♂Thomas Tylle

Thomas Tylle (died 1556) was a householder of Henlow in Bedfordshire, England, in the first half of the sixteenth century. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son William Tilly (buried 1578/79).

Family

Thomas appears to have been the son of Henry Tilly and his wife Johan. When Henry made his will on 1 September 1520, Thomas already had a family of his own: the will remembered “the children of Thomas Tilly my Sonne” and named Thomas its supervisor, the man who was to see it carried out, while his brother William, the executor, was to have the place after their mother. Thomas married Margaret, whose family is not known. Thomas and Margaret had a son, William, and a daughter, Agnes.

Death

Thomas is said to have made his will on 21 August 1556, leaving the house to William as his heir and remembering Margaret and Agnes, who by then had children of her own. The will was proved on 6 October 1556, so he died in the weeks between.

Through William, Thomas was probably the great-grandfather of John Tilley^W and Edward Tilley^W, two brothers who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. John’s daughter Elizabeth married John Howland, and Roger’s line runs through her.

Notes

The two wills

Thomas’s will (made 21 August 1556, proved 6 October 1556 in the court of the Archdeaconry of Bedford) and his father’s (Henry Tilly’s, made 1 September 1520 and proved 4 December 1520 by William Tilly as executor) are known here from Robert Leigh Ward’s transcriptions in The American Genealogist^W, volume 52 (1976), pages 198–200, as quoted on WikiTree. Henry’s will calls Johan “my wiff”, Thomas “my sonne supervisor” and William “my sonne”. The two wills sit together in Ward’s account of the Henlow Tilleys; that Henry’s son Thomas is the Thomas Tylle who died in 1556 is the reading followed here.

The children

Thomas’s will names only two children, his son William and his daughter Agnes. Henry’s will of 1520 shows that Thomas had children living by then; whether William and Agnes were among them, and whether Margaret was the mother of all of them, the records do not say. Longer lists of children and other wives for Thomas in online family trees have no source behind them. The placing of William as Thomas’s son follows Ward and rests on the will’s naming William heir to the house.