♂Thomas Whitcomb

Thomas Whitcomb (died 1618) was a townsman of Taunton in Somerset, England, who held a house and land just outside the town’s East Gate. He married Joanna Pope, a merchant’s daughter, about March 1584/5, and her father’s grant of land to him before the wedding was made on terms that left the grant void if Whitcomb died before he married her. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Whitcomb (died 1662).

Marriage

The arrangement was entered in the court of the manor of Taunton Late Priory, the former lands of Taunton Priory^W that lay on the northeast side of the old borough. On 18 March 1584/5 Thomas Pope senior, a merchant of Taunton, granted Thomas four feet of land in the north part of the garden of a tenement in the tithing^W of Extra Portam, outside the East Gate, with the rest of the tenement to follow. His daughter Joanna was to hold it for life if she and Thomas both outlived him. An earlier surrender, dated 3 February 1584/5, put another tenement and three acres in the same tithing to Thomas’s use, on condition that Pope’s heirs paid him £100 within a year of Pope’s death, the money to be handed over at the house of Thomas Davidge in Taunton. On 22 October 1589 Thomas surrendered that holding to the use of his brother, John Whetcombe.

Taunton

After Thomas Pope senior’s death the court admitted Thomas Whitcomb to the whole tenement in Extra Portam, where Roger Stibbes was living. Thomas also came to hold two and a half acres of meadow called Waterslade in the tithing of Holway, which had been his father-in-law’s.

Death

Thomas was buried at the church of St James in Taunton on 20 August 1618. Joanna, as his widow, took up the Extra Portam tenement at the court of 1 October 1618, entered again on 23 September 1619, and in September 1619 the Holway court gave her the Waterslade meadow, which had come into the lord’s hands by his death. She lived almost eleven years more, and before her death she settled the tenement on their son John.

The family

Joanna’s will of 1628/9 names four sons, John, Robert, Thomas and Edmund, and a daughter, Dorothy. Another daughter, Christian, was buried at St James on 29 June 1619, ten months after her father. In September 1629 Robert was brought before the bishop’s court for holding a fast or conventicle^W in his chamber on 31 July, a gathering that ran from the morning sermon until about six in the evening; he answered that he and others “did theare doe exercises of religion amongest themselves contrarie to the lawes of this realme.” Dorothy, the executrix of her mother’s will, died the same month: an inventory of Dorothy’s own goods was sworn on 20 July 1629, three days after her mother’s burial.

Notes

Sources

His life rests on the rolls of the manor courts of Taunton Late Priory and Taunton Deane (Somerset Archives, series DD/SP) and on the registers of the two Taunton parishes, abstracted by Robin Bush in Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John 1630, volume 26 (1997), pages 61 to 71. The rolls spell the name Whetcombe and Whitcombe, and the burial register writes “Thomas Wheatcom’”. Bush dates the marriage “c. Mar. 1584/5”. The tenement held “in which Roger Stibbes now lives” is entered with the court business of 2 March 1603/4, after Thomas Pope senior’s death. The rolls spell the bride’s name Johanna.

His son John

The court roll of 16 September 1630 has John Whetcombe taking the tenement “formerly of Thomas Pope and late of Thomas Whetcombe, by grant of Johanna Whetcombe, widow, his mother”. Joanna was unmarried when the grant of March 1584/5 was made, and Thomas was her only husband, so John was Thomas’s son. On this evidence Bush concluded that John’s parents “were Thomas Whetcombe & Johanna Pope”.

His burial date

Bush’s extract of the St James burials gives 20 August 1618. His summary of the family gives “30 Aug. 1619”, but the court entry of 1 October 1618 already calls Joanna his widow, and Christian was buried in June 1619 as the daughter of “the widow Wheatcom’”.

His birth and family

Online trees give his birth as 5 January 1544 at Colyton in Devon and name his father as Robert Whetcombe; Bush gives no birth date and leaves the father unnamed.

Dorothy

A court entry of 9 March 1629/30 records Dorothy taking up the Waterslade meadow by her mother’s grant, made years earlier and reserving the meadow to Joanna for life. Bush has Dorothy dying unmarried about July 1629, which rests on the inventory sworn that month.