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Home , Dumnonii, Hamoaze, Hingston Down, History of Cornwall, History of Plymouth, Ince Castle

THE LEES OF THEIR FAMILY HISTORY FROM ANCIENT TIMES

"Brave men have lived before Agamemnon, lots of them. But on all of them - eternal night lies heavy, for they left no records behind. (`ODES` Horace 65-8BC)

This is the story of those who did

This is the story of my ancestors, the Lee family, who have left records behind and from which the line can be traced from Alexander and Thomas born 1994 and 1990 respectively, back to John of Legh, alive in 1433, and Richard de Leye, alive in 1327. John and Richard lived at, and took their surname from Legh, a pre-Norman settlement in Cornwall recorded in the of 1086. Legh is situated in the present parish of Quethiock, some 5 miles west of the and 5 miles east of , just in the southeast corner of Cornwall. To uncover the history took ten and more years of research. So what stimulated me to commence? In 1986 I watched a television programme on early portraiture. It was explained that during the time of the (146BC-410AD) it was fashionable to have a statue carved of oneself together with ones father and grandfather. To illustrate this a statue from the 1st century AD was shown; I was astounded to note that it bore a likeness to my family and in particular to my brother, David Henry Lee. I immediately commented on this to my wife, Brenda, who replied `No, it is more like you`. From that moment the question lay in my mind `I look like a Roman from 2000 years ago; I have the surname of Lee which is derived from a Saxon-German word meaning pasture; my father`s family were known to have come from Cornwall and so presumably I have West Welsh Celtic blood; my mother claimed her family came from and I was born in Devonport on the borders of Devon and Cornwall; so who am I? Cornwall over the millenniums had been invaded by 6 or so groups of different people; Ancient British (7000BC), (700BC-63AD), (800AD), Romans (63-401AD), (447-1066AD), (1066). Each will have left descendants in Cornwall of whom some are my ancestors; but which ones? To answer that question I embarked on a search that traced ancestral roots to all six. The English are oft described as not being a true pure race, I am a typical Englishman, a typical Cornishman who illustrates this statement fully. I found that I am a genetic mixture of those many early European races who successively invaded the southern parts of Britain. I will trace the history of the family from ancient times, which has left no direct records of the family and the history has to be inferred from genetic indications, then through the medieval period of 500-1500AD during which records were starting to be kept and fortunately some of these exist still and do contain references to the Lees, finally through the period from 1500AD until the present in which ample records have been kept and those from Cornwall show a continuous record of the family`s births, marriages and deaths.

EARLIEST ROOTS We are physically and mentally what our genes make us, we can be no other. These genes we inherit from our ancestors, so by looking at ourselves and the collective pool of genes in the area from which we come, we can get some inkling as to the nature and appearance of our forefathers. Roman Ancestor I spent my whole working career engaged in exploring for oil and in the course of that I visited more than 70 countries in 6 of the 7 continents. Thus I was able to enjoy the companionship of many different races and nationalities and to observe their differences. My companions were all principally of the same social stratum of highly intelligent, well educated professionals; our differences in character were small and overall we were more alike than different. Yet one could not conceal that there were obvious visible physical differences in appearance between the races, conversely though, within each national group there was a predominance of similar facial and body features; most Germans looked like Germans, most Irish looked like Irish. I use to amuse myself on long flights watching the other passengers and guessing their origins, particularly those from the USA since they all had the same cultural trappings but yet their faces, hair colouring and body build still told their ancestral roots. Others applying this same observation to myself placed me as a Roman. I explained to an Italian colleague who lived in Rome that I felt at ease walking down the Via Veneto in Rome, to which he responded, `I am not surprised. You look like everybody else there`. Additionally I found that the only gentlemans ready-to-wear suits that fit without any alterations were those tailored in Italy; my body build is a standard Italian pattern. The statue* from 1st century Rome shown on television and which looked like me was a confirmation of the observation. Shortly afterwards my brother, Godfrey Lee, who knew nothing about the above told me that when he and his wife were visiting the Doge`s Palace in Venice they became separated and he found her looking up at a statue of the Roman Empire period and on asking what she was doing she replied `Looking at Maurice`. It may at first seem unlikely that Roman features could be passed down through 40 to 50 generations and still be readily discernible but a similar occurrence has been well documented in Iran: in the 13th century the Mongols swept as far west as Cairo where they were defeated in 1300 and subsequently settled down to consolidate their Empire, which lasted for over a century. Within the Empire local rule was by resident Khans and their followers. When the Empire broke up many of these remained in Iran. A ITV programme 25August1993 showed how their descendants are readily identifiable 700 years later, the camera panned the people in the Bazaar in Teheran; the majority were typical Arabs but mingling with them were several that had the broad flat face with narrow widely spaced eyes typical of Mongolians. So if I look like an early Roman, it is certain that I had a Roman ancestor. This is not surprising since the British Isles were part of the Roman Empire for nearly 5 centuries and there was considerable movement of people throughout. Julius Caesar made the first landing in Britain, on 26-27th August 55BC between Deal and Walmer in East Kent. Though it was not until a century later, in the summer of 43AD, that a permanent settlement was established. The Romans slowly subdued the ancient British tribes and eventually in 62-63AD, some 100 years after their first landing in Kent they finally occupied Cornwall. They stayed for over 300 years, until 401AD, and controlled every aspect of life. The army was mainly mercenaries from the Roman colonies, 3 the number from Rome itself was small and mainly restricted to the ruling elite. During the occupation there must have been numerous liaisons between the Roman men and the British women and from 220AD, for the last 180 years of the occupation, they were officially permitted to marry. Many children must have been born from these relationships, illicit and approved, who would have inherited genes from their Roman fathers that would then be passed on to successive generations. Consequently it is inevitable that some of the descendants will have facial features and body build that resemble their original Roman ancestor; myself, and my two brothers and father, who I resemble closely, appear to be in this category; we resemble our unknown Roman ancestor. It is interesting to speculate whether he was stationed at Castle which was the headquarters of the 2nd Augustan Legion; it lies in the heart of the area in which the Lees lived * Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatore,Salle III-Braccio Nuovo;Piazzo del Campidiglio, Rome

Pre-Roman: Ancient British & Celtic Ancestors My Roman ancestor`s liaison must have been with a local British woman since recent research has shown that few, if any, women came with the invaders into Britain. So who was my ancestral British mother? Recent (1998) genetic research by The Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford compared the Mitochondria of 6000 present-day Britons with that in 20 ancient skeletons from Britain and the Continent and found that over 95% of the former had inherited their Mitochondria from women who had lived in Britain over 10,000 years ago and that 25% of them had inherited it from women who lived in Britain 24,000 years ago. Men cannot pass their Mitochondria on to their offsprings, only mothers can. So the results show that there was little introduction of new Mitochondria into the British population after the Stone Age. So my Roman`s liaison must have been with a woman whose ancestors were Early Stone Age British. Genetically, other than her Mitochondria, her DNA would have been a mixture inherited from the men of the different tribes that had invaded and settled in Cornwall in pre-Roman times. We are fortunate that in Cornwall these settlers left an abundance of evidence of themselves which is still well preserved. We can see the remains of their huts, stand within them, touch the stone boundary walls of their fields and realise that these are spots where our 200th+ to 60th great grandfathers stood, ate and slept. The earliest ones who left evidence of their existence in Cornwall were the Middle Stone Age men of the period dated about 7000BC, when the ice of the last Ice Age had melted and forests were beginning to form, though the did not form completely until 6500BC. They were nomadic hunter gathers who lived in temporary huts. They are known as the Magelose who were racially akin to others of the Western Mediterranean Culture who lived in Spain and France. Recent genetic studies have shown that they have survived as the Basques of northern Spain but no genetic similarity has been found between the Basques and the modern inhabitants of Cornwall. So it is possible the Magelose did not survive in any great numbers in Britain but were nearly totally replaced by the Age men, who came in 1,800-1,400BC, and who built permanent huts in small groups, introduced agriculture, cultivated plots and had domestic herds. "They were slightly built, dark people with long, rather narrow heads and delicate features, who can be recognised today among the southern Italians" C & J Hawkes - Such a description fits our Roman statue and myself and many from Cornwall. When in the 7th to 1st century BC the Celts arrived in Britain they did find the inhabitants short and dark. The Celts, whose first origins were at Hallstatt in Austria, were tall and fair. The number of short, dark people does increase towards and possibly the , which suggests that these are the areas where the descendants of the pre-Celtic Iron & men have survived. The Celts absorbed them and together they formed 3 tribes in Devon and Cornwall; whose lands extended over the south from the R.Fal to the R.Exe; Cimbii whose land extended over the north from the R.Camel in Cornwall to ; Carnabii who spread over the Lands End and peninsulas and the north coast area up to the R.Camel. In 350BC the invaded Cornwall from the Continent and many natives fled to Ireland. The 3 Celtic tribes combined and eventually defeated the invaders, but then fought amongst themselves. By the time the Romans arrived the Dumnonii 4 had absorbed the other two tribes and spread over the whole of Devon and Cornwall. It is these Dumnonii people, a combination of Ancient British (short & dark) and Celts (tall & fair), who are our ancient Cornish ancestors. I am at 5ft.10ins. just above average height for my age group and have blue eyes and fair complexion. My father was shorter than I and had brown eyes and dark complexion. So it is possible that I inherited, from my mother, Mitochondria from a Stone Age British woman and other genes that have passed down from Celts, whilst from my father, I inherited genes that came from a Bronze Age British man. R.L.Jimenez proposes the name Britain was derived by in 300BC from the Celtic word to describe themselves Pretani -people who paint themselves, which they did especially before a battle. Alternatively Saxon Chronicles report that the early inhabitants came a long voyage by sea, they could be referring to the Phoenicians who were in the Atlantic by 1000BC and landed in Cornwall for and lead. The name of Britain could be derived from a Phoenician word `Barat- anoc`meaning Land of tin and lead. This was contracted in pronunciation to Bratanac, softened by the Greeks to Britanniae and by the Romans to Britannia. The name Cornwall derives in part from `Corn` a Celtic word meaning Horn referring to the geographical shape of the county; Cornouia latinized during the Roman occupation as Cornubia. Post-Roman times the Saxons added Wealas or Walas; their word for strangers to which they referred to the British of Wales and Cornwall. Post-Roman: Saxon Ancestors The Romans were leaving Britain by 401AD and the Celtic-British tribe was left as the sole occupants of Cornwall until the next invasion; this time it was by the Saxons from the present North Sea coast of Germany. Their first landings were in 440AD in East Anglia. Migration westward was slow and they did not enter Devon until 614AD. They were fighting west of in 661 and after a battle north of in 682 they pushed ahead to occupy all East & Northwest Devon and parts of Cornwall between the R.Tamar and the R.Ottery. Later, according to the Saxon Chronicles, Ine and Nunna his kinsman fought , King of Dumnonia, the exact location and date is not known. But in 712, presumably shortly after the battle, Ine granted William, the English Abbot of Glastonbury, 20 hides (37.6 sq.miles)of land in Ling by the Tamar; almost certainly territory between the Tamar and Lyhner. (De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesial - printed in Hearne`s edition of Adam of Domerham 1727 pg52,97 - the original charter now lost) (20 hides granted covers more than the area between the R.Tamar and R. Lyhner so the area of Saxon influence and settlement must have extended slightly west of the R.Lyhner and probably over the St Germans- peninsula too.) These two areas beyond the R.Tamar, which the Saxons occupied and settled, up to the R.Lyhner in the south and up to the R.Ottery in the centre, are still pieces of Cornwall where pure English/Saxon place names abound and there are few Cornish ones. There were further battles; the Cornish Celts defeated Ine at the R.Camel in 721/2 but he renewed the attack in 753. Finally in 838 the Cornish combined with a large force of Danes and advanced against the Saxon King Egbert who gave battle at , near . The Saxons triumphed and the whole of Cornwall came under the domination of the Kingdom of though there were still Celtic kings in West Cornwall () until early 900`s. The final subjugation of Cornwall was completed by King Athelstan 90 years later in 930AD when he defeated Howel, the last Cornish King, at Haldon Hill, just west of Exeter and the Cornish kings disappeared for ever; the British were expelled from Exeter and their tribal boundary was set, mainly along the R.Tamar. It was agreed that the Saxons would not increase their settlements west of the Tamar and the Celts would cease to harass the Saxons east of the Tamar and so Cornwalls boundary was fixed for a 1000 years [Interestingly most present-day Cornish fondly believe the boundary between Devon and Cornwall has always been along the entire length of the River Tamar, this is not true. The boundary was set initially by the western limit of the Saxon invasion and settlement and so the area settled south of the mouth of the R.Tamar, around Maker and Edgecombe was part of the Devon Hundred of Roborough until at least medieval times, the dividing line was the little stream between and whilst the parishes in the area settled between R.Ottery and R.Tamar were part of Devon until 1967] The Celts may have honoured the peace agreement but their allies, the Danes, did not. "in 981 they destroyed and the Bishop fled to St Germans. In 997 they landed at the mouth of the Tamar and wasting both sides of the river till they reached Lideford and then plundered the Abbey at " Borlase - Antiquities of Cornwall 1754 Amongst those Saxons harassed by the Danes would have been our ancestors since our Lee family, and many of their wives, came from that area close to the River Tamar which was the southern of the two Saxon settlements in Cornwall. These then are our ancient roots before the of 1066 and before members of our family are recorded in written records. They include Ancient British, Celts, Romans and Saxons. They may all seem distant, but between myself and the Saxon ancestor, who was harassed by the Danes 1000 years ago, there are only 29 generations; and assuming 33 years between 5 generations, between myself and the Roman ancestor of 200AD only 54 generations, and even to the Stone Age ancestor of 7000BC only 270 generations. If all these ancestors of the direct Lee male line stood in line one behind each other, then from myself to the Saxon ancestor would be a distance of only 23ft, which is just the length of the lounge in my house, so we could all easily stand in line in that room. The distance between myself and the Roman ancestor would be 40ft, less than the width of the garden to my suburban house; whilst the distance to the Stone Age ancestor would be less than 100 yards, a distance we were expected to run whilst at school in 14 seconds. The time span of the family tree back 9000 years may seem hugh but the direct line includes only a small number of men.

NAME ORIGIN & DOCUMENTS RECORDING THE PLACE & FAMILY OF LEE Since the family comes from the area of Cornwall invaded and settled by the Saxons it is not surprising that the Lee family name is derived from a Saxon word, LEGH which was their word for the place of a settlement, or land that had been used for sometime as pasture close to a stream. So originally the family would have been referred to as `of Legh` and over the ages from it the family name, or surname, of Lee was derived. The word would have been pronounced as `Le` followed by a glottal stop. A glottal stop is a gulp sound made at the back of the throat and was common in the Saxon language but did not pass into English pronunciation and so has no fixed written expression; in the 11th to 14th centuries it was written variously as -gh, -ge, -ye, and later by simple -e or -a or -igh. The most commonly quoted example of the remnant of the Saxon glottal stop in the is the -gh in bough and cough. Over the centuries the written spelling of the family`s name has varied,though the pronunciation would have remained essentially the same - Le + a glottal stop. Recorded Variants are -1086AD Legea - version in the Domesday Book -1100+ Lega, Lege, Legga -1200+ Leya, Legh, Leghe -1300+ de Leye, de Legh, de Leygh, de Leght -1400+ de- was dropped :1403 atte Lee -1500+ 1544 Lee, 1547 Leighe, Lyhe -1606 Leigh Other variants include: Lea, A`Lee; 1620 Ley

Surnames were adopted and became hereditary commencing in the 13th and 14th centuries, starting with the wealthier families, who took the locative name of their abode. Later the lower orders took surnames based on their nicknames, occupations or father`s personal name. It is noticeable that lists of Taxpayers of the 14th century,who were the ones with wealth, include very few with occupational surnames, though by the 16th century this is no longer true. (Ref:Colin Rogers :The Surname Detective pg146/7) Our family name, variously spelt over the centuries as de Leye, Legh, Lee and Leigh, all sometimes with a terminal -e, is locative. From that we can deduce with reasonable certainty that when they adopted the name, pre-14th century, the family would be rated in the upper orders, or gentry. The place from which the name originates is given in the Domesday Book of 1086. It lists only two places named Legh in Cornwall; one in the northeast, five miles north of present-day ; the other in the southeast, in Quethiock parish. Our family lived in Quethiock until the 18th century and it is from the Legh there that we took our name. There are now several other places named Leigh in Cornwall, such as Leigh in , the next Parish to Quethiock, but a surname study of the 1327 Subsidy List gave a general impression that in Cornwall at that time it was common not only to bear the name of your dwelling as a surname but if a man moved away he took his surname, and the name of the farmhouse from which it was derived, and gave it to his new abode. (Ref: O.J.Padel : in 1327). So it is likely that these other Leighs did not exist in pre- Conquest times and were named by descendants of the original families from the 2 Domesday sites of Legh, when they set up new homes away from them. Padel also noted that in 1327 those with a locative name lived within 10 miles of the place of origin, usually no further than the next 6 parish. Our Lees conformed to Oliver Padel`s statement by remaining within 10 miles of their place of origin in Quethiock for 900 years until myself who in 1952 permanently left the West Country of Devon & Cornwall. The Domesday site of Legh in Quethiock remained in the hands of the family until 1732 when it was sold. What we cannot tell is when our ancestors first lived at the site, was it soon after the Conquest of 1066, or before, and do we descend from the first Saxons who cleared the site in the 10th century. It is unquestionable that our name Lee derives from the Saxon word Legh but in the there is a similar word Laë ,it means High. It gave rise to the Cornish surname Ley that is sometimes confused with Lee. Lee is the 49th commonest name in and at one count there were 119,000 namesakes, with the highest number in the Sheffield, Leeds and Nottingham areas. Overseas there are concentrations in Vancouver 308, Toronto 419, Sydney 547, and USA 429,000. However in Cornwall Lee is not common and some who are there now are recent immigrants from elsewhere in England e.g. the only Lee presently living in the hamlet of , where our family lived throughout the 19th century, had moved recently from Essex. DOMESDAY BOOK 1086 After his victory over the English in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings William I rewarded his Norman Viking Lords by allocating to them the ownership of the lands he confiscated from the Saxons. In 1086 he had a full and detailed inventory made of the resources and taxable worth of those lands. The evidence was sworn by juries consisting of the priest, the reeve and 6 villeins from each township.The collection of the recordings is known now as the Domesday Book. In the parchment Rolls for Cornwall there is an entry:-

Rogerivs - Idem ten LEGEA. Alnod teneb T.R.E./ geldb p.11.ferlings trae. Ibi tam.e dimid hida. Tra.1111.car.Ibi.st.1.car./ 11.ferui. /x.bord./ 11.ac pti./ una ac filuae./ v.ac paiturae. Olim.xx.folid. Modo ual.x.folid. Roger, - He also holds LEGH. Alnoth held it before 1066, and paid tax for 2 furlongs of land; ½ hide there, however. Land for 4 ploughs; 2 ploughs there; 2 slaves. 10 smallholders. Meadow 2 acres; woodland 1 acre, pasture 5 acres,Formerly 20 shillings; value now 10shillings. 5...cattle; 30 sheep.

