♂John Clarke

John Clarke (died 6 April 1585) was a merchant of Colyton, in Devon, England, and one of the townsmen who bought the manor of Colyton from the Crown. At his burial the parish register remembered him as “the cheftest traviler of the purchas of the mannor of Colliton and the marketts”: the man who had labored most to bring that purchase about. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Agnes Clarke (born 1548).

The manor of Colyton

The manor of Colyton had belonged to Henry Courtenay, Marquess of Exeter^W. When he was beheaded in 1538 his lands passed to the Crown, and a number of Colyton’s wealthier townsmen bought part of the manor from the king, together with the running of its fairs and markets. John Clarke’s name is said to have stood first on the king’s patent, and to have appeared again on the patent of a second incorporation granted by Queen Mary.

Family and death

John Clarke and Anne Macye were married at Colyton on 9 June 1544; the register names him as John Clarke of Colyford, a village beside Colyton and then within its parish, and her as the daughter of William Macye of Colyton. Their daughter Agnes, written “Annes” in the register, was christened at Colyton on 16 May 1548. On 4 February 1578/9 Agnes married Richard Conant, the son of John Conant of East Budleigh, the register naming her “the daught. of John Clarke, senior, of Collyton”.

John Clarke died on 6 April 1585 and was buried at Colyton three days later, on 9 April, the register calling him “John Clarke the elder of Coliton marchant”.

Notes

Sources

• The marriage, the christening of Agnes, her marriage and John Clarke’s burial are from the parish register of Colyton, as printed in A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family (Frederick Odell Conant, 1887).
• The account of the purchase of the manor and of his place on the two patents is from the same book, not from the register.

The day of the marriage

The register as printed in 1887 gives the marriage as 9 June 1544. Another reading of the original register gives “the xxix daye of June”, which would make it 29 June.

Which John Clarke

Several men named John Clarke lived in Colyton parish in these years. The register records the marriages of sons of a John Clarke in 1563, 1574 and 1575, a son of “John Clarke, the younger” christened in 1582, and a son of “John Clarke, the elder, of Coliford” christened in 1589, four years after the merchant’s burial. The 1887 genealogy takes the John Clarke of Colyford who married Anne Macye, the father of Agnes, the “John Clarke, senior” named at her marriage and the merchant buried in 1585 to be one man.

The register also records children of a John Clarke christened in 1539 and 1541, before the marriage of 1544, and in 1545 and 1551. Which of them, if any, were children of John Clarke and Anne Macye is not settled.