♂Reinold Marvin

Reinold Marvin (about 1513 – between 1554 and 1561) was a yeoman of Ramsey in Essex, England, who held the tenement called Bennettes there and land in the neighbouring parish of Wrabness. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Edward Marvin (about 1552–1615). His will of 22 December 1554 carries his own signature, “By me Rynalde mervyn.”

Life in Ramsey

Reinold was a son of John Mervyn of Ramsey, and was still under twenty-one when his father made his will on 16 September 1533, so he was probably born about 1513. That will left him the tenement called Bennettes and its lands to him and his heirs, and ten pounds when he reached twenty-one. His mother Margaret was to have all the houses and lands for her life if she stayed a widow, and half of them if she remarried.

He stayed in Ramsey, and in the lay subsidy of 1540 he was reportedly taxed twenty shillings on his movable goods. By 1554 he had added a second tenement in Ramsey, called Genettes, which he bought of John Dave, and a tenement in Wrabness with lands both freehold and copyhold^W.

He married Johan, whose surname is not known. Reinold and Johan had six children, all under age when he made his will in December 1554: three sons, Richard, Edward and John, and three daughters, Audrey, Margery and Barbara. Edward, the second son named, was most likely the Edward Marvin who later lived at Great Bentley, and who in 1615 left houses and lands in Wrabness and Wix to his own eldest son.

His will

Reinold made his will on 22 December 1554 as “Raynold Marven of Ramsey in the countey of essex yeman,” and asked to be buried in the church of St Michael the Archangel at Ramsey. He left Johan all his houses and lands for her lifetime, “to kepe my chyldren & hyrs withall tell they be abell to helpe themselfs,” together with the ewes on his farm of “east Haull & the Ray & Barwycke” and the rest of his goods, and made her sole executrix.

After her death Bennettes was to go to Richard, the tenement in Wrabness to Edward, and Genettes to John, who was also to have ten pounds at twenty-one. Each daughter was to have ten pounds at the age of twenty. If Johan married again, she was first to be bound to his brothers John and Thomas Mervyn, with two sureties, for the children’s portions, or else to hand those portions over to them.

He remembered the parish as well. He left 26s 8d to the bridge of Ramsey, to be paid “when yt ys a makyng or a mending,” small sums to several neighbors and widows, and an ewe to each of his three maids, Christian, Johan and Margaret.

Death

Reinold died some time after making his will and before 14 October 1561, when his brother Thomas, in his own will, called him “Raynold Marveyn lat of Ramsey deceased.” His will bears no date of probate.

Notes

Birth and parentage

No record gives Reinold’s birth. John Insley Coddington, in “Notes on the Ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin”, The American Genealogist 18 (1941), places it about 1513 because Reinold was under twenty-one in 1533, and Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman, Hale, House and Related Families (1952), give “about (or slightly after) 1513”. The parentage and the tenement called Bennettes rest on the will itself, that of John Mervyn of Ramsey, yeoman, dated 16 September 1533 and proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 17 December 1533, known from a full transcript of the court’s register copy. Coddington, who first published the link, printed an abstract of the same will in that article. What ties the Raynold of 1533 to this man is his own will of 22 December 1554, which leaves “Benettes” to his son Richard and says that if his widow remarries she is to be bound “to my brother John Mervyn & to my Brother thomas Mervyn”, both of them named as sons in the 1533 will. Coddington and the Hale, House volume both give the 1540 subsidy assessment of twenty shillings. Some online family trees give a birth date of 4 April 1513, with no source.

The will

The will is known from the full transcript printed in William T. R. Marvin, The English Ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford (1900), pp. 78-79, from the copy recorded in the court of the Commissary of London for Essex and Hertfordshire in December 1554. The author of that book saw the original and noted that it bears Reinold’s autograph signature. He also identified one of the witnesses, William Vaughan, as the parish priest of St Michael’s.

Edward of Great Bentley

The 1900 book identifies Reinold’s son Edward with Edward Marvin of Great Bentley by the land at Wrabness: the tenement Reinold left to Edward in 1554 matches the houses and lands in Wrabness and Wix that Edward left to his own son in 1615. Coddington accepts the identification. The book gives Edward’s birth as about 1552; Coddington gives about 1545-50.

Date of death

Coddington writes that Reinold “certainly died before 14 October 1561”, the date of his brother Thomas’s will, and the Hale, House volume adds “probably not long before”. Reinold’s uncle Robert Mervyn, in a will of 10 December 1556, left twenty shillings to his “godsons” Raynold and John Marven, sons of his brother John; if that Raynold was this Reinold, he was still alive at the end of 1556. Several online trees give 14 October 1561 as his death date, which is the date of Thomas’s will, not of Reinold’s death.