♂Thomas Couchman

Thomas Couchman (about 1538 – buried 14 February 1585/6) was a husbandman^W of Rolvenden, in Kent, England, who settled there from Hawkhurst about 1566, married Elynour Hubbard in 1568, and died at about forty-seven with three children still under age. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Robert Cushman (1578–1625). A study of the family published in 1914 identified that son, “in all probability”, with Robert Cushman^W, the Pilgrims’ agent in England.

Rolvenden

He was born about 1538 and lived in the parish of Hawkhurst before he moved to Rolvenden, about 1566. Both facts come from a deposition he gave at Canterbury on 25 September 1578, when he was forty and had lived at Rolvenden for twelve years; the surviving abstract does not say what the case was about. On 18 July 1568, at about thirty, he married Elynour Hubbard at Rolvenden. The register calls her a maid, so it was her first marriage.

The couple had at least six children. Alys, baptized in April 1572, was buried two years later; Sylvester, a daughter, was baptized in October 1574 and Robert in February 1577/8; Margaret, baptized in March 1582, was buried before she was two, and Henry, baptized in July 1584, was buried the following April. The sixth, Richard, has no baptism among the family’s entries in the Rolvenden register, but his father’s will calls Robert the “younger son”, so Richard was the elder of the two boys.

His will

Ten months after burying his youngest son, Thomas made his will, on 10 February 1585/6, and he was buried four days later, entered in the register as a householder. He asked to be buried in Rolvenden churchyard and left two shillings to the poor men’s box. His sons Richard and “my younger son Robarte” were each to have £10 at twenty-one, and his daughter Sylvester £6 13s. 4d. at twenty or on her marriage; the share of any child who died under age was to pass to the others. Five godchildren were remembered, one with twelve pence and four with a sheep apiece. The will ends “Signum Thome Couchman”, his mark rather than a signature.

He made his wife Ellen executrix and residuary legatee, named Robert Gibbon overseer, and provided for her marrying again: if she took a new husband before the children had their portions, he was to give Gibbon security for the money, and if he would not, Ellen was to pay the portions over to Gibbon, who would lay them out for the children until they came of age. Ellen proved the will on 12 May 1586, when Robert was eight and Sylvester eleven. She did marry again, in October 1587.

Notes

His birth year rests on the age he gave in 1578. The 1914 study found no Cushmans in the early Hawkhurst registers or among the Hawkhurst testators, and his parents are not known.

A will of 2 March 1523/4 shows John Crocheman of Rolvenden leaving the residue of his estate to his brother Thomas Crocheman. The 1914 study thought that Thomas “probably father or grandfather” of Thomas Couchman, but it cites nothing that connects them, and he is not taken here as Thomas’s father.

The clerks spelled the surname many ways: Cuchiman, Cutchman, Cutchiman, Cuchman and Cowchman in the Rolvenden register, Couchman in the will. His son Robert was married at Canterbury in 1606 as Cushman.

His son Robert

Their son Robert was baptized at Rolvenden on 9 February 1577/8. A study of the family published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1914, which printed the Rolvenden register entries and the family’s wills, judged that he was “in all probability” the Robert Cushman who became the agent of the Leiden Pilgrims in England. The study cites no record that names the agent’s parents. What joins the two is the name and the county: the agent came to Leiden from Canterbury, in Kent, where he had been admitted a freeman in 1605 as “Robert Couchman”. Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins, a reference work on the first New England settlers, accepts the identification and gives the Rolvenden baptism as the agent’s.