♀Joanna Pope

Joanna Pope (died 1629) was the daughter of a Taunton merchant in Somerset, England. She married Thomas Whitcomb about March 1584/5, and her father’s grant of land to him before the wedding was made on terms that left the grant void if Whitcomb died before he married her. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son John Whitcomb (died 1662).

Marriage

Joanna came of a merchant family of Taunton: her father, Thomas Pope senior, and his father, John Pope, were both merchants of the town. Her marriage settlement was entered in the court of the manor of Taunton Late Priory, the former lands of Taunton Priory^W that lay on the northeast side of the old borough. On 18 March 1584/5 Thomas Pope senior granted Thomas Whitcomb four feet of land in the north part of the garden of a tenement in the tithing^W of Extra Portam, outside the East Gate, with the rest of the tenement to follow. Joanna was to hold it for life if she and Thomas both outlived her father. After her father’s death the tenement passed to Thomas, and the couple also held two and a half acres of meadow called Waterslade in the tithing of Holway, which had been her father’s.

Widowhood

Thomas was buried at the church of St James in Taunton on 20 August 1618. Joanna, as his widow, took up the Extra Portam tenement at the court of 1 October 1618, entered again on 23 September 1619, and in September 1619 the Holway court gave her the Waterslade meadow, which had come into the lord’s hands by his death.

She was a widow for almost eleven years. She settled the tenement on her son John, keeping for herself “the three fore chambers” of the house with free entry and exit, and an annuity of £5 4s from him for life; John was also to pay the legacies in her will. She granted the Waterslade meadow in the same way to her daughter Dorothy, keeping it for her own life.

Her will and death

Joanna made her will on 3 January 1628/9, as Johane Whetcombe of the parish of St James, widow. It named her sons John, Robert, Thomas and Edmund and the eldest sons of Thomas and Edmund, an unnamed brother, and her goddaughter Johane Holcombe, and it made her daughter Dorothy executrix, with her cousins Samuel Whetcombe and Robert Holcombe as overseers. She was buried at St James on 17 July 1629, entered in the register as a widow, and the will was proved on 29 July. On 3 February 1634/5, shortly before he took his own family to New England, John paid his brother Edmund the money due to him under their mother’s will.

The family

Joanna’s will of 1628/9 names four sons, John, Robert, Thomas and Edmund, and a daughter, Dorothy. Another daughter, Christian, was buried at St James on 29 June 1619, ten months after her father. In September 1629 Robert was brought before the bishop’s court for holding a fast or conventicle^W in his chamber on 31 July, a gathering that ran from the morning sermon until about six in the evening; he answered that he and others “did theare doe exercises of religion amongest themselves contrarie to the lawes of this realme.” Dorothy, the executrix of her mother’s will, died the same month: an inventory of Dorothy’s own goods was sworn on 20 July 1629, three days after her mother’s burial.

Notes

Sources

Her life rests on the rolls of the manor courts of Taunton Late Priory and Taunton Deane (Somerset Archives, series DD/SP), on the registers of the two Taunton parishes, and on the abstract of her will (Diocese of Bath and Wells, D/D/Ct “W” 78), all printed by Robin Bush in Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630, volume 26 (1997), pages 61 to 71. The rolls write her name Johanna, the will Johane, and the burial register “Johan Whetcombe “vedeo”“, that is, widow. Bush calls her father “Thomas Pope of Taunton, merchant”, and the grant of 18 March 1584/5 names “Johanna daughter of the said Thomas Pope”. Bush dates the marriage “c. Mar. 1584/5”.

Her son John

The court roll of 16 September 1630 has John Whetcombe taking the tenement “formerly of Thomas Pope and late of Thomas Whetcombe, by grant of Johanna Whetcombe, widow, his mother”. Joanna was unmarried when the grant of March 1584/5 was made, and Thomas was her only husband, so John was Thomas’s son as well as hers. On this evidence Bush concluded that John’s parents “were Thomas Whetcombe & Johanna Pope”.

Dates

Online trees give her birth as 1560 at Taunton; Bush gives no birth date. The grants to Dorothy and to John were entered on the rolls only after her death, on 9 March 1629/30 and 16 September 1630. The 1630 entry calls her will “dated 31 Jan. last”, against the 3 January 1628/9 of the will itself. The payment to Edmund was witnessed by John West and Henry West junior.

Dorothy

A court entry of 9 March 1629/30 records Dorothy taking up the Waterslade meadow by her mother’s grant, made years earlier and reserving the meadow to Joanna for life. Bush has Dorothy dying unmarried about July 1629, which rests on the inventory sworn that month.