MRP: Samuel Moyer will

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Samuel Moyer will


Editorial history

05/12/11, CSG: Created page & posted transcription to wiki


Abstract & context


Leigh in Essex & the Moyer family

In the early seventeenth century a number of important mariner and merchant families lived in Leigh and neighbouring Eastwood, in the county of Essex. Also living in Leigh was the cleric and author of the Pilgrimage, Samuel Purchas.[1] According to a genealogical study of the Purchas family, the families included "the Moyers, the Salmons, the Goodlads, the Haddocks, the Bonners, the Harrises, the Hares, the Cockes, Richard Hare, and many others..." The study cites Camden as stating that Leigh was “well stocked with lusty seamen” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[2]

Lee is on the north shore of the Thames estuary, just to the east of Benfleet and Canvey island, and about fifteen miles downstream of Tilbury and Gravesend. A local website states that Leigh began as a fishing village, but that by the sixteenth century had become a fairly large and prosperous port with a deepwater channel, known as the Leigh Road.[3] However, the channel silted up in the eighteenth century and the town’s importance decreased. The same site states that ships of up to 340 tons have been recorded as built at Lee.

Manorial records collected by the Heathcote family, who were descendants of Samuel Moyer, and which are now in the Cambridge County archives, Huntingdon, enable the family structure, land holdings, titles and occupations of the Moyer family to be reconstructed surprisingly well. They show that the Moyer family was in the Leigh area, on the Thames estuary, at least from the 1545, and that they held small amounts of land in several manors in the area as well as being mariners.[4] The manors they appear in from the mid-C16th are the manors of Prittlewell[5] and Mylton Hall. In the 1650s Samuel Moyer himself appears as lord of the manor of Hawkesbury and also of Pittsea, both in the same area of Essex.[6]

There was a close relationship between the Moyer family and maritime and merchant activities from the mid-C16th and for the subsequent one hundred and fifty years. The earliest Moyer mariner reference is in 1550 to a James Moyer, who appears separately in related manorial records described as a "mariner" and a "yeoman."[7] Ninety years later, Lawrence Moyer, brother of our Samuel Moyer, is described as a mariner, the same occupation as his and Samuel’s father, Captain James Moyer.[8] Both Lawrence and James commanded major ships. Lawrence commanded the Hercules in 1643, a 468 ton, 128 man, 28 gun ship, and James commanded the Royal Merchant in the late 1620-1636/37 period, a ship which is variously described as of 500 or 600 tons, which he part owned.[9] Lawrence Moyer commanded the Hercules as a parliamentary ship, and in late June 1643 was instrumental in preventing the surrender of the city of Hull to royalist forces by landing the crew of the Hercules in Hull, securing the city and arresting Captain Hotham.[10]

Moyer links to Trinity House

Various members of the Moyer family occupied positions in the Trinity House at Deptford Strond: Samuel’s father, James Moyer, was reportedly an Elder Brother, as was Samuel himself. Lawrence Moyer, Samuel’s brother, appears as one of the four wardens in a secondary source listing restoration Trinity House personnel.[11] In addition the list records George, Duke of Albermarle as the Master, and includes amongst the eight assistants Sir William Batten, and Sir George Oxenden’s two associates Nicholas Hurlestone and Sir William Ryder. Nicholas Hurlestone, as it appears from James Moyer senior's will, James Moyer senior's son-in-law, and thus a brother-in-law of Lawrence and samuell Moyer. The list of restoration Trinity House personnel also includes as assistants Alexander Bence (probably the elder, who was merchant of London linked to Aldeburgh, and who was the father of Aaron Mico’s partner in 1657, Alexander Bence Jun.) and John Steevens, who may, speculatively, have been the captain of the Dove, with whom Nathaniel Temms and William Noke connived an attempted interloping voyage in the early 1650s. There may have been a request by Charles II in 1662 to eject Lawrence from his position as warden and/or elder, but details and any success are currently unclear.[12]

Lawrence Moyer [senior]

