered in the parish register of Henlow, printed by F. G. Emmison in Bedfordshire Parish Registers, volume 26. The family’s history at Henlow, and its link to the two Mayflower brothers, was worked out by Robert Leigh Ward in a study published in The American Genealogist^W in 1976 (volume 52, pages 198–208). Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins follows Ward, giving John and Edward as sons of Robert and Elizabeth Tilley.

The wills

The wills of Agnes (made 1 June 1582) and of William (made 1 January 1578/79, proved 28 January) are known here from Ward’s transcriptions, as quoted on WikiTree. The placing of Robert as the son of William and Agnes rests on William’s will and on Ward’s pages 202–203; the parish register itself does not name Robert’s parents.

The daughters

That Mary was the wife of William Warde is an inference: William’s will names “Mary my daughter” and William Warde as a son-in-law, William Warde, a tailor, was buried at Henlow on 6 February 1578/79, and by 1582 Agnes was calling Thomas Younge her son-in-law. Agnes’s will also names Elizabeth, the wife of Richard Huckle, and William’s will names Richard Huckle and his children; Elizabeth may have been a daughter of Agnes by an earlier marriage, but no record shows it.

Her surname

Agnes’s maiden name is not known. WikiTree gives it as Bishop, but no record names her parents.