♂William Tilly

William Tilly (buried 21 January 1578/79) was a husbandman^W of Henlow in Bedfordshire, England, where the parish register entered him at his burial as “Wm TYLLYE, husbdn.”. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Robert Tilley (died 1612/13).

Family

William appears to have been the son of Thomas Tylle and his wife Margaret. Thomas made his will on 21 August 1556, and when it was proved that October it left the house to William as his heir. William Tilly married Agnes, and they had a son, Robert, and two daughters, Mary and Alice. Both daughters were married before their father died: Alice to William Sheffield, and Mary most likely to William Warde, a tailor, and both households had children baptized at Henlow in the 1570s.

Death

William made his will on 1 January 1578/79^W. He is said to have remembered his son Robert and Robert’s three children, his daughter Mary, his sons-in-law William Warde and William Sheffield, the Sheffield children, and a wider circle that included Richard Huckle and his children. He was buried at Henlow on 21 January, and the will was proved a week later. Agnes outlived him by three years.

Robert’s three children at that date were John, Rose and George, all baptized at Henlow between 1571 and 1577. Through Robert, William was probably the grandfather of John Tilley^W and Edward Tilley^W, two brothers who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. John was seven when his grandfather died; Edward was baptized in 1588, nine years later. Both brothers died in the first sickness at Plymouth. John’s daughter Elizabeth survived and married John Howland, and Roger’s line runs through her.

Notes

Where the family is known from

The burials of William and Agnes are entered in the parish register of Henlow, printed by F. G. Emmison in Bedfordshire Parish Registers, volume 26. The family’s history at Henlow, and its link to the two Mayflower brothers, was worked out by Robert Leigh Ward in a study published in The American Genealogist^W in 1976 (volume 52, pages 198–208). Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins follows Ward, giving John and Edward as sons of Robert and Elizabeth Tilley.

The wills

The wills of William (made 1 January 1578/79, proved 28 January, in the records of the Archdeaconry of Bedford), of Agnes (1582) and of Thomas Tylle (made 21 August 1556, proved 6 October 1556) are known here from Ward’s transcriptions, as quoted on WikiTree. The placing of Robert as William’s son rests on William’s will and on Ward’s pages 202–203; the parish register itself does not name Robert’s parents.

The daughters

William’s will names “Mary my daughter” and two sons-in-law, William Warde and William Sheffield; Agnes’s will of 1582 names “Willyam Sheffeilde my sonne in lawe and Alice his wife”, which settles Alice. That Mary was the wife of William Warde is an inference: William Warde, a tailor, was buried at Henlow on 6 February 1578/79, and by 1582 Agnes was calling Thomas Younge her son-in-law. The printed Henlow register has no Tilly marriage between 1558 and 1577 and no Tilly baptism between 1559 and 1570, so the children were born, and the daughters married, before those years or in another parish.