The Hollyman English Ancestry Quest 2019, Part 2

By Glenn N. Holliman

Our First Stop – St. Peter de Merton

Bedford, Bedfordshire

May 18, 2019

We were on an adventure moving back in time.  There were 29 or so of us on that chilly, rainy morning. Our bus met us at 9:15 am on Saturday morning, May 18^th in Moreton in Marsh and took us across beautiful countryside, fields green and yellow flowering horse chestnut trees in bloom and through little villages. There was a bit of rain but it did not discourage our high spirits.

We Hollimans and spouses gathered in Bedford at the spot where 410 years earlier my generation’s 8^th great grandparents, Thomas and Helena Poynard Holliman, were married.  Naturally this called for another group photograph.  This couple were the parents of Christopher Hollyman, our forefather who migrated to Jamestown, Virginia in 1650.

Above the entrance to St. Peter de Merton in Bedford, Bedfordshire. Jim Holliman of Marion Junction, Alabama and Becky Holliman Payne, Cookeville, Tennessee in the picture between the gates.

Genealogist Anne Holmes had arranged our first stop at St. Peters de Merton, a 10^th century church where we received hot tea, biscuits and a history of the parish by one of the lovely ladies who greeted us.

It was here we were transported back in time to 1609, the year and place where my generation’s 8^th great grandparents were married. 

Below the nave of St. Peter Church in Bedford, a parish over 1,000 years old!  Texans Marcia Holliman, Rob Fenske and Mary Holliman Fenske, center, and right, Alice Holliman Murphy take pictures.

Great changes occurred in that first decade of the 17^th Century. 

Queen Elizabeth, perhaps England’s greatest monarch, died in 1603 replaced by James VI of Scotland, James I as he became known in England.  His mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, had lost her head several decades earlier after an attempt to replace Good Queen Bess on the throne. Dangerous business being a monarch in those times.

At the time of the marriage of Thomas and Helena, Jamestown, Virginia struggled to survive, an outpost for the London Company to which Christopher and Judith Hollyman would find a safe harbor 40 or so years later.

The new King James struggled to keep the various religious factions of England and Scotland from harming each other.  A sect of pious Protestants demanded less liturgy and more ‘puritanism’ in the nascent Church of England.  Roman Catholic terrorists led by Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the House of Commons.  Their gunpowder plot failed, and persecution of Catholics was renewed.

   

Guy Fawkes pictured.  To this day the English celebrate this would be tragedy with massive bonfires all over England on November 5th.

On the plus side, the glorious King James Version of the Bible was transcribed at the same time Shakespeare wrote some of his most outstanding plays.  It can be argued these two events were the epitome of English literature, not equaled since.

What do we know of this great grandmother, Helena? 

Not very much.  It was expected that the bride’s church would be chosen for the ceremony, and it did occur at St. Peter because such is recorded in the parish register.  Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chancellor decreed in the 1530s (before he too lost his head) that baptisms, marriages and funerals were to be documented, for which genealogists have been ever grateful.

Foreground, Rob Fenske and Dr. Jim Holliman inspect the chancery where Thomas and Helena Poynard Hollyman were married.

Genealogist Anne Holmes cannot find the name Poynard in other registers in Bedford, a town then of 2,000 souls.  She did find a will dated decades before the marriage by a Thomas Poynard of Barkway in 1563, perhaps a document of our 10^th or 11^th great Poynard grandfather?   We may never know.

We do know that Helena died in 1653 and is buried outside St. Mary’s Church on the south side of the Ouse River in Bedford.  Probably she was in her early 60s, and Thomas, whose death date is not known, evidently passed away before her.

And of course, of her eight living children, two had left the family forever, migrating in 1650 to Virginia, never to return to a mother’s embrace.

We thank the good ladies of St Peter de Merton for their kind hospitality, hot tea and sharing of the history of this famous church.

Next blog, we visit the parish where Thomas and Helena had their many children baptized.