Ploughs The calculation of the `land for ploughs there` is based on the number of oxen found; 8 oxen are needed for 1 plough. Legh rated 2 ploughs, so there must have been 16 oxen there. Inhabitants It has been calculated that statistically for each man recorded there would have been 3 other persons; a wife and 2 children. So the likely population of Legh would have been about 50 in total. Size The extent of Legh was ½ hide, that is 60 acres or 0.094 square mile. Legh was one of the largest places in the area, other nearby places recorded were 39 acres, Hammett 31 acres, Newton Ferrers 60 acres and Pillaton 60 acres. The present farm of Leigh is in an area where the boundaries of the fields have no discernible pattern of alignment, they seem random in orientation. However the area immediately surrounding Leigh Farm buildings stands out by being symmetrical and bound by four lines that form a parallelogram of side 0.2 mile by 0.47 mile, covering an area of 0.094 sq.miles, which is the exact area given in the Domesday Book for Legh, so it would seem that the Saxon boundary of Legh is still discernible a 1000 or more years later. Manor Lord Of the Saxon Alnoth we know nothing. He was dispossessed by the Normans and the manor given to the Count of Mortain whose father was half brother to ; he passed it on to his vassal Roger. At some time later Legh was amalgamated with others to form the Manor of Penpoll whose Lord is now the Coryton family. LEIGH & QUETHIOCK Legea in the Domesday Book is a latinized version of the Saxon place name of Legh. The Victoria County History Series of Cornwall identifies it as the present-day Leigh in the parish of Quethiock. In Cornwall many of the Domesday settlements were isolated farmsteads, and even today on 4/5ths of them there lies only a single farm. Documents exist to show that this has been the case since Domesday times and that many of the `demesne` farms (Bartons) became the residences of Franklins, or lesser gentry in the Middle Ages. (Michael Wood -"Domesday - in search for the roots of 7

England" - 1986) This then seems to be the case of the place and family of Leghe or Leigh. Leigh is now a single farm and documents show our family as lesser gentry. Leigh is located about 1½ miles east of the hamlet of Quethiock. That part of Cornwall is an area of pastoral beauty with gently rolling hills of green fields with man high hedges, small woods of deciduous trees and gentle streams in the valleys. Quethiock, pronounced `Quitock`, is from the Cornish word `Cruetheke`, meaning the place of the Weavers, which seems an apt description of the probable historical activity of the area. Leigh itself is on the east side of a gentle hill and overlooking a lightly wooded valley through which a spring-fed stream runs. The O.S. map of 1889 marks it as "Remains of a mansion" Now in 1996 the house has been rebuilt and it is a large farm. C.S.Gilbert in his of 1817 described `Leigh as at the time of Charles II (1660-1685) to be the seat of Nicholas Leigh, gent. and that it has long remained in the same family, but was now the property of Mr William Hambly`. It lies in the parish of Quethiock of which he says `were 91 houses and 587 inhabitants; 304 males and 283 females. The church having 12th century parts and containing ancient bronze monumental tablets. It is a handsome Gothic edifice of venerable antiquity and valued at £5 in 1219. There are monuments to Roger Kyngdon, who died 1471, his wife Johanna and 16 children in an aisle on the southern side, and on the floor of the north aisle are memorials to the Doneys, Hawkinses and Leighs`. Unfortunately the church was rebuilt in mid-1800`s and the present incumbent, Rev.Ron Lucas advises that he cannot find the memorial to the Leighs.

DOCUMENTS RECORDING THE LEGH, LEE or LEIGH FAMILY of QUETHIOCK FEET of FINES - Rolls of Law-suits 1200 - At Westminster 15 days from Easter in the [1st] year of King John (24 April 1200) ½ knight`s fee in Lega (Leigh in Pillaton? or Quethiock). 1263 - 2 acres of land in Legh - 47 Henry (3 Nov 1263) 1294 - At Westminster between Richard de Leghe claimant & John de Thulrebere re 10 acres of wood in Yalwelegh (?YellowLeigh in ) 1328 - Manorial rights of several manors - At York on the octave of Holy Trinity, 2 Ed III (5 June 1328). Between William de Ferrers & Matilda his wife, claimants, and Master Henry de Nyweton, deforciant; as to the manors of Birferers & Nyweton Ferrers & 5¾ knights fees in Poselinch (N.Ferrers),...... & Legh in co. Cornwall. P.M.INQUISITIONS of Feudal Holdings: a search of those of Edward III & Richard III found 2 references to Legh in Cornwall but no specific reference to the family. 10EIII-1336 William de Ferrers manors listed include Legh held of Knight`s Fee of Mortain 14EIII-1340 Thomas de MonteHermerii`s holdings listed include Legh - `A Knights Fee which John Dauny holds`. MEDIEVAL TAX & MILITARY SURVEYS The continual need to raise finance, and men, for the kingly wars required keeping records of the population and their ability to pay taxes. Taxation was usually based on the value of capital assets so the lists include a value of such assets owned by individuals or collectively in the parish. Military surveys were made to determine the number of fit men between 16 and 60 years of age available for war and the weapons they were to provide. Of the records of these, the following have been transcribed and contain references to the Leigh\Lee family:- 1327 Subsidy has been transcribed by Padel & Picken but not published. Oliver Padel provided me with a copy of his notes for Quethiock. (Encl) (Surnames in 1327 O.J.Padel - Nomina 9 -1985) Quethiock Richard de Leye Taxatore 1522 Military Survey - Henry VIII - able bodied men between 16 and 60 years Quethiock William Leghe #5 gorget : £3-0s-0d goods & harness Heir of Legh : £1-0s-0d value of land rental Others in Cornwall John Lee - Vil be Bodmyn : £2 Simon Legh - land in Stratton :£22 1544 Subsidy - Henry VIII 8

Quethiock John Lee Goods valued £10 3/4 Collector of the Subsidy William Lee " " £5 1545 Subsidy - Henry VIII Quethiock John Aler 6/8 (In same position in list as John Lee in 1544, a misspelling) 1569 Military Survey - Quethiock William Leghe -able Billsman to provide pair almain rivet (light armour made of overlapping plates sliding rivets, 6ft yew long bow, sheaf of 24 arrows, Bill and Sallet - a short brimmed helmet) Peter Lee -able archer to provide bow & 12 arrows. George Lee -able archer to provide bow & 6 arrows. Elsewhere in Cornwall : Launceston :Christopher, Pentecoste & Nicholas Leigh - Thomas Legh :- Robert Lee 1604 Subsidy - James I - Second payment of 4 Quethiock William Lee gent Jacob Lee 1662 Hearth Tax - Charles II Occupiers, not owners were taxed 2s on each hearth in their dwelling. The poor were exempt but were listed. The lists were prepared by the Summer Parish Constable. Quethiock Nicholas Leigh -6 one fallen down Roger Lea -2 no such person found Roger Leigh -2 ex

Some records are held in Kew PRO of the following which may contain references to the family. But they mainly consist of piles of receipts, these I have not searched systematically. 1181 Saladin Tax Movable tax of 1/10th value of possessions of urban dwellers and 1/15th for country dwellers. 1194-1224 Hideage or Carucage Tax levied on each hide (120 acres) or caracute of land based on the Domesday Book. Lay Subsidies 1290-1332 : Sixteen subsidies of 4/- in £1 per annum on land worth 20/- or more and 2/8 in £1 on personal possessions worth £3 or more. 1334-1434 : a further 42 grants levied. 1435-1516 : a further 16 were levied. Many parchment rolls of the assessments have survived and are held in the Principal Record Office (E179) of which only the 1327 has been transcribed. Mostly they give only details of the value of a village or manor`s subsidy. (Pre-1841 Censuses & population Listings - Colin Chapman 1990)

1377,1379,1381 Poll Tax levied on all males over 14 years old. In 1381 the rate was trebled and not graded by rank as previous, this lead to rioting and the Peasants Revolt under Wat Tyler from Kent. This rocked the Norman complacency and was put down bloodily. The tax was not levied again until 1985 when rioting again occurred and as a result the responsible Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, eventually was removed. John Legh`s father may have seen the riots in 1381, I saw them in in 1985. All Poll Tax listing are to be transcribed and published by but the Cornish one will be a few years. (Surname Detective - Colin Rogers 1995)

Archives at the Principal Record office, Kew, were searched for direct references to the family by a professional Cornish local history researcher, James Derriman, during 1997-98. He found the following :- CATALOGUE OF ANCIENT DEEDS - John atte Lee was a witness to a marriage Feoffment on 8January1341 at Treworgy. COURT of AUGMENTATION shortly after 1547 considered an `OBIT` made by Walter and Olive of Legh in 1513 at Quethiock.(Encl) STAR CHAMBER CASE,heard at Liskeard in 1547, in which John Lyghe sued the Lords of Penpoll Manor over damage done to fences that he had erected on Crendle Down, which adjoins Lee Down. John is described as the son of John and grandson of Walter Lee, and nephew of 9

William. (Encl)

HERALDIC ARMS - The bearing of Arms was obligatory on every land-holding family as a direct result of the feudal system introduced by the Norman Conquerors. The record of grants of Armorial Bearings is kept at the College of Arms in London. (ref;- A.C.Fox-Davis: Guide to Heraldry) After the conquest of the Saxons by the Normans William introduced into England a system of feudal tenure which was a partition of the land amongst his Barons, Earls & Lords in return for accepting a liability of military service for themselves and a number of followers according to the land held. In their turn they sub-let the land, on advantageous terms to themselves, and also required from those to whom they sub-let the same obligation of military service as the King required from themselves. Every man holding land under these conditions, and it was impossible to hold land without them, was of the upper class; he was `noblis or known` and of a rank distinct from the remainder of the population, who at that time were actually serfs or slaves. The Kingdom was land, there was practically no middle class and the trading community in the towns were of little account save as `milche Kine` for taxation. Those who held land were Gentlemen and because they held land they had to lead their servants and followers into battle. Distinctive Arms were necessary so that their men could identify them. In effect every Landlord, or land owner, bore Arms. Though initially these were worn only in battle their use changed with time to purposes of pageantry, and proving authenticity of seals and for identification on monuments etc. At first the Arms were chosen without control but from a dispute recorded in 1390 it is known that duplication and assumption of others Arms was occurring and the Crown took control of the granting of Arms. This control was vested in the Heralds, who now form the College of Arms. To ensure the exclusivity of use of the arms awarded the Heralds made visits to check on usage. Such a Visitation was made to Cornwall in 1620, at the time of James I, by Henry StGeorge, Richmond Herald and Sampson Lennard, Bluemantel Poursuivant. They recorded the Arms and family tree of Leigh of Quethiock (Visitations of County of Cornwall - J.L.Vivian 1887) Details were provided by Nicholas Leigh and he signed the visitation pedigree - HARL.MS 1162. He gave data back to his greatgrandparents - John Leigh of Leigh whose wife was the daughter and heiress of Issack of Cornwall; that was presumably as much as he knew, 100 years. The Herald recorded his arms a diagonal band of black lozenges, or diamonds on a silver shield - Argent a bend lozengy sable. There were visitations to Cornwall before 1620 in 1530 & 1573 but the College of Arms advised me in 1996 that the Lee family is not mentioned in the records of those and so it would seem the family adopted the Arms sometime between 1573 & 1620. C.S.Gilbert in 1817 - History and Heraldry of Cornwall copied the arms from the memorial to the Leighs in Quethiock church. The memorial was destroyed when the church was renovated in 1828.

Arms of Nicholas Leigh Leigh Isseck 1598-1653

Lower

A new set of Heraldic Arms was granted in 1997 by Garter King of Arms to myself,

Maurice Leonard Lee, and to my descendants in perpetuity that combine the two heraldic devices in the Arms of the two 17th Century Armigerous Lee families of Cornwall,a red lion rampant and a row of black lozenges.

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PARISH REGISTERS (at Quethiock - from 1574 :16ElizabethI) (Encl) In 1538 Thomas Cromwell as Vicar General to Henry VIII ordered that each parish should keep a register of baptisms, marriages and burials. The entries were made after each Sunday service. Initially they were kept on paper and in 1598 it was decreed that they should be kept on the more permanent medium of parchment. The earlier records had to be copied but by then many had become unreadable through damp and decay. For Quethiock parish the first register contains the records from 1574 to 1858, it is a 2" thick fawn coloured leather bound book with plain unlined pages 8 by 6 inches of thick fairly coarse parchment on which the records are written by hand. It is held in the Cornwall County Record Office in ref:-P195/1/1. On page 1 is :- Ana filus Guilyilum Leighe bapt 29 July 1574 On page 40 is :- John Lee buried 20 April 1576

From the Parish registers it is possible to follow the Lee and Leigh family descent through the centuries until modern times.

1641 PROTESTATION RETURN - Parliament decided that all adult males should take an oath of support for the reformed Protestant religion and for the power of Parliament. The following are recorded as having made the declaration :- (Encl) At Quethiock Nicholas Leigh gent Henry Lee Walter Lee James Lee At Menheniot William Leigh William Lee Roger Leigh

WILLS & INVENTORIES - Copies of the Wills proven in Cornwall before 1838 are deposited in the County Record Office in Truro; Included are those of the following :- 1583 John Lee -admonition (In the will index but not found in Truro CRO) 11th greatgrandfather 1604 Johannis Leigh -inventory only 9th great grandfather 1605 William Leigh -will & inventory 10th maternal great grandfather 1611 Jane Leigh " " 9th great grandmother 1645 Henry Lee " " 8th great granduncle 1670 Joanne Leigh -will & legal Documents wife of Nicholas,3rd Cousin 9 removed

1702/3 Jane Lee -her bond & his inventory wife of Titus - 6th great grand uncle 1709 Thomas Leigh -will & inventory distant cousin 1730 Nicholas Leigh -will 5th cousin 7 removed 1791 Catherine Lee -bond ? distant greatn aunt 1805 John Lee -will 3rd great grandfather 1838 Richard Lee -will greatgreatgrandfather

MANORIAL RECORDS - Coryton Deposition Leigh is situated in the Manor of Penpoll, the Lordship of which was purchased by the Corytons before 1620, it had previously been held by Kenewich of Trehawke, near Menheniot, and by Sprye, who had it from the recusant Francis Tregian of Golden,near Truro,whose ancestor had been involved in the Star Chamber Case with John Lee in 1547. The Corytons originated from Lifton in Devon and moved to Newton Ferrers in 14th century when they married a heiress of Ferrers. Subsequently they vastly increased their landholdings by further advantageous marriages. But in 1739 the last male, John died without issue and he bequeathed Newton Ferrers to his wife`s family of Helyar and other land to Peter Goodall, a 1st cousin once removed. The bequests were disputed in Court - Coryton late Goodall sued Helyar defendant in Chancery on 21 March 1743. During the case all documents relating to the Coryton lands were assembled and a summary index prepared, to 11 evidence how the Corytons acquired the lands. The whole has been deposited since, and is available for inspection, in the Cornwall County Record Office in Truro. We are extremely fortunate since it includes the originals of documents relating to the Lee family which we would not have known existed otherwise viz:- They include the original documents of:- i) Marriage Settlement of 1433 witnessed by John Legh (Encl) ii) Tenancy agreements signed by Lees/Leighs for houses and land they occupied in 17th & 18th century (Encl) iii) Penpoll Manorial records; these are in Medieval Latin doggerel which I cannot read but the Archivists of the CRO have looked through them for me and reported that :- Estreat Roll for Michaelmas 1575-76 has the entries:- William Lee as a free tenant `vjd` (6 pence = 2.5p) William Lee brought a plea of trespass against John Alee. iv) Lease agreements with Nicholas Leigh

LAND TAX-Tithe Records - 1799-1805, 1805-1811, 1841-51 Those of the village of Trehan, in the parish of St Stephens with , have records of our family`s land and include a map showing location. (Encl)

CIVIL REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS, MARRIAGES & DEATHS from 1837 The requirement to register a birth, marriage or death came into effect on 1st July 1837 in England & Wales and 1st January 1855 in . Copies of all the certificates of registration of the family have been purchased and from these the lineages to the present day has been traced.

TEN-YEARLY CENSUS RETURNS from 1841 Censuses have been taken of the whole population every ten years since the beginning of the 19th century, though the first to include a full list of names was that of 1841. The records are available after 100 years for public inspection locally and in Principal Record Office, Central London. The 6 between 1841 and 1891 have been consulted. These all contain records of the family first at St Stephens/Saltash,Cornwall and later in Devonport.

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EARLIEST RECORDED ANCESTORS 12th - 16th century 1179 - William de Legh was in dispute with Abbot Baldwin. Legh claimed advowson of Leigh Chapel. The convent asserted that it was a daughter-chapel of Milton Abbot, the church of which was in their patronage. After William`s death an agreement was reached. In a charter by William`s daughter Alice and her husband Robert Champeaux it was laid down that the Chaplain of Milton Abbot must celebrate divine service at Leigh on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays: a time-table which appears to leave little time for his duties at Milton Abbot. (Ref; Devon & Cornwall Record Society - Church and State in 12th Century Devon) : There is a Leigh shown on modern maps just over the R.Tamar in Devon and 1 mile south of Milton Abbot; this is probably William`s seat. It is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 so it is later in origin than the Leigh of Quethiock which is in the Domesday Book and is 9 miles to the south. 1308 - William de Legh and his wife Alice put their names to a claim in dispute over 1 messuage and ploughland in Fauteston (Manor of Roscarrock?) held at Westminster 15 days from the day of St Martin, 2EdII (25Nov1308). (ref: Feet of Fines) The above were recorded in Feet of Fines and are the earliest of any Leghs in the area. Other than the name there is no direct evidence of linkage between these two Leghs and our family from Quethiock, but when we consider that the only pre-Conquest Saxon settlement recorded as Legh in the area was in Quethiock, and it was common for younger sons when setting up new dwellings to name them after the old and we are talking about a time when the total population of Cornwall was no more than 25,000, and of an area where the name Lee and variants has never been common, so it seems very likely that these two Leghs are related in some way to the Quethiock Leghs.

The earliest record found of a Legh of Legh in Quethiock is of :- d 1275-1350?- Rich de Leye - my 18th great grandfather whose name is the penultimate one on the roll listing those in Quethiock who paid a Subsidy, or tax,imposed by King Edward III in 1327. The roll (Encl) contains 29 names. Richard is shown as one of the two Parish Taxatores, who assessed what each man should contribute to the levy made on Quethiock parish. In medieval script a `g` was written as a modern script `y` with a bar above it. So `de Leye` means `of Lege`, that is Legh, or our Leigh. Richard of Leye is the earliest dweller at Legh that we know and so is the earliest ancestor of our Lee line that we can be totally sure of. Since he was a Taxatore we can deduce that he must have been a senior member of the community, possibly aged 40 to 50 years and whose life spanned about 1275 - 1350, and that his family were of some substance in the local community, which agrees with that inferred from their adoption of a locative surname. They are however not in the top layer of gentry otherwise he would have not been a Taxatore; landowning lesser gentry fits. His name appears on one other ancient document, it is a marriage settlement, the original of which is held in Kew PRO: Feoffment by Zeditha (Edith) d. and h. of Gervase Bastard,to Walter de Carmynou,of all her lands in `le Steorte`,with house and garden &c. Witnesses: Thomas de Clyve the elder,William de Trebarveth,Richard de Penwern, Richard Rouse,Richard ate Legh. Dated Treworgy Tuesday after Epiphany,14Edward III (8January1341) VolIV p.538 A.10333 Catalogue of Ancient Deeds Treworgy is 1 mile north of Liskeard & 6 miles west of Leigh. Richard would have lived during the reigns of the Edwards I, II & III, a time of the 5th Crusade, when Knights worn full Plate Armour, when the Venetian Marco Polo was the first man to travel to China and return and describe it, the Eastern World was controlled by the Mongol Hordes and Kublai was Khan of all China, Dante wrote his Divine Comedy and the front of Exeter Cathedral was built, the Battle of Crecy was fought in 1346 and English archers with Longbows defeated the French to start the war that lasted for 100 years. He may have experienced the horror of the first Black Plague which reached Cornwall in the winter of 1349 and may have even died of it since it killed between _ and ½ of the population. Richard`s time was 700 years ago and his world was far different from our late 20th century.

