♂Robert Whitfield

Robert Whitfield (dates unknown) was a gentleman of Worth in Sussex, with copyhold lands at Wadhurst, and the father of Jane, the wife of the Bayham ironmaster Richard Porter. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his daughter Jane Whitfield.

His will

On 6 December 1591 Robert made his will as “Robert Whytfeld of Worth in Sussex gent.” It was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 16 February 1597/98. He made his son Thomas sole executor and gave him all his copyhold lands at Wadhurst. He left legacies to his daughter Joan, the wife of Robert Baker, and to four more daughters, Margaret, Sara, Jane and Frances. The will also made provision for “the reparations of the church of Wadhurst” and for “the poor of Wadhurst and of Worth”, and it names two of his sons’ wives, Mildred and Mary, and a grandson, John, the eldest son of Thomas.

Death and burial

He probably died on 9 December 1597, and was buried the next day in the chancel of the church at Emmington, near Thame in Oxfordshire, where his son William was then rector.

Family

His wife was probably Agnes Atwood, daughter of William Atwood of Kent. His parents were probably Robert Whitfield of Wadhurst, whose will of 1541 names a son Robert, and that man’s second wife, Agnes Giles. His children were the sons Thomas and William and the daughters Joan, Margaret, Sara, Jane and Frances. Three of the daughters married at Worth, where he lived: Jane to Richard Porter of Bayham on 13 July 1573, Frances to Richard Harris on 24 September 1576, and Margaret to Thomas Digons, a clergyman, on 11 November 1576.

When Jane’s husband Richard Porter made his will in August 1584, five days before his burial, he named “my brother Thomas Whitefielde” as one of its two overseers, with ten pounds for the task. The word then covered a brother-in-law, and the will does not say whether the overseer was Jane’s own brother.

Notes

The family pedigree

The Visitation of Kent 1619-1621 (Harleian Society vol. 42, 1898), p. 155, prints the Porter pedigree: “Richardus Porter de Bayham = Jana filia Rob’ti Whitfeild de Wadhurst”, with the couple’s children listed under them. It is a heraldic pedigree compiled from the family’s own report, so it is a secondary source, not a parish or probate record. It gives Robert no dates. Richard Porter’s will of 22 August 1584 calls his wife only “Jane my wief”; that “my brother Thomas Whitefielde” was her brother is an inference, not a statement in that will. No baptism, marriage or burial of Robert himself is known; his own will of 1591 is the record that names him directly.

Wadhurst or Worth

The will settles the question of place. Robert’s will of 6 December 1591, proved 16 February 1597/98 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC Lewyn 18; Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, vol. 2, p. 1345, gives an abstract), calls him “Robert Whytfeld of Worth in Sussex gent.” and leaves his son Thomas “all my copyhold lands &c. in Wadhurst”. The Visitation’s “de Wadhurst” and the 1906 Hawes genealogy’s “of Worth” (The English Ancestry of Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, p. 12) both describe him: his place was Worth, and his copyhold land lay at Wadhurst.

Two Harleian pedigrees printed by Waters (vol. 2, pp. 1352-1353) make the Robert of Wadhurst this man’s father, but they differ on his birth order. Harleian MS 1432 gives “Rob’tus Whitfield de Worth in Comit. Sussex primus filius”, the eldest son; Harleian MS 6164 gives “Robert Whitfield 2 son, living 1577”. Both are compiled pedigrees, so the father and the birth order carry that qualifier.

Two wills also tie the two men to Wadhurst. The will of 1541 of Robert Whitfield of Wadhurst, proved 2 March 1542/3 (Waters, vol. 2, p. 1344), names a “Son Robert”. This man’s own will keeps copyhold land at Wadhurst and remembers the church and poor there, so the two wills tie father and son to the same place. Neither will says that the son named in 1541 is the Robert of Worth, so that identity still rests on the pedigrees.

The Visitation of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905), pp. 96-97 (Harleian MS 1562), draws this man as a son of “Agnes d. of .... Eyles”, the second of the Wadhurst man’s two wives. The second wife is given here as Agnes Giles, whose name the pedigree spells Eyles. The will of 1541 names a wife Agnes, but it does not say which wife bore which child.

