♀Agnes Vye

Agnes Vye (married 1539) was a woman of the parish of Colyton in Devon, England, in the years when its registers were first kept. She may have been the eleventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through John Michell (buried 1620), if he was her son.

Marriage and family

John Mychell married Agnes Vye at Colyton on 5 October 1539. The registers there begin in 1538, so the wedding is one of the first the parish wrote down. The 1539 marriage entry names her father as Harry Vye, written “Harrye Vye” in the register, and places her at Cadhayne, a farm in Colyton.

The 1569 marriage of John Michell to Emlyn Weeke at Colyton names his father as “John Mychell the younger of Rawkerayne”, a farm in the parish. Agnes was probably John Michell’s mother, but no record of him names his mother.

Three baptisms at Colyton name the younger John of Rawkerayne as father: Annes on 4 November 1547, Thomas on 19 August 1550 and Johan on 1 July 1554. None of the three names a mother. Three more baptisms to a John Mychell, Mary in 1545, Robert in 1546/47 and William in 1556, carry no “younger”, so which John is their father is not settled. Agnes may have been the Agnes Mychell of Rawkerayne, a widow, who was buried at Colyton on 12 March 1564/5.

Notes

Sources

The marriage of 1539 and the burial of 1564 come from the FamilySearch index of the Devon parish registers, and the FreeREG transcript of the Colyton St Andrew register gives the marriage with both fathers named. The Colyton registers begin in 1538, as the extracts printed in the Conant family genealogy of 1887 note. John Insley Coddington set out the Michell family in his article on Jonathan Gillett and Mary Dolbiar in The American Genealogist (April 1939), and called the whole Michell pedigree tentative. Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630 (vol. 23) states without qualification that John Michell was the son of John Mychell and Agnes Vye, married at Colyton on 5 October 1539, and calls Agnes a daughter of Henry Vye; it names no record.

Her parents

Coddington wrote that the mother of John Michell (buried 1620) “may, or may not, have been” Agnes Vye, a daughter of Harry Vye of Cadhayne; that doubt is about whether she was John Michell’s mother, and the 1539 entry names her father as “Harrye Vye”. A Harry Vye of Colyton made his will on 2 October 1558, and it was proved in London on 29 October 1558, in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W. He left bequests to his sons Harry, Robert, Edmond and John at the age of 21 and to his daughters Alice and Elizabeth at their marriages, so his sons at least were under 21 in 1558. He names no Agnes. One of the four men he made his executors was a John Michell, which shows a tie between the families but gives no kinship.

The link to John Michell

The 1569 marriage of John Michell to Emlyn Weeke at Colyton names his father as “John Mychell the younger of Rawkerayne”, as the FreeREG transcript of the Colyton St Andrew register gives it. No entry names his mother. Colyton had more than one John Mychell at the time, as the words “the younger” show, and the 1539 marriage entry names the groom’s father as John Mychell. Coddington wrote that the mother of John Michell “may, or may not, have been” Agnes Vye.

Her burial

The FreeREG transcript calls the Agnes Mychell buried in 1564/5 a widow of Rawkerhayne, the younger John’s farm. Colyton had more than one John Mychell of that farm, so she could also have been the elder John’s widow.