1337 - John de Leygh is recorded in a Survey of Tenants at the `Manor of Trematon a third part of half an acre Cornish. Rent at Christmas ½d Suit twice yearly Relief 2s 2d for all services Fealty & recognigment. This John is unlikely to be a direct ancestor though is probably a relation, though I have no knowledge how.

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1395-1465? John of Leghe - my 15th greatgrandfather After Richard the next record found of a Legh of Quethiock is over a century later; on 10th July 1433 when at Trecorme,a mansion between Leigh and Quethiock church, John of Leghe was one of five witnesses to a formal settlement of lands on the marriage of Joan Bodulgate to Edward Coryton. The document was a Feoffment by which Stephen and Joan Bodulgate put the freehold of considerable land holdings in trust for their two daughters,Joan and Isabel,in consideration of one red rose each year of their lives on St John the Baptist day, 24 June. The land passed to the Corytons in 1514 and 1537. The other witnesses were Sir John Trelawny Kt, Robert Buketon, Roger Kingdon and Nicholas Stephens. That John was a witness to such an important document for Coryton, indicates that he was a man of substance; the Corytons were Lords of Penpoll Manor in which Legh was situated and are still one of the premier families of Cornwall. A quote from Education in the West of England 1066-1548 - Nicholas Orme 1976 :-In 1611 William Coryton was educated in St Germans with John Eliot and Beville Grenvile, two of the premier families of that time shows the status of the Corytons and, on the basis that one is known by one`s friends, the status of the Lees. Unfortunately there is no record where the Lees were educated or as to how they rose to the rank of gentry, or if they had a profession. But according to Judge Stuckley in his (Biography of "Sir Beville Grenvile and his times" -1982) `None of the Cornish gentry were very rich or lived in great mansions. On the assumption that John of Leghe would be over 30 years old to be chosen as a witness to a neighbours important document and he lived for the average male Lee span of 65-75 years, then he will have been born between 1390 and 1400, and died between 1455 and 1475. There is over a century between John alive in 1433 and Richard alive in 1327 so there will have been 2 or 3 generations between them of whom we have no record. John would have been a greatgrandson of Richard. Their lives spanned 1275 to 1470 and included the reigns of Edward I, II & III, Richard II, Henry IV, V & VI; Kings whose histories were immortalized 100 to 200 year later by William Shakespeare. His plays give the impression of a period of colourful characters and chivalrous warfare, but in truth his is a nostalgic view of a period when there was considerable unrest throughout the country caused by famine, pestilence and the 100 years war (1337-1453) with France, that had led to great hardship and heavy taxation at all levels that was compounded by the simultaneous full impact of the Norman imposed Feudal system being felt; the ownership of lands taken from the Celts and Saxons in 1066 was still held by the descendants of the Normans and under their Feudal system land was wealth and power so the lot of the ordinary English, and Cornish, was serfdom, or slavery which ensured that their level was rarely above subsistence and they lived in one or two room mud or daub huts. Tom Paine wrote during the early 19th century - In succeeding centuries following the Norman Conquest they complained of a loss of native freedom, and of a continuing "rain of (Norman) locusts" generation by generation - "England was disfigured (still 800 years later) by the marks of a Norman-imposed authority". Most of the lands of Cornwall were allocated after 1066 by William I to the Count de Mortain but his descendants soon moved out of Cornwall and Soulsby comments in his `History of Cornwall` - The association of the Mortain family in Cornwall may have been short-lived, but the legacy of their Norman settlement proved to be much more durable. The foreign feudal imposition on the British was justified by Christian Bishops with the message - Servitude is ordained by God, either because of the sins of those who became serfs, or as a trial, in order that those who are thus humbled may be made better - from a 12th century theological fragment. However Cornwall fared better than most of England because it benefited from a diverse economy with fishing and mining besides agriculture. The population of Cornwall increased from some 19,000 at the time of the 1066-conquest to some 77,000 in the early part of the 14th century. (1971 population - 377,460) A similar near four-fold increase occurred throughout the rest of England and agricultural production had to be increased to feed it. With only limited natural fertilizers to replenish the soil, its fertility was progressively diminished and famine became common. The worst famines were in Richards time, in 1315-17, when there was unusually heavy rainfall, that was compared by contemporaries to Noah`s flood, combined with a sharp fall in temperatures, known as the Little Ice Age that caused harvests to fail. The hardships were increased by the commencement in 1313 of Cattle Plague, fortunately horses proved to be immune to it and could be used for ploughing instead of oxen. These natural disasters together with the population increase led to widespread starvation -"in 1348 the poor ate dogs, cats & dung of doves 14

and their own children"-Annals of Bermondsey quoted by Asa Briggs, A Social 1994. Even worse, in September 1348 the Black Bubonic Plague, which over the previous century had been spreading slowly westward from China through Asia and Southern , arrived in England:- Two ships, one from Bristol, landed at Melcombe a little before mid-summer. On them were sailors from Gascony who were infected by an unknown illness referred to as pestilence. They infected Melcombe, whose first inhabitants died on Eve of St John the Baptist (23 June) after an illness of three days at the most. Melcombe is now part of Weymouth, . Outbreaks of the disease quickly occurred in other west country ports, including . The main outbreak in Cornwall was during the winter of 1349, during the time of Richard de Leye. The average death rate in the country was _. A measure of the severity in Cornwall can be gauged by the appointments of new Rectors which rose from 4 per year in 1339-40 to 85 appointed between March 1349 and March 1350, a 21-fold increase. The population of Cornwall in 1377 was 51,500 and presumably had fallen from some 70,000 after 20,000 deaths during the 1st pestilence. In general the deaths were highest amongst the poor whose huts with mud walls and thatched roofs were ideal in which house rats, bearing the plague fleas, could nest. The gentry, presumably including our Leghs, lived in houses with solid walls and roofs and were somewhat protected. In 1349 Richard would have experienced the horror of seeing his neighbours and friends die in great numbers and possibly he succumbed too, without any idea why they were dying. His children and grandchildren, including John of Legh, would have had the same experience since the pestilence returned nationally in 1360/61, 1369/70 and to the West country in 1373, 1378 and 1398. In 1361 when the plague returned King Edward III faced with difficulty in finding archers for his war with the French issued a proclamation the people of our realm..usually practice in their games the art of archery...the said art is almost totally neglected and the same people amuse themselves with throwing stones, wood or iron or...cock-fighting and some indulge in other dishonest games which are less useful ...so that the kingdom becomes destitute of archers and he required that all able-bodied men should practice archery on `s days. There are no records of how country folk fared but certainly towns like Truro, Plymouth and Exeter were badly depopulated; in 1378 Truro asked the King to reduce its tax assessment because of heavy losses of population `by plagues`, plural indicating more than one type. Outbreaks of Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague, Smallpox and Cholera continued to occur during the 15th century; the worst were Plague 1447-1454 and Smallpox 1463- 1478. It is quite possible some Leghs died in one of these outbreaks. (Black Death - Rosemary Horox 1994: Phillip Zeigler 1992?: JFD Shrewsbury 1970; Robert Gottfried 1988?) The lives of Richard and John were also in what is known as the Dark Ages of European history (600-1600AD) a 1000 years in which the intellectual advances made by the Greek and Romans in science, philosophy, literature and art came to a halt as Europe was ravaged by the broad swords of the , or Normans, and Huns, who with their subjugated subjects fought continual wars to gain and then exercise royal control on increasing territory. The contrast between 600-1600AD to the previous 1000 years is strikingly apparent when one studies the literature of the two periods. So not only did Richard and John have to bear the plague they also had to bear continual effects of the wars waged by their Norman Kings of England against the Scots and French. In 1337 the war in Normandy grew from a skirmish to a full scale war that lasted for a 100 years. It was conducted to regain control of lands in Normandy that the Norman Kings had previously held without paying homage to the French king. Most English lived inland and before the present era of easy and rapid communications would never travel further than the next parish boundary, and would have been oblivious of events beyond. But our family lived near the Cornish coast close to Plymouth and would have seen ships arriving and departing for France, Spain, Caribbean or Americas and would have been aware of the national events causing these movements. Plymouth is closer to France than London and in Medieval times was the fourth largest town in England and a major port of exit. Legh is less than 10 miles from it. 1302 & 1308-10 Plymouth and outlying districts were told to send men to man ships against Bruce and the Scots Richard de Leye 1290-1350 1339 French (referred to as pirates) first attack on Plymouth, 500 drowned and 89 townsmen killed. 15

1346 After the Battle of Crecy Edward III besieged Calais and 700 ships were sent to assist him of which 47 ships and 770 men came from Plymouth; 1 ship and 12 men came from Millbrook. 1348 The Black Prince made Plymouth his HQ and stayed at Priory. 40 ships left with 30 Bowmen to escort Joanna, the Prince`s sister, to Gascony for her wedding. Black Prince was created and granted 1350 French 2nd attack, they destroyed some farms & `fair` places in neighbourhood. 1356 French King, John & many French Noblemen taken prisoner at Battle of Poitiers landed at Plymouth en route to London. 1377 Poll Tax of Edward III; in Plymouth 4837 were liable, which suggests a total population of 7000, only London, York & Bristol were larger. 1377 & 1400 French burnt part of Plymouth John Legh 1390-1460 1403 30 Breton ships & 1200 men ravaged Plymouth, burnt houses near waterside levelling 600 to the ground; the area is still to this day known as Bretonside. After this attack Plymouth`s defences were improved and in 1416-1449 a castle was built on the hillside seaward of the town. A defensive structure is still there now and called the Citadel. Richard would have been alive at the time of the Battle of Crecy 26 August 1346, the first major battle of the war, in which the mass of English Archers with the Longbows that they had recently copied from the Welsh defeated the Crossbows of the French. His son would have been alive at the time of the Battle of Agincourt 25 Oct 1415 which was later immortalised by Shakespeare in his Play `Henry V` and by Laurence Olivier who played the title role in the film. His greatgrandson, John would have been alive at the time of the Battle of Orlean 30 April 1429 when Jeanne d`Arc triumphed and later when she was captured and burnt by the English in revenge at Rouen on 28 May 1431. We do not know what part the Leghs took in any of these battles, but the Feudal system introduced by the Norman Kings required all landholders to make a military commitment to provide and arm a number of men and to lead them into battle if the King or the Lord to whom they paid homage so required - they may have worn a suit of armour and rode on horseback either into battle or at the many pageants that took place! But even though our Leghes lived in a period of brutality and pestilence, life in isolated Cornwall must have had some personal pleasures; they married, had children and had time to witness the Coryton/Bodulgate marriage settlements in 1433 and wear fashionable dress. From 1375 plays were performed in the Cornish language in open round theatres; the remains of one at St Just is a 126ft circular 10ft high mound the inner rim of which is faced by stone steps that acted as seats for the spectators. The male fashion in 1399 outshone the female: men wore voluminous robes of rich material, usually buttoned down front, and hose joined together at the top to form tights and fastened up by laces, with exaggeratedly long toes and a cod-piece worn at the front. The French war ended finally in 1453 shortly before John died in about 1465. I have found no written record of his son. The next record found of the family is of his grandson, Walter in 1513.

1450-1513/1522 Walter & Olive Leghe - my 13th greatgrandparents The Court of Augumentation in 1547 recorded that "Walter Leigh of Leighe in the parish of Quethiock entered into a deed, or Obit, dated at Leighe on 23rd July in the fifth year of the reign of King Henry VIII (1513) whereby Walter and his wife Olive agreed to bequeath in their wills all their lands at Leigh to Phillip Burden on condition that he and others after him shall arrange to have said at the parish church of Quethiock for the salvation of the souls of the said Walter and Olive his wife and et the souls of their forebears and relatives and other faithful of Christ for ever, with dirges,commendations and Masses and other petitions and prayers. And the feoffees to take of the profits of the said moiety a reasonable reward for their labours in seeing the said OBIT is performed. Such Obits were very fashionable during early Tudor times and consequently the church became one of the major landowners in the country until Henry VIII instigated the Reformation and the split from the Papal Church and such Obits were investigated by a Court of Augmentation; Walters Obit was investigated in 1547. The minutes of their investigation still exist 16 and are in the National Record Office in Kew. They record that the investigation was made by the King`s Council for the furtherance of the King`s Right for the profit of the Obit. That-William Legh of Legh in Cornwall is tenant of the ground and heir to the donor. The said Phillip Burden is an old man and therefore there had need be speed thereof. As a result of the Reformation the family were able to recover the lands of Leigh. Walter was born about 1450 just before the war that the Norman Kings had waged for over 100 years against France ended. So he would have suffered the aftermath of it since it left England financially destitute and embittered against the Kings, and led to unrest at all levels of the society viz:- 1455 onwards there was the War of the Roses, fought to determine the Royal succession. During it there were many regal dignitaries passing through Plymouth to and from France, and later in Tudor times Spain also. 1497 Perkin Warbeck landed near Lands End marched to Bodmin assembled 6000 men to back his claim to the throne, marched to Exeter where they were defeated. 1497 June 17th Hundreds of Cornishmen, mainly miners, fishermen & labourers, marched to London to protest to King Henry VII about the injustice of taxing those who had little or nothing to give for the financing of the endless Royal wars. They commenced from St Kevern, on , led by Michael Joseph Angrove. At Bodmin a large number of men led by joined them and en route the numbers swelled to 15,000. It was peaceful until Guildford where the Kings men attacked them and later 200 were slaughtered on Blackheath. Afterwards almost every parish that assisted the marchers enroute was fined. In 1997 the march was re-enacted from St Kevern to Tyburn where Angove died and a monument placed in his memory on Blackheath.

1485-1540? John Leghe- my 12th Great Grandfather was the eldest son of Walter and is positively identified in the records of a Star Chamber case in which he was involved; it is described below. He is also recorded in the Military Survey of 1522 as Heir of Legh. His younger brother William is recorded in the 1522 Survey, in the 1547 Star Chamber Case and the 1547 investigation of their parents Obit. In the last William is referred to as Walter`s heir presumably because John died before the date of the investigation.

1510?-1578/9 John Lee-my 11th Great Grandfather -is the son of John and the grandson of Walter. He is positively identified in the records of the 1547 Star Chamber Case. He and his uncle, William are recorded also in 1544 in the Roll of Henry VIII Subsidy,or Tax, they are the only 2 Lees at Quethiock paying the tax. The Roll records John Lee as a collector of the tax for Quethiock just as his ancestor Richard was in 1327, it is possible that this was a position held by the Leghs throughout the centuries.

The lives of Walter, his son John and his grandson John span some 130 years (1450-1579); it is one in which changes occurred that ended the era of Medieval Knights and Feudal Lords and heralded the start of the Modern Age. Since the Battle of Crecy in 1347 the English Knights and Archers had been unbeatable but in 1453 the French used artillery against them and annihilated them; their days were over. During the same interval deaths from the Plague epidemics had greatly reduced the population numbers so that there was not enough serfs to work all the land of the English Lords and much of their land lay unworked. The basis of Feudalism was that the serfs were chattels of the Lords bound to work his lands in return for protection and a plot of land on which they grew their own food; they were not allowed to go beyond the limits of the Manor nor marry or move residence without the Lords approval, and, by paying him a suitable fee. The system depended upon there being more serfs than plots of land but by the mid- 15th century the reverse was true and many fled their Manors to find better land, or opportunities in one of the new towns, where unchallenged residency for 12 months and 1 day released them from their ties to a Manor and made them Freemen. Many were found before then and dragged back to their Manors, or were executed, but there were so many opportunities for fugitives that the whole Feudal system collapsed. As this new age began so a spirit of exploration gripped many European countries and at 17 last they discovered the full extent of the world: 1485 Diaz rounded the Cape of Good Hope, 1492 Columbus reached America, 1497 Cabot reached Newfoundland, 1520 Magellan rounded Cape Horn and crossed the Pacific Ocean to reach the Philippine Islands, 1519 The Spanish Conquistadors led by Cortez landed in Mexico, seized Montezuma in Mexico City and proceeded to invade the lands of the Aztecs and Incas of Central and South America, capturing Atahalpa in 1535. It was also a period of great religious change the omnipotent authority of the Pope in Rome was challenged, and Henry VIII led the English Church away from Roman Catholicism and Papal domination and so led to the formation of our present Anglican Church; it also started a bloody confrontation between the Protestants and Catholics that was to last for over a century. The two Johns would have experienced a change in the Sunday religious service when the Latin Prayer Book was replaced by one in English. In 1548/9 as a result of agitation by disgruntled clerics, a rebellion took place known locally as Commocion Time during which many Cornishmen marched from Bodmin to attack Trematon Castle and Plymouth. They demanded restoration of the old service in Latin not Englysh. The leaders were hanged. Another 2000 Cornishmen from the north of the county marched to Exeter to protest to the Bishop. They were treated roughly and three of the four leaders were executed, the fourth was Henry Lee, Mayor of Torrington who escaped. Grandson John`s time was the golden age of Queen Elizabeth I and her Admirals from Plymouth; 1567 Admiral Hawkins watched as a fleet of 50 Spanish sail entered Plymouth harbour, he opened fire on their ensign, they parlied and left. 1577 left Plymouth to sail around the world; he landed in San Fransico Bay in 1579 and claimed it for England; he returned to Plymouth in the Golden Hind in 1580. 1578 Gilbert & Raleigh sailed from Plymouth in the first attempt to set up a colony in North America. 1588 The colourful spectacle of the 130 ships of the sailing up the English Channel to be met and fought by Drake and the English Fleet off , watched by the local Cornish,possibly including our Leighs,from the cliffs above Whitsands Bay: where 350 years later I often went as a young boy with my family. It is appropriate that from this point onwards, when the modern age began that we start finding many records that have detailed information on our family. Grandson John is mentioned in 4 documents:- Star Chamber Case In 1547 John was involved in a legal case heard by the Star Chamber at Liskeard, the records of which are still held in the National Record Office in Kew. The case concerned 100 acres of pasture and meadow on Crendle Down, which is just to the north of Leigh Down in Quethiock. The land had been claimed by the family as theirs since the time of Walter or before. Walter had impounded any cattle that strayed on to it and had claimed a fine from the cattle`s owner. Though there were some who believed that it was not theirs and that it was manorial common land. John junior fenced part and grew corn there. Early one morning the Bailiff of the manor and others came armed and broke down his fences and damaged his crops. John signed a Bill of Indictment against them :-...complayne..unto your excellent maiestie your pore subiecte & daylie Orator Jhon Lee of the parishe of Quethike in the county of Cornwall whereas one Walter Lee graundfather unto your sayd Orator was seased of..hundrethe acres of..medow & pasture..in Grendoll Downe within the parishe of Quethike in his demeane as of Fee..after whose deathe all the use right title possession..discended..to sonne & heyre of one John Lee sonne & next heyre of the sayd Walter Lee..without let or dysturbance of any person..untill of late..the xxjth day of March last past one John Hall..of Probus..husbandman Hugh Fleshman..of Quithike..husbandman William Bryand of the same parishe husbandman being accompanied with diverse other ryotouse & misdemeanid persons to the nombre eight..arayed in forcyble manner that..with swords bucklers dagers staves pykeforks..assembled..in forcyble manner intred into a close of your said subjecte at Greydoll Downe ..which sayd close your sayd subiecte had lately tyled with whete & by force & armes brake open the hedge..in dyverse.. places & with there beasts & cattall consumed eate up & distroyed xij acres of good whete....to save & preserve viij acres more ..not being fullie consumed..caused sixe servants too come within the close..the sayd riotouse..persons came and assaulted your sayd subiecte & his sayd servaunt & they threatened & menassed since then the sayd Hall..daylie manasseth vexeth & disquietith your sayd subiecte 18 so that he is lyke utterlie to be undone..unles..you..grante your gracyouse writs of sub pena to be directed unto..them.. When the case was heard statements were recorded from 22 witnesses. Unfortunately the outcome of the case has not survived. But the relationships of Walter, John senior, John junior and William Lee are clearly stated in the records as is the names and age of their neighbours who were witnesses. Typical statements were:- Edward Layne of Quethiock of the age of L yrs (50) one of the tenants of Penpoll manor swore sayth that he dyd know Water Legh ocupy a common yn Cryndall Downe as the tenents of Goodmary dyd but what estate he was seased he knoweth not. And ferder sayth that he dyd beate ground yn Cryndall Downe to Water Leghe about a XXX yrs past (30). And had wags of the seid Water for the same. ....he sayth that Water Legh made an estate to Wylliam Legh and John Legh. And that after the decesse of Water, William dyd entre and occupy yn comyn wyth the lords tenants of Goodmary and after William dyd enter and occupy Xij yrs (12) or thereabout yn comyn with the tenants of Goodmary. And ferder sayth that the close that Lygh yn dyd fryth was brokyn and that cattall was yn the corn there, but by whome hyt was broken other then by Hall one of the lords baylyffs nor what hurt was don yn the corn he knoweth not,nor ferder he can not say. John Basely of the parysh of Myllen at the age of XL yrs (40) sworn that he came by the ground now yn varyaunce,And ther did mete John Hall having a sword buckler and dagger and dyd se Bryand breke downe the fryth without wepen,And that Lyghes son dyd ax of Hall why he came with weapons and not with a whyt rod only as a bayleff. And the seid Hall aunswred that his fader (John Lee) had sayd that he wold mete them ther,And therefore he brought his weapons with them to defend them.... Thomas Kyngdon of Trewonsey withyn the countye of Cornwall gentylman of the age of L yrs (50) deposed sayth ...Water Leghe occupy parcell of the ground called Lyghe Downe which he thynkth came unto Cryndall Downe. And dyd clayme the same as hys enheitance,but how myche hyt conteyneth he knowyth not.....Water dyd seased of the one moyte (one half) and did geve the other moyte to his youngest son Wylliam Legh And saythe the compleynant (John Leejnr) had the ynterest of Wylliam by exhange..... Phelypp Burden of the parysch of Quedeke of the age of LXXij (72) deposed sayth that he hath byn tenant ther of some ..LX yers (60). And sayth that the said Legh & his tenants of Gudmery have occupyed the land yn varyaunce yn comyn,And that hit is parte of the manor of Penpoll,to...that Corbut & Tregyan ar lords....he sayth that John Lyghe hath wrongfully enclosed the same from the said lords,And also Wylliam Leghe his uncle dyd lekewyse enclose parcell therof before hem which was commmaunded to be broken down by the offycers of the lord Vawse & of Mr Corbut that came from London & parte thereof was brokyn accordying to their commaundement... Wylliam Leghe of the parysch of Quethyok of the age of LX yrs (60) sworn saythe that the ground nowe yn variaunce ys parcell of the manor of Penpoll....that Corbut & Tregyan ar lords...... he sayeth that the said John Leghe hath enclosed the same wrongfully for this deponent wold have enclosed the same yf he myght have this suffred by the lords of Penpoll. These troubles that John experienced were common at that time and arose because of an increasing population and the need to feed it. Up till the 16th Century most of Cornwall had been barren heath fit only for summer pasture but in that century agriculture became more efficient and it was possible to grow crops on the poorer soils and so more and more of Cornwall`s waste and moorland was enclosed. The same process was going on throughout England and everywhere the peasants were objecting violently since it reduced the common land on which they could each pasture a cow or two. Other examples of the same trouble were: at Helston where Martin Hycka fenced in 3 acres of waste land that he had bought,the locals complained and the Prior told them to break down the hedge and he would defend them: and near ,Richard Curtis owned 2 moors of which he enclosed 4 acres, `the Townsfolk proceeded to put their beasts into the said moors and to eat up and befoul his grass without any lawful authority` ;Curtis impounded the cattle and the Town Mayor brought and action against him in the Star Chamber.

