♂Thomas Perkins

Thomas Perkins (about 1525 – buried 23 March 1591/2) was a landholder of Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England, whose will of 1588 divided his houses and land among his sons and provided for his wife Alice. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Henry Perkins (1555–1609).

Family

He was most likely born in Hillmorton about 1525, some forty years before the parish register there begins, and his parents are not known. He married a wife named Alice, and they had at least seven sons: Henry, the eldest, John, William, Thomas, Edward, Luke and Isaac. A brother, William Perkins, was still living when Thomas made his will.

Will and death

Calling himself Thomas Perkyns the elder, of Hilmorton, he made his will on 15 September 1588. He asked to be buried in the parish church or churchyard, and gave 10s. to the poor of Hillmorton and 6d. to every godchild. His son John received a house in Hillmorton lately held by Thomas Bassett, with an orchard, a close and a half-yard of arable land, half a virgate^W, with its meadow, pasture and common rights; if John’s male line failed it was to pass to Edward, and then to Luke. Henry, the eldest son, had all the rest of the houses and land and was named sole executor. William and Thomas were left 10s. each, and Edward, Luke and Isaac £40 each, payable four, six and ten years after their father’s death.

To Alice, “now my wife,” he left all the household stuff and the furniture of the parlour or chamber where they had slept, except one coffer holding his evidences, the deeds to his land, and the use of that chamber for as long as she remained his widow. To every one of his sons’ children he left a ewe and a lamb, and a ewe and a lamb each to his brother William and to “his brother Kebble’s wife”, with a lamb for Thomas Kebble.

Thomas Perkins was buried at Hillmorton on 23 March 1591/2^W. Three men valued his goods on 29 March at £192 10s., and the will was proved at Lichfield on 11 May 1592. An Alice Perkyns buried at Hillmorton on 20 August 1613 was probably his widow.

Notes

Sources and dates

Every date here comes from Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Dudley Wildes, 1759–1820, of Topsfield, Massachusetts (1959), chapter “Perkins, of Topsfield”, which abstracts the Hillmorton parish register and the probate records of the Lichfield registry. The register begins in 1564, so the birth year is Davis’s estimate: “presumably born in Hillmorton about 1525”. The quoted phrases of the will are as Davis abstracts it. The burial falls before 25 March, when the year then began, so it carries a double year.

His wife

The will names his wife only as Alice. Because it leaves a legacy to “his brother Kebble’s wife”, Davis suggests she may have been Alice Kebble, but he adds that there are other possibilities, and four Kebble wills of the time and place do not identify her. A William Kebbell was one of the witnesses to the will.

Earlier generations

Davis carries the family two generations above Thomas Perkins, through a Henry Perkins of Hillmorton whose will was proved in 1546, but marks the link to Henry with a question mark: that will is missing, and two abstracts of its probate disagree on whether a son Thomas is mentioned. It is not followed here.