Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Genealogy is sometimes like a puzzle with lots of pieces, the challenge being to discover which pieces fit together. It is easier to find what fits when you have all of the pieces out on the table and have a vision of the general picture you’re trying to construct. This is an attempt to get more of the Leonard pieces out in the open and on the table matching the picture to see if we can find what fits.
English history yields evidence that there were iron mines in Roman times. There was a renewed interest in iron refining in the late 1400s and early 1500s along with the introduction of gun powder, cannons, and guns in warfare at the same time. This convergence encouraged the development of a new technology in refining iron in France, which was stronger than that previously available. Because of its obvious use in warfare, English kings imported laborers conversant in the new technology and encouraged its development, particularly in Sussex in the 1500s where the bog iron ore was readily available.
England had adopted a feudal form of government before the Norman conquest in 1066. The battle in 1066 resulted in the replacement of the old Anglo-Saxon aristocracy by Norman nobility. The economy was food-based, with farm labor consuming over 90% of the population. Of this 90%, most were slaves or serfs bound to the land they tilled. Most of the land was owned and controlled by the king, who could award it to whomever he wished, usually to his followers and to monasteries. Upon the death of the holder of the land, the land reverted to the king for disposition.
Over time, more land was awarded to the monasteries in fee simple, referred to as “bookland” and not returned to the king. The nobles and holders of estates soon caught on and wanted land awarded as bookland that they could pass on to their families, sell, or lease as they saw fit. The Great Plague 1348-51 upset much of this arrangement. Population in towns and the countryside was reduced by 50% or more. There weren’t enough peasants left to till all the land, upon which the aristocracy depended for income. Serfs and peasants left their estates for towns and estates offering better deals.
Early records weren’t set up for genealogical purposes. They were usually for the conveyance or taxation of property, for the documentation of property ownership or its leasing, and to record family feudal obligations. The Doomsday Book in 1086 was the first effort to record all the lands in England for ownership, food production, and taxation.
The evolving social class structure by the late 1300s had all but eliminated serfdom and slavery due to the relative scarcity of labor brought on by the plague in 1350. Lords of the manor provided local judicial, law enforcement, and government functions. The guild system organized trade and production. Cities and towns grew and had over 20% of England’s population. More of the population was involved in trade and specialized production, such as carpentry, shoemaking, baking, beer brewing, and the like.
The new social class structure had the king at the top, nobility and lords at the next level, knights and aldermen at the next level, thanes, ceorls, yeomen, merchants, and tenant farmers at the bottom rung. Those serving in noble households were divided between men of the hall (external operations) and men of the chamber (family living quarters). Class was fixed at birth. Laws were set by Parliament to ensure that one remained in that class by setting class standards as to colors and types of cloth a given class could wear.
Another law set by Parliament required every person to sign a fealty or loyalty oath to a lord, the basic purposes of which was to give each person an overlord to whom he was responsible and to which court he would be tried for transgressions. If one were found without a valid oath, one could be killed on sight withno further legal action required.
Primogeniture governed heredity, meaning that the oldest living son inherited the title, the lands, and the fortune of the deceased. When there was no son and the oldest surviving sibling was a daughter, she could inherit the estate and give the title to her husband with the king’s permission.
With the growth of small towns, specialization, and trade in the 1300s, guilds comprised of practitioners of various specialties were formed to provide organization and structure to the specialty, setting standards and prices, and providing for education in the specialty. Masters of the craft took on apprentices, usually as indentured children, to learn the craft. Upon having learned the skill, the apprentices became journeymen, working for other masters to expand their skills. Trade required literacy, which became part of the training. Finally, they become masters, settle down, marry, and in many cases, enroll their children as apprentices in the same trade,
Another outcome of the Black Plague in the period after 1350 AD was that the peasants in many cases emerged from serfdom. They were no longer bound to the land they were cultivating. They could demand wages, save money, and purchase property. Some recognized that the ability to read and write provided a way to advance socially as well as to defend their property acquisitions against other claimants. As more people learned to read and write, letter-writing among family members and saving the letters became popular in the 1400s. The Paston family of Norfolkshire presents an example.[1] Over 1,000 letters from the 1200s to the 1400s have been preserved. Clement Paston, a free peasant, lived in the late 1300s in Paston, Norfolkshire. He was able to save enough money to buy several properties such as Beckham Manor and to send several of his sons and wives to school to learn to read and write. By the second generation. The Pastons were the second-largest land holders in Norfolk shire. Two sons, John and William, resided in London and exchanged letters with their wives who remained in Paston. William studied law and by 1429 became one of 6 judges on the court of common pleas. To son John fell the task of defending the family’s land purchases against competing claimants, such as lords whose claims to the properties were from feudal grants and family relationships. John’s wife Margaret wrote to John in London (Stroud, 2020) to defend the property where they were residing, Gresham Manor, from a rival family who was seeking to occupy it by force of arms. Many lords had private armies, and “possession was nine-tenths of the law.” Disputes between families over properties occurred frequently during this period, sometimes settled by legal proceedings, sometimes by petitioning the king or parliament, sometimes by force of arms, sometimes by bribery and corruption, sometimes by who was in power. During the various Wars of the Roses in the 1400s, for example, the Pastons were on the side of the Nevilles/Yorkists, and received more favorable treatment from them than the Percys/Lancastrians. Some information has been passed down that the Lennards of Dacre fame were lawyers back then -- John Lennard born 1422 was a lawyer, for example, as was his great-grandson, John Lennard born 1508 who was a lawyer and high sheriff of Kent. This line of Lennards were apparently quite aware that an education was an important route to higher status in society.
Other influential changes in the 1300s and 1400s include the introduction of paper, cheaper and easier to obtain than vellum and calfskin, and the printing press by William Caxton in the 1470s, which made books and other printed materials much cheaper and more readily available. These are not insignificant or minor.
Timeline – History and its implications for genealogy.
A simple timeline illustrates the changes over the centuries. The ability to track people and families across generations differed over the centuries as laws, customs, and technology changed.
Members of the aristocracy were always “easy” to track. The historical records of the time show lineage and property. The hard folks to track are those not part of the lines of kings, queens, dukes, earls, lords, and other nobility. These harder ones had names like John, Alfred, Ian, with no additional formal and permanent name to keep the Johns unique. They had a given name but