1575/6 Manorial Records show William Lee brought a plea of trespass against John aLee. This is probably our John junior of Legh and William his Uncle, or his Uncle`s son, since there seems 19 to have been some animosity within the family; in the Star Chamber case of 1547 William spoke against John and declared that in his opinion the disputed land on Crendle Down fenced by John had never been owned by the Lee family but was common land. Parish records In 1574 the Parish Records of Quethiock were commenced. The first burial of any Lee/Leigh recorded was John Lee on 20th April 1576, and on 23rd March 1578/9 another John Lee. Our John is probably the latter since the latter had sufficient assets to require a formal admonition in 1583, corresponding to our John as a man of substance. The admonition is listed in the archives of Truro County Record Office but in 1990 & 96 the archivists were unable to locate it for me.

Heraldic Visitation made in 1620 records that John married the daughter of an Issack, or Isseck, of Cornwall. The College of Arms inform that they do not know which branch she was from but her Arms quartered with the Leighs are from the line that descends from Thomas Issack, father of Edward, who came from Kent. Their line descends to Samuel Isaacke who was Town Clerk of Exeter during the reign of Charles I and who suffered "...many imprisonments both by sea and land, Plunderings, Payments of Compositions, decimation & sequestration from his said office of Towne Clerke....for 14 years" He was rewarded by Charles II by being permitted to augment his Crest with "..a coronett Or about ye neck of ye Leopards head erased prop."

Descendants of John John had at least two sons, William and George, from whom descend two male lines. Both are recorded in the 1569 Military Survey for Quethiock :- William Leghe Billsman; Peter & George Lee archers. It does not list John,who would have been over the age limit of 60 years. William and George are John` sons, whilst Peter is probably a nephew since whereas George is mentioned in William`s will Peter is not. William,the eldest, inherited the lands of Legh and from him descended the senior family line,Legh/Leighs of Leigh, the last male of which died in 1730. From George descends the junior line, which is mine and which has persisted to the present 20th century.

SENIOR LINE of LEGH/LEIGHS of LEIGH : 1535-1732 In 1620 Nicholas Leigh gave the pedigree of the Senior Line to the Heralds of the College of Arms on their visit to Cornwall; Vivian in his Visitations of Cornwall,published 1887,includes a copy which he had extended from other data by 3 more generations to 1670. The line descends from William, the eldest son of John (1510-1578) after whom the line persisted for only 5 more male generations, until 1730. The line continues through daughters, some of whom had children, but only one bore the name of Lee; William`s daughter Jane married his nephew John Lee, the son of his brother George, which is my junior line. 1535?-1607 William Leghe als Leigh als Lee -is my 10th Greatgrand Uncle and through his daughter Jane, he is also my 10th greatgrandfather His baptism was before the commencement of the Quethiock Parish Register and the first record of him is in the Muster Roll of 1569 in which he shown as- William Leghe, billsman. His burial was recorded in the Quethiock PRs on 7th February 1607,as Gulielmus Leigh (The PRs were written in latin until 1640, Gulielmus is the latinized form of William). He married Jane Coode of Morval, who is descended from Richard Coode MP for Liskeard in 1345 (47EdwIII) and from Peter leProuzes alive in 1210 and whose greatgrandson Sir William leProuz was Sheriff of Devon in 1270 and built Gidleigh Castle in Devon. William and Jane had 7 children who are named in his will of 1604 as John, Henry, Jane, Edyth, Joane, An and Margeryt. All but the two youngest daughters were born before 1574 when Quethiock Church Register was commenced, they are recorded as;- Ana filius Guilyilum Leighe bapt 29 July 1574, the 6th entry in the register, and Margareta filius Gulielmi Legh bapt 3rd March 1577. It was during Williams lifetime that the spelling of the surname was most variable: the family name is recorded in 1522 as Legh, in 1544 Lee, in 1569 Lee and Leghe, in 1574 Leighe, in 1577 20

Legh, in 1604 Lee and at his burial in 1607 Leigh. The variant of Leigh occurred first in the Parish Records and it would seem that it was introduced at Quethiock by a new parish incumbent, usually they were from outside Cornwall and educated at Oxford. But to the villagers William was still a Lee so in the Subsidy Return for 1604 compiled by a member of the village not the Incumbent, he was recorded as William Lee. William`s descendants adopted the Leigh variant and adhered to it. Last Will (Encl) William was buried at Quethiock on 7 February 1607. His will of 11th March 1605 is in Truro CRO. He declares himself `somewhat sick of bodye` and bequeathed To the poore of the pyshe of Quethiock 10s 1996 Values =£565 my daughter Jane 11s and every one of her children 12d a peece =£621 & £57 Edythe 10s " " 12d =£565 Joane 10s " " 12d An 3/3 " " 12d =£184 Margeryt 10s " " 12d Elizabeth daughter of my sonne Henry Leigh the £20 due to me from Thomas Herle`s children after his decease (Henry = Sibella Herle of Trenouth) 1996 Values =£22,600 It I give unto George my brother 6/7 =£372 Ann Esseryr servant 3/3 =£184 Everyone of my godchildren 12d =£57 Hugh Gadycombe children 3/3 =£184 The remainder to his wife Jane. His sonne James (?error for John) he made his executor.

Inventory of personal possessions (Encl) was taken on 27th February 1607 It was valued at £152 - 5s - 6d =£172,071 (The = figures are sums of 1996 money that would give the same impact on the living standard of the person as the bequest would have in 1607. It is the bequest multiplied by the ratio of average daily wages in 1600 and 1996 £1=£1130, and takes into effect raising living standards and expectations between the two periods.) In his will there were no bequest to his two sons, only to his daughters, which suggests that he had already made bequests to both John and Henry. His inventory does not include his land holdings, including Leigh, but lists his personal possessions; pots & pans, farm animals & equipment, and household items including 4 feather beds and 11 other beds. From this we can conclude that William had had a largish household and was reasonably well-off though not extremely wealthy; he was minor gentry. Two main points to note are his bequest to his brother George, who is my ancestor, and to Hugh Gadycombe. The former because it connects George Lee to the Leighs of Leigh. The latter because in the official records the Gadycombes seem always to have been listed near to the Lee`s suggesting that the two families had been closely linked over a long period; early in the 17th Century Hugh Gadgecombe married Margery Lee, the daughter of John and Jane Lee, who were cousins. They were respectively the son of George and the daughter of William, his brother. 1560?-1610? John Leigh was William`s eldest son, who was appointed his fathers executor in 1607. He must have died before 1620 since he does not appear in the Heraldic Visitation pedigree of that date. There is no record of a burial of a John or James Leigh or any children baptised by him at Quethiock, so he seems to have left Quethiock completely. 1570?-1610? Henry Leigh was William`s second son, who succeeded to the title of Leigh of Leigh, and the senior male line continued through him. The Heraldic Pedigree shows he married Sibell daughter of Thomas Hearle of Trenouth in Cornwall. Her family is probably the one C.S.Gilbert described as Trenowth or Trenowith in Probus (20c Trewithen) who became extinct in the reign of Henry VIII, the co-heiresses married Boscawen, Borlase and Hearle. The Trenowth family ranked high in point of antiquity, and of which, was Michael de Trenowith, who served in parliament for Cornwall, in the twelfth of Edward III (1338). Henry and Sibella had a daughter, Elizabeth baptised at Quethiock in 1596, and a son Nicholas, baptised on 31st May 1598. There is no record of the burial of either Henry or Sibella at Quethiock.

After Henry the senior line of the family was headed by four successive generations named Nicholas:- 1598-1653 Nicholas Leigh -my 2nd Cousin 10 generations removed, married Barbara Lower of . He gave the family pedigree to the Heralds in 1620. It is his crest that C.S.Gilbert found on the Leigh 21 memorial in Quethiock church and copied into his History and Heraldry of Cornwall in 1817.

Arms of Nicholas Leigh Leigh Isseck 1598-1653

Lower

Barbara Lower was the second daughter of three to Ferdinand Lower and his wife, the daughter

of William Kelly of Northlew, Devon. His seat was at Botonet, Lezant. Both Barbara`s grandfather and greatgrandfathers were High Sheriffs of Cornwall, during the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, in 1579 & 1525 respectively. Nicholas and Barbara had 6 children: Nicholas in 1621, William in 1630, Barbara in 1616, Anne in 1617, Jane in 1623 and Margarett in 1633. 1621-1670 Nicholas Leigh their eldest son and heir, married Joane and died intestate. They had one son, Nicholas born 8May1644. Joanne was probably a Collins. She was buried at Quethiock on 17June 1670 and left all her possessions, valued at £52 to her brothers son William Leigh. William was a minor and probably the son of William Leigh; his guardian had been Phillip Mayow, who was her sons father-in-law. When he died in 1679 Nicholas took over the guardianship. The legal documents were signed by Nicholas and his sister Anne Leigh; the originals are in Truro CRO. 1644-1713 Nicholas Leigh the only child of Nicholas and Joane married Edith Mayow of Bray in 1663 and had 4 children; William1666, Nicholas1674, Elizabeth1670 were baptised at Quethiock & Barbara 1676 at Morval. Their eldest, William, had three daughters and died in 1703, 10 years before his father. Nicholas`s second son was another Nicholas, baptised in 1674 at Quethiock, he inherited Leigh on his fathers death in 1713. 1674-1732 Nicholas Leigh my 5th cousin 5 generations removed. I have found no record of him marrying. A copy of his will [Encl] dated 27th October 1730 is included in the Coryton Papers in Truro CRO (Ref DDCY 870) from it we learn that he had a natural daughter, Barbara, by Elizabeth Mann of Launceston to whom he left the lands at Leigh and elsewhere. So the line of male descent of Leigh then became extinct. It continued but only through female lines and the Domesday settlement of Legh passed from the family. It was bought by William Hambly who later sold it to the Corytons,the Lords of the Manor. Presumably it was Barbara Mann who sold it to Hambly shortly after 1732.

Family Social Status We know the lineage of the senior line and some of the names of the early Lee/Leghs but it is a list only, we have no knowledge of them as persons; how they lived, their education or professions, if any. Their gentry status within the Cornish society we can infer:- 1) Their name is locative and so they must be one of the landowning classes. In a feudal society land was power and so this placed them well above most Englishmen. 2) Two of the Subsidy Returns, 1327 & 1544, record them as the Collector for Quethiock Parish. This is a position of trust and it seems likely that it was hereditary, handed on from generation to generation through the 14th to 16th centuries. 3) The lines of the Cornish gentry are all interlinked and hence, since like married like, we can ascertain the status of the Lee/Leigh family from that of the families of their wives and to whom else they were related. In 1887 Vivian published the lineages of the Armigerous Cornish families; he had compiled these from the records of the Heralds Visitations to Cornwall in 1530, 1573 & 1620 and extended them using Parish & Inquisition P.M. records, wills and private family papers. He included the lineage of 4 wives of the senior line of

Jane Coode married William Lee around 1560. Her mother was Edith Coriton, the sister of Richard Coriton, the Lord of Penpoll Manor in which Leghe lies. The Coode family had ancestral connections to many MPs or Sheriffs of Cornwall; to the Dernfords who were Lords of Rame & Stonehouse, the Edgecombes of Cothele (now National Trust property) and Earls of Mount Edgecombes, the Prouzes of Gidleigh Castle in SW Devon and through Peter leProuze to the grandfather of William the Conqueror: she is connected also to James L. Vivian himself who compiled the lineage study 22 on which our analysis is based. Her daughter, Jane, married her nephew John Lee, the son of our ancestor George, and hence our Junior Lee line is also linked to her Coode ancestors. Sibell Herle married Henry Leigh around 1595. Her mother was the daughter of Sir Hugh Trevanion, who was knighted on the battle field of Bosworth together with her greatgrandfather Sir Richard Edgecombe. The latter was Comptroller to the household of King Henry VII. Many others of her ancestors were MPs or Sheriffs of Cornwall or Devon. A line of descent can be traced to her from Paganus Prideaux `Lord of Prideaux in the Conquerors tyme` Barbara Lower married Nicholas Leigh in 1616. The Lower family is linked via a 1st cousin to the deVeres, who were Earls of Oxford and the Courtneys, who were Governors of Exeter Castle, Barons of Okehampton and Earls of Exeter, and through them a direct line from Godfrey, the natural son of William the Conquerors grandfather. Edith Mayow married Nicholas Leigh in 1663. Her maternal grandparents were Sir John StLeger and Katherine Neville, both of whose direct ancestral lines descend from King Edward III (1327- 77) and so include the Plantagenet and Norman Kings of England and the Kings of France. They are cousins to the Tudor Kings and also to Queen Anne Boleyn. Of the 6 generations of the senior line of Leigh from John Lee (1510-78), from whom both junior and senior lines descend, we know the ancestors of 5 of their wives, the above 4 are all from families linked not only to the most prominent and influential families of Cornwall and West Devon but also with nationally important ones too. Whilst John`s wife was an Issack. Her lineage is not in Vivian`s book, but her Arms indicate that she was from a Devon family of some importance in Exeter. From this we may conclude that the Lee/Leigh family though not aristocratic were of the upper echelons of society in England.

