Jacob Blakeway
Encyclopedia
Background
Jacob Blakeway was born in July 1583 and baptised at Stanton Long in Corvedale, ShropshireShropshire
Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...
. His father was a yeoman
Yeoman
Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work"...
, and farmed approximately thirty acres of land as a leaseholder, though it is possible that the Blakeways held other land. Blakeway was, and is, a common name in Shropshire; the original Blakeways may have come from a settlement near Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge
Wenlock Edge is a limestone escarpment near Much Wenlock, Shropshire, England. It is long and runs from South West to North East between Craven Arms and Much Wenlock. It is roughly 330 metres high...
. A trackway called Blakeway Hollow leads out of Much Wenlock
Much Wenlock
Much Wenlock, earlier known as Wenlock, is a small town in central Shropshire, England. It is situated on the A458 road between Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth. Nearby, to the northeast, is the Ironbridge Gorge, and the new town of Telford...
, and drops over the Edge to Apedale, where there is still a Blakeway Farm and Blakeway Cottage.
Scandal
In 1616 Jacob Blakeway was accused of adultery with Katherine MoreKatherine More
Katherine More was the centre of a seventeenth century controversy in England.Katherine was the youngest daughter of an ancient Shropshire family...
, the wife of a local landowner. The affair was long standing and flagrant. The landowner, Samuel More
Samuel More
Samuel More was at the centre of two separate controversies in seventeenth century England.- The Mayflower controversy :Samuel More married his cousin Katherine More at Shipton in Corvedale on February 4, 1610 . Katherine’s father, Jasper More, was master of Larden, a 1000-acre estate between Much...
, repudiated the four children from the marriage, and removed them from Larden Hall, the family home. In a later statement, Samuel More wrote that the reason was the ‘apparent likeness & resemblance … to Jacob Blakeway’. The removal seems to have occurred in late April or May 1616, because the youngest child had only just been baptised, on April 16 at Shipton.
Jacob and Katherine did not deny the affair. On the contrary, they claimed a pre-contract, a formal betrothal prior to the marriage with Samuel. If this could have been proved, the couple would have had a formidable case. The law at the time recognised a betrothal as a contract to marry, even if there had been no religious ceremony. Two witness statements were all that were required, but the likely witnesses to Jacob amd Katherine's betrothal were all dead.
Pursued through the Courts
After the children were removed from Larden Hall, Jacob Blakeway faced further action. According to Samuel More’s account, Jacob was cited before the ‘high commission court and Council of the Marches’, but there is no record of his appearing before either court. In March 1617 Jacob obtained a royal pardon to “remit, condone, release and pardon all and singular charges of adultery or fornication with a certain Katherine Moore, wife of Samuel Moore of Larden”. The pardon effectively scuppered any possibility of bringing Jacob to court for adultery, which possibly explains why there is no record of such a case in the archives (or at least no catalogued record).Samuel’s testimony states that Jacob and Katherine continued to live at Larden during this period (1616–1618) and the next action against Jacob was an accusation of trespass
Trespass
Trespass is an area of tort law broadly divided into three groups: trespass to the person, trespass to chattels and trespass to land.Trespass to the person, historically involved six separate trespasses: threats, assault, battery, wounding, mayhem, and maiming...
. Samuel More’s account states that Jacob was brought before Mr Justice Warburton in the 1618 Lent assizes, and that Samuel was awarded damaged of £400. But there are several problems with this account.
- There is no record of this case; in fact there are no records of the Oxford court circuit (which included Shropshire) for this period, possibly because they were lost during the civil warEnglish Civil WarThe English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
. - Trespass is a civil offence, where the assizes normally dealt with criminal acts.
- Peter WarburtonPeter WarburtonColonel Peter Egerton Warburton CMG was an English explorer who made one particularly daring expedition from Adelaide to cross the centre of Australia to the coast of Western Australia via Alice Springs in 1872.The younger brother of Rowland Egerton-Warburton, Warburton was educated at home and...
(1540–1621) was a judge at the Court of Common PleasCourt of Common PleasCourt of Common Pleas may refer to several different courts:England and Wales and Ireland:* Court of Common Pleas * Court of Common Pleas...
