♂Robert Whitfield

Robert Whitfield (died about 1541) lived at Wadhurst, in the Sussex Weald, and was the father of Robert Whitfield of Worth. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Robert Whitfield.

Life

He was probably the son of Miles Whitfield and Matilda, whom a sworn certificate drawn up at Durham in 1522 names as his parents; her surname is not known. He was born about 1453 and was probably baptized in the parish church at Alston, Cumberland. He is said to have come out of the north of England to settle at Wadhurst, and the family’s pedigree traces its origins to Whitfield Hall and to the manor of Alston Moor in Cumberland. He is not to be confused with his son and namesake, the younger Robert, of Worth, who was the father of Jane Whitfield. The son kept the family’s ties to Wadhurst: his will of 1591 gave money toward repairs to its church, remembered its poor, and passed on the copyhold^W lands he held there.

His will of 1541 was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 2 March 1542/3. He directed that his body be buried in the churchyard at Wadhurst, and that his household goods be divided into three parts: one to his wife Agnes, and the other two to his sons John and Thomas. Thomas was made sole executor. He was probably buried at Wadhurst on 2 June 1541.

The will names a wife Agnes, the sons John, Thomas and Robert, and a daughter Elizabeth. The Sussex visitation pedigree gives him two wives, and probably the mothers of the children it lists under them: Margaret and Elizabeth under a first wife whose name the pedigree leaves blank, and John, Robert and Thomas under Agnes Giles, whose name the pedigree spells Eyles.

Notes

How he is known

Robert Whitfield is known from his own will and from two heralds’ pedigrees of the Whitfield family among the Harleian manuscripts, both printed by Henry F. Waters in Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2. Harleian MS 1432 (p. 1352) heads its table “Robertus Whitfield de Wadhurst in Com. Sussex”. Harleian MS 6164, fol. 13b (p. 1353), calls him “Robert who came out of the North 80 years since and dwelt at Wadhurst”, and sets above him earlier Whitfields of Whitfield Hall and of Alston Moor in Cumberland. Pedigrees of this kind were compiled from the family’s own account, a generation or more after his time. No baptism of his is known, and neither pedigree gives him a date. His northern origin rests on the second pedigree and on the 1522 certificate, which places his birth at Alston. Waters printed that table “with one or two emendations” from two other Harleian copies, and cautioned that anyone descended from the family “would naturally apply to the Royal College of Arms for an authentic pedigree”.

Parents and baptism

The sworn certificate of 14 August 1522, drawn up at Durham and printed in English translation by John Brooks Threlfall in The Ancestry of Reverend Henry Whitfield (1590-1657) and his Wife Dorothy Sheafe (1989), p. 61, says that Robert was born to Miles Whitfield and Matilda his wife in the parish of Alston, and that he was baptized there by Robert Jackson, chaplain and then vicar, with Edmond Lee, Thomas Stevenson and Isabel Bowman as godparents. The certificate writes the parish as Aldneston, the name it uses for Alston. It gives Matilda no surname. The certificate is known only from a printed copy, so the parentage is taken with one step of caution.

Burial and age

Threlfall’s account of the Visitation of London (p. 59) records a burial at Wadhurst on 2 June 1541, when Robert was 88 years old. The age is the basis for the estimate of about 1453 for his birth. The date comes from that heraldic record as Threlfall gives it, not from a parish register.

His will

The will is printed by Waters in Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2, p. 1344, and in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 51 (1897). The Prerogative Court of Canterbury holds the original. It is headed “Robert Whitfelde the elder of Wadherst, Sussex”, the tree’s Wadhurst. Waters prints the proof as 2 March 1542, in the Old Style year that began on 25 March; the tree’s 2 March 1543 is the same day. The directions are in the abstract’s words: “My body to be buried in the churchyard of Wadherst”, and “My household stuff to be divided into three parts. One part to Agnes my wife”, with “the other two parts to John and Thomas my sons”. “Son Thomas sole executor” follows, and the will names “Daughter Elizabeth” and “Son Robert”.

His wives

The Visitation of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905), pp. 96-97 (Harleian MS 1562), prints the Whitfield pedigree with two wives. The first is shown as “....”, with the daughters Margaret and Elizabeth beneath her. The second, Agnes Giles, is written in the pedigree as “Agnes d. of .... Eyles” (the pedigree spells the surname Eyles), with John Whitfeld, living 1571, Robert Whitfeld, living 1577, and Thomas Whitfeld beneath her; the pedigree carries the Robert line over onto p. 97. The will names only Agnes as wife and does not say which wife bore which child, so the mothers of the children rest on the pedigree alone.

Eldest or second son

The two pedigrees agree that Robert Whitfield of Worth was his son, but they disagree on his place in the family. Harleian MS 1432 calls him “primus filius”, the eldest son, ahead of John Whitfield of Tenterden, the second son, and Thomas, the third. Harleian MS 6164 makes him “Robert Whitfield 2 son, living 1577”, and puts first an eldest son John, of Alston Moor, living in 1571; it also names a daughter, Elizabeth, who married John Edwards of Mayfield, and a third son, Thomas. Nothing else settles which order is right.

The two Roberts

Father and son are easily confused. The son made his will on 6 December 1591 as Robert Whitfield of Worth, gentleman; it was proved on 16 February 1597 (1598 by the modern reckoning). He still held copyhold lands in Wadhurst, gave toward “the reparations of the church of Wadhurst” and remembered the poor of both Wadhurst and Worth; he named a daughter Jane among his children. The 1619 heralds’ visitation of Kent also calls Jane’s father “Rob’ti Whitfeild de Wadhurst”, so the place name alone does not tell the two men apart. The 1541 will places the elder Robert at Wadhurst and names a son Robert, but it is the Harleian pedigrees’ two generations that make that son the Robert of Worth, and the elder man the settler from the north.