JUNIOR BRANCH of LEE from LEIGHS of LEIGH This line is my line which commenced with George Lee, the second son of John Lee (1510-1578) of Leigh in Quethiock. George`s descendants lived close to the seat of Leigh for 7 generations after George, until about 1757 when they permanently left Quethiock for nearby StGermans. By using National Birth Registrations and baptismal records the family line can be traced, from son to father, from the 20th century back to the baptism of Richard Lee by William & Mary Lee at Quethiock on Wednesday 18th August 1647; both series of records give children and parents names so the ancestry is firmly documented back to that date. However before 1647 there are no continuous baptismal records unequivocally linking the family`s ancestors and initially this presented a problem, but fortunately Cornwall has only a small population and the Cornish have always disliked moving far, or out of the county, and consequently it is not difficult to deduce the family`s earlier ancestry from other types of existing evidence. We know that in the 18-19th centuries the family took some 150 years to gradually move their place of residence from Quethiock to Devonport, a distance of 9 miles. Such reluctance to move was common among the Cornish so it is very unlikely that their predecessors were any more mobile. Daniel Defoe in 1724 in his `A tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain` describes the Cornish accurately as `the kindest neighbours to be found; and as they generally live, as we may say, together, for they are almost always at one another`s houses, so they generally intermarry amongst themselves, the gentlemen seldom going out of the county for a wife, or the ladies for a husband, from whence they say, that a proverb upon them was rais`d (viz) That all Cornish gentlemen are cousins.` So we would expect that our early 17th and 16th century Lees acted similarly; never moved far, lived close together and married neighbour`s daughters. This is exactly what the evidence shows:- in a sparsely populated rural area about a mile east of the small hamlet of Quethiock there are four houses, separated by less than 1/4 mile; in one, Leigh, lived a family recorded first as Legh, then as Lee and after 1607 as Leigh; in two others, Pounds and Woodyeate, lived a family recorded both as Lee and Leigh; in the fourth lived a family named Stephens a daughter of whom, Wilmot, married Henry Lee of Pounds. In Celtic Cornwall the Saxon surname of Lee, and its variants, is uncommon. The medieval subsidy and muster rolls of Quethiock record only 2 or 3 each. So the conclusion that these two families of Lee/Leigh, who 23 lived so close to each other, were closely related is the only realistic one, especially considering that the family seated at Leigh was one of the prominent families of the Parish; no close neighbour is going to assume that family`s uncommon name unless they are actually closely related. The nature of that relationship is shown by the Alias, or Alternative Name, used by several generations of the Junior Line. The Quethiock parish records record the junior family either as Lee or Leigh until 1678 when in that year the burial of the daughter of Richard Lee was recorded as that of Isable George though only two years previous she had been baptized as Isable Lee. The family continued to live in Quethiock for another 53 years, 1678-1731, during which time they are recorded in the Parish records as George als Lee, or Lee als George or Leigh als George (als = alias or `otherwise known as`). After 1731 the family lived in the adjacent parish of St Germans and there all their events are recorded as Lee only. The use of such an alias was common in Cornwall. There are three common reasons for aliases; illegitimacy, inheritance or a patronyme. A thorough search of the records found no evidence whatsoever to connect the family with any family known as George from elsewhere in Cornwall, either on the male or the female sides and it would seem certain that George was a patronyme. The usage of patronymes continued in the Celtic regions of Wales and Cornwall well after they had been abandoned elsewhere in Britain; even in recent times it was still informally practised, often I and my two brothers were referred to as being `Franks` meaning sons of Frank Lee, our father. So the Junior Line were `Georges`, the sons of a George Lee. Before the time of the first recorded use of the patronyme (1678) there was only one George Lee in the records, he is in the 1569 Quethiock Muster Roll and therefore that George Lee must be the ancestor of the Junior Line of Lee. He is the younger son of John Lee of Legh and brother of William from whom the senior line descended. This then established the relationship between the Senior and Junior Lines of Lee. The earliest record of the usage of the patronyme is by Richard Lee in 1678, who must have been George Lee`s greatgrandson. So it is interesting to speculate why he used George`s name. The answer becomes apparent when one looks at the christian names of Richards other ancestors; they were all John or William except one Richard and one George, and George was the only name not used by the Senior Line. So it was the one patronyme that could differentiate between the two lines. It was a small community and most of the land surrounding their homes was either owned or tenanted by one or other of the two families,so to avoid confusion it would be understandable that everybody would resort to the common practise of using a patronyme to separately identify them. It was the turbulent period after the Civil War and it is possible that they themselves wished to dissociate from each other; Cornwall was fiercely Royalist and the Lord of their Penpoll Manor, Coryton, was one of the three leaders of the Cornish Royalist Forces, whilst Humphrey Lower, a possible relative of Nicholas Leighs wife Barbara Lower, was a strong Parliamentarian.

(i) 16th - 17th CENTURY at QUETHIOCK 1540?-1610? George Lee - my 10th Greatgrandfather Other than William Leigh`s will of 1605 and the 1569 Muster Roll there is no record of George. He is our important link man but a mystery; his burial is not recorded in the Quethiock Parish Records. Based on the dates of the lives of his father and son, both Johns, and that he was alive on 11th March 1605 when his brother left him a bequest in his will I estimate his lifespan as 1540-1610,which spans the reigns of the Tudor Monarchs from HenryVIII through Elizabeth I. It was a time of great upheaval following the changes instigated by King Henry VIII to abolish the power of the Roman Pope on the English and which led to passionate bloodshed. Amongst the changes was the introduction of a new prayer book in vernacular English to replace the one in Latin; It was ordered to be first used on WhitSunday 9June1549. There were risings in Devon and Cornwall throughout June and August,priests were forced to don their vestments and say mass instead of the new service. The rising in Cornwall was led by Humphry Arundell of and John Winslade. (The former was a nasty character who withheld money from his servant Thomas ALeigh who he had sent to London 4 times without refunding him his expenses) 2000 Cornishmen marched in protest to Exeter, of the four leaders one was Henry Lee, the Mayor of Torrington; he was the only one not executed. He is not one of ours but would have been from the other Lees from northeast Cornwall. Besides these religious changes it was also a time of a Scientific Explosion the onset of which is attributed partly to the publication in 1543 of Copernicus`s "De revolutionibus or buim coelestium" in which he proposes a sun-centric planetary system and dismissed the theologically demanded earth-centric one, and in part to the rediscovery of the scientific philosophical works of Archimedes (287-212BC). The originals of the latter in Greek had 24

been long lost but for 17 centuries the Arabs had preserved his writings in translations in Arabic. These were refound by the Europeans and retranslated into Latin. Archimedes had been a millennium ahead of his time and the rediscovery of his works heralded the end of the Dark Ages which had existed in Europe for the 1000 years from the end of the Roman Empire; during it there was an intellectual stagnation throughout Europe, and England. The classical culture that had developed in Greece and Rome during the previous 1000 years was forgotten and all was dominated by the broad swords of the northern European Tribes; the Huns and the Norman-Vikings and the new philosophy of the Christian religion that taught fatalism and the meek acceptance of domination by the Kings, and the Popes. The period is known as the Renaissance,Rebirth,when everything in the arts and sciences was challenged and adventurous men were financed to discover new lands and new ideas. George is about the same age as Francis Drake who was born on a farm in nearby Tavistock in 1545 and since Drake sailed with ships from Plymouth George would have heard many stories of his exploits against the Spanish and probably even saw his ships pass in out of Plymouth Sound: especially on 13December1577 for his voyage around the world, returning on the Golden Hind on 26September1580 with a vast fortune in emeralds, silver and gold that was stored in the famous Trematon Castle near Saltash until Queen Elizabeth determined what was to happen to it. On the morning of Sunday 21July1588 the 130 ships of the Spanish Armada sailed up the Channel, a colourful spectacle. Warning beacons were lit and Armour was taken off the peg in the parish churches ready for the expected invasion. Drake and the English fleet left Plymouth,waited for them in nearby and engaged them in battle off Looe. The local Cornish,including probably George and his family,had a fine view from the cliff-tops. George may have heard of the discovery of Virginia in 1584 by another Devon man, Walter Raleigh. It was a stirring period when during Elizabethan times England first began to become a world power and empire builder, founded on its west country maritime prowess. The first Englishman to visit India which was to become the centre of England`s future empire was in 1591. Since we know nothing of George`s life one speculates whether as a West countryman born within 10 miles of Plymouth, the departure harbour for so many Elizabethan maritime adventurers, he may have been involved in one of these adventures and perished away from rural Quethiock. But there was the return of the Black Plague to Cornwall in 1571,1581 & 1590 which must have affected the family; the Historian Carew later wrote that there was great loss of life in Bodmin and now there were many decayed houses that showed the town to have once been more populous. Bodmin is the administrative town of the area and only 16 miles west of Leigh. The late 1590`s were terrible years. During the 16th century the population of England more than doubled from about 2 to 4½ million and it became increasingly necessary to grow more food crops. However problems arose because with the increased demands on the soil and with only limited natural fertilizers, the fertility fell, so common land was enclosed and tilled, but then the peasants suffered since each had customarily pastured a cow or two there. So when in the late 1590`s there was four summers of torrential rain that rotted the harvests and in June 1601 there were frosts every morning, there was widespread starvation and food riots. Bread was made from parsnips,Tapsters could no longer afford to brew beer, there were ragged armies of landless unemployed roaming the countryside. Food handouts were arranged, Parliament prohibited the eating of meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, the further enclosing of common land and the exporting of corn. Elizabeth`s reign that had sparkled, ended in general disillusionment.

1560?-1604 John Lee/Leigh -my 9th greatgrandfather was the eldest of George`s 2 or 3 sons. His two brothers were Edward who gave rise to the dynasty of Lees at nearby , and James whose descendants moved to Maker and Devonport. He married Jane Lee in 1581 at Quethiock. The only Jane Lee recorded was his cousin, the eldest daughter of his uncle William. (Support that John`s wife was Williams daughter comes from William`s will of 1605 in which he includes his brother George, John`s father, in his family bequests, and from John`s administration of 1604, in which a debt of £30 [£34,062 in 1996 salary equivalent] is repaid to William Leigh. So a close relationship existed between William, George and John, the most probable explanation is that Jane and John are cousins and she is the eldest daughter of William Leigh of Leigh.) Jane`s mother was Jane Coode the daughter of Walter Coode and Edith Coriton whose direct ancestors include many of the senior gentry of Cornwall and Devon, including the Coritons, the Dernfords and Prouses. John died intestate and on 12th November 1604 an inventory was made of possessions and in March 1605 a settlement of his accounts was made and proven by a `Theologie of Cornwall Archdeaconry`; copies of both are in Truro CRO. They show that he was not poor but had a substantial farm for those times with cattle and poultry; his possessions, excluding any land, were 25 valued at £39.3s.5d (the 1996 salary equivalent is £44,475). Jane, his wife left a will dated 16th December 1611 which was proven together with an inventory of her personal possessions on 12th day February 1611 (In the Julian calendar used until 1752 the year number changed on 23rd March so February 1611 came after December 1611 not before) A copy is in Truro CRO which I have copied and transcribed. In making her bequests she names her living children; John, William, Walter, Henry, Hugh and Margarett, Joane, Elizabeth. Her possessions are more modest than her husbands and her bequests accordingly so; to Margarett her best gown, best hat, best parcelett, best apron, and her second best brass pot; to Elizabeth her second best peticoat, best woolen waistcoat, best kerchief, best partlett and her best crock. Our ancestor William, to whom she refers as Wlm Leigh her second son, she leaves her bedstead, a feather bed, a bolster of feathers and her greatest pan of brass. These possessions which John and Jane valued enough to bequeath are so modest by 1996 today`s standards and fully illustrate the enormous increase in living standards and possessions. Jane`s assets were appraised at £10.14s.2d which would be equivalent to a 1996 £11,600. Interestingly throughout John`s asset appraisal and accounts and Jane`s will and appraisal they are referred to as Leigh not as Lee, implying that they were part of the Leigh of Leigh family line, yet the recording of their marriage was as the older variant of Lee. Whilst their children were baptised some as Leghe and some as Lee. Obviously at that time which name spelling each family was to use had still to be fixed. Their children`s baptisms were at Quethiock : Hugo Leghe 4May1582, Margarii Lee 8Dec1586, Mari Lee 25Jan88, Samuell Lee 3Nov1591, Galterius Lee 23Mar1594, Elizabeth Lee 18July1597, Henricus Leghe Jan 1601. Neither Mary nor Samuell are mentioned in Jane`s will, Samuell died under one year old on 23March1592 and presumably Mary had died before 1611. I have found no record of the baptism of either William or John but from the dates of baptisms of the other children it can be deduced that William must have been born between 1584 and 1593; John was appointed executor in his mother,Jane`s Will but his brother Hugh did the work and in 1611 wrote in the statement of accounts that he was John Leighs guardian and tutor, so John must have been under age and probably Jane`s last child, born about 1604, at the time of his fathers death.

1584-1650? William Lee/Leigh -my 8th greatgrandfather was the second son of John and Jane. There is no record of him except in Jane`s will in which he is named Wlm Leigh. I have deduced above that his birth date to be between 1584-1593. Unfortunately the early Parish records of Quethiock have become difficult to read and one page is blank. But two baptisms of Williams were noted under `Parentage not decipherable` by the Mormon Researchers of Utah in their original transcription of the of Quethiock Parish Records (Microfiche MF1423 in the Society of Genealogists in London) :- 22 July 1593 - Gulielmus s 00344-6 17 Mar 1621 - Willielmus s Willielmi 00731-2 The first fits exactly with the estimated date of the baptism of Jane`s second son William whilst the second fits as that of his son, William (1621-1695). William, the father`s time was that of Charles I`s wars against France and Spain which led to the following local events :- 1625 Mariners were impressed (enslaved) in Devon and Cornwall for expedition to Cadiz; during April- 200 and in May-150 were taken to Plymouth; September-500 more to replace those who escaped or were sick, 50 from Cornwall. Press gangs were feared and most did their utmost to avoid them, the Mayor of Saltash insisted no Gang could proceed until with due ceremony he had read the Order from the Town Steps, so giving the local men time to disappear. William Coryton, Lord of Penpoll, had no such scruples and impressed 20 Tinners. Aug-Nov 1627 150 more from Cornwall for expedition to Isle de Rhe, La Rochelle. The area had not only to put up with this impressment but also there were 4,750 men billeted on them, for which they received no payment. St Germans was exempt from billeting and Quethiock seems to have been an exception in the area and also had none. In 1625 the problem of pirates, referred to as `Turks` and `Dunkirkers` became acute. Turks operated from Algiers & Tunisia and the Dunkirkers from Dunkirk in the Spanish Netherlands; the pirates were sailors who were redundant after the France-Spanish peace of 1598 and England-Spain in 1604. They attacked not only small ships but raided onshore too; 26 merchants and mariners were taken into slavery and they caused fear amongst the Cornish generally; Looe lost 80 mariners & 27 ships in 10 days; Lundy Is. & were occupied; 60 men, women & child from `Munnigesson` in Mounts Bay were carried off to slavery. The authorities took little action until 1637 when the English invaded Salle in Morocco and piracy diminished. 1629 William Coryton and John Eliot, both from premier families of SE Cornwall, who had opposed Charles I`s favourite, Duke of Buckingham were sent to the Tower. Coryton relented and was released but Eliot died there. 1642 Carew reports that fear of Popery was inflamed in Cornwall by the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion and rumours of a massacre of Irish Protestants and in January 1642 by an influx of 800 Irish Catholics some of whom set up taverns & alehouses "They were very disorderly and much terrifie the Inhabitants where they come"

1621-1695 William Lee als Leigh als George -my 7th greatgrandfather is the first ancestor from whom there is clear documentary evidence of descent through males to our present 20th century generations. He was baptised on Sunday 17th March 1621 at Quethiock Parish Church, and when aged 25 married there on Thursday 30th July 1646 to Mary Hodge who was 26 years old and also from Quethiock, the daughter of Anthony Hodge. They had three children; Richard baptised 18 August 1647, Mary 23 August 1650 and Titus 19 September 1652. They lived in Pounds House , across the fields from the Leigh seat; they were the first of three generations of the family that we know lived there. The leases for it and adjacent, Woodyeate, record 5 generations of the family. The earliest lease for the house we have is dated 27 August 1696 (Ref:DDCY3225 Truro CRO), it is between William Gilbert and John Coryton. In it the house is said to have been heretobefore in the tenure of Digory Gadecombe deceased and late in the possession of William Leigh deceased. The term is for 99 years or the 3 lives of William Gilbert, of Thomas Bond sonne of William Bond of Holwood (a mansion one mile to the southeast, the other side of Leigh and later leased by a Nicholas Leigh) and of Richard Leigh sonne of William Leigh. After Richard died his son Henry took a new 3-life lease on the house (DDCY3227) on 24 June 1726 for 99 years or the duration of his own life, that of his wife Joanne and their son John. The house was in ruin by 1778 when it was leased (DDCY3229) to Jn Jones to rebuild. [Encl] We know nothing about William but he lived for 74 years during troubled times. He was born a year after the Pilgrim Fathers set sail from Plymouth Barbican for America. The Civil War began in 1642 when he was 21 and ended when he was 28 and Cromwell set up the Commonwealth republic. The Lord of the Manor was John Coryton who was one of the three principal leaders of the Royalist force in Cornwall so one wonders whether William was involved in the fighting since he was of the right age. In 1642 Cornwall was a poor county with a declining trade; by 1646 it was exhausted by the drain of rival armies upon its resources. Bad harvests followed the end of the war, while the price of tin fell. To add to the misery plague reappeared in 1646 and persisted for more than a year. At St Ives 535 people died of it; the town was isolated and food placed with the price affixed beside the streams bounding the affected areas. The aftermath of the war was wounded and disabled soldiers, bridges and walls destroyed and had to be rebuilt. In Cornwall the Royalist General Hopkins surrendered to Fairfax and Parliament on Tresilian Bridge, just east of Truro.Civil War in Cornwall In 1659 Celia Fiennes wrote in "Through England on a side-saddle" that in Cornwall she found all goods carried by packhorse and the roads full of holes & sloughs. In 1685 there was the Monmouth Rebellion that failed and was followed by Bloody Assizes of Judge Jefferies who wrought James II`s retribution on the West country for its support of the Rebellion. William would have had to suffer not only the Civil War and the rebellion but also the cold period 1645-1715 known as the Little Ice Age when for 6 weeks in 1684 the R.Thames was frozen. His wife Mary predeceased him and was buried at Quethiock Parish church on Tuesday 8th February 1687 as Mary George als Lee aged 68 years; William survived her for seven more years and was buried at the church on Tuesday 26 November 1695 aged 74 years as William Lee als George. His eldest son Richard took over his house, Pounds House and was the ancestor of our line. Of his daughter Mary there is no trace after her baptism. His younger son Titus married Jane Leane on 6 May 1680, recorded as Lee als George: he died childless and intestate at 50 years in 1702. His wife, nephews Henry Lee and Hoskin Hodge, who were farmers and yeomen of 27

Menheniot and Quethiock, had to sign an Administration obligation, the original of which together with an inventory of his possessions is in CRO Truro. Titus` possessions were valued at £3.5s.6d the most valuable item was two geld horses.

1647-1718 Richard Lee als George -my 6th greatgrandfather was baptised on Wednesday 18th August 1647 at Quethiock Church. On Friday 15th November 1669 at 22 years he is recorded in the Quethiock Parish records as marrying a Wilmot Stephens. Strangely there is no other record of a Wilmot Stephens. However living at the house of Trebrowne, that was situated between Leigh and Pounds House, were John and Wilmot Stephens who between 1642 and 1660 had 11 children of whom the eldest daughter was Jane, baptised 6th March 1651. When Jane was 10 Wilmot the mother died. She left eight surviving children of which two were girls, Jane 10 and Mary 1; and 6 boys ranging in ages from 17 to 5. Doubtlessly Jane would have had to become mother to the other children and probably was called Little Wilmot rather than Jane; and very likely she kept the name Wilmot throughout her life and it is this Wilmot who became wife to Richard Lee. Noteworthy is that Richard and Wilmot named their first child, Mary, the same as the sister that Jane looked after from a baby. Richard and Wilmot had three children, Mary 1670, Henery 1673 and Isable 1676; Mary possibly married Artur Carne in 1698, Henery continued our Lee line, but Isable died at 2 years. The Quethiock Parish records show Isable baptised as a Lee but buried in 1678 as a George, this was the first recorded use of the patronyme. They had no more children after Isable and Wilmot was buried 10May1704 aged 53. Three years after Wilmot died Richard married Margaret Binny who already had a child, Elizabeth Binny baptised in 1703; exactly one year before Wilmot`s death and would suggest that Wilmot had been unwell for some time and that Elizabeth was Richards child. Richard and Margaret had three other children, Jane in 1707, William and Titus in 1709, the last two when Richard was 62. The names given to the children form a pattern; Elizabeth is a variant of Isable which is the name of Richard daughter that died in 1678 two years old, their next daughter, born 3 years after Wilmot`s death was named Jane, the name which we believe to be Wilmot`s baptismal name; William was Richard`s father name and Titus the name of Richard`s only brother who had died in 1702. Three out of the four are definitely family names and so we would expect the fourth to be also and it is if as we deduce that Jane was Wilmot`s baptismal name. Richard was the second generation of Lees to live in Pounds House and was presumably a Yeoman farmer. The Quethiock records show him sometimes as Lee, sometimes as Leigh or George. He was born just as the second Civil War began and by the time he had grown up the troubles had subsided and the Monarchy restored. His lifetime was a new period when the stultifying effects of religious fervour decreased and with it England relaxed and, with its tensions gone, both science and the arts develop in a great flush as had not been seen since the times of Chaucer and Shakespeare; an Age under Charles II patronage that produced Isaac Newton`s Principia, Milton`s Paradise Lost, Samuel Pepy`s Diaries, Wren`s Churchs, Henry Purcell`s Music, the theatres were revived not as the open playhouses of Shakespeare but roofed in and stages lit artificially by candles where the still performed Restoration Comedies were enacted, encouraged by Nell Gwyne the King`s orange seller Mistress. But there was the weather, it was cold and the Thames froze for 6 weeks, it was known as the Little Ice Age. Then the Bubonic Plague returned for the last time for 3 centuries; in London it was controlled by the accidental Great Fire of 1666 which raged for 5 days and destroyed all between the Temple and the Tower; but it led to a rebuilding and to Wrens great churchs. In Cornwall the application of scientific advancement enabled improved yields and import tariffs ensured a home market, life become easier than for their forefathers. During his lifetime :- 1665 on the restoration of the Monarchy after the Civil War the Citadel on was built on the site of the old Castle with guns pointing towards the city, which had strongly supported Cromwell; In 1671 & 1677 King Charles II came to inspect progress. 1688 William of Orange landed at Brixham first but then sailed around to Plymouth who declared for him as King instead of James II Stewart. Richard Lee 1647-1718 1689 a 1000 people died in the area of a great infection following the presence in Plymouth of 400 ships & 4 regiments awaiting embarkation to Scotland. Henry Lee 1673-1750 28

1691 Building of Devonport Dockyard commenced. Until then ships were all built at Saltash, as the names there of Dockbeach, Battery-yard & Battery Cottage show. `The Tamar` in which Byron, father of the poet, sailed around the world was built at Saltash in 1758. 1700 The first houses were built at North Corner, on the banks of the R.Tamar and referred to initially as Plymouth Dock and after 1824 as Devonport. Richard lived until he was 71 but sadly in spite of having had 7 children he had only one Lee grandson, John, the son of Henry. He is our single link in the Lee male line. Richard was buried at Quethiock Church on 30th March 1718, recorded as George als Lee.

