When We Were English, Part LII

by Glenn N. Holliman

The Holymans during the Tudor Era....

Below is a family tree of the Cuddington, Buckinghamshire Holymans from John (d 1521) to Thomas (d 1558) and their siblings.  This important document was prepared by English professional genealogist Anne Holmes with information gathered from the original wills in the Buckinghamshire Archives in Aylesbury.  Click twice on the tree and it should enlarge.

In previous posts we have analysed the estates of John Holyman and his son, John Holyman, both landed farmers who, along with other branches of the family in the village of Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, were leading their generations to higher social and economic status.

These fathers and sons lived in a momentous period of English history during the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547), Edward VI (1547-1553) and Mary (1553-1558).  The Protestant Reformation and Henry's love life coincided to produce a revolution in the Roman Catholic Church in England.  The boy king Edward VI, all of nine years old, and his protectors, embraced the revised Christianity of Protestant Anglicanism, what is now known as the Church of England.  When his young life ended, his half sister, devout Roman Catholic Mary, daughter of Henry and Queen Catherine, attempted a Counter-Reformation. 

 

The Holyman family of Cuddington had as a member, The Rt. Rev. John Holyman, a conservative Roman Catholic, appointed Bishop of Bristol in 1554 by Mary Tudor's Cardinal Pole, and who served on the commission that found the discredited Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cramner, guilty of heresy.  Cramner, author of the famous Book of Common Prayer, was burned at the stake in Oxford.  Likewise, our relative, the fanatic Bishop John Holyman, oversaw the immolation for five Protestants during his time in Bristol before both he and Queen Mary died in 1558 of natural causes.

 

In early posts I have written extensively on Bishop John Holyman and his life.  As for now, let us begin an examination of the life of Thomas Holyman who died in the same year as his probable cousin or uncle, the ecclesiastical John, and the Tudor Queen known as 'Bloody Mary'.  Double click on the translation and it should enlarge.

 

  

Line 3 - Thomas Holyman dated his will as the fifth and sixth year of the reigns of King Phillip and Queen Mary Tudor.  This was a very controversial marriage in which the 38 year old Queen married the 27 year old Roman Catholic Spanish Prince Phillip, son of Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. 

 

Mary was doomed to disappointment as her husband found reasons to spend his time in the Spanish Netherlands rather than with her.  She endured a false pregnancy and died early, possibly of uterine cancer.  Most English leaders breathed a sigh of relief when her 25 year old Protestant sister, Elizabeth, succeeded her.  Phillip ceased to be King of England.

 

Ironically Elizabeth's brother-in-law, later King Philip II of Spain, sent his Armada to subdue Protestant England in 1588.  As every English school child knows, the invasion ended in a massive Spanish failure.  A soldier of Queen Elizabeth, who also died that year of 1588, a member of the Queen's Guard, was one of Thomas Holyman's sons - Christopher Holyman, whom I believe to be my 9th great grandfather!  As far as we know, Christopher died of natural causes and not in the war.

 

Line 4 - Thomas described himself as a yeoman, an upgrade socially and economically from the title 'husbandman' that his father and grandfather used to describe their status in life.

 

Lines 6 and 7 - This was a Roman Catholic person's Will.  Note the gifts to the altar of Mary, Mother of Jesus.  The next generation would see a reversion to Protestantism by most English persons, who must have felt religiously whip lashed  by their Tudor monarchs!

 

Lines 7 and 8 - Thomas Holyman asked to be buried in the church, not in the church yard as did his father and grandfather.  Only persons of status were buried under the physical nave or sanctuary.  So as Thomas was moving physically down to this grave, his surviving family was moving up socially!  Unfortunately for us, there is no memorial stone surviving for Thomas.

 

Above, yours truly discusses with family historian Peter Smith and his wife, Maureen, that the Holyman families for generations were baptized in this 13th Century font which rests in a side chapel of St. Nicholas Parish in Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, England.  Thomas Holyman's remains may rest under the floor of this church. November 2012 photograph

 





There are countless books on the Tudor monarchs. Some that I have been utilizing for these articles include Carolly Erickson's The First Elizabeth (1983) and Bloody Mary (1978), Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Boy King, Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation, Linda Porter's The First Queen of England, The Myth of Bloody Mary (2007) and Alison Weir's Henry VIII, King and Court.

ut your family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at of some of the more difficult to Yes, more on our Thomas Holyman and his family's social rise in the next post....


Have questions about Holliman family history? You are invited to join the Hollyman Email List at Hollyman-Subscribe@yahoogroups.com and the Hollyman Family Facebook Page located on Facebook at "Hollyman Family". Post your questions and perhaps one of the dozens Holyman cousins on the list will have an answer. For more information contact Tina Peddie at desabla1@yahoo.com, the list and Facebook manager for Hollyman (and all our various spellings!).

