♀Anne Butter

Anne Butter (died before 10 November 1648) was a widow of Castle Hedingham in Essex, England, who was sued in the Court of Chancery^W in 1640 over a debt her son had run up in New England, and answered on oath with an account of the letters that had crossed the Atlantic between them. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son John Coggeshall^W (1601–1647). That son sailed for New England in 1632 and in 1647 became the first president of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Marriage and widowhood

She was a sister of John Butter, a yeoman of Thorrington in Essex, and married John Coggeshall, a gentleman of Halstead. Their son John was baptized at Halstead on 9 December 1601, and two daughters followed, Anne and Catherine. Her husband borrowed against his land: in 1605 he mortgaged fields in the hamlet of Stansted in Halstead to John Sydaye of Pebmarsh, “a common lender of money”, and when he was buried at Halstead on 4 August 1615 he had still not settled with Sydaye’s executor.

On 26 June 1620, while her son was still under twenty-one, Anne, as “his mother and guardian assigned”, brought a complaint in Chancery in his name to keep the Stansted land, which Sydaye’s heirs had leased to a man who was suing to evict the family’s tenants. The complaint claimed that her husband had paid off the whole £300 “in money, corn, cattle, and other goods”, and that Sydaye had lent to him knowing him to be “a man both weak and improvident and much neglecting the good of himself, his wife, and children”. Sydaye’s executor answered that £148 15s. was still owing.

The legacy and the letters

In January 1624/5 her brother John Butter made his will, leaving £20 to Anne and £40 to each of her three children, to be paid when his lands at Thorrington were sold after the death of his wife, Margaret. Anne’s son sailed for New England with his family in 1632. When Margaret Butter died, about 1636, Anne wrote to tell him and asked him to send her a letter of attorney so that she could collect his £40 for him, and he sent one. Meanwhile a kinswoman of John Butter went to law, claiming the Thorrington lands as his next heir, and while that suit lasted the lands could not be sold.

Moses Greenewood, a worsted weaver of Hingham in Norfolk, said he had sold her son goods worth more than £55 in New England in December 1637 and had taken the £40 as part payment. He brought Anne a second letter from her son, asking her to pay the legacy to Greenewood once she had it. She told him the lands were in dispute, and wrote to her son that the legacy was in doubt and that he should pay Greenewood himself. About Christmas 1639 a third letter came back: her son had settled with Greenewood in New England, and the £40, if it ever came, was to go to other people he named.

Greenewood sued her in Chancery all the same, in May 1640. He claimed that she had recognized her son’s handwriting, said she was “much beholden” to him for the credit he had given her son, and privately promised to pay him once certain lands were sold, and that she had since sold them and now refused, knowing he had no witness. Anne answered on oath at Castle Hedingham on 19 January 1640/1. She had promised to pay only once she received the money for her son, she said, had no power under her brother’s will to sell anything, and had received no part of the legacy; and, as she had been advised, her son’s last letter forbade her to pay Greenewood at all.

Last years and will

Her son’s family had lived at Castle Hedingham before they sailed, and her daughter Catherine was buried there on 14 May 1640, still bearing the name Coggeshall. As Anne Coggeshall of Castle Hedingham, widow, she made her will on 16 April 1645. By then the £40 had been received, and she left her son, “now dwelling in New England”, her house and lands at Sible Hedingham on condition that he “no way molest my executors” over it. If he did, he was to have only 20s., and the house would go to her grandson Henry Raymond, son of her daughter Anne and the late Richard Raymond.

She had also lent £72 to Parliament “upon the Public Faith”. Parliament raised such loans from 1642 to pay for its war against Charles I, promising repayment on the public faith, and Anne’s will shared the loan out among her grandchildren: £20 to Henry Raymond, and £50 among eight others, John, Anne, Mary, Joshua and James Coggeshall, her son’s children, and John, Richard and Elizabeth Raymond. Her watch went to her daughter Anne for life and then to her grandson John Raymond, and her daughter was sole executor. Anne died before 10 November 1648, when the will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.

Notes

• Her brother John Butter’s will (26 January 1624/5, proved May 1626), her own will, the Halstead baptisms of her children and the Chancery cases of 1620 and 1640 are printed in abstract in “Genealogical Research in England: Coggeshall”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 73 (1919), pages 19–30. Her will was abstracted earlier in the Register 47 (1893), page 402, and in Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, volume 1, page 748. The outcome of neither case is given there.
• Her maiden name comes from her brother’s will, which leaves legacies to “my sister Anne Cogshall” and to her children John, Anne and Catherine (written Katherine). Her own will calls the £40 “a legacy given him by his uncle John Batter”, and both wills leave 40s. to an aunt Morphew.
• Her answer of January 1640/1 dates her brother’s will to “about twelve years ago”, her son’s departure to “about ten years ago” and Margaret Butter’s death to “about four years ago”.
• Her will names five of her son’s children and none of the three baptized at Boston between 1635 and 1637. Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins suggests that she did not know of one of them, Wait.