1673-1750/1 Henery Lee als Leigh als George - my 5th greatgrandfather was born on Thursday 20 Nov 1673 the only son of Richard and Wilmot. His period is at the start of modern times and we can recognise the same attitudes and lifestyles that are continuous over the three centuries from him to ourselves in the latter part of the 20th century. Reading the documents he has left one can identify with him and he becomes a person not a name from ancient times. His leases for Pounds House and Woodyeate I found in the archives of Truro CRO. They are the originals that he signed in 1726 and 1737. They are the first of our family documents that are totally in English and not obscured in medieval latin; from 1733 it became obligatory to use English in legal documents. We can read them easily and they establish a connection to him since they read as 1930`s leases would have read. In 1995 I sat in the parlour of Woodyeate and had afternoon tea, it had been renovated in 1780 and was being renovated again but the 18-24 inch thick unplastered granite block walls, small rooms with low ceilings were the originals. Henery had sat in that room 250 years before me. I could image his feelings when he did so since it was the house next to his own and he had leased it for his daughter-in-law Margery and his two grandsons Henery and John to live in after his only son, John, died in 1731 aged 29 years. They were Henery`s only living descendants since his only other child , Mary, had died aged 2 years in 1707. At first I wondered why Henry had to lease the two houses from the Coryton family, since he came from a family of some substance but then I recalled that until recently the land in England was still owned mainly by the descendants, or inheritors, from the Norman Conquerors, and to build a house one had to lease land from one of them; freehold ownership of ones house is a recent phenomenon resulting from the 19th century . In Henry`s time the Norman Lords of the Feudal Manors collected their dues and dispensed justice to their Free Tenants, that is those who were not Serfs or slaves bound to work and live on his lands throughout their lives. The Lee`s were Free Manorial Tenants in 1726, as seemingly they always were since William Lee was recorded as such in the Penpoll Manorial Roll of 1575/6. Henry`s period is the first in which there was cheap mass publishing of books, tracts and pamphlets, so there are plenty of descriptions of both the economic conditions and political thoughts of the time. Daniel Defoe, the author of the famous novels, Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders made `A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain` in 1702-1710 and published an account of it. The full description he left us of the country is one of ordered prosperity in which agriculture, industry and commerce were expanding; harvests were good and cheap food available. The people were content after two generations since the bloodsheds over religious differences; 60 years before in 1640s it was the Puritans with Cromwell sword in hand, 30 years before in 1670s it was Bunyan singing hymns in gaol but by Henry`s times the Bible had an important rival, the Trade Ledger. But much decay and squalor still remained in the villages that had hardly changed in appearances since medieval times and in the `poor decayed borough towns`. Henery`s local town was Saltash of which Defoe wrote `a little poor shatter`d town. The Tamar here is very wide, and the ferry boats bad, so that I thought myself escap`d, when I got safe onshore in Cornwall. Saltash seems to be the ruin of a larger place, and we saw many houses as it were falling down, and I doubt not the mice and rats have abandoned many more, as they say they will, when they are likely to fall; yet this town is govern`d by a Mayor and Aldermen, has many privileges, sends members to Parliament, takes toll of all vessels that pass the river, and have the sole oyster fishing in the whole river, which is considerable. The Town has a kind of jurisdiction upon the river Tamar down to the mouth of the port, so that they claim anchorage of all small ships that enter the river, their coroner sits upon all dead bodies that are found drown`d in the river, and the like, but they make not much profit of them. Still, Saltash has a good market, inhabitants from the new town near Dock at the mouth of the "Ham-Oze" choose 29 to go over the Tamar to buy their provisions rather than walk to Plymouth. This in time might put a new face of wealth upon the place`. As in most areas capital was not being put into the old towns and villages but into commerce and the new towns, such as Plymouth Dock which later was renamed as Devonport, and so prepared the path for the Industrial Revolution that was to come in the next century. In the countryside everywhere the yeomen and gentry were building and rebuilding, and applying new scientific methods to agriculture; though the roads were still atrocious, at times they were too soft for wagons, but in most weathers the sheep and cattle, the geese and turkeys could be driven to the cities on the broad grass of the roadsides. Transport of goods was mainly along rivers. Defoe in his Tour described two great Storms that Henry would have experienced,and not forgotten; that of 1703 in which the newly erected was destroyed and that of August 1705,which Defoe experienced too and describes - It was at Plymouth Hoo (Hoe),which is a plain on the edge of the sea...so I observed the evening so calm,so bright and the seas so smooth,that a finer sight,I think,I never saw;there was little wind..but a little breeze from the southwest..came into the Sound,that night and next morning, a fleet of fourteen sail of ships,from Barbados,richly laden for London..That day the wind freshened and blow hard: About midnight the noise indeed was dreadful,what with the roaring of the sea,and of the wind,intermixed with the firing of guns for help from the ships,the cries of the seamen and people on shore,and,which was worse,the cries of those,which were driven on shore by the Tempest,and dashed in pieces. In a word,all the fleet,except three,were dashed to pieces against the rocks,and sunk at sea,most of the men being drowned...This was a melancholy morning indeed; nothing was to be seen but wrecks of the ships,and a foaming,furious sea,in that place where they rode all day in joy and triumph. Henry`s time was an exciting one when new thoughts and ideas were encouraged, the hold of old repressive religious orders, Puritan and Catholic, had loosened and men felt free. Politically, the effects of the Civil War of the previous century were becoming obvious. It may have failed to establish a permanent republic but it succeeded in stopping Britain becoming an autocratic monarchy and firmly established a parliamentary constitution in which freedom of thought and of expression were tolerated. This new freedom is illustrated by Dean Jonathan Swift`s `Gulliver`s Travels`, which he published in 1726. It is a political satire thinly disguised as a fantasy novel. He mocks viciously at the English aristocracy, their values and that they had clung to political power in spite of their degenerate state. It is a call for a change in our society`s values. It was the first of many that were to follow in succeeding decades; ones which in France led to the Revolution in 1792. In 1747 came and preached in Cornwall and found a great following there who built chapels in every town and village. This new spirit is apparent in the simplicity and direct language used by the authors of the day, Swift and Defoe. It lacks both the descriptive floweriness that abounded in the writings of the following 19th century and the sophisticated convolutions in 20th century writings; their writing had the naive warmth of a new awaken, as a young person would write. Henry`s period initiated the stability and adventurous attitudes that led to the prosperity of England in the following 19th century and on which we in the 20th century have benefitted. Meanwhile he married Joanne Giddy of Menheniot on Friday 9th February 1750/1, recorded as Henery Leigh als George. Joanne was the daughter of Oliver Geedy and Elizabeth Wenmouth. The Giddys of Menheniot were butchers and yeomen who married into Gentry. The Wenmouths of Quethiock were blacksmiths. Both were from the middle social rank of that time, in which senior branches were minor gentry and junior branches farmers and tradesmen. Like marries like and so confirms the picture of Henry as a husbandman, a tenant farmer, and descended from a nearby branch of gentry. (The Wenmouths are one of only 8 families who lived continuously in Quethiock from pre-1544 to post 1939.) Henery and Joanne had one son, John 1703 and one daughter, Mary 1705. Mary died a month before her second birthday; she was baptised and buried as Mary George. Their son, John reach adulthood and had three sons but he died when he was 29; at the time he and his family were living in the parish of St Germans. Not surprising Henery moved them back to Quethiock and to the house next to his. Both Henery and Joanne died the same year, she in October 1750 aged 79 recorded as Leigh and he in February 1750/51 aged 77 recorded as Leigh als George. These were the last 30 family events recorded in the Parish Record at Quethiock and the last time the alias George was recorded, after 1750 the family was in the adjacent parish of St Germans.

(ii) 18th Century at StGerman`s 1703-1737? John Lee - my 4th greatgrandfather was the only surviving child of Henery and Joanne. We know nothing about him except that he was baptised on Thursday 23rd September 1703 at Quethiock as John Lee and married Margery Colwell at Quethiock on Friday 20th May 1726. He had three children; the eldest was baptised at Quethiock in 1727 as Henry George als Lee and the two at St Germans,John Lee 1729 and Richard Lee 1731. John and Margery left Quethiock and went to live in St Germans Parish in 1728, the same year as John and Mary Frost, whose daughter Mary married John Lee`s son John in 1757, moved from East Looe to St Germans. At that time the Manor of Bonealva (1996map-Bonyalva), that is in the Parish of StGermans and lies mid-way between Quethiock and Looe and which had been depopulated in 16th century to make a Deer Park, was being repopulated so it is probably where the two families went. John must have died shortly after 1731 though I have not found a record of his burial, and in 1737/8 his wife and two surviving sons returned to Quethiock where his father, Henry, had taken a lease on the house Woodyeate, next to his own. The lease is in the names of Margery and the two sons, Henry and John. I have found out little about Margery, neither her baptism nor burial. She was a Colwell of which there was a family in Quethiock. Of John`s sons; Henry, probably married a widow, Elizabeth Hill and had a son Richard 1747 at St Germans from whom I have not found any descendants; John, the middle son is our ancestor; the youngest, Richard, died before he was 4 months old and was buried at Quethiock on 20Jan1731/2 as Leigh als George. The history of the children of the last three Lee generations illustrate sadly the high incidence of child mortality. Richard had 6 children 1670-1709 of whom 3 died before 2 years old: Henery had 2 children 1703-1705 of whom 1 died when she was 2 months old: John had 3 children 1727- 1731 of whom 1 died 4 months old. The infant mortality in our family around 1700 was about 50%. Fortunately in the succeeding three generations the pattern changed; the infant mortality gradually reduced from 1 in 2 (1670-1731) first to 1 in 5 (1757-1770) then to 1 in 7 (1796-1815) and then 0 in 3 (1841-1852), but unfortunately a high incidence of adolescent mortality took its place so that still only two thirds of all children (1757-1852) reach adulthood until the generations 1879-1959 when 10 out of 11 children reached adulthood, the exception was a youth who drowned in 1903 whilst skylarking with his younger brother in a small boat.

1729-1805 John Lee - my 3rd greatgrandfather was the younger surviving son of John and Margery Lee. He was baptised at St Germans on Friday 6 June 1729 as John Lee. His father died when he was still an infant and his mother took him and his brother Henry, back to Quethiock to live next door to their grandfather, Henry Lee. As an adult he returned to StGermans where he married Mary Frost in January 1757, he was 28 and she 27. They moved from St Germans a few miles east to the hamlet of Trehan in the parish of St Stephen with Saltash where he became a yeoman farmer. The Land Tax Assessments 1799-1805 (SOG Microfiche 1564) lists John Lee as the owner occupier of `Wills` and `Hole Hill`. Wills is Plot 57 on the map, taxed at 17/8 and Hole Hill is plot 58, taxed at 6/- (1996 equivalents £383 & £130). His time was that of the Agricultural Revolution that preceded the Industrial Revolution. An immense increase of food production had to be achieved to cope with the unprecedented increase in the population of the country, from 5.5 in 1700 to 9 million in 1801. The enforced enclosure by Act of Parliament of the open communal fields to a pattern of rectangular hedged ones was one of the main reasons it was achieved. It led to affluence for those who could afford to buy the enclosed land but destroyed and pauperized the peasantry who could not afford to buy the part of the common land to which they were entitled and thus were deprived of the common lands on which they had depended for millennium to scratch a little extra food or raise a goose. Nowhere else in Europe was the peasant class so effectively destroyed. But for John Lee he acquired a small landholding and made a comfortable living, and was probably untouched by the hardships that many others suffered in England during the late 18th century. 31

The freedom and spirit of exploration in the 18th century led to expansion of the Empire and to economic rewards for a minority and in so doing created a society in which the vast majority lived in abject poverty and the minority lived in splendour. This led to open discussions and demands for political and social changes to which in England the governing aristocracy responded with legalizing brutality; one third of all seamen on a long voyage would be flogged with the cat(- o-nine-tails),a rope whip, and the number of offences for which hanging was the official penalty was greatly increased to include the most minor ones and so some magistrates were fearful of convicting; in 1787 transportation to Botany Bay in Australia was introduced as an alternative to hanging and continued until 1867 further pauperizing the wives and children left behind. W.H.Hudson in his `A Shepherd`s Life` The law did not distinguish between the starving and the systematic thief and dreadful sentences were handed out by magistrates thinly disguised by lofty conventional phrases, as to the necessity to uphold the law, morality and religion. Most of the offenses for which men were sentenced to the gallows or to transportation for life, were ones which today would be punished by a probation order or a few weeks imprisonment. In 1827 Justice Park at Salisbury commented that the Assize calendar was a heavy one but he was happy to find that the principle cases were not of a very serious nature. Nevertheless he passed sentence of death on 28 persons, among them being one for stealing a half-a-crown (present cash equivalent £6). Many were later changed to transportation but that did not include a youth of 19 who was hanged for stealing a horse. In the Assizes of 1830 Justice Gazalee addressing the jury said that none of the crimes appeared to be marked with circumstances of great moral turpitude. There were 130 prisoners; he passed sentence of death on 29, life-transportation on 4, 14 years on 5, 7 years on 11 and various terms of hard labour on the other 80. As they filed past their weeping women `Don`t cry old girl, its only fourteen years I have got, and maybe I`ll live to see you all again` But of those transported by the freighters from Plymouth or Portsmouth harbours only 1 in 5 or 6 ever returned. When the law of the country and the temper of those that administered it is so - what must the misery of the people have been to cause them to rise against their masters. In many countries they did rise; a rebellion in Scotland crushed at Culloden in 1746; a revolution for independence in the British North American colonies and a revolution in France. But in England the seemingly inevitable revolution was evaded, but it was a close thing, and the threat continued until 1939 and the start of the 2nd Great European War of the century. The reason England was different was that throughout the period it was nearly continuously fighting a war somewhere against one or more countries - France, Spain, Netherlands, America, India, Africa, Russia, Germany - and was victorious in most; it fought thoughts of revolution at home with battles abroad. In John Lee`s time there were two main wars, The War of American Independence 1775- 1783 and against 1796-1815. In 1779 a combined French & Spanish Fleet anchored 4 leagues from Plymouth Sound & eventually entered but did not attack, 1000s lined Rame Head & Staddon Heights to view the hostile fleets but many fled from the area. John and his sons could easily have been amongst those who walked the few miles from St Germans to Rame to see the enemies ships. An effect of the Napoleonic War was the stoppage of importation of cheap wheat, consequently food became expensive and there were shortages.This led to riots in towns such as Plymouth, just across the River Tamar from our family. Ian Gilmore describes one in his `Riot, Risings & Revolutions` In Plymouth, by the end of the century a large town of 23,000 where the Dockyard workers were all powerful, face-to-face relationships between the magistrates and populace were rare; hence food riots were not orderly disturbances but destructive outbreaks of looting. After one such outbreak in 1801, the Riot Act was read, Dragoons charged, wounding several, and arrests were made. The Dockyard men marched to the guardhouse and, unintimidated by the artillery, the cavalry, the militia and the volunteers assembled by the authorities, demanded the release of the prisoners. The magistrates gave way, explaining that had they used force`many hundreds must have fallen` (Such attitudes were absent at Peterloo 16 years later). But for John Lee there was a ready profitable market for his produce in the new town of Plymouth Dock. Food prices collapsed at the end of the Napoleonic War but John died 10 years before that happened so his was a comfortable life at a time of economic prosperity. John was a middle class yeoman living in a rural area of rolling hills of green fields and estuaries of the R. Tamar and R. Lynher where at that time salmon could be caught and oysters bred. He was within easy walking distance of the 32 sea and the long stretches of sandy beach of Whitsand Bay; an idyllic setting. Though there were changes in his lifetime: until 1791 the main road into Cornwall was across the Tamar at Saltash and then west past St Stephens. The frequent passing and repassing of carriage, horses and foot passengers crossing on the Tamar Ferry enlivened the town of Saltash and enabled the Innkeeper to accommodate strangers with post-chaises and good entertainment; but in 1791 it came to a sudden termination occasioned by the cutting of an excellent road between Liskeard and and the establishment of a regular ferry, called New Passage, across the Hamoaze, from Dock to Torpoint. C.S.Gilbert 1817 John and his family would have noticed this diminution of traffic past their farmlands. His wife Mary Frost was baptised at St Martins Church, a mile inland and the parish church of the fishing village of East Looe, on 2nd December 1730. She was 1 of 8 children of John Frost & Mary Sandercock. Her younger sister Sibylla married Benjamin Fowell whose grandson Thomas Poad emigrated to New Zealand. His greatgreatgrand daughter Alison Richards now lives in and we have met frequently. Our common ancestors, John and Mary Frost, are 6 to 7 generations back but we found that the professions adopted by our present near relatives, first cousins or siblings, were identical e.g. Electrical Engineer, Analytic Chemist, Geophysicist, Computer Expert. The connecting link was that they all needed a logical deductive mind. One day Alison produced an old photograph of her great aunt Phillapa Jane Poad, at which both Brenda and I exclaimed She looks like my brother Godfrey`. She was born in Cornwall in 1839 and died in Auckland New Zealand in 1918. As we say its all in the genes. So did my generation of Lees inherit their facial appearance from John Frost or his wife Mary Sandercock of 6 generations back and did one of them look like me and Alison`s great aunt? John and Mary Lee had 5 children, who were baptised at St Germans church; Henry 1757, Elizabeth 1758, Mary 1762, John 1766, Richard 1770. From the parish records I deduce Henry the eldest son married Elizabeth Williams in 1784 at and had 4 sons who were baptised at ; Richard 1785, Henry 1789, Samuel 1791, Thomas 1796 and some of these had descendants. John`s other 2 sons; John died young whilst Richard is our ancestor whose line has descended through myself to Nicholas, Thomas & Alexander. Our line and that of Henry are the only male lines descending from as far back as William Lee of 1621-1695 or possibly even his father William 1593-1650. Of John and Mary`s daughters; Elizabeth married Richard Bray at St Erney in 1782 and had 2 children; Mary married Thomas Scantlebury in 1787 at St Germans and had 7 children. John left a will the original of which is in Truro CRO (Will No:449). It is dated 10th September 1802 and witnessed by Wm Smith and Honor Jacketts. It was proved on 29th March 1805 at St Stephens next Saltash and granted to Richd Lee the son and sole Executor named in the sd Will. In it he bequeathed to his 2 daughters, Elizabeth Bray & Mary Scantlebury, £10 each to be paid out of his tenement - Wills Tenement; in his time it was a small cottage but since has been considerably extended. I visited it in 1989 when it was occupied by a lady who was a Medical consultant at Plymouth City Hospital. In 1993 it was advertised for sale at £229,000 which is well above the average for houses in that area of England. (Fig) John left his eldest son, Henry one shilling. This was the traditional amount where a testator wished to cut a close relative out of his will; it prevented the will being challenged. As to how Henry had offended his father I have not found, though he did leave a token Brass Pot to Henry`s son Richard. Mary his wife is not mentioned in his will and so we must assume that she died before 1802, though I have not found a record of her burial.

