♂John Iddenden

John Iddenden (died 1588) was a tailor of Cranbrook, in Kent, who married Christian Mercer at Hawkhurst in 1569 and died in March 1588, about seven weeks after the baptism of his only son. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Mary Iddenden (born 1573).

Cranbrook

John and Christian were married at Hawkhurst on 26 September 1569 and made their home at Cranbrook, where their children were baptized. The couple had eight children, seven daughters and a son: Susan, Sara, Mary, Rebecca, Elizabeth, Katherine, Judith and John, the eldest baptized in 1570 and the youngest in January 1587/8.

A tailor’s trade was not all John lived by. By a deed of July 1580 he held a mortgage on the lands of Richard Glover, whom he called his brother, and drew £6 a year on the £60 he had lent, with the principal due to come back to him at the feast of St John the Baptist in 1589.

His will

On 15 March 1587/8 John made his will. He asked to be buried in the churchyard at Cranbrook and left £10 each to six of his daughters, to be paid at twenty or on their marriage, £5 to his daughter Rebecca, and £10 to his infant son John at twenty-one. Everything else went to Christian, whom he named executrix, with Richard Glover as overseer. He died before the month was out; the will was proved on 9 April 1588, and his goods were valued at £66 13s. 4d.

Christian outlived him by nine years and died of the plague at Cranbrook in August 1597. Their daughter Mary probably married Thomas Soole at Hawkhurst on 16 October 1598, and was the mother of Sarah Soole, who crossed to New England with her husband Samuel Hinckley in 1635.

The family

Sara, the second daughter, married George Iddenden, a Cranbrook tailor, and probably died before her mother, whose will left a share to George “for the good of his children”. Judith died of the plague and was buried at Cranbrook on 16 August 1597, three days after her mother.

Notes

Sources

The family’s baptisms, burials and wills are known from abstracts of the Cranbrook and Hawkhurst parish registers and of the Archdeaconry of Canterbury wills, printed by Elizabeth French in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, volume 67 (1913), pages 38–44, and volume 68 (1914), pages 186–189. John signed his will “John Edynden”; the name is written Iddenden, Edynden and Edinden in the same records.

The date of his death

French placed his death between 15 March 1587/8, the date of the will, and 27 March 1588. The probate act book gives the date of probate as 27 March 1587, a slip for 1588, while the will register records probate on 9 April 1588.

His wife’s maiden name

French’s 1913 account called his wife Christian Glover, because both John and Christian named Richard Glover as “brother” in their wills. In 1914 French printed the Hawkhurst marriage of “John Iddenden and Christian Mercer” on 26 September 1569 and concluded that her maiden name was Mercer, Richard Glover most likely being the husband of her sister or of John’s. The same 1914 article gives the marriage year once as 1589, a misprint for the register’s 1569: the eldest child was baptized in 1570.

Mary and the Soole marriage

Both parents’ wills name a daughter Mary, but no baptism for her appears among the printed Cranbrook entries; her birth year of 1573 comes from an online family tree and falls in the gap between Sara’s baptism in January 1571/2 and Rebecca’s in December 1575. French identified the “Marye Iddenden” who married Thomas Soole at Hawkhurst on 16 October 1598 as this daughter, and Sarah, “daughter of Thomas Soole”, was baptized there on 8 June 1600.