♀Elynour Hubbard

Elynour Hubbard (fl. 1568–1593) was the wife of Thomas Couchman, a husbandman of Rolvenden, in Kent, England, and after his death in 1586 married twice more, losing her second husband after two years; her license to marry for the third time was issued the day before her daughter Sylvester’s wedding. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Robert Cushman (1578–1625). A study of the family published in 1914 identified that son, “in all probability”, with Robert Cushman^W, the Pilgrims’ agent in England.

Marriage to Thomas Couchman

She married Thomas Couchman at Rolvenden on 18 July 1568. The register enters her as “Elynour hubbarde maydin”: a maid, so it was her first marriage. Her parents are not known. Later records call her Ellen.

The couple had at least six children. Alys, baptized in April 1572, was buried two years later; Sylvester, a daughter, was baptized in October 1574 and Robert in February 1577/8; Margaret, baptized in March 1582, was buried before she was two, and Henry, baptized in July 1584, was buried the following April. The sixth, Richard, has no baptism among the family’s entries in the Rolvenden register, but his father’s will calls Robert the “younger son”, so Richard was the elder of the two boys.

Widowhood and two more marriages

Thomas was buried on 14 February 1585/6, four days after making his will. He left Ellen executrix and residuary legatee, with three children under age, and the will provided for her marrying again: a new husband was to give the overseer, Robert Gibbon, security for the children’s portions, or else Ellen was to pay the money over to Gibbon to lay out for them. She proved the will on 12 May 1586.

On 17 October 1587, as “Ellyn Cowchman widow”, she married Emanuel Evernden at Rolvenden. He was buried there on 3 December 1589. Less than a month before, on 8 November, he had made a nuncupative will^W, an oral will declared before witnesses: after 6s. 8d. to the poor of Rolvenden and 20s. to his brother Joseph, everything went to his wife Ellen, whom he made executrix. She proved it on 12 February 1589/90.

In November 1593 mother and daughter married within a week of each other. A license for “Ellen Evernden of Rolvenden, widow” to marry Thomas Tilden of Tenterden, yeoman, was issued at Canterbury on 6 November; the next day, at Rolvenden, Sylvester married Stephen Evernden of Tenterden, a broadweaver, which made her £6 13s. 4d. under her father’s will payable. The 1914 study gives Ellen’s wedding to Thomas Tilden as 13 November 1593; she was his second wife. The records do not say whether Stephen Evernden was kin to Emanuel. She died before Thomas Tilden took a third wife, Alice, but no record of her burial, and no will or administration of her estate, has been found.

Notes

The 1914 study found nothing on her parentage. Her name is written Elynour at her first marriage, Ellyn at her second, and Ellen in both husbands’ wills and in the license of 1593.

Her son Robert

Their son Robert was baptized at Rolvenden on 9 February 1577/8. A study of the family published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1914, which printed the Rolvenden register entries and the family’s wills, judged that he was “in all probability” the Robert Cushman who became the agent of the Leiden Pilgrims in England. The study cites no record that names the agent’s parents. What joins the two is the name and the county: the agent came to Leiden from Canterbury, in Kent, where he had been admitted a freeman in 1605 as “Robert Couchman”. Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins, a reference work on the first New England settlers, accepts the identification and gives the Rolvenden baptism as the agent’s.