(iii) 19th Century at Trehan - StStephens with Saltash Parish 1770-1838 Richard Lee - my greatgrandfather was the youngest of 5 children of John and Mary Lee. He was baptised at St Germans Church on Sunday 24th September 1770. He was the principal inheritor from his father and continued farming his lands at Trehan. The Land Tax records of 1805-1812 (SOG Microfiche) list Richard as owning Wills and Hole Hill (Plots 22 & 23) Taxed at 17/8 and 6/-. These are the same ones previously farmed by his father, John Lee. Richard`s life spans the Napoleonic Wars with France (1793-1815) during and after which great hardships were experienced in England. Plymouth Dock lived in fear of a French bombardment or invasion and a series of hill top beacons were set up to relay any attempt, hence 33 the numerous `Telegraph Hills`. Throughout Dock (Devonport) was terrified by the Naval Press Gangs, a newspaper reported in 1803 "About 7pm the town was alarmed by the marching of several parties of towards the quays...... the town looked as if it were in a state of seige. At Stonehouse, Mutton Cove, North Corner, Morris Town, and in all the receiving and gin shops at Dock, several hundreds of seamen and landsmen were picked up and sent on board the flagship....One press gang entered the Dock Theatre and cleared the whole gallery, except the women" The war ended with Napoleon surrendering to Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland of the British ship Bellerophon which was anchored offshore Rochelle, western France, on 14 July 1815. Maitland transported Napoleon and his entourage to English waters and anchored offshore Plymouth from 24th July for 12 days where it was a tourist attraction. It would be surprising if Richard Lee and his son John, aged 12, my greatgrandfather, did not share the general excitement and walk to Cawsand to see the ship; everybody else did. The local small boat owners did a fine trade ferrying visitors out and around the ship and hopefully seeing Napoleon on deck. It is a small world: in tracing my wife Brenda`s family history I found evidence which strongly pointed to her greatgrandmother being the base born daughter of Captain Lewis Maitland, who was the nephew of Captain Frederick Lewis Maitland of the Bellerophon. In 1990 I told this to a visitor to our home in Swindon, Mary Higman, whose son was Treasurer of the Cornish Family History Society, she responded that her greatgrandfather was the waterman who took the painter W.Q.Orchardson out to the Bellerophon, whilst it was anchored in Plymouth Sound, to make sketches on which he based his famous painting of Napoleon and the French officers standing on the deck of the Bellerophon that is now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. Also in 1990, the Cornish Family History society were bequeathed a large library of books , those not required were sent to the monthly book auction in Swindon and I was asked to attend the auction on their behalf. Included in the books was a rare copy of Maitlands account, written in 1821, of surrender and his handover in Plymouth Sound, I acquired it. As a result of these wars naval activity increased greatly in Plymouth so a breakwater was built across the harbour to increase security and anchorage. It is 1 mile long and 3 miles out from Plymouth Hoe; it took from 1812 to 1841 to build. During the war years Richard, like his father before him, had a comfortable life, with a ready market in Plymouth Dock for his produce, and had the social standing of an English Yeoman. But following the end of the Napoleonic War in 1815 food prices dropped when cheap corn was imported from abroad and the prosperity that the agricultural community had enjoyed ended. This was further exacerbated by the government pursuing a Free Trade policy and led to emigration from the farms, peaking in 1822/23 but continuing into the 30`s and the hungry `40`s when famines occurred due to poor weather and harvests combined with an epidemic. Most agricultural labour moved into one of the new industrial towns. But Richard died in 1838 and so this affected him only in the latter part of his life, his sons however were badly affected. Richard married Jane Clatworthy on Saturday 5th December 1795 at St Stephens Church. Jane was a widow who had previously married Robert Hancock in 1791 at St Stephens and had a son, William, in 1792. She was the daughter of John and Agnes Clatworthy. The family had come from St Dominic, in the Tamar valley just 5 miles north of Trehan. I do not know what became of their son, was he brought up as a Lee? Richard and Jane had 7 children; Catherine 1796, Mary 1798 who died as an infant, Mary 1801, John 1803, Richard 1807, Jane 1810 and Henry 1815. Richard remained at Trehan throughout his whole life and died on 5th May 1838 at Trehan aged 68 of Consumption of the lungs. The death was reported by his son-in-law William Pearce. Richard left a will, the original of which is in Truro CRO. In it he left all his estate to his Dear Wife, Jane Lee for life subject or on remarriage afterwards to be shared equally between his two sons, John & Henry, included was his leasehold cottage and orchard Whipples Tenement in which he had been living and the insurance policy thereon. By 1841, Jane had moved from it and Whipples is shown in the Land Tax Records of post-1841 as the cottage and orchard occupied by her son, John. The Census Return of 1841 (HO107-135 Pg26) lists Jane Lee 69 living with her son-in- law, William Pearce 50 a widower and his 9 children aged between 25 to 6. His wife Catherine nee Lee died aged 40 in 1835, possibly at the birth of their last child James. However William bought Jane a cottage at Forder close to his Mill and in the Census of 1851 (HO107-1900 f392) Jane 80 is 34 shown as living there with a young widower, Christian Billing 22 and his two children Emily 3 and Joseph Avery 1. Jane survived Richard by 19 years and died at Forder on 4thJan1857.

Of Richard & Jane`s children:- i) Their eldest son, John is our ancestor. ii) Their eldest daughter Catherine married William Pearce in 1814; he was the Miller at Forder. The Mill lies in a steep sided salt water creek off the R.Lyhner at the base of the steep hill on which is located Trematon Castle. The Castle was painted several times by J.M.Turner and others; these were etched and I have an original print of some, one of which dated 1830 shows the Mill and a lady with 5 children outside it, it would seem highly likely that it was Catherine; another dated 1787 shows a man with a horse and cart coming up the hill from the Mill towards Trehan, nearly outside Castle Farm. It would seem very likely that it was one of my ancestors, either John Deacon, who farmed Castle Farm or John Lee, who farmed near Trehan. (Figs ) Catherine had 5 sons and 4 daughters, one of whom Mary Ann (1815-1889) married William Deacon who was the Blacksmith at Longlands. A descendent of this marriage is Margaret Cox of Plymouth with whom I correspond, she is my 3rd cousin. But since my grandfather, William Henry Lee married Louisa Deacon we are also related through the Deacon Line too; we are both 6th and 3rd cousins. Her husband has Deacon ancestry too and both of us are 7th cousins to him. As Defoe said in 1724- Cornishmen marry in the county and hence are all cousin to one another. iii) Richard`s other 3 daughters; the first Mary died as an infant; of the second Mary I have no knowledge; the youngest, Jane died in 1823 aged 12 years and is buried in St Stephens Churchyard with her brother Richard who died in 1816 aged 9 years. There is a memorial there to them (Fig...). iv) His youngest son Henry married an Elizabeth and lived in Wills Tenement that had previously been owned by his grandfather. They had one son, William Henry in 1839 who died at seven weeks and one daughter, Emma Jane who was recorded as living with her Aunt & Uncle Billings at Trehan in the Census of 1851. Henry is recorded in the Land Tax records, dated between 1841 & 1851 Censuses, as leasing 17 acres of arable land and a house and orchard in Trehan from James Wentworth Fuller; these include his grandfather, John Lee`s Hole Hill, Burrows and Wills Tenement. Henry and his family are in the Census return of 1841 for Trehan but not the one for 1851. I located Henry next in the census of 1871 for Devonport; at 4 Mill Street: Henry Lee, Widower: Stoker RN invalided: 55 years: born StStephens w/Saltash (1816). Henry had deserted farming and joined the Navy in the `hungry 40s` of the agricultural depression; a time when most agricultural labour left the land and went to one of the new towns that had grown up in response to the Industrial Revolution initiated in England during the 19th century. (England led the world in those times as the foremost nation to apply the new technologies. It was able to do so in part because it had been blessed with large deposits of iron ore in the Midlands close to those of coal, so cheap energy was available to smelt the ore to produce iron for the machinery. In Cornwall the mines had a boom meeting the demand for extra tin and lead and during the early 1800s 30,000 miners moved into Cornwall to increase the number of miners by a third. Many Cornish agricultural labourers became miners, such as the Batten family of Liskeard to whom we are related through a female line. The boom ended in the latter half of the century, when ores were discovered in Southeast Asia that could be produced cheaper than in Cornwall, and the miners emigrated en mass to wherever there were mines; Mexico, Australia, USA. The miners and the Ag Labs departure from Cornwall means that there are now more Cornish outside the county than resident in it; a survey in 1927 found that less than 5% of the descendants of marriages in Cornwall between 1800 and 1820 were resident in it. The easy option for emigrants from southeast Cornwall was a short move across the R.Tamar to Devonport to join the expanding navy and to find work in the ship repair Dockyard. Uncle Henry joined the navy, as did his brothers descendants later. Henry has the distinction of being the one who sold the last remaining Lee land in Cornwall. 1803-1872 John Lee - my greatgrandfather was the eldest son of Richard and Jane born at Trehan, where he lived for most of his life. He is our ancestor and the one who I see as the low point in our family history. As I read the records I formed a picture of each ancestor and his life style, for example, Henry in the 18th century had great initiative and looked after the welfare of his family; 35 his grandson Richard at the turn of the century lived a comfortable life and with his wife Jane aspired above the lower social scales; but for John fortune did not smile on him, he lived in Cornwall during the 19th century agricultural and mining depression and does not seem to have had the courage and initiative to emigrate, as most other Cornish did. He stayed and worked as a Labourer or a Gardener. In the Census of 1871 (Reel RG10-2232f92) John is described as aged 70 living alone in Trehan Village, an Ag Lab -Pauper. He died in the Workhouse at Torpoint the following year on 11th March 1872; his death certificate describes cause as `Old Age` and gives his age as 64, he was 68. He was baptised on Sunday 4th September 1803 and married Mary Bennet Ruse on Monday 27th July 1840 at Stoke Dameral Church, which is the parish church for Devonport. He is described as a labourer living at 20 Fore Street and she a spinster with no occupation living at 50 Granby Street; both streets located in central Devonport. She was 21 but he was 37, ten years above the average age of marriage of any of our ancestors. He presumably had gone to work in Devonport but a year after the marriage, the Census of March 1841 lists him as living in Trehan again (Reel HO107-135.) The Land Tax records of 1840-1850 show him as renting a house and orchard from James Wentworth Fuller (Plot 394 on the map attached to the records). I visited Trehan in 1989 and found the orchard was still there but John`s cottage has gone though the front is now incorporated in a farm wall (Fig ). I believe that this is Whipple`s Tenement, which was his father`s and which he bequeathed to his wife Jane to live in for the rest of her life ; she vacated it for John and his new wife Mary and went to live with her son-in-law, William Pearce, and family at Forder Mill. John`s wife Mary Ruse was the eldest of 4 children of John Ruse and Jane nee Bennet who was born 1818/9 at Elm Gate, which is under one mile west of Trehan. It is an attractive cottage at a fork in the road and I believe it was at one time the Gate House to Ince Castle to which one of the roads is the drive. It has been extended since John and Jane`s time but it is possible to ascertain the outline of their original cottage (Fig.. ) The name Ruse or Roose or Rowse is a Cornish surname, though not extensively common there. John was born in 1790 at Quethiock whilst Jane Bennet was born at in 1793/5. Quethiock is the ancestral home of the Lees whilst Stoke Climsland is that of the Deacons from whom my grandmother Louisa is descended. Once again, as Defoe said, `They do not go out of the county for a wife, and hence are all cousins` well at least they knew each others families. John and Mary Lee had two daughters and one son. But of them only the son, William Henry, survived and had offspring: sadness must have been John`s life. One daughter, Elizabeth Ann died in 1853 aged 11; his wife Jane died on 8th June 1865 aged 47 at Trehan; his other daughter, Mary Jane died in 1868 aged 26, a spinster, at the Union House in Saltash; he died 4 years later at 64 in Torpoint Workhouse in 1872 and buried in St Stephens Churchyard on 13th March. The splendour of Empire and the pageant of Queen Victoria`s times are legend and related to every English schoolchild, but John Lee`s life was the reality of the 19th century depression, full of hardships and piteous sorrows, of the type so accurately described by Charles Dickens in his many novels of those times. In 1824 Plymouth Dock was renamed Devonport, and given the grander status of a borough, but for most families their accommodation was still only one room. With such overcrowding and lack of sanitary facilities epidemics were frequent, of Smallpox, Diphtheria, Typhus, one of the worst was of Cholera in 1832. As a result a new hospital; the Royal Albert was built between Devonport and Morris Town. The next 3 generations of Lees after John were to be treated there for various aliments. Plymouth Dock - Devonport: The Naval Dockyard along the Devon shore of the R.Tamar played a great part in several generations of Lee`s; Its construction was commenced in 1691 during the reign of William III. It was surrounded by a high grey granite wall from Mutton Cove in the south to North Corner. The main entrance was a gate at the end of Fore Street. The town that grew up outside its wall was called Plymouth Dock, known locally as Dock. In 1758 it consisted of only a few streets; expansion commenced in 1760 and the shambles in Fore Street were rebuilt. In 1744 green fields overlooking the mud flats along the Tamar estuary north of the Dockyard were purchased from Sir Wm. Morris and on it was built a naval barracks. In 1850`s additional housing was built outside the wall of the New Yard at North Corner and named Morris Town - it was where my mother`s family and I and my brothers were born. In 1824 Dock was renamed Devonport. It lay in the parish of Stoke Dameral, it is still the name of the registration district.

1852-1918 William Henry Lee my grandfather was the only son of John and Mary Lee born at Trehan on 20th May 1852 and baptised at St Stephens Church on Sunday 23rd May. He is recorded in three of the four possible Census Returns released; 36

1861 at Trehan Village 8 years old and with his parents and sister Mary J.(19) 1871 at Hawkins Farm, Trematon 18 years old and working as an Ag Lab for who farmed 140 acres; The farm was a mile north of Trehan and close to Stoketon Farm where George & Elizabeth Deacon, his future parents-in-law, were living; Louisa was working as a servant for his cousin, James Pearce, at Forder Mill. 1881 at Castle Farm, Trematon, is Louisa Lee 24 Seaman`s wife & daughter Maud 1 with her parents George & Elizabeth Deacon who were Market Gardeners (William Henry had joined the and was away for 3½ years from 19 Oct 1880 until 28 May 1884 on HMS Agincourt) 1891 at 27 Princess Street, Devonport, 38 years old a Stoker RN, with his wife Louisa and 4 children; Maude 11, Henry 8, Alonzo 5, Lilian 1. (At the Census time of 1891 there were no longer any Lees in Trehan or StStephens Parish) William Henry`s boyhood was spent in the idyllic setting of Trehan village, ideal for a boy; expanses of pleasant countryside, close to the sea and to the fishing in the creeks of the River Tamar. Throughout his childhood he would have watched build the Saltash Railway Bridge across the River Tamar, it took seven years and was opened in 1859. It is an impressive structure and was Brunel`s last engineering masterpiece. In the mid-1930s when I was a boy, on Sunday mornings I,my brother David with our father use to frequently walk out from Devonport to Saltash Passage, which is the Devon side of the river , and stand on the stony beach beneath the bridge and look up at it in wonderment. Our father would tell us in great detail how Brunel managed to build it and I use to wonder how he knew; I now realize that his father saw it all and told him. But in 1865, when William Henry was 13, his mother Mary died and 3 years later in 1868, when he was 16, his only surviving sister, Mary Jane, who was ten years older, died ; then 4 years after that, in 1872, his father John died. William was only 20 but was the only survivor of his immediate family; his closest relatives were the Pearces of Forder and his Uncle Henry Lee who was a widower and had been invalided out of the Navy and was living in Devonport. At 22, on 17th September 1874, William enlisted in the Royal Navy as Stoker 2nd Class. The naval records in PRO at Kew describe him as 5ft 5", brown eyes, dark brown hair and of a ruddy complexion in 1874, but pale in 1884. He stayed in the navy for 20 years, until 1894. He reached the rank of Leading Stoker 1st Class. During his service he was at home in Devonport for a total of only 5 years 4 months; he was away a total of 15 years during which the longest continuous period of absence was 4 years 1 month in the Pacific. During the 20 years he was absent from his home, wife and family 75% of the time. This was not unusual prior to the 1950`s; another of our ancestors, James Bellman Prouse, was in the navy at the same time and was away almost as long, 72.2% of the time. At the end of a 3 month period that William spent in Devonport Barracks he married the local girl from Trematon, Louisa Deacon, at Stoke Dameral Church. The marriage took place on Sunday 14 January 1877 and shortly afterwards he went away for 2 years! The life cycle of the naval ratings of those times appear to be near continuous sailing overseas interspersed with brief periods at home in Devonport barracks during nearly every one of which they managed to father a child before sailing away again. William`s wife Louisa Deacon was born on Sunday 3rd February 1856 at Stoketon Lodge, near Trehan. She was the fourth child of eleven of George Deacon and Elizabeth nee Batten. The Census Returns from 1841 through 1881 show the Deacons farming Trematon Castle Farm, George taking it over from his father in 1870`s. The farm lies between Trehan village and Forder, so the Deacons and Lees were close neighbours for decades. I have traced the Deacon line back to the 17th century; they were blacksmiths at Stoke Climsland and later at Weyton near , both in the R.Tamar valley a few miles north of Saltash. George`s mother, Elizabeth Batten, was from Lake, a small holding south of Liskeard. Elizabeth`s mother was Elizabeth Dann the daughter of a fisherman from Looe. William Henry and Louisa had 7 children; 3 girls and 4 boys, between 1879 and 1903. The family lived in Princess Street, Devonport. This was a street of 4-storied Georgian terrace houses with the front doors opening directly on to the street. Princess Street was parallel to Fore Street, which was one of the main shopping and entertainment streets of the town. Their house was across the street from the Hippodrome Theatre and close the Alambra Theatre in Fore Street. Louisa seems to have had initiative and took in Theatrical Boarders and kept poultry in the yard 37 behind the house. The children had to help with the chores, especially feeding the chickens. The Theatres showed principally Musichall Variety Shows and from the familiarity that my father, Frank, had with the names of the most famous of the Musichall stars of the pre-Great War period; Dan Lupino, Little Titch, Marie Lloyd etc, he must have met them at his mother`s boarding house. The street no longer exists; it partly survived the bombs of the Air Raids of 1941 but after the 2nd World War was over the naval authorities destroyed the remainder together with rest of the centre of the town of Devonport so that the ship repair facilities could be expanded. The town is a sad sight now, it has the appearance of being soulless without a centre just a long high grey wall that stretches for miles; it defies belief that Englishmen could willing do to themselves what their enemies bombers had failed to do; it is a salutary lesson since the facilities were never needed. Of William and Louisa`s children, all but the eldest boy survived to adulthood, married and lived until they were over 70 or 80. The exception was Henry who in his late teens drowned in an accident whilst out in a small boat in the river with his brother Alonzo. The three girls grew in adulthood like their mother; tall, well built statuesque ladies with straight backed poise and had plenty of self-confidence. Of the three surviving boys; all worked in the Naval Dockyard as craftsmen; William Alonzo 1885-1945 was a boilermaker and Trade Union Official, Frank Leonard 1892-1965 and Reginald John 1903-1977 were both Shipwrights. Both Alonzo and Reg had daughters, only Frank had sons to carry on the name -Godfrey Leslie 1923-1998, David Henry 1926-1989, and myself Maurice Leonard b1928. William Henry died at 45 Princess Street on Wednesday 20th February 1918 of a heart attack. It was reported to the registrar by his son, Frank, and his age given as 66. He was nearing his 67th birthday. All records quote his age a year younger than he actually was; he obviously was mistaken himself, which is not surprising considering the early deaths of the older members of his family when he was still young; his naval records record his birth date as 20th May 1853 and his marriage certificate an age of 23 which agrees with the naval records; but his true birth date registered by his mother at Saltash was 20th May 1852. Louisa survived him by another seven years and died in summer 1935 aged 79. I was only 7 and my only memory of her is when I was taken to Princess Street by my father to see her shortly before she died; she was a large lady with grey hair tied in a bun at the back, reclining full-length on a chaise-longue, with a lace shawl draped around her shoulders, she had a pleasant manner. Others were present standing behind the chaise-longue though I do not recall who. Father introduced me with "Mother, this is my youngest". When she died all her possessions and belongings were taken by my fathers sisters and brothers before he could reach the house, all of which they subsequently disposed of and we have no memento of my grandparents. Such as there was, were bequeathed with their houses to cousin Tony Trenwith who instructed a House Clearer to dispose of the lot; it included the only known photograph of William Henry. In 1989 I contacted him at his retirement home in , Cornwall; he had two photographs of Louisa and sent me one.

