♀Christian (surname unknown)

Christian (died after 1503) was the wife and widow of Thomas Mervyn, a man of property at Ramsey in Essex, England, and one of the three executors of his will. She was the thirteenth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through John Mervyn (about 1480 – 1533), who was probably her son.

Thomas made his will by word of mouth on 23 August 1503, and Christian survived him. His will left his wife Christian half of his household goods and all the goods she had brought with her on their marriage, with his lands at the Churchgate of Ramsey to her and her heirs forever. He named his wife Christian, his son John and Thomas Gray as executors, and the will was proved on 11 April 1504. Thomas left three sons, John, Thomas and Robert, and four daughters, of whom only Ann is known by name. The terms of the will do not show whether Christian was the mother of his children.

Notes

Mother of the children?

John Insley Coddington, who published an abstract of Thomas’s will in The American Genealogist 18 (1941), pp. 3-4, wrote that Thomas “may have married more than once, and it is not possible to judge from the terms of his will whether his wife CHRISTIAN was the mother of his children, or not.” Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman, Hale, House and Related Families (1952), p. 712, were more confident: Christian was “perhaps his only wife, and probably the mother of his children because she was a co-executor of his will with his son John, and the latter named a daughter Christian.” Her own family name and the date of her death are not known.