♀Isabel Smythe

Isabel Smythe (married 13 November 1576) was a woman of Hillmorton, a Warwickshire village about two miles from Rugby, near the point where Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire meet. She married Michael Gater there in 1576, and Judith was christened there in 1588/9 with him named as her father. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Judith Gater (christened 1588/9).

Early life

Her father was probably John Smythe of Hillmorton, who was buried there on 24 December 1580. On 9 May 1572 she married William Bailey at Hillmorton, and their son Richard Bailey was christened there on 6 November 1573. William was buried there on 20 June 1574, and she was left a widow. The Hillmorton register begins in 1564, too late to hold her baptism.

Second marriage

On 13 November 1576 she married Michael Gater at Hillmorton. In 1594 Richard Beridge and his wife Elizabeth, William Bailey’s sister, sued Michael Gater, and in his answer Gater acknowledged that William’s widow Isabel had married him. The suit was brought in the ^W. The payment in dispute was £12 that William had bound himself to pay his sister, and through his widow it had passed to her new husband. She probably had nine children with Michael, christened at Hillmorton between 1576/7 and 1592, and Judith was the eighth. Only three of the nine christenings name her as mother, and Judith’s is one of the six that name only Michael, so she is probably Judith’s mother by inference from the marriage. Four of the nine were buried there, three of them within two years of their christening.

Death

She was buried at Hillmorton on 26 October 1617. The register calls her Isabell Gater.

Notes

Sources

The marriage, Judith’s christening and Michael’s name as her father come from Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes (1959), which abstracts the Hillmorton parish register and notes that the register begins in 1564. Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins gives Judith’s christening on 19 March 1588/9 as the “daughter of Michael Gater”. Melynie Moody’s article “Who Was Isabell Baylie?” (New England Historical and Genealogical Register 180, Winter 2026, pp. 88–93) quotes the register entries for her first marriage, her second marriage, her children and her burial word for word, and the 1594 Chancery pleadings. The two books differ by one day on Judith’s wedding: Davis and Moody give 9 October 1608, Anderson 8 October.

Her names

The register writes her name three ways: “Isabell Smithe” at her first marriage (9 May 1572), “Isabell Baylie” at her second (13 November 1576), and “Isabell Gater” at her burial (26 October 1617). Moody argues that Baylie was her first husband’s name, not her birth name, and standardizes her birth surname as Smythe, the form used here. Davis prints her surname as Baylie and indexes her under “Bailey, Baylie”.

Her father

John Smythe of Hillmorton made his will on 10 December 1580, and it was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury in February 1580/1. It leaves a year-old heifer to “my daughter Elizabeth”, a cow to Michael Gater, and two sheep to Richard Baylie. Moody argues that the daughter Elizabeth was probably Isabel: the names Isabel and Elizabeth were often interchangeable, her legacy is small, which suggests she had already had her portion (probably at her marriage), and her place in the list, between Michael Gater and her two sons, fits. The will also names Michael Gater as one of the overseers. The register does not hold Isabel’s baptism, so the link to John Smythe is Moody’s inference from the will, not a register entry.

Her children

The nine children christened to Michael and Isabel at Hillmorton between 1576/7 and 1592 are named in the register. Three entries name Isabel as mother (Michael, Francis and Margaret, 1583 to 1587), and the others name only Michael. She is taken as the mother of all nine because she was his wife from 1576 until her burial in 1617.

The suit of 1594

Richard Beridge of Kibworth Harcourt, Leicestershire, and his wife Elizabeth brought their complaint against Michael Gater of Hillmorton on 16 June 1594 (The National Archives, C 2/Eliz/B25/38), and Gater replied on 15 October 1594. In his answer he acknowledged that William Bailey had entered a bond of £20 to pay Elizabeth £12 when she turned 21 or married, that William had died before paying, and that William’s widow Isabel then married him. He disagreed that the terms of Richard Bailey’s will made the payment due, since William had died before his father. He said that he had since made most of the payments to William’s siblings himself, to his own loss, because the sums he had paid were greater than the money he had received in marriage to Isabel.

Ann Gater

Davis suggests that the Ann Gater who married Thomas Wright at Hillmorton on 29 July 1600 “was probably an older sister of Judith”. Davis gives no christening for her, and Moody’s list of the nine christenings has no Ann.