 Since early 2010, I have been publishing research and stories on the broad spectrum of Holliman (Holyman) family history at http://hollimanfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/ . For stories on my more immediate family since the early 20th Century, I have been posting articles since early 2011 at http://ulyssholliman.blogspot.com/ .

 
Let's save the past for the future! If you have photographs, letters, memorabilia or research you wish to share, please contact me directly at glennhistory@gmail.com. Several of us have an on-going program of scanning and preserving Holyman and related family records. Don't just let family's genealogical work or photographs languish unread and deteriorating in an attic. Write us please and tell us of your items. Thanks to the Internet, we are able to scan, upload to the web (with your permission) and return the materials to you. - GNH

 

When We Were English, Part XIL

by Glenn N. Holliman

Return to England, Part 3, The John Holyman Will of 1533

In my last post, we examined the will of the person I believe to be my generation's 12th great grandfather, John Holyman of Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, England.  With this article, we begin a review of his elder son, my very probable 11th great grandfather, John Holyman's will.  Here is a portion of the 1533 will, with other sections to follow in my next articles.

Each line of the will is numbered and the explanations refer to the numbered lines.  Genealogist Anne Holmes of Buckinghamshire is due the credit for her transcription and interpretations of a will almost 500 years old! (Although any errors are mine alone.)

This will is markedly different from John's father's which we examined in my last post.  The Reformation is sweeping Europe and is engulfing England.  King Henry VIII has fallen in love with Anne Bolyen and in early 1533 married her, she several months pregnant with a child who would become Queen Elizabeth I.

The Pope had refused Henry a divorce from his still living first wife, Catherine of Spain and mother of Mary Tudor.  When a conservative Archbishop of Canterbury died, Henry appointed Thomas Cramner, a supporter of the growing Protestant tide.  Cramner hastily granted Henry his divorce and conducted the rites of marriage for Henry and Anne.

Into this gathering maelstrom which divided the clergy and laity of England, strode a monk, Brother John Holyman of Cuddington, baptised in 1495 at the same font from which his probable uncle and cousin, the John Holymans, d 1521 and d 1533, had been sprinkled with holy water.  As I have written earlier Brother John Holyman boldly stood at St. Paul's Cross in London and on several occasions decried the divorce, the remarriage and the growing radicalism of many English concerning their faith.

With this background of the early 1530s, we can better understand the will of John Holyman of 1533.  The first 20% is a homage to the Roman Catholic Church.  The will of John's son Thomas Holyman in 1558 will read very much differently, much more Protestant.  Again my thanks to genealogist Anne Holmes for this transcription taken from the original will in the Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire archives.

Line 1 - John identifies himself as a husbandman, a term to describe a free tenant farmer or small landowner.  A yeoman farmer, higher up in social status, would have had more acreage than a husbandman.  As the Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (1996) states the words yeoman and husbandman were gradually replaced in the 18th and 19th centuries in England by 'farmer'.  Interesting that this John describes himself as a husbandman, as the Holymans rose economically and socially in the 1500s.

Line 6 -  He directs, as did his father, to be buried in the St. Nicolas church yard, Cuddington.

Line 8 - He leaves a bequest to the Diocese of Lincoln cathedral.

Lines 9 -18 - John Holyman leaves bequests, bushels of malt barley, for the holy lights on the High Altar and for the altars of St. Mary, St. Margaret, St. Nicolas, St. Christopher, our Lady of Bethlehem, St. Antony, St. Laurence, our Lady of Peter's light and St. Erasmus or Elmo.  This tells us the parish is still Roman Catholic with numerous altars and chapels for various saints.  In 1534, Henry VIII will have himself proclaimed the head of the English Church replacing the Roman Catholic pope. English churches will soon change.

It is not unusual to find in English parishes even today the posting of legacies to the local church.  This one in Cuddington, Buckinghamsire recognizes one Nicholas Almond for his bequests in his will.  However, no sign hangs for John Holyman whose bequests were made when the parish was Roman Catholic and not Anglican. Photograph November 2012.

Line 19 - Bells remain to this date in St. Nicolas in Cuddington.

Line 20 - He leaves funds for the purchase of a pair of vestments or cope, another indication of John's support of the Roman faith, then under growing criticism in an England in political turmoil due to Henry VIII's 'Great Matter' - the divorce of Queen Catherine and remarriage to Anne Bolyen. 

His cousin, nephew or in-law, Brother John Holyman, later Roman Catholic Bishop of Bristol, would have approved mightily of this will! 

Next post, more of John Holyman's will of 1533....