John Butching (?-1560) & his wife.
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 and the identity of his wife is unknown. But John 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. Other Butchins died around the same time: Amy Butchin was buried in Nutfield on 17 September 1560 and Elizabeth Butchin on 20 October. I can only speculate on their relationship to John. 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.
John was a tenant farmer, resident of a property that had over time come to be known by the family’s surname of Butching. Butchings is known these days as Ridge Green Farm and lies in the southern part of Nutfield. It was the home of the Butching family from at least the 15th century and in 1477 the court rolls of Reigate Manor show 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.
On John Snr’s death the farm passed to his oldest son John but he died just weeks later and his tenancy was inherited by his second son William Butching.
John and his wife had a number of children:
- Joan Butching (1543?-1594), my 12th great 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. I suspect she married Roger Mercer at St Mary’s Church in Bletchingley on 24 April 1540. Although her name has been transcribed as Norton, this may be an error. The reason I suspect this is that her brother William left a will on his death in 1607 in which he left “to sister Mercer, wife of Roger Mercer, a bushel and a half of wheat”. J E B Gover, A Mawer and F M Stenton in The Place Names of Surrey (Cambridge 1934) suggests 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 derives from the word ‘marsh’.
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: Society of Genealogists’ will records. BMDs at Ancestry.co.uk and Findmypast.co.uk. Bourne Society Local History Records Vol XXVI. 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.