Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 4.djvu/311

 12 S. IV. Nov., 19J8.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

305

claim descent from John Crosborough, or Henchman, of Dodingfcon Magna, through the paternal parent of the remaining five, .and (2) that there was but a single issue invariably male of the ten or eleven -consecutive unions which practically do duty for the Henchman " tree " in the work enumerated above.

It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the Hensmans of North- amptonshire are all to be accounted for by .a casual change of name or by the reversion to an older form of the substantive. Accord- ing to a Midland journal of some repute, The Northampton Independent of Jan. 9, 1909, their publishable history did not begin in the latter part of the seventeenth century, as

"" the Hensman family can trace their descent back to the fifteenth century. . One was Mayor of Northampton in 1573, and another was mayor twice in the seventeenth century, at which period the right of arms was granted them [sic] .... and it was from Pytchley, and afterwards the village of Bozeat, not many miles distant, that the Hensmans of Northampton descended."

It is unfortunate that the paper's in- formant did not make a passing reference to the name by which his progenitors were known in the fifteenth century, the more so as the final phrase of the quotation fails to make it clear whether the Hensmans of the present day living in the county town, in contradistinction to the mayors in question and to those domiciled elsewhere in the shire, were sprung from Bozeat.

Inasmuch as during the period under review railways were unknown and the

topographical factor was of the first im- portance, the point is material ; as cer- tain papers in the possession of the writer disinterestedly compiled by the Vicar of Bozeat, Wellingborough furnish abundant geographical evidence of the suggestion that some members of the family branched from the Henchmans of Welling- borough. The Bozeat registers were totally " destroyed by fire " in 1729, at which period a decadal gap (1736-45) likewise occurs in the marriage books of Pytchley. The conflagration which razed Northampton in 1675 did not leave many genealogies behind. None the less it is possible, with the aid of the above manuscript, to show that from within about half a century of the date of the supposed general change in the patronymic, circa 1675, the forbears of the last of Northampton's mayors of the name were all either born or married at Bozeat, thereby inferentially substantiating the fact that in the sixteenth century the Henxmans were concurrently represented in Northants by at least two " aliases," Hensman and Henchman. (It is obvious, by the way, that " Hens," like " Hinx," is a rather closer approximation to " Henx " than any syllable ending in " ch.") So many members of the family have been named Thomas, Hannah, and after the maternal Dexter that the branches may well have been confused. The following, embracing as it does only the more relevant data, is not without interest as constituting probably ^a record in genealogical coinci- dence :

John Hensman,=r=M. Toms b. 1733 (? Jones),

at Udell. | Bozeat, 1757-

Hannah Hensman,=pThos. Goff, b. 1736, Odell. Bozeat,

4. 1762.

Thos. Hensman, =fMary

b. 1773 ; d. 1846.

Dexter,

Bozeat,

1798.

I

Thomas, b. and d. Odell, 1773.

John Dexter,=j b. Odell, 1771 ; d. 1846.

^Elizabeth Bland, Thrapston, 1793.

Thomas =r=Hannah Dexter, Hensman, h Bozeat, 1767. b. 1743, Odell.

Hannah,=f Humphrey Beale (?), Bozeat, 1792.

Win. Hensman, b. Bozeat, ]811 (Mayor of Northampton 1857-8).

Not the least significant of the foregoing is the incidence of the name Humphrey, which happens to have been borne by Oharles II. : s clerical benefactor at Stone- henge (1651), and which, like Dexter, is doubtless a surname employed baptismally iri order to preserve an identity more or less lost in marriage. The ambiguity of the reference to Hannah Hensman jun. is

due to the fact that one of the witnesses to her parents' nuptials was Humphrey Bottoll (? Bettles), and the conclusion logic- ally follows that if their daughter wedded a Humphrey, one was the son of the other.

The father of John, Hannah, and Thomas sen. was Henry ; and a transcript from the burial registers of Odell, Beds (four miles from Bozeat), dated May 10, 1774. in which