♂Thomas Pope

Thomas Pope (died by 1602) was a property holder of Taunton in Somerset, England, who lived in a house just outside the town’s East Gate. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Joanna Pope (1560–1629). When Joanna was to marry Thomas Whitcomb in 1585, her father granted land to Whitcomb on terms that made the grant void if Whitcomb died before he married her.

Taunton

Thomas Pope first appears in the Taunton manor court rolls in September 1557, when he was licensed to let a tenement with a garden for twenty years in the tithing of Extra Portam, the ground outside the East Gate that belonged to the manor of the former Taunton Priory^W. Over the next forty years he held cottages, houses, meadow and other land there and in the tithing of Holway, and he granted several pieces of it to his son John, who held them with his wife Maria.

He is said to have been a merchant, and he was probably the Thomas Pope the elder who in May 1592, with Thomas Pope the younger and three others, was granted a patent to trade with Guinea, a third of the profits to be kept by the partners, a third to go to Queen Elizabeth and a third to the King of Portugal.

The rolls name two wives. In September 1584 his wife was Johanna, whose son William Harvye made over two cottages in Canon Street to her for her life. By March 1588 he was married to Anne, to whom he granted the house he lived in, a burgage^W with a garden in Extra Portam, to hold for her life if she outlived him. Neither woman is named as Joanna’s mother.

Joanna’s marriage

On 18 March 1584/5 Thomas Pope granted Thomas Whitcomb (written Whetcombe in the rolls) four feet of land at the north end of the garden of a tenement in Extra Portam, “to attract the rest of the tenement”, on condition that Joanna should hold it for life if she and Whitcomb outlived her father. A second arrangement, first made on 3 February 1584/5 and enrolled in 1590, surrendered a tenement and three acres in Extra Portam to Whitcomb’s use, to hold on condition that Thomas Pope’s heirs pay him £100 within a year of Thomas Pope’s death, the money to be paid at the house of Thomas Davidge in Taunton.

The marriage took place, and in September 1619, after Whitcomb’s death, Joanna as his widow took up two and a half acres of meadow at Waterslade in Holway that had once been her father’s. Their son John Whitcomb later settled in New England.

The almshouse

Thomas Pope had died by 19 October 1602, when the rolls cite “the will of Thomas Pope senior”. By that will a yearly payment of eight shillings went to the almshouse in Taunton called the Bellhowse, charged on meadow in Holway that passed to his son John and then to his grandson Thomas. He is said to have founded the almshouse himself in 1590. It stood at the corner of East Street and Silver Street, was badly damaged in the sieges of Taunton^W during the Civil War, was restored afterward and was finally pulled down in 1833.

Notes

Sources

His life rests on the Taunton manor court rolls (Somerset Archives, series DD/SP), abstracted by Robin Bush in Burton W. Spear, Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630, volume 26, pages 61 to 70. The grant of 18 March 1584/5 names “Johanna daughter of the said Thomas Pope”, which is what makes him Joanna’s father. Bush calls him “Thomas Pope of Taunton, merchant” (page 69). The 1592 Guinea patent (Patent Roll, 34 Elizabeth I) and the founding of the almshouse in 1590 come from Bush’s notes on page 68, where both are given to “Thomas Pope the elder”; the rolls tie the Bellhowse to the will of Thomas Pope senior, which supports taking the elder and the senior as the same man. Bush also lists a charge of false making of cloth brought against “Thomas Pope of Taunton” in 1579; with a Thomas Pope the younger also in Taunton, it is not clear which man that was.

Dates

No record gives his birth. The years 1530 for his birth and 1602 for his death at Taunton come from an online tree. The rolls first name him in September 1557, and by 19 October 1602 they cite his will, so he had died by then.

His father

Bush carries Joanna’s ancestry back to her grandfather, John Pope of Taunton, merchant, whose will, dated 6 November 1549 and proved 7 February 1549/50, names his sons Lewes, John and Thomas and his wife Emm.