(iv) 20th Century at Devonport, & Buckinghamshire 1892-1965 Frank Leonard Lee was my father. He was born at 45 Princess Street Devonport on Monday 9th May 1892, the third son of four of William and Louisa Lee; the eldest Henry died unmarried and both Alonzo and Reginald had daughters only. So since I am the only one of Frank`s three sons who had a son, my line is the only male Lee line descending from Richard Lee (1770-1838) and possibly earlier. The town of Devonport depended entirely upon the Naval Repair Yards, known as The Dockyard, for employment. At the time of Franks youth the top grade craftsmen were the Shipwrights,who were responsible for building and maintaining the hull of the ships. He served a 5-year apprenticeship as a shipwright at a boat building yard near Mutton Cove. In 1914, when he was 22 the Great War with Germany broke out. He was fortunate in that his was a `reserved occupation` and he was not conscripted or permitted to join the army. If he had it would have been unlikely that he would have survived since few of his age group did. He was sent to work in the shipyards at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria and remained there until the war ended in 1918 when he returned to Devonport Dockyard to work. 38

His school-time girlfriend since 1909, when she was 15 and he 17, was Florence Maud Clarke who lived in Street, which is close to the Lee home in Princess Street. During a brief visit to Devonport from Barrow in 1916 he encountered her coming out of a Fish-and-Chip shop and invited her to go out with him. She declined his invitation and told him that `she could not because the Banns had been read for her marriage to Joe Smerdon`. He was shocked and asked `why she had not waited for him?` She told him `You have not written to me since you went away and I thought you had forgotten me` Frank suggested that she cancel the wedding but Flo told him that she could not do that at such a late stage, she was too fond of Joe Smerdon. Frank`s parting words were `If I can`t be the first, I will be the second`. She married Joe Smerdon, who was a Wireman of ships rigging. After their marriage he was moved from Devonport Naval Dockyard to one at Rosyth, near Edinburgh. Flo went with him and there they had a daughter, Audrey Florence Maud born 6thJanuary 1918. After 5 years of marriage, in 1921, whilst working something fell on his head and he died later in hospital. Flo and Audrey returned to Devonport and lived in her mother`s house. Frank began to court Flo, of which Flo`s mother Lavinia Florence Clarke did not approve. Audrey tells a story of her leaning out the upstairs window and threatening to throw water over Frank, who was below, if he did not go away. But Frank persisted and his words of 1916 were prophetic and Flo married him on 12 November 1922, he was 30, she was 28. They were well matched; mild even tempered and devoted to their children and to each other. They gave each other mutual support enabling them to cope with the trials of their times. Throughout my childhood I do not recall hearing any angry words passing between them. Audrey adopted the Lee name and Flo had three sons by Frank; Godfrey Leslie born 26February 1923, David Henry 26October 1926 & Maurice Leonard 14August 1928, all born at 36 Gloucester Street. Gloucester Street was one of a number of narrow streets of square blocks of terraced two- storied cottages with front doors straight on to the street and a small paved yard at the rear. The area was known as Morris Town and was built during the first half of the 19th century to house the workers recruited for the expanding Naval Dockyard. It was an inner city claustrophobic dwelling though there was a very large grassed park close by in which to relax and children to play. (On the afternoon of 14August 1928 Audrey was told to take Godfrey and David off to Devonport Park for an hour. By the time she came home for tea I had been born). Shortly afterwards Frank moved the family out to a new housing development by the Council on the edge of the town known as North Prospect. His mother commented `What`s Frank moving out there for ?` and neither she nor any of his brothers or sisters except Florence Balfour ever visited him; it was a Council estate and below their dignity. But for Frank`s family 60 Grassendale Avenue was a home with a large garden back and front, where he could grow vegetables and soft fruit but not many flowers, and unspoilt Devon countryside the other side of the street, where he could take his growing sons for long walks on Sundays mornings to run in the fields and paddle in the stream of Western Mill. It was on a steep hill and from the bedrooms we looked westward over the tops of the other house and could see the Dockyard and the Estuary of the Tamar and beyond the green fields of Cornwall on the heights above Millbrook. Frank worked in Devonport Naval Dockyard throughout his married life, retiring on pension in 1959. The dominant feature of their life span was one of war; England was involved in 7 major wars; Anglo-Sudan 1896-1898, Ashanti 1896, South-African Boer War 1899-1903, Great War 1914-1918, World War 1939-1945, Malaysia 1948, Korea 1950-51, Egypt 1956. Our family was fortunate since only John Walter Clarke, Flo`s eldest brother perished in the wars, no Lees did. Principally this was because they were all ship repair workers and as such were exempted from military service. John Clarke was intelligent and was transferred to the Admiralty in London, from where he foolishly volunteered to join the Army. He was gassed and died in a hospital in Abbeville, France, on 30th October 1918, just before Armistice. The horror of these wars was compounded by a deep industrial depression that lasted throughout the 1920`s and 30`s and did not end until the early 1950`s. During it there was massive unemployment and lowering of living standards amongst the working classes that led to considerable unrest. There was a national stoppage of work in May 1926, marches of workers to London from the coal mines in Wales and from the ship-yards of Yarrow known as Hunger Marches. All highlighted the considerable inequality within the British Society; it was well known that King George V kept a bag packed 39 for a quick exit since nearly everywhere else in Europe similar events were leading to the displacement of Monarchies by Republics, sometimes violently. During the depression Frank was unemployed for a couple of years 1930-32. I recall Flo relating how she kept his spirits up by `reading tea leaves` - Pour the dregs from a tea cup, upturn it, rotate it three times, then tell the drinkers fortune from the patterns made by the leaves. She kept telling him he would soon get work and he did. However she was embittered by a Socialist Labour government who at that time of need reduced the benefit paid to such families with no other income; "I had 10/- to fed a family of six on for a week" That is equivalent in 1996 purchasing power of £24.52p, and she had to clothe and feed 6 on that: the equivalent benefit paid in 1996 to a married couple without children is £116.22p. So she had 1/15th of what is now considered necessary. Malnutrition and ill-health was rife throughout her class, but we were lucky, whilst most of England`s families still lived in one or two rooms and shared toilet facilities with several other families in houses in towns where the atmosphere was heavily polluted by smoke from the coal burning fires used for cooking and heating, we had the 3-bedroomed house that was away from the smoke and had a reasonable size garden in which Frank grew fresh vegetables and soft fruit. Evenso Frank, Flo and Audrey each spent a short period in hospital during the 1930`s and I was proscribed extra nourishment - Cod Liver Oil and Malt, the remedy of the day for lack of basic foodstuff. At a typical evening meal Frank had a boiled egg, the top 1/2 inch of which he would cut off and give to David and I to share the luxury of. There were few treats for any of us in those days. But with Frank and Flo`s love, care and sacrifice we survived when many did not. Looking back I realise that both Frank and Flo were probably above average intelligence and had alert minds that could identify the significance of events. They were born and remained at a working class level because there was no resources in either family to buy them a formal higher education nor any role model to show them how to climb the social ladder unaided. There was a scarcity of available opportunities during the recession period in which they lived, but even so their complacent natures lacked any ambitious drive and they could not seize those opportunities that did exist or create new ones for themselves. A generation latter education and opportunities existed and they would have risen above the craftsman level. Evenso they understood politics and were acquainted with the local Councillors, possibly because Frank`s brother Alonzo was a Trade Union Official. The home always had books to read and we were encouraged to educate ourselves. Franks working day was Mondays to Fridays from 7 am to 5pm with 1½ unpaid hours for lunch, a 8½ hour day, and on Saturdays from 7 am to 12.30pm, 5½ hours. A working week of 48 hours not including the lunch break. The longish lunch break was because the main meal of the day was at mid-day and the workers walked home to have it. The whole Dockyard closed for the annual holiday during the first two weeks of August. Most years he took the family on day trips to a beach; they were moments of excitement for his young sons; a bus ride to North Corner Ferry quay from where we took a small boat across the R.Tamar to Millbrook Creek in Cornwall followed by a ride in a very small charabanc up the hill and to alight at the top of a hugh steep cliff and then scramble down to an extensive golden sand beach, Whitsands, where we played and picnicked until late afternoon when we made the exciting journey in reverse. Alternatively it was a small boat ride from Mutton Cove to Cawsand where the boat ran up the beach and we alighted by walking down a wood plank. By 1938 both Audrey and Godfrey were working so Frank could buy weekly Rover tickets on the railway for the family holiday and go to new places, all wonderful Devon beach resorts; Brixham, Goodrington Sands, Paignton and Dawlish Warren. The latter was 40 miles from Devonport and was the furthest I was to travel out of the west country until I was 18. The 1930`s was a warm period; in the west country I only recall seeing a handful of snowflakes fall and in the summer the sun shone for months. So holidays with the family on these wonderful beaches of Devon and Cornwall were warm and enjoyable. But then the war came in 1939 and the German bombers in 1940. Frank dug a shelter in the back garden where the rhubarb use to grow. At night we were awaken by mother calling "David, Maurice, get up, quickly, its the siren" and we heard the wailing of the air-raid sirens and the cracks of the anti-aircraft shells exploding, usually over the Dockyard. We saw the sky illuminated by cris-crossing beams of the ring of searchlights around the town and we hid in the shelter where we listened, first to the roar of aircraft engines, then the whistle of the bombs dropping, followed by an explosion, `Sounds as if 40

Peverell is getting it tonight` Frank or Flo would say. The bombers avoided the area of shells over the naval installations and dropped their bombs on the houses, mostly miles from any military target. Next morning we carried on as if nothing had happened, Frank arose at 6.30am and left for the Dockyard, I walked to school and on the way read the casualty list pinned on the wall of Ford Workhouse and at school sat at my desk and looked around to see who was absent. Overall 4,448 were killed or injured in Plymouth during these raids and 50,000 homes destroyed. I was only 12 and really did not appreciate the absolute stupidity and horror of it all but the adults did. In late March 1941 I recall going to the centre of Plymouth with Flo a few days after a major raid; the whole centre of the town, 150 acres, had been destroyed, mainly by fire, there was not a building left complete, most were a pile of rubble. The roads had been cleared and as we walked Flo was confused and in tears and said `Where are we?`. `This was Spooners` I replied. Spooners had been a large 6-storey department store about the size of Harrods and its site was now a pile of rubble, it was not discernible that it was ever a building at all. On the opposite side of the road was another equally large pile; it was the office where Audrey had worked. Everywhere one looked it was the same. After that those who could left the town at night; the Dockyard allowed the senior officials to borrow trucks. A few times a neighbour, Mr Cory, found space for our family in a truck. We all piled into the back of it as many as 20 to 30, and he would drive out of the town on to the open moorland where one would try and sleep on the floor of the truck. Once we had the luxury of sleeping on the floor of the lounge of the Moorland Links Hotel. The next time I visited that room was 33 years later, in 1974 to host a dinner party for Flo`s 80th birthday. One weekend Frank sent Audrey and I off to stay with his Uncle Ned Deacon at his farm outside Saltash. On the Sunday morning we all went to the chapel in the Fore Street. That night the German bombers destroyed it and much of Saltash, though fortunately not the New Inn, which one of Flo`s greatgreatgrandfathers had kept as a publican in the early 19th century. In the morning we decided that we might as well go home. Audrey went to work and I went home. When I arrived the street was empty and our house was cordoned off. I was only 13 and very fearful as to what I might find, slid under the rope, found the house locked and deserted, in the back garden was a deep hole. A bomb had dropped but failed to explode. One half of the garden had about a foot of topsoil covering hard slate whilst the other half had very deep fine loam with no hard stone in at least the first 20 feet. The bomb was fitted with an impact detonator and fortunately had fallen on the side of the garden with deep soft soil. Four feet away Flo and Frank were in the shelter where the hard slate was near the surface. Those neighbours at home did not know where Flo and Frank were so nearly in tears I walked the mile to the Air Raid Warden`s Post and he had a record that they had moved in with Mr Bennett, a neighbour. A few days latter the Army winched the bomb out, loaded it on to a flatbed lorry and took it away. We returned home and Frank shovelled the soil back into the hole. (I wonder if the present inhabitants of the house are aware of what had been in their garden?) Of our family only Flo`s parents suffered directly from this bombing. Two successive houses in which they lived, in Gloucester Street near the entrance to the Dockyard, were severely damaged and made uninhabitable. They moved to East Looe to stay with their daughter-in-laws parents, Albert . I was taken by Flo to see her there and can still recall the fright and horror registered on her lined face, she was 67. I now realise that she never recovered from the shock of the bombing and it had given her Tinnitus and she may have had a thyroid problem. She died a few months later on 24September 1941, at Liskeard of heart failure, aged 67years. Frank lived until he was 73 and died of Cancer of the Prostate on 22May 1965. Flo lived for a further 21 years and died of Cancer of the Pancreas on 26August 1987 aged 93 in the Plymouth City Hospital. She was born Florence Maud Clarke on 23rd March 1894 in Morris Town Devonport the eldest daughter of John Thomas Clarke and Lavinia Florence Prouse. Her ancestry was half Cornish, quarter Devon and quarter East London. Of Frank and Flo`s sons:- (i) The eldest Godfrey Leslie attended the grammar school Sutton High but left in 1938 when 15 and joined the Royal Navy as a Shipwright Apprentice. He was intelligent and had ambition and drive consequently he excelled and rose to the highest rank possible of Commander in charge of new Naval Ship Construction, he was based at the Admiralty in Whitehall and later at Bath. He resembled Flo`s brother Fred in looks and like him was good at football too. He married Doris Channing, a local Devonport girl, but had no children. They adopted a son, Stephen Godfrey, who 41 has not married to date. Godfrey inherited the gait and nature of Flo`s paternal line, the Clarkes of East London. He died 3rd February 1998 of heart failure. (ii)The second son, David Henry did not achieve selection to a place in a Grammar School and joined the Navy as an Electrical Apprentice rising to the rank of Lieutenant before becoming disenchanted at being away from his family too often and resigned. He then took over a general store cum sub-post office in the Devon village of Brixton, close to Plymouth. He died of influenza on Boxing Day 1989. He had slumped to the floor in his home, Godfrey who lived nearby was called and tried to revive him with artificial respiration but it was too late. He married a local girl too, Patricia Hill. They had a daughter, Linda, who married and has had a son, Mark, and a daughter, Lee Helen. David inherited the jovial nature of Flo`s maternal line.

(iii)Their third son is me, Maurice Leonard Lee 1928- who attended Devonport High School, won State & Ballard University Scholarships, graduating in Physics from University College Exeter and became a Geophysicist. My career was spent in exploration for oil worldwide. I married Brenda Adlard at StBoltophs, Lincoln on 2April1955. We have one son, Nicholas Blaire, who has two sons. So my line is the only line descended from Richard Lee (1770-1838) that bears the name Lee all others have died out or are through females.

1959- Nicholas Blaire Lee the only son of Maurice and Brenda Lee. He was born at 5.30am on 19th May 1959; Brenda says she can still recall the hands of the clock on the wall of the Delivery room. He married Michèle Ganley on 7June 1986 at Weybridge, Surrey and has had two sons; Thomas Ganley Blaire born 20May 1990 and Alexander Ganley William on 2Jan 1994. He excelled at school and took medical education at Guy`s Hospital Medical School 1977- 1983 gaining MB, BS, BSc, FRCS and FRCOpth, and after a number of posts in various inner London Hospitals was appointed Consultant Ophthalmologist at Hillingdon and St Marys Paddington Hospitals. Michèle Ganley was born on 30June 1960 at Woking, Surrey the only child of Alfred Silvanus Thomas Ganley, known as Ivor, whose father was of Southern Irish extraction and mother English, and of Eva-Marie Bernhard, who is of German birth at Rostock. Her fathers ancestors were the O`Ganleys of County West Meath c1850: her mothers the Bernhards who were Lawyers of the German State of Mecklenburg c1800 and the von Burmeisters who were Veterinary Surgeons of Germany c1850.

1990- Thomas Ganley Blaire Lee & 1994- Alexander Ganley William Lee Thomas was born at Portland Hospital, London on 20th May 1990; the 20th is a day after his father`s birthday, 11 days after his greatgrandfather`s and the same day as his greatgreatgrandfather William Henry Lee`s. Alexander was born at the Portland Hospital on 2nd January 1994. Thomas and Alexander genetically are 11 parts English, 9 parts Celtic (5 Cornish, 4 Irish) and 8 parts German.

Consummatum Est : Alpha to Omega From Richard de Leye alive when Marco Polo met Kublai Khan Through George Lee alive when Drake defeated the Spanish Armada And Richard Lee als George alive during the Civil War To me born between the two World Wars and alive when man first stepped on to the moon And to my grandsons Thomas & Alexander Lee born 700 years after Richard de Leye That is the story of the Lee family,an unassuming but successful lower gentry /middle class family,who statistically are near the norm for England :- 18 generations spanning 540 years - average generation gap 31.7years Average age of marriage - Male 27 (22-37) : Female 24 (21-28) years 42

Average life span of 8 generations 72 (66-76) years

Maurice L.Lee 1998

For each Generation :- The moving finger has writ; and, having writ, Moves on: not all their piety and wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all our tears wash away a word of it. Omar Khayyam Persia 1273