Samuel Moyer’s grandfather was Lawrence Moyer (?XXXX-after 1583, bef. 1597), also reputedly a mariner.[13]

James Moyer [senior]

Samuel Moyer’s father was James Moyer [senior] (c. 1585[14] -1636/37[15]), a master mariner of considerable prominence. He was the eldest son of Lawrence Moyer, who had died when James was just twelve years old.[16] He appears on a 1627 list of grants of marque as master of the Royal Merchant, which is described as a ship of 600 tons,[17] and in a secondary source reporting a London shipping list of 1629 as being master of a ship of 500 tons (probably the same ship).[18] James Moyer was engaged in the Levant trade and was buried at Smyrna in March 1636/7.[19]

James Moyer [senior] appears to have had a younger brother, Samuel Moyer, also a mariner, to whom James sold “Messuages and 3 crofts or closes called Paperells with apps. in Pritwell” in 1611, when both men were described as of Lee, Essex, "maryner."[20] James Moyer senior’s brother Samuel predeceased him, dying ca. 1618, leaving a son, Robert who was sixteen at his father’s death (our Samuel Moyer’s cousin).[21] In 1650 this Robert Moyer sold a very short term lease on the Paperells land in Pritwell, which had come to him via his father.[22]

Samuel Moyer & his brothers

Samuel Moyer had three brothers, Lawrence, who appears to have been the eldest, William, and James.[23] James was also a merchant, and predeceased Samuel, dying in 1661.[24] According to a secondary report of his tomb at Leigh he died on May 9th in Redriff, aged forty-four.[25] Lawrence and William survived Samuel, with Lawrence probably dying ca. 1685.[26] A secondary source, reporting his grave inscription at Lee, records Lawrence as aged seventy-seven at death, putting his year of birth at ca. 1608.[27] This would make him roughly two years older than his brother Samuel, who was born ca, 1610, and would make the last two brothers, William and James, the younger brothers.

Proposed links


See

Transcription



Commentary



Notes



Possible primary sources


Goodlad

PROB 11/121 Capell 1-65 Will of William Goodlad, Mariner of Leigh, Essex 15 February 1613
PROB 11/121 Capell 1-65 Will of John Goodlad, Mariner of Leigh, Essex 18 May 1613
PROB 11/142 Swann 67-130 Will of Peter Goodlad, Mariner of Leigh, Essex08 October 1623
PROB 11/144 Byrde 66-118 Will of Richard Goodlad or Godlad, Mariner of Leigh, Essex 08 December 1624
PROB 11/182 Coventry 1-53 Will of William Goodlad, Mariner of Leigh, Essex 13 March 1640 ['Chief Commander of the Greenland Fleet' for twenty years, who was also Master of the Trinity House, and who died in 1639 and was buried in Leigh]
PROB 11/279 Wootton 363-416 Will of Nathaniell Goodlad of Rotherhithe, Surrey 22 July 1658 [Possibly James Moyer senior's brother-in-law, who was one of the overseers' of James Moyer senior's will]
PROB 11/351 Bence 55-108 Will of William Goodlad, Mariner of Stepney, Middlesex 20 June 1676
PROB 11/388 Foot 90-132 Will of Richard Goodlad, Commander of the good Ship Adventure 22 October 1687
PROB 11/395 Ent 47-90 Will of William Goodlad, Mariner being now bound out on a Voyage in the East India Company's Service to Some Port or Places in the East Indies in and with the Good Ship or Vessel Loyal Adventure of Stepney, Middlesex 16 April 1689
PROB 11/399 Dyke 45-90 Will of Richard Goodlad, Merchant Tailor of Saint Dionis Backchurch, City of London 23 June 1690

