I begin this next chapter with a caution. I am not certain why so many Smiths in America insist that Peter Smith of Yeocomico/Westmoreland descends from the Smiths of Swallowfield, but there are many online trees that accept that as true. I am not convinced and leave it at that. As to whether we descend from the Smyths who occupied the manor house or lived in the village as commoners, I do not know for certain. I do feel that there is some connection to Swallowfield and will point you, the reader in that direction, in terms of geography and history.
The manor house, after several additions and investments made by generations of wealthy Brits. Pitt and Russell family members, who were heavily invested in the East India Tea Company and the diamond mines of South Africa in the 18th, 19th and 20th Century, saved the estate.
The manor house has been the subject of much online literature. The available articles are found in journals that encompass history, archaelogy, architecture and interior design. One of the more fascinating articles deals with the question: How does a modern-day family afford the upkeep of a building that is one thousand years old? Really? In America we would just mow the sucker over, write it off as a tax loss and open a Kwik Trip.
Swallowfield, the village, is just a few miles south of Reading in Berkshire, England. It is 35 miles west of London. Bring your horses. There appears to be a large equestrian park just to the east on the grounds of the manor house.
There are several intriguing stories related to Swallowfield Manor. I will provide the tip of the iceberg here and you can find the details online. Swallowfield Manor went through many hands during the millenia, some of which is related in the following pages. It was purchased at one point by Thomas ‘Diamond’ Pitt with money he garnered when he sold the world’s largest diamond (at that time) and purchased Swallowfield. The diamond had been found by a slave who smuggled it out of the mine in a wound in his leg. A merchant killed the slave, secured the diamond for himself and later sold it to Pitt. It has become known as the Regent Diamond and is on display in the Louvre.
The manor passed through the hands of the Despencer family in the 13th Century. My father descends from 20xGGF Hugh Despencer (1261-1326) and his son, 19xGGF Hugh de Spencer the Younger (1290-1326). The Despencers were nortorious noblemen who were each executed in a ghastly way when King Edward II was toppled and executed by his wife, Queen Isabella and her boyfriend and henchman Mortimer. You will find a bit more on the topic in the chapter on Royal bloodlines.
Many believe our Smith family came to the New World in the soul of a man named Peter Smith. LDS records point toward Swallowfield, England as the village in which Peter’s family lived. Let’s go with that but not rule out other possibilities.
The history of Swallowfield Manor is archived online, and I have read the literature from cover to cover. The surname Smith doesn’t show up very often in Swallowfield history but when it does the Smith characters are a part of some fascinating drama. Let’s personalize this and make it more pertinent to the present-day descendants of Peter Smith of Yeocomico. Whether we are the child of J.D., Bill, Bob, or Marge Smith Jacobs, we are the progeny of opinionated, well-educated deep thinkers who dedicated their lives to public service and believed deeply in the principles of democracy. Each of our parents believed in public education, inclusion of all in the political process, enfranchisement of the masses, civil rights, etc.
Those are traits found in the generations that have descended from the Eyota, Minnesota clan. The power of public speech was not only espoused by Uncle Bill but practiced by his brother Robert Raphael Smith (Bob) as President of the San Francisco State University campus during the crusade for Civil Rights. It was put to work by J.D. (Don) as a classroom teacher and chair of the community Civil Rights Commission in West Chicago and Marge as a classroom teacher and devout Catholic. We all have our opinions, our need to resolve issues through communicative processes and our interest in political activity and religious principles. These character traits evolved through the ages in our family tree. I urge you to continue reading and enjoy the history of a small, pastoral village that gave birth to much more than a large family brood. Swallowfield made history happen. When I read the history of Swallowfield my thoughts filled with a recognition: “This is where the Smiths get this trait!”
Swallowfield, Berkshire County, England
The village of Swallowfield is 5 miles south of Reading and St. Giles church. It is 1 mile north of Berkshire’s county boundary with Hampshire. The location of the village is important in understanding the character of the man, Peter Smith. The man who came to America brought with him not only the DNA that infuses the physical body of his descendants, but the character traits and moral fiber that filtered through generations as well.
