♂Robert Trott

Robert Trott (buried 16 February 1599) was a landholder of Pitminster, in Somerset, England, who held land at South Trendle in the manor of Taunton, and the father of Richard Treat, later a settler of Wethersfield in the Connecticut Colony^W. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Richard Treat (1584–1669).

The land at South Trendle

The manor of Taunton was an ancient estate of the see of Winchester, divided into hundreds and those again into tithings, and its land passed from one tenant to the next by surrender in the manor court. In 1571 Robert took over from his father, Richard Trott, a messuage and half a virgate^W of bondland, a cottage and four acres of overland in the tithing of South Trendle, in the hundred of Poundisford, land that Hugh Hollwell had once held. The grant came with a condition, as the roll is translated: he was not to sell or surrender any part of it to anyone but a person of the surname Trott. The same year he took four acres of pasture in South Trendle on the surrender of William Willes, and in 1573 three acres of overland called Saymore, in the tithing of Blackdon, on the surrender of Thomas Vincent. He probably lived in the southern part of Trendle, the hamlet now called Trull.

Family

He married Honora, whose surname is not known. Their six children were baptized at Pitminster between 1564 and 1584: Alice, John, Mary, Agnes, Tamsen and, the youngest, Richard. Three of them married within a year of one another: Mary to Robert Babb, a widower, in October 1597, and John to Edith Priest and Agnes to John Aplin in 1598. On 24 August 1598, three days before Agnes’s wedding, a “Robte Trotte”, most likely her father, witnessed the surrender by which Richard Aplin settled land on his son John.

Death

He was buried at Pitminster on 16 February 1599. He left a will, proved at Taunton, which has since perished. On 4 March 1600 the land at South Trendle passed to their son Richard, on condition that Honora should have and hold it during her widowhood.

Notes

Sources

His burial, his children’s baptisms and marriages and the land grants come from The Treat Family (1893), by John Harvey Treat, which prints the Pitminster parish register and the Taunton manor registers, the latter in Latin with translations. The register writes his name “Robart trott” at the baptisms of his children and “Robart Tratt” at his burial. The Latin of the 1571 roll names Richard Trott as his father. Hale, House and Related Families (1952) gives the same burial date.

The year of his burial

The register dates his burial 16 February 1599. In England the year then began on 25 March, the reckoning now called Old Style^W, and the grant that passed his land to Richard is dated 4 March in the forty-second year of Queen Elizabeth, that is, 1600. The burial was therefore most likely in February 1600 by the modern count, less than three weeks before the grant; some online family trees give that year.