– which did hear civil cases. Warburton was Cheshire born and may have also been a circuit judge - though it seems unlikely.
Samuel goes on to say that Jacob appealed to the Kings Bench, but that the judgement was confirmed, whereupon Jacob “to prevent execution fledd”. Similar problems arise with this additional detail.
- Prisoners could appeal from the assize courts to the Kings Bench, but the swift and often summary justice handed out by the assize courts made such appeals problematic.
- To flee from court in these circumstances would have put Jacob beyond the law. He would have become a fugitiveFugitiveA fugitive is a person who is fleeing from custody, whether it be from private slavery, a government arrest, government or non-government questioning, vigilante violence, or outraged private individuals...
. "Fugitives from the law were hunted down, arrest warrants were issued, law offices in neighbouring jurisdictions were warned to look out for them. A glance through the archives reveals a number of such cases in the period. But Jacob’s name is not amongst them".
An alternative explanation offered by one account is that the case was originally brought before the Court of Common Pleas, and then transferred to the Kings Bench - both of which sat in the great hall at Westminster.
"It is possible that Jacob did become a fugitive, because there is nothing further in the historical record after 1617: no place of death, or gravestone, or further record in the archive".
The More Children and the Mayflower
Katherine More continued with the legal action, but after a four year legal battle, the case was lost. Following the court action, Jacob and Katherine's four children were transferred to the Pilgrim Fathers' ship, the MayflowerMayflower
The Mayflower was the ship that transported the English Separatists, better known as the Pilgrims, from a site near the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, , in 1620...
. In Samuel More’s statement, he wrote that he took this action because of the:
“great grief of such a spurious brood,”
The children were despatched to America in order to:
“provide for the educacon & maintenance of these children in a place remote from these parts where these great blotts and blemishes may fall upon them.”
The choice of the Mayflower may have been because of the connection between Samuel More and Lord Zouche
Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche
Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche, 12th Baron St Maur was an English diplomat.-Early Life:Zouche was the son of George la Zouche, 10th Baron Zouche and his wife Margaret, née Welby....
; Zouche was an early supporter of the Virginia Company
Virginia Company
The Virginia Company refers collectively to a pair of English joint stock companies chartered by James I on 10 April1606 with the purposes of establishing settlements on the coast of North America...
. At the time of the Mayflower sailing in September 1620, the children were aged between four and eight. A number of colonists travelled as paying passengers on the Mayflower and the children were amongst this group. Exactly what explanation was given for their presence is not known. Three of the Mayflower pilgrims took responsibility for the children:
- Ellen More was under the care of Edward WinslowEdward WinslowEdward Winslow was an English Pilgrim leader on the Mayflower. He served as the governor of Plymouth Colony in 1633, 1636, and finally in 1644...
. She died in the winter of 1621 - Jasper More was under the care of John CarverJohn CarverJohn Carver was a Pilgrim leader. He was the first governor of Plymouth Colony and his is the first signature on the Mayflower Compact.-Mayflower:...
and died in the winter of 1621 - Mary More was under the care of William BrewsterWilliam BrewsterWilliam Brewster may refer to:*William Brewster , Pilgrim and Mayflower passenger*William Brewster , ornithologist*William K. Brewster, Democratic politician and a retired U.S. Congressman from Oklahoma...
and died in the winter of 1621 - Richard MoreRichard More (Mayflower passenger)Richard More was a passenger on the Pilgrim Fathers's ship, the Mayflower. Richard More was born in Corvedale, Shropshire and baptised at Shipton church on November 13, 1614. As a child, Richard More was at the centre of a seventeenth century controversy in England...
was also under the care of William Brewster and lived a long life in the American colony
Jacob Blakeway's illegitimate son therefore became one of the founding settlers of the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
.
Books
'A Spurious Brood' (Ascribe Publishing 2011) - is a fiction based on fact novel based on these events.'Mayflower Bastard' by David Lindsay, (Thomas Dunne Books 2002), focuses on Richard More as a child and an adult in America.
External links
- 'A Spurious Brood' - the History, sets out a factual account of the events.