♂John Hinckley

John Hinckley (buried 25 June 1577) was a householder of Harrietsham, in Kent, England, whose will settled his chief house on his son Robert for life and then on Robert’s sons. He was probably the eleventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Robert Hinckley (buried 1606). When he died, the parish clerk entered his burial as that of “John Hinckley senior and paterfamilias”, giving him the Latin title of the head of a family, the pater familias^W.

Family

The name of John’s first wife, the mother of his sons Robert and John, is not known. By the 1570s both sons had sons of their own. Robert was living in his father’s chief house at Harrietsham, and his sons included Thomas and Isaac, the sons of his first marriage, baptized in 1562 and 1571; the younger John had two sons, Henry and John. A daughter, whose name the will does not give, was the mother of a granddaughter John called “Katheryne Lytlehare, my daughter’s daughter”.

Already a grandfather, John married Avysse Eles at Harrietsham on 3 July 1570. Their daughter, Annys Hinckley, was still under twenty-one when he made his will.

Will and death

John made his will on 5 May 1577. He named Robert executor, left him the residue, and gave him for life the chief messuage^W at Harrietsham “wherein Robert my son now dwelleth”; after Robert’s death the house was to pass to Robert’s sons Isaac and Thomas. The younger John had 13s 4d and, after Avysse, the tenement in Steden Street. The will also remembered Avysse and Annys, the younger John’s sons Henry and John, Robert’s son Thomas, the granddaughter Katheryne and a godson named Henry, and it named Henrye Smoothynge and Robert Wyllmott as overseers.

Seven weeks later, on 25 June 1577, John was buried at Harrietsham. Robert proved the will at Lenham on 11 October 1577, and the inventory of his father’s goods came to £15 9s 6d.

Notes

The will and the register

The will is known from Elizabeth French’s abstract of the copy in the registers of the Archdeaconry of Canterbury^W (volume 43, folio 30), printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1911 (volume 65, pages 287–288), with the probate from the act book of 1575–81 (folio 75). The marriage and the burial come from her extracts of the Harrietsham parish register in the same volume (pages 314–317). The Robert of the will is the Robert Hinckley of Harrietsham who was buried in 1606: the will names Robert’s sons Isaac and Thomas, and the register records the baptisms of Thomas, son of Robert, on 28 December 1562 and of Isaac on 8 October 1571.

The line to Roger

The descent from John to Roger runs through Robert’s son Samuel. It rests on French’s identification of the Samuel baptized at Harrietsham on 25 May 1589 with the Samuel Hinckley of Tenterden who sailed for New England in 1635; neither the baptism nor Robert’s will follows Samuel to Tenterden, so the relationship is given as probable.

What is not known

John’s parents are not known. French thought he was probably the son of John Henkle, the brother and overseer of Robert Henkle of Lenham, whose will was made on 30 December 1522, but she found no will of John Henkle’s own. Her pedigree (volume 65, pages 316–317) also offers several identifications that no record settles. She suggested that John’s first wife was probably the Johane buried at Harrietsham on 23 January 1563/4, and that the unnamed daughter was probably the Anne baptized on 8 October 1539 who married a Lytlehare. She took Annys to be the “Agnes Hincklie” baptized on 1 January 1571/2, and the younger John to be the John Hinckley who married Johane Bills on 9 October 1553 and was buried on 13 February 1590/1. The children baptized at Harrietsham between 1557 and 1566 to a John Hinckley belong to the younger John, entered as “John Hinckley Jun.” in 1557, and not to his father; the Henry baptized in 1562 is the grandson Henry of the will.