PROB 11/417 XXXX Will of Richard Goodlad, Gentleman of Stepney, Middlesex 07 November 1693
  1. ↑ Samuel Purchas, Purchase his Pilgrimage or Relations of the world and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation to this present, vol. 1, and Hakluytus Poshumus; or Puchas his Pilgrimes, containing the History of the World in Sea-Voyages, and Land Travels by Englishmen and others, vols. 2-5 (5 vols, London, 1613-1625)
  2. ↑ H.W.King, 'A sketch of the genealogy of the Purchas family', in Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, vol. 4 (Colchester, 1869), p. 169. The accompanying footnotes refer to Lawrence Moyer, mariner, whose grandson was Samuel Moyer, and whose family was subsequently connected to the Heathcotes; Robert Salman "a wealthy Merchant and Mariner, afterwards Master of the Trinity House", who died in 1641 and was buried in Leigh; William Goodlad of Leigh "Chief Commander of the Greenland Fleet" for twenty years, who was also Master of the Trinity House, and who died in 1639 and was buried in Leigh. "Ten or twelve of his family [Goodlad], all mariners, were contemporary with Purchas"; Captain Richard Haddock, a Master Mariner, who was a contemporary of Purchas; the maritime family of the Bonners at Leigh in the time of Purchas; Richard Harris of Leigh, an Elder Brother of Trinity House, who was buried at Leigh in 1628; the Hare family of Leigh, several of whom were mariners; Abraham Cocke of Limehouse, who had a disasterous expedition to the River Plate in the reign of Elizabeth; and Richard Chester, Esq., of Leigh, mariner, Elder Brother of the Trinity House, and Master of the Society in 1615, who was buried in 1632 in Leigh (Ibid, p.169)
  3. ↑ http://www.oldleigh.com/history.html, viewed 10/09/10
  4. ↑ Cambridge County Archives, CON 3/5/11 [n.d.]: XXXX: referring to “Laurence Magott & John Mower, quer.” conceeding to another party “3 messuages, 3 gardens, 9a. land & 4a. pasture with apps. in Pryttelwell & Legh.” DATE?
  5. ↑ Prittlewell is XXX miles from Leigh, now part of Southend
  6. ↑ This is the footnote text
  7. ↑ This is the footnote text
  8. ↑ This is the footnote text
  9. ↑ Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 42 (XXXX, 1964), p. 46; John Rowland Powell, The navy in the civil war (XXXX, 1962), p. 200
  10. ↑ K.J.Allison (ed.), ‘Hull in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in History of the County of York East Riding, vol. 1: 'The city of Kingston upon Hull' (London, 1969), pp. 90-171, viewed at BHOL, 09/09/10
  11. ↑ Joseph Cotton, Memoir on the origin and incorporation of the Trinity House of Deptford Strand (London, 1818), p. 177
  12. ↑ This is the footnote text
  13. ↑ This is the footnote text
  14. ↑ Cambridge County Archives, Huntingdon: CON 3/5/11/12
  15. ↑ PROB 11/176 Lee 1-51 Will of James Moyer, Mariner of Tower Wharf, Middlesex 02 March 1638
  16. ↑ Cambridge County Archives, Huntingdon: CON 3/5/11/12
  17. ↑ Calendar of State Papers, Domestic series, of the reign of Charles I, vol. 3 (London, 1859), p. 302
  18. ↑ This is the footnote text
  19. ↑ This is the footnote text
  20. ↑ Cambridge County Archive, Huntingdon: CON 3/5/11/13
  21. ↑ Cambridge County Archives, Huntingdon: CON 3/5/11/14
  22. ↑ Cambridge County Archives, Huntingdon: CON 3/5/11/19 19/20
  23. ↑ PROB 11/373 Drax 52–101 Will of Samuel Moyer of Saint Giles without Cripplegate, Middlesex 03 August 1683
  24. ↑ This is the footnote text
  25. ↑ Charles Raymond Booth Barrett, The Trinity house of Deptford Strond (XXXX, 1893), p. 145
  26. ↑ PROB 11/380 Cann 52–107 Will of Lawrence Moyer of Lowlayton, Essex 30 September 1685
  27. ↑ G.G. Harris (ed.), 'Transactions', vol. 2: 1635, in Trinity House of Deptford Transactions, 1609-35, London Record Society 19 (XXXX, 1982), pp. 143-153, viewed at BHOL, 09/09/10

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