Chapter 3

 

Haskells in England

 

First, let me state that not all information has been discoverable. I will use a question mark as a shorthand symbol for “unknown”. Second, names in my direct  lineage will be  written in a bold font in the list of children for each generation. I will give the names of siblings in a non-bold font and these will be provided for information but will not be followed further in this work. Third, my starting point I have arbitrarily labeled “Generation 0”.  Names repeat often through the generations and so it is necessary to number them so I and the reader can keep them straight. So behind the first name I use an italicized number to designate the individual such as William(3). Fourth, I use b. for born d. for death and m. for married. Fifth, unknown siblings, of course, are not listed.  It should be assumed that every sibling list may be incomplete.

Generation 0: William(0) Haskell (b. 1540) (d. 1575)

++ Joan Foyle (b.?) (d. ?) (m. 1564)

 

Children

1. Mark Haskell (b.1565) (d.1640)

2. William(1) Haskell (b. 1575) (d. May 11, 1630)  

 William (0) lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.  Remember Tim Burton’s description of the classes in Tudor England.

“Tudor society was divided into four broad groups. At the top were the nobility who owned huge amounts of land. Below them were the gentry and rich merchants. Gentlemen owned large amounts of land and they were usually educated and had a family coat of arms. Most important gentlemen never did any manual work. Below the gentry were yeomen and craftsmen. Yeomen owned their own land. They could be as wealthy as gentlemen but they worked alongside their men. Yeomen and craftsmen were often able to read and write. Below the yeomen were the tenant farmers who leased their land from the rich. There were also wage laborers. They were often illiterate and very poor.”

William (0) may have belonged to the  gentry class because our family has a coat of arms but that may have been bought from Queen Elizabeth I and not earned in battle or he may have belonged to the yeomen and craftsmen class. No doubt he probably owned at least a small plot of land where he lived in Charlton Musgrave Wincanton, Somerset, England and could read and write. It is very doubtful that he was a tenant farmer  or a wage laborer because he was the church warden at the Anglican Church of St Stephen in Charlton Musgrave in the English county of Somerset. It  was built in the 13th century.

Recent pictures of the Anglican Church of St Stephen in Charlton Musgrave in the English county of Somerset where William(1) was warden.

Generation 1: William(1) Haskell (b. 1573) (d. 1630)

++ Elinor Foule (b.1583) (d. 1662) (m. 27 Jun 1600)

Children

1. Edward Haskell (b.1610) (d.1629)

2. Roger Haskell (b.1613) (d.16 Jun 1667)

3. Cecile Haskell (b.1616) (d.1693)

4. William(2) Osbern Haskell (b. 1618) (d.1693)

5. Mark Haskell (b.1621) (d. 20 Aug 1640)

6. Dorothy Haskell (b.16 Nov 1623) (d.1623)

7. Elizabeth Haskell (b.30 Apr 1628) (d.1629)

8. Joan Haskell (b.1629) (d.1667)

In 1629 William(1) and Elinor lost their 19 year old son Edward and their one year old daughter Elizabeth. In 1630 William(1) died at the age of 57. In 1629/1630 the plague raged in England. There was a lot of sickness during that summer in London, so that many citizens fled to the country but found the country very sickly too. This may be what claimed the lives of William(1), Edward, and Elizabeth. 

Sometime between 1630 and 1635 Widow Haskell married John Stone. The family consisted of five children remaining alive: Roger, William(2), Mark, Cecile and Joan. John Stone, Elinor and the family with the exception of Cecile emigrated in 1635 to the new world. Cecile, age 18 or 19, stayed in England; the reason is unknown but she may have been courting or engaged.  She married Edward Coke on 30 July 1637 at Pen Selwood, Somerset, England. 

John Stone was born in1595 and was 40 years old and Elinor was 35 when they sailed to the new world.  They were issued a certificate “that they [are] conformable to the Church of England and they are no subsidy men” by the minister of Hawkhurst, England. The certificate allowed them to come to the Puritan settlement in Massachusetts Bay Colony. Unlike the Pilgrims who wanted to clean break with the Church of England the Puritans wanted to stay a part of the Church of England but wanted to purify the vestiges of Catholicism that were not described in the Bible that were still practiced within the Church of England.Why did they leave England?   There was a lot of hostility between the Catholics and the protestants and a lot of hostility between the protestants who did not want to change the Church of England and the Puritans. England was full of strife. The Puritans wanted a place where they could live and worship and live as God wanted and to set an example for the English Monarch and the Church of England to convince them to follow their path which was not just religion but also a way to live life. To leave England for America was not a decision to be made lightly as we shall see. Several rich English Puritans obtained a charter from the king in the new world establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1628.They appointed John Winthrop to lead a group of Puritans to the new world and in 1630 fifteen ships loaded with Puritans left England. Tradition says they sailed from Bristol, England. Our progenitors left England five years later.