HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H03048 6/2/03 "THE PARISH AND GENEALOGY-PART 2"
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From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2003 17:06:39 EDT
Subject: Re: the parish and british behaviour - Domesday Book


Dear Forum Readers

Absence on holiday has prevented my responding sooner to Rosemarie's
contribution. On a point of historical accuracy, William I did not order the survey of
landholdings and values compiled as Domesday Book until midwinter 1085
(Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for that year). Nineteen years earlier in 1066, William
would have been far too busy consolidating his as yet still fragile conquest
of England and would hardly have begun his distribution of lands to his
followers. Many pockets of Saxon resistance had to be suppressed.

Whilst Domesday Book is a valuable source for early Norman England, it has
limited genealogical use - although it lists landholders' names it contains no
family trees; and genealogical inquiry has to work backwards from the known to
the unknown. Very few family trees can be authentically traced back to the
names of the feudal landholders listed in Domesday. I recall with some amusement
an incident in Somerset Record Office of a naive American who thought that he
could somehow trace his ancestry by working forwards chronologically from a
name in a medieval document!

However, we all come from ancient families even if the records are
non-existent; and it has been postulated that apart from recent immigrants, most people
in Britain are very distantly related to one another.

Best wishes

John Pentney

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Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 19:46:27 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: the parish and british behaviour - Domesday Book


Thanks John--- Could I draw on your historical knowledge for another question?

I have a Family Tree for the Hardys which differs from the one provided (I
believe) by Michael Millgate for Sarah Bird Wright's * A-Z.* on Hardy. In a
history of the past thousand years in Swanage (which as you may know
abounds with Hardys) a "Simplified Pedigree" shows that not only did one
branch of the family acquire a knighthood in the 1760s (descending to the
5th Earl of Mansfield in the 20th century), but there was an Avice
(?1632-1704), 2 Thomasins (between 1584 & 1585), and 3 Knights (between
1565 & 1758).

So my question is, did Hardy have knowledge of this pedigree and if so,
how? And if not, would his naming of characters have simply co-incided with
these in the Hardy family where I believe there is also a Eustacia or are
there other records he consulted?

Thanks,
Rosemarie

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From: Jcphardysoc@aol.com
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 11:06:29 EDT
Subject: Re: Hardy Family Pedigree

Dear Forum Readers

I have found the pedigree Rosemarie cites in the [1979] reprint of W.M. Hardy's Old Swanage. As acknowledgement is made to Stevens Cox, I soon traced the original to No. 16 in the Stevens Cox Monographs on the Life, Times and Works of Thomas Hardy series: The Early Hardys by F.R. Southerington, 1968, where it forms the centre-page spread [pp18-19].

This is Southerington's version of Hardy's family tree and his sources are listed in his Appendix I (which is lacking from the Swanage book though the reference to it has not been deleted). The sources include primary and secondary material.

Hardy is unlikely to have been familiar with or had access to all of these; was well acquainted with some such as Hutchins' History of Dorset (he had his own copy of the 4-volume 1861 edn); and may have known and accessed others such as Dorset and Berkshire parish registers (this would have entailed visiting the relevant parishes before records were centralized in county record offices) and the Dorset Law Suits, copies of which were in Dorset County Museum.

So, to attempt to answer Rosemarie's questions: Hardy would not have seen this pedigree as compiled by Southerington, but would have been familiar with elements of it and these may have prompted his use of such names as Avice and Thomasin. He could also have encountered these names elsewhere e.g. I have found a Thomasine on a memorial in Langport church, Somerset and doubtless there are others. Avice is probably the least common of the names Rosemarie highlights, but I believe it was a Dorset girl's name. As to the name Knight, it is probably far too common an English surname for its appearance in a Hardy pedigree and Hardy's choice of it in A Pair of Blue Eyes to be anything more than coincidental. [There may be some deliberate irony - the priggish Knight's behaviour is ultimately unchivalarous/'unknightly' towards Elfride]. I don't believe Hardy did much research into his ancestry until some time after the 1870s when A Pair of Blue Eyes was written.

I cannot give a more definitive answer than this, and I would regard the later work of such scholars as Michael Millgate and John Doheny as superseding Southerington's. Southerington rather tended to subscribe somewhat uncritically to the Lois Deacon school of Hardy studies.

Best wishes

John Pentney

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Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 12:37:57 -0400
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: Hardy Family Pedigree

Many thanks, John, for your detailed response.

Appreciated,

Rosemarie

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From: "RDKnight" <ronald@knight339.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: Hardy Family Pedigree
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 20:01:52 +0100


Further to John Pentney's reply of 5 June. Hardy's great-grandmother was Jane Knight, who married John Hardy (father of Thomas Hardy I) in December 1777 at Woodsford, Dorset. In THE LIFE, Chapter XX, Hardy particularly writes that his own father "was buried [in Stinsford churchyard] close to his father and mother, and near the Knights of various dates in the 17th & 18th centuries, with whom the Hardys had been connected." Then in Chapter XXXVII, "Early in January [1921] he [Hardy] was researching through the registers of Stinsford for records of a family named Knight, connected with his own. Many generations of this family are buried in nameless graves in Stinsford Churchyard." Back in 1995 I completed something of a study into the Hardy-Knight ancestry, going back to John Hardy born c.1676, whose 1723 headstone is still at Stinsford. Copies of the unpublished resultant illustrated manuscript were subsequently donated to both the Dorset County Record Office, and Dorst County Museum. With the onset since of the Internet, and more old records become available, the time may thus perhaps be opportune to endeavour an up-date to fill in some gaps in information on the subjecft. It should not be overlooked that A PAIR OF BLUE EYES was somewhat autobiographical, which novelists may be particularly prone to do in their early novels. Thus it is not unexpected that Hardy would have used at least one name from his own personal ancestry. It is understood that Hardy had contemplated changing the name KNIGHT in the novel to KNIGHTON - as found in the Froom Valley village of West Knighton. As regards his use of the names Avice and Thomasine, there is record of an AVES KNIGHT in the late 1600s, and a Widow AVIS KNIGHT at Netherbury, Dorset, at the same period. Closer than Langport, in 1580 a THOMSIN KNIGHT was married at Moreton in Dorset. It is not beyond possibility, of course, that Hardy would early on have heard oral knowledge of his (Knight) family genealogy. Regards, Ronald Knight (no connection unfortunately)

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