Swallowfield lies 35 miles to the west of London, within the civil parish of Swallowfield and the borough of Wokingham. The parish and borough include the nearby villages of Riseley and Farley Hill, each within two miles of Swallowfield. We are talking about an area no greater than four miles square. That is a small amount of land. From those four miles square emerged a foundation stone in the creation of republics and democracy as we know it today. Peter Smith was a product of a political culture that shaped Swallowfield, transformed the nation of England and the growth of American colonies. This is not hyperbole, but the conjecture of English historian Patrick Collinson.
In his seminal research, Elizabethans (2003) and essay (The Monarchial Republic of Queen Elizabeth I) Collinson discusses The Articles of Swallowfield (1596) and their impact on the transition from rule by monarchs to rule by the people. While we have all been exposed to the Magna Charta (1215) and the American Constitution(1787) we have never heard of The Articles of Swallowfield (1596). There is a reason for that. The articles were hidden for 400 years in the pages of the Ellesmere Manuscripts in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. In 1984, during his tenure as a Mellon Fellowship scholar, Collinson combed through the archives and found a “scruffy little manuscript” tucked away in a volume of papers relevant to British history. How the articles got from England to sunny California is anyone’s guess.
Collinson was interested in the nature of 16th century British political and religious institutions. The two (church and state) were inextricably and dramatically interwoven during the age of the Reformation and Tudor Dynasties, including those of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The impact of the Protestant Reformation on our family history is extensive. The Swallowfield Articles and Collinson’s work focus attention on the impact of economic conditions, social structure and civil unrest in the lives of our British ancestors and folks like the Smyths of Swallowfield. These conditions provided compelling motivation for our ancestors to flee the European scene and risk everything to start new lives in North America. I should add that when I use the term ‘British’ I am referring to English, Scot Irish and Welsh.
The death of Henry VIII in 1547 catapulted the peasant class of England into the depths of one of many ‘risings’ that litter British history. The Rebellions of 1549 were numerous across England and included the Prayer Book Rebellion in Cornwall, Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk and the Oxfordshire Rebellion in the county of the same name. These rebellions spanned three hundred miles in a time when television, internet and radio contact were at a minimum. While local in nature, there was common ground for each of these separate revolts:
–The Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and newly anointed King Edward VI were forcing all citizens to use one standard Protestant prayer book. This was a kick in the ass for Catholics and Protestants who preferred something other than what the Church of England offered.
–The Parliament and King were taking open and arable farmlands away from use by the commoner. Open land was being sold off and enclosed by aristocrats. Not unlike present day efforts to parcel off federal lands in the western states.
–Commoners were also being removed from public forests and no longer allowed open access to hunt formerly public lands.
Enclosure was the legal process in England of walling in numerous small landholdings to create one larger farm. Once enclosed, use of the land was restricted to a new owner and no longer available for community use. Open fields ceased to exist. The English countryside was fenced off (enclosed) and deeded to one land baron or a syndicate of owners. Enclosure was accomplished in one of two ways: 1) buy the rights to properties or 2) pass laws forcing enclosure. The latter process was sometimes accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed and remains among the most controversial events in the agricultural and economic history in England. It is not unlike the Bolshevik seizure of Kulak farms in Soviet Russia under Lenin and Stalin.
The new owners constructed rock walls around their turf and fenced out previous occupants. Many peasant farmers and their families were cut off from their food source and joined with Catholics who were enraged by the protestant king’s efforts to force the Church of England on all citizens of Great Britain. Tens of thousands of the King’s army including many German mercenary troops waged war against one hundred thousand peasants, rural farmers and laborers alike who were armed with little more than sticks, stones and pitchforks in village streets across the countryside. Tens of thousands died, their corpses left to litter the landscape like dead deer along the highways of Wisconsin. Mass executions proclaimed: “Don’t mess with the King!”