His wife and other children

Harleian MS 6164 gives his wife as “Agnes Atwood dau. of William Atwood of Kent” (Waters, vol. 2, p. 1353). The Visitation of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905), p. 97, gives her as “Agnes d. of Wm. Atwood”. Apart from her burial at Worth in 1591, she is not otherwise recorded. The will names two of his sons’ wives, Mildred and Mary. Mildred was the wife of his son Thomas. Mary is taken as the wife of his son William, the Mayfield clerk whose will of 1610 names a wife Mary (PCC Wood 22). A bargain and sale of 6 June 1580, for £590, from Nicholas Saunder of Epsom, Surrey, esquire, is made “to Robert Whitfelde of Worth gent and his son William Whitfelde” (East Sussex Record Office, AMS5813/1).

Robert Baker of Withyham, who married Joan, made his will on 24 May 1585 (PCC Brudenell 45), leaving a wife Johane and calling “my father in law Robert Whitfilde”. Waters (vol. 2, p. 1354) had inferred from the wills that Robert had a daughter Jone who married Robert Baker; the 1591 will names her directly as “my daughter Johan Baker”.

Waters, in his notes on the Whitfield wills (p. 1354), makes Thomas Whitfield of Mortlake, in Surrey, and a William Whitfield sons of Robert. On p. 1437 Waters concludes that Jane Quinby, Richard Porter’s widow, was “a daughter of Robert Whitfield, sister of Thomas Whitfield of Mortlake, and aunt of Henry Whitfield of Connecticut”, the minister^W.

Death and burial

The date of death and the burial come from Threlfall, The Ancestry of Reverend Henry Whitfield (1989), pp. 49 and 51, a compiled account. Threlfall gives the death on 9 December 1597 and quotes the Emmington register for a burial on 10 December 1597, in the chancel, where his son William was then rector. The dates rest on Threlfall’s quotation of the register. The will was proved on 16 February 1597/98, after the death, so the death precedes the proof.

The children’s marriages at Worth

The Worth register records three of the daughters’ marriages, and their copies carry the names as written. Jane’s entry gives “The xiij daie of July Richard Porter and Jane Whytffeld weare maried” (1573). A Sussex marriage extract, as cited in a later family-tree profile, gives the same day. A later compilation, Douglas Richardson’s Royal Ancestry (vol. III, p. 271), is cited for a marriage “circa 1569”, which the register does not support.

Frances’s entry gives “The xxiiij daie of September Richard Harrys and ffraunce Whitfeld weare maried” (1576). A typed copy of the same page agrees on the day. Threlfall (p. 52) gives the same date and adds that Richard Harris was dead by 1591. The will refers to “Richard Wakelyn alias Harris, late of Beedinge”, which is probably the same man, but the link is a probability.

Margaret’s entry gives “The x?j daie of November Thomas Digons Clerke and Margarett Whitfeld weare maried” (1576). The numeral is faint; it is taken here as xj, the 11th, while a typed copy gives the 17th and Threlfall the 12th. Thomas Digons is called “Clerke” in the register, that is, a clergyman.

Thomas, a lawyer of Mortlake, married Mildred Fortune Manning, daughter of Henry and Katherine Manning, at St Magnus in London on 10 January 1584/5, according to Threlfall (p. 52). Harleian MS 6164 names her “Mildred, daughter of Henry Manning of Greenwich”. The Worth register records his burial on 6 May 1629 (“The 6th of Maye Thomas Whitfeild gent was buryed”); a typed copy gives 24 May, and Threlfall gives his death as 1 May 1629. William married Mary Kempe, according to Threlfall (p. 52), and was minister at Emmington until about 1606; his 1610 will, as vicar of Mayfield, names his wife Mary.

Robert’s first wife

Threlfall (pp. 49 and 51) gives Robert an earlier wife, Ann, daughter of George and Rose Roberts of Brenchley, Kent, who died before he married Agnes Atwood. The Visitation pedigrees attribute all the children to Agnes, and Threlfall says it is not known which children were by which wife. He suggests that Joan Baker, who married Robert Baker, may have been Ann’s daughter rather than Agnes’s, because the December 1562 will of her grandfather George Roberts names her as the daughter of his daughter Anne Whitfield. That will itself has not been traced, so the question is open. The will of 1591 calls Joan “my daughter Johan Baker” and does not say which wife bore her. Robert Baker’s own will of 24 May 1585 names “George Roberts of Brenchley” among its overseers, and mentions two parcels “lately purchased” “for my father in law Robert Whitfilde” (Waters, vol. 2, p. 1345). That supports Threlfall’s suggestion that Joan was Ann’s daughter, and so a granddaughter of George Roberts; it does not state it.