John Butching (????-1560) and Amy Clement (????-1560).
My 12th great-grandparents.
John Butching’s birth date is a mystery, principally because the requirement to register baptisms, marriages and burials had not been introduced at the time. It was only in 1538 that Henry VIII and his trusted adviser Thomas Cromwell made it law.
Similarly, I’ve no record of his marriage but his wife was Amy Clement, a fact confirmed in her father John Clement’s will. He was from Nutfield, as were the Butchings, and a member of a prominent local family. His will mentioned “the son of my daughter John Buchin”.
John Butching Snr died in 1560 and is likely the man buried at St Peter & St Paul’s Church in Nutfield, Surrey, on the 25 September that year. An Amy Butchin was buried in Nutfield on 17 September 1560 and this could well have been John’s wife. An Elizabeth Butchin was buried the same month – on 20 October – but I have no clue as to her relationship to the family. This was a time when the flu was raging through Europe and the period 1557-1561 was notorious for being one of sickness and depression, so it’s possible they were among the victims.
John Snr was a tenant farmer, resident of a copyhold property that had over time come to be known by the family surname as Butchings or Butchens. It’s known these days as Ridge Green Farm and lies in the southern part of Nutfield. Manorial records show it was the home of the Butching family from at least 1431 and in 1477 the court rolls of Reigate Manor noted that it constituted a tenement and 30 acres. Copyhold essentially involved a tenant holding the property from the Lord of the Manor in return for certain duties, such as working for the manor for a set number of days each year. This had gradually been changed to a monetary rent and in 1560 this was 4s 31/2d – a figure that remained unchanged into the 19th century. In effect, the Butchings were still regarded as ‘possessions’ of the local lord and copyhold was the modern version of villeinage. With copyhold, a tenancy was inherited invariably by the deceased person’s heir.
On John Snr’s death the farm passed to his oldest son John Jnr, and in doing so he had to pay an entry fine of 10s to the manor. In addition the family had to pay the manor a form of death duty known as a heriot, which was invariably the dead man’s best beast – in this case it was an ox valued at 20s. John Jnr died just weeks later, though, and his tenancy was inherited by his younger brother William Butching, resulting in yet more fines being paid to the manor.
John Snr and his wife Amy had a number of children:
- Joan Butching (?1540-1594), my 11th great grand-aunt. I’ve not been able to locate a baptism for Joan for it’s likely that she was born in or around the mid 1540s in Nutfield, Surrey, and registers have not survived for this period. It’s possible that she married Roger Mercer at St Mary’s Church in Bletchingley on 24 April 1570 as her brother William left his “sister Mercer, wife of Roger Mercer, a bushel and a half of wheat” in his will of 1607. However, that woman’s name has been transcribed as Norton, Morton and Worton in the marriage register. Was this an error or was this Joan’s second marriage? J E B Gover, A Mawer and F M Stenton in The Place Names of Surrey (Cambridge 1934) suggest that Mercers Farm in Nutfield earned its name from Joan’s husband Roger but research in the area and by Nutfield Local History Group suggests that the name is a lot older and could well derive from the word ‘marsh’. Assuming I have the right relationship, Roger died in 1617 and was buried in Bletchingley on 11 June. Joan is doubtless the Widow Mercer buried there on 4 June 1627. I’ve found no evidence yet of them having children.
- John Butching (?1542-1560), my 11th great grand-uncle. There’s no baptism record for John Jnr but he was older than his brother William, as he inherited the copyhold farm Butchings from his father and had to pay the entry fine to take on the tenancy as well as the death duty known as a heriot (see above). His grandfather John Clement left him a two-year-old bullock in his will written in 1559 and which was proved the following year. John Jnr died a few weeks after this will was finally proved and he was buried on the 18 October 1560 at St Peter & St Paul, Nutfield.
- William Butching (c1546-1608), my 11th great grandfather. There’s no baptism record for William but he was said to be aged 14 in 1560 when he inherited the copyhold farm Butchings following the death of his older brother.
So who were John’s ancestors?
The records of the Manor of Reigate show the family had been in the area for many years. From 1431 they record a John Bowchinge inheriting property from his father Nicholas Bowchinge, specifically a tenement called Helde that consisted of a messuage, garden and 32 acres. I don’t know how long Nicholas had been a tenant of the property – and its location wasn’t mentioned – but the manor’s court roll does say that it had once belonged to John Attes. It’s worth pointing out that ‘atte’ meant ‘at the’ and was usually linked with a place, such as a village, a mill, a lake and so on.
Some years later, in 1447, a John Bouching paid chevage to the Lord of the Manor of Reigate, at the time the 3rd Duke of Norfolk. This could well be the same John who inherited from Nicholas. Chevage was a fine paid by people who were legally the property of the lord – often known as villeins and in effect little more than serfs – but who wanted to live outside the manor boundaries. In John’s case, this is likely the Nutfield property.
The usual chevage rate was 12d but John was the only one of the handful of local villeins to pay just 8d. The details are found in the records of the manorial Reeve, as outlined in Wilfrid Hooper’s book Reigate: Its Story Through the Ages. He describes the Bouchings as one of the oldest villein families in the manor and although he doesn’t make the link, it’s interesting to note the existence of an Adam Bosoyng, the janitor of Reigate Castle in 1300. Mentioned in the manorial records of that year, his name bears a similarity to the early spellings of Budgen.
Hooper notes signs of distress in the local agricultural community in the 15th century, with the manor’s records showing reduced rents and land left unlet because of the shortage of tenants. He suggests this could’ve been the result of many long years of war with France. Quite how long the Butchings/Budgens had been in Reigate is unclear but a couple of copyhold meadows adjoining the Parsonage, later Reigate Lodge, on the west side of Croydon Road (then known as Wray Lane) were traditionally known as Bevis and Butchings according to Hooper’s book.
By 1477 the copyhold property in Nutfield, listed as a tenement with 30 acres, had taken on the name of Bowchings.
The taxation rolls of the period – known in the records as the Surrey Lay Subsidies – refer to the family in Nutfield. For example, John Bochyng crops up in the Great Subsidy of 1524-5, which lists all people over the age of 16 years with income from land or with taxable goods worth £2 per annum, or with annual wages of £1 or more. The record mentions L £1; G £7 (which I imagine refers to land and goods). Similar subsidy rolls exist: 1545 John Bochyng, Nutfield, £20. 1550, John Bochyng, Nutfield, £20. What the £20 refers to I don’t yet know.
Sources: Much of the material about the farm known as Butchings and other Nutfield families and properties comes from Peter Finch’s history of the Budgen family in Bourne Society Local History Records Vol XXVI as well as the book Nutfield: Our Village Since Domesday by Richard Deacon (Nutfield History Group, 2000). Society of Genealogists’ will records from Surrey Archdeaconry Court. Surrey parish registers at Surrey History Centre, Woking. Wilfred Hooper: Reigate, Its History Through The Ages (Surrey Archaeological Society). Reigate Manor records (Surrey History Centre, Woking). The Local Historian, the journal of the British Association for Local History, Vol 18 No 1.