♀Anne Macye

Anne Macye was a woman of Colyton, in Devon, England, who in 1544 married John Clarke, a merchant of the town remembered at his burial as the man who had done most to bring about the townsmen’s purchase of the manor of Colyton from the Crown. She was the twelfth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Agnes Clarke (born 1548).

John Clarke and Anne Macye were married at Colyton on 9 June 1544; the register names him as John Clarke of Colyford, a village beside Colyton and then within its parish, and her as the daughter of William Macye of Colyton. Their daughter Agnes, written “Annes” in the register, was christened at Colyton on 16 May 1548. On 4 February 1578/9 Agnes married Richard Conant, the son of John Conant of East Budleigh. Anne’s husband died on 6 April 1585 and was buried at Colyton on 9 April. When Anne herself died is not known.

Notes

Sources

• The marriage, the christening of Agnes, her marriage and John Clarke’s burial are from the parish register of Colyton, as printed in A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family (Frederick Odell Conant, 1887). The burial entry calls him “the cheftest traviler of the purchas of the mannor of Colliton and the marketts”.

The day of the marriage

The register as printed in 1887 gives the marriage as 9 June 1544. Another reading of the original register gives “the xxix daye of June”, which would make it 29 June.

Other children

Several men named John Clarke lived in Colyton parish in these years, and the register records children of a John Clarke christened in 1539 and 1541, before the marriage of 1544, and in 1545 and 1551. Which of them, if any, were children of John Clarke and Anne Macye is not settled.