The Rebellions of 1549 brought to a head the very issues that remain unresolved in the world today. How do men of different faiths live one with another? How is wealth distributed? How are resources consumed? Who owns what? What do we do to bring relief to the impoverished? One of the issues that we see surfacing in 2018 is an issue that confronted Swallowfield in 1595: Who gets to participate in community decision making? Whose voice should be heard? Present efforts to require voter identification are nothing more than an attempt to disenfranchise minorities and the impoverished. We find our ancestors embroiled in the same controversies four hundred years ago.
The Swallowfield Articles of 1595 laid down, in writing, some principles for community business meetings. In a nation governed by the top down rule of the Queen Elizabeth one might be surprised to find elements of local control exercised by community activists. While the monarch relied on the input of a Privy Council in the privacy of her chambers, she determined whose voice would be heard on that Council and who might face execution at Smithfield if they overstepped their bounds. While the British did have a Parliament, the members of Parliament could also face the wrath of the King or Queen and die in a variety of horrible ways. Parliaments were suspended, disbanded and crushed at times. Battles between King Charles I and Parliament (Oliver Cromwell) fed the fire of a British Civil War in the decade of 1640, forcing a number of our ancestors to flee to America.
Kings and Queens also controlled the lands of their empire. They appointed Barons, Lords, and a variety of other titled positions. With those titles they granted lands and castles to those they counted as allies and removed those who failed to earn their trust. My wife’s ancestors (Whittingtons, DeSpencers, Grenvilles, Hawkins, Butlers and numerous other royals) moved in and out of castles over the period of one thousand years of British rule. These Lords of the land were responsible to the King and Queen. They raised armies and taxes to support the monarch and rule the countryside. This layer of upper crust managers was supported, in turn, by those who were delegated to run a manor system in which the middling class, yeoman, laborers, artisans and peasant class would live firmly under the rule of the monarchial system. Swallowfield was a manor placed in the hands of a variety of royals over the centuries.
Prior to Collison’s discovery of The Swallowfield Articles it was assumed by scholars that top down management ruled the land in 16th Century England. The Swallowfield Articles revealed a local, grass roots effort to govern the neighborhood. The manor and accompanying neighborhood were important structures in the medieval European society. Most people lived their entire lives in one small community where interaction took place among life-long neighbors. If the youngsters chose to grow up and move away, they moved to a new, similarly styled neighborhood and often moved with siblings, cousins or childhood friends. This pattern of moving, en masse, continued in America as our ancestors moved from the Coastal shoreline through the Appalachians and into the Great Plains and Deep South. And no, my Uncle Bill wasn’t the first Smith to land in the Deep South. Centuries before him, great Uncle Thomas Smith’s seven sons picked up everything and settled in Spartanburg, South Carolina. From there the cousins drifted off to Indiana, Alabama, Texas, Missouri and Europe.
The Swallowfield neighborhood was part of the manor system and subject to the rule of the monarch, the Barons and Lords of the manor. The Lord was responsible for the manor and the welfare of the people. The Lord maintained a Justice of the Peace who enforced the laws, maintained the peace, resolved conflicts and insured that norms and mores of the community carried forward each day. All of this went to Hell in a Hand Basket in Swallowfield in the 1590s, despite the firm rule of a strong monarch in London, 35 miles away. So, what happened to motivate the locals to boldly meet in a formal, public meeting in 1596?
The system broke down. English court records reveal that several manors failed in old England and failed miserably in the latter decades of the 1500s, in the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1549. Swallowfield was one of those manors that fell victim to a Lord’s neglect. The history of Swallowfield manor is detailed in an online, archived manuscript covering the millennia beginning with the rule of William the Conqueror. Our focus on Swallowfield manor relates only to the 16th and 17th century in which we find Smyths playing a prominent role at the manor and in England. Like all other manors and castles in England, Swallowfield bounced from the custody of one family to another depending on the whim and relationship of the King or Queen. Swallowfield did pass through the hands of Arundels, Allyns and DeSpencers in previous centuries. Those surnames appear in our tree as 20x great grandparents.
In 1464 Swallowfield was owned by the wife of King Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville. At Edward’s death in 1483 Swallowfield was transferred by the new King Richard III who granted ownership to Sir William Tyrwhitt for life. The granting of a property “for life” often shows up in these grants of ownership but is considered meaningless. The King could easily end your life at any time, or simply let you live and turn the land over to someone else “for life.”
King Richard III had his own life cut short two years into his term (d 1485) when King Henry VII (7th) rose to power on the Battlefield of Bosworth Field. (You may remember Richard III as the king whose skeleton was recently discovered under a parking lot at Greyfriars Church, Leicester.) In 1485 the new King Henry VII granted Swallowfield to his mother-in-law and the former Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, “for life.” A year later King Henry VII took Swallowfield away from his mother-in-law and he gave it instead to his wife, Elizabeth “for life.” The mother-in-law was shipped off to an Abbey up the road where she dawdled off to die in 1492. These transactions illustrate a key point: The Monarch controlled the property. Land ownership was a fleeting thing, as was life itself if one crossed the person sitting on the throne.
The Rising and the Articles of Swallowfield
As indicated previously, King Henry VIII granted Swallowfield to the first of his many wives in 1509. With the departure or passing of each wife he moved the property into the hands of the next wife or victim, depending on your view of Henry’s many failed attempts at conception and marriage. With Henry’s death in 1547 the control of all manors belonged to King Edward VI. Edward granted the Swallowfield Manor to one Christopher Lytcott in 1553 and Lytcott promptly died in 1554. His son John took ownership and immediately mortgaged the property, sold the property, regained the estate, mortgaged the estate, sold portions of the estate to investors, and mortgaged it again. For 25 years, 1575 through 1600, the manor fell victim to neglect as John Lytcott found himself floundering between debtor’s prison and foreclosure. Ownership of the manor was a subject of court and royal debate. The local aristocrats lost confidence in the chain of command at the local level. Lytcott’s unsteady hand created a void in local control.
Samuel Backhouse tried to take possession of Swallowfield in 1581. The Backhouse acquisition did not have the Queen’s immediate approval and Lytcott forced matters into the court system for years on end. Matters were finally resolved in 1588. The Backhouse family provided stable leadership, but Samuel Backhouse was an absentee Lord. He maintained a highly successful haberdashery in London and found it difficult to pull away from work. While Backhouse provided an improvement of sorts, a void of leadership remained at the local level.
Please recall that in 1549 much of Great Britain had been rocked by ‘Risings,’ a British term for rebellion. During his nearly fifty years as King, Henry VIII had forced the closure of many rural churches, closed Catholic abbeys, monasteries and churches, executed Catholic priests, monks, bishops and cardinals. He had confiscated church lands and sources of income. King Edward exasperated conditions with his policies of enclosure and Prayer Book manifesto. Counties Berkshire and Wiltshire, where our Smyths resided, felt the threat of the peasant uprising. Berkshire County provided soldiers for the King in the royal effort to suppress the rebellion in Cornwall. One hundred thousand peasants gathered near Lancaster with petitions, not arms, airing their concerns. From Cornwall to Norfolk tens of thousands of people died in protests launched against religious tyranny and the enclosure of common farmlands. It was shortly after these traumatic events that the governance of Swallowfield fell into chaos under the mismanagement of the Lytcott family.
The ‘risings’ fueled concerns among the property owners, the landed gentry, the gentlemen of England, our ancestors in Berkshire. These men of wealth were threatened by the revolt of the masses and they supported the Monarch’s efforts to suffocate the rebellion, execute the rebel leaders and annihilate their armies. At the slightest sign of revolt, the local gentry were empowered by the Monarch to execute anyone who dared contest the will of the Monarch. It was in this atmosphere that the landed gentry of Swallowfield gathered in 1596 to deal with the issues that threatened their very lives and livelihood. They were, in part, a vigilante group empowered by the Queen, organizing a Committee of Public Safety.
“The Chief Inhabitants” of Swallowfield expressed concern about the complete collapse of their manorial courts due to the Lord’s failure and the lack of nearby Justices of the Peace. Who were “the Chief Inhabitants” of Swallowfield? They were the landed gentry, people of property and wealth, the “Haves” as opposed to the “Have Nots.” The word “Chief” meant the important, significant people of the manor and county. The “Chief Inhabitants” were concerned about the peasant class, the impoverished, the unemployed, the vagrants…. They were concerned about: “illegitimate children, provision of the poor, suppression of pilferers, backbiters, hedgebreakers, mischevious people, and the proud, dissentious and arrogant.”
The ‘chief inhabitants’ were not interested in sharing their power, or podium in their meeting house with the ‘have nots’. The village poor were to be put in their place, muzzled, and respectful of the well to do. If they spoke at a meeting they were to be considered out of line and prosecuted as “common disturbers of the peace.”
The landed gentry, the Smyths among them, were royals supporting the monarch. They benefitted from their connections with the monarch, in this case Queen Elizabeth I. The men gathered on December 4, 1596, were not declaring independence or establishing a republic. The Ellesmere Manuscript (that document found by Collison in San Marino, California) is a written record of the Articles that were recorded by those in attendance. The assembly laid down some principles for meeting together to run the parish. In the absence of a Lord, a Manorial Court, or a Justice of the Peace, these guys were going to put their heads together and engage in some problem solving. They were a corporation, a company, joined together to serve the monarch and dominate their peasant neighbors. They chose to work together “to the end we may be better and more quietly serving of her majesty when we meet together.”
The Articles were drawn up to guide them
“in good love and liking one another. None of us shall disdain one another, nor seek to hinder one another by words nor deeds, but rather to be helpers, assisters, and counselors of one another, and all of our doings to be good, honest, loving and just; as a strong bundle of sticks that cannot be broken.”
The authors of the Articles pledged to maintain records and not to sue each other at law without first attempting to resolve the matter amongst themselves. They stressed participation and the elimination of contention. It was written: “None should do anything one against another or against any man by word or deed upon affection or malice, in our meeting, nor to be discontented, since none of us is ruler of himself, but the whole company or the most part is ruler of us all.” They were to be “Helpers, assisters, and councellors of one another, and all our doings to be good, honest, loving and just to one another.”
The bylaws of Swallowfield illustrate participatory traditions at the heart of English social and political life. These traditions arrived in the New World along with the men and women who embarked on the great American journey toward independence. There are significant lines within the bylaws that sadly did not survive in the American Congress of 2015. As an example, the gentry of Swallowfield agreed “No man shall scorn another man’s speech but that all shall be spoken may be quietly taken and heard by all.”
In a nation in which the President of the United States, Donald Trump, holds others up to ridicule, one can see how far we have fallen from a sense of decency and respect in this nation. Before I set the folks in Swallowfield too high on a pedestal I need to remind the reader that the authors of the Articles were writing bylaws that governed their interaction one with another. They did not grant such respect to the impoverished masses that squabbled for decent living conditions and wages. They were to be kept in their place and made mindful of their station in life. That too would be a characteristic that followed the landed gentry to the New World.
Despite the class differences made clear in the Articles one can find important historical evidence that English citizens in small, remote villages were taking strides toward greater civil engagement in matters of local governance. The folks in Swallowfield made it abundantly clear to the Queen that they were not acting in a manner to interfere with her right to govern. They were, in fact, seeking to aid in the monarch’s effort to control the destitute masses, and end a century of rebellions ignited by the Protestant Reformation.
From these difficult times and conditions Peter Smith emerged, fifty years after the Articles of 1595 were drafted and put into effect. The decade of his birth is significant in English history. He was either an infant Peter (1641) or a young man Peeter (1627) when the protestant Roundhead, Oliver Cromwell seized control and ruled England with an iron hand and a will to destroy.
The search for a father and grandfather for Peter of Yeocomico has been exhaustive. So much so that I get tired trying to recount the number of leads I have followed, notepads I have filled and dead people I have stalked. Smith family historians have filled various pedigree charts with the names of predecessors of our Peter of Yeocomico/Westmoreland. I have elected to throw the various candidates into a file at the back of this book. If anyone cares to pick up the cause of carrying on the search the info in the back might help. But for the sake of all that is good and right in the world, please do not even think that Captain John Smith of Jamestown could be a great grandfather of some sort. He didn’t have children!
