♂William Cooke

William Cooke (died 1615) was a Puritan clergyman, a fellow of Magdalen College at Oxford and then, from 1596 until his death, vicar preacher of Crediton, in Devon. At Oxford he was one of twelve fellows who petitioned against the Queen’s own choice of a president for the college, and he was named among those who had been made ministers without subscribing to the Book of Common Prayer. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Cooke.

Oxford

William is said to have been born in Yorkshire, and at Magdalen he held a chaplain’s fellowship founded for men from Royston and Rothwell, in Yorkshire. He took his B.A. there on 3 November 1582 and his M.A. on 22 July 1587. Twice the college punished him. In November 1583 he lost his college income for two weeks for slandering the vice-president, James Bisse, and in January 1592 he and the Dean of Divinity were both stripped of their commons for quarreling and “using hurtful words”.

He sided with the Puritan party in the college. When Queen Elizabeth commanded the fellows to elect Nicholas Bond^W, one of her chaplains, as president, Cooke was one of twelve who petitioned the Archbishop of Canterbury for the Puritans’ own man, Ralph Smith. The Queen quashed the election in April 1589 and the fellows gave way. From 1589 to 1595 he was paid as the college’s lecturer in Hebrew, and in October 1591 he was given a year’s leave to preach before the Council of Wales^W, only to have it recalled on 27 October; the reason does not appear.

Vicar of Crediton

On 20 September 1595 the Twelve Governors, the corporation set up under a charter of 1547 to run the church of the Holy Cross at Crediton, chose “Mr William Cooke fellowe of Magdalyn Colledge” to succeed Peter Duncan as their vicar preacher. He was admitted on 5 March 1596. Because the vicar’s stipend was “vearie small”, the governors granted him that December a life annuity of £30 for his “hospitalitie and howse kepinge”, so long as he lived among them.

William Cooke and Martha White were married at Stockton, in Wiltshire, on 27 April 1597. She was a daughter of John White of Stanton St. John, in Oxfordshire, and the rector of Stockton, John Terry, was the husband of her sister Mary. Since fellows of the college could not be married, William resigned his fellowship in 1598.

The vicarage was thatched with reed and was always in need of repair. In 1603 he was himself made one of the Twelve Governors. In 1605 they gave him a share of £10 towards the clerical dress the new canons required, and in 1606 a benevolence of 200 marks. By the time he made his will he had bought the vicarage house from Sir Robert Chichester, from whom the governors had rented it, probably in 1612.

William and Martha had seven children, all apparently born at Crediton: four daughters, Elizabeth, Susanna, Mary and Martha, and three sons. Their first son, Nathaniel, was buried in 1603, a second Nathaniel was baptized on the same day as Susanna, and Samuel seems to have died young.

Death and will

William made his will on 7 February 1614/5, as “Pastor there and Precher of the worde of God”. He left £50 apiece to his son Nathaniel and his daughters Elizabeth, Susanna, Mary and Martha. Each daughter was to forfeit her share if she married “contrary to her mothers likinge” before the age of twenty-one. Nathaniel was to have his books, and each daughter a book or a Bible. Martha was made sole executrix, charged with the children’s education, and left the house and the £100 of her marriage portion that her father still held. His overseers were his brother-in-law John White^W, “preacher of Gods word at Dorchester”, and his “olde friend Mr Wilton schoolmaster of Credyton”.

He died early in 1615. His successor was instituted on 4 April, and on 11 April the governors filled his place as “our late vycar preacher decessed”. The will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 26 June 1615.

Notes

Sources

Nearly everything known about him comes from Harold F. Porter, Jr., “Mr. William Cooke, Father-in-Law of Mr. William Walton of Marblehead, Massachusetts,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 142 (1988): 361-368. Porter prints the Stockton register entry of the marriage (“Guilielmus Cooke cler. et Martha White filia Joh’is White de Stanton St. Joh’is”), the Twelve Governors’ minutes and accounts from the Chanter collection at the Devon Record Office, the Crediton institution register, and the will. The Oxford years are from Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses and Macray’s Register of the Members of Magdalen College. Macray is the source for the Yorkshire birth, which Porter could not trace further.

Porter concludes from the governors’ minutes and accounts that he was “a moderate Puritan well settled in a congenial parish”. The passage naming him among those “made ministers” who “have not subscribed” comes from a reply to a tract put out by the Puritan fellows during the dispute over the presidency. The will calls the house “lands I lately purchased of Sir Robert Chichester knight”; the year 1612 is Porter’s inference from the rent for that year, paid half to Sir Robert and half to Cooke.

The children

The Crediton register for 1596-1615 is in very bad condition, and the will is the only source for the names of several of the children. Elizabeth’s birth about 1602 and Mary’s baptism in July 1611 are Porter’s estimates. Another index gives Susanna’s baptism as 20 January 1606/7, not 18 June 1609. Porter gives the youngest’s baptism as 7 February 1614, the same day and month as the will.

“Of Stratton”

Frances Rose-Troup, in John White the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930), first identified his daughter Elizabeth as the daughter of “William Cooke of Stratton”. Porter found the Stockton marriage after the words “of Stratton” had led him down several false trails. He also showed that the William Cooke baptized at Dorchester in 1609, whom Rose-Troup took for a son of this couple, belonged to another William Cooke and his wife Elizabeth Dowritche.