♀Christian Mercer

Christian Mercer (died August 1597) was the wife of John Iddenden, a tailor of Cranbrook, in Kent, and his widow for nine years; she died of the plague in August 1597 and was buried the day after she declared her will by word of mouth. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Mary Iddenden (born 1573).

Marriage

Christian came from a Hawkhurst family: Mercers appear again and again in the Hawkhurst registers from 1550 on, and Timothy Mercer of Hawkhurst, who would later serve as an overseer of her will, was probably her brother. John and Christian were married at Hawkhurst on 26 September 1569 and made their home at Cranbrook, where their children were baptized. The couple had eight children, seven daughters and a son: Susan, Sara, Mary, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Katherine, Judith and John, the eldest baptized in 1570 and the youngest in January 1587/8.

Widowhood

John died in March 1588, weeks after the baptism of their son. His will made Christian executrix and left her everything not set aside for the children, including a loan of £60 on the lands of Richard Glover, whom both husband and wife called brother, at £6 a year. The money was due back in 1589, but Glover still held it when she died.

The plague of 1597

In August 1597 the plague was at Cranbrook. On 12 August, “sick of the plage”, Christian declared her will by word of mouth, a nuncupative will^W. She left her son John £20, with the £10 his father had given him, to be paid at twenty-two out of the money Richard Glover held; the other £30 was to be shared among her six daughters and her son-in-law George Iddenden, for his children. Her household goods went to five of the daughters, Elizabeth “having already had her part of the linen and pewter”. Elizabeth’s husband, William Pittocke, was named executor, with Thomas Pellet and Timothy Mercer as overseers.

She was buried at Cranbrook the next day, 13 August 1597. Her will was proved on 13 April 1598, and her goods were valued at £75 18s. 6d. Their daughter Mary probably married Thomas Soole at Hawkhurst on 16 October 1598, and was the mother of Sarah Soole, who crossed to New England with her husband Samuel Hinckley in 1635.

The family

Sara, the second daughter, married George Iddenden, a Cranbrook tailor, and probably died before her mother, whose will left a share to George “for the good of his children”. Judith died of the plague and was buried at Cranbrook on 16 August 1597, three days after her mother.

Notes

Sources

The family’s baptisms, burials and wills are known from abstracts of the Cranbrook and Hawkhurst parish registers and of the Archdeaconry of Canterbury wills, printed by Elizabeth French in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 67 (1913), pages 38–44, and volume 68 (1914), pages 186–189. Her name is written Christian, and once Xpiane, an old abbreviation of it, in the probate records.

Her maiden name

French’s 1913 account called her Christian Glover, because both John and Christian named Richard Glover as “brother” in their wills. In 1914 French printed the Hawkhurst marriage of “John Iddenden and Christian Mercer” on 26 September 1569 and concluded that her maiden name was Mercer, Richard Glover most likely being the husband of her sister or of John’s. Timothy Mercer, her overseer, was baptized at Hawkhurst on 22 September 1551 and was churchwarden there in 1598; French called him probably her brother. The same 1914 article gives the marriage year once as 1589, a misprint for the register’s 1569: the eldest child was baptized in 1570.

The two grants

On 27 September 1597 the archdeacon’s court did not prove a will of Christian Iddenden, widow, probably for lack of proper witnesses, and granted administration to William Pittocke. The spoken will of 12 August was proved on 13 April 1598 by Pittocke as executor. Her will speaks of “her six daughters” and names Susan, Marie, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Katherine and Judeth; Sara, named in her father’s will of 1588, is missing from the list, and French took this to mean she had died.

Mary and the Soole marriage

Both parents’ wills name a daughter Mary, but no baptism for her appears among the printed Cranbrook entries; her birth year of 1573 comes from an online family tree and falls in the gap between Sara’s baptism in January 1571/2 and Rebecca’s in December 1575. French identified the “Marye Iddenden” who married Thomas Soole at Hawkhurst on 16 October 1598 as this daughter, and Sarah, “daughter of Thomas Soole”, was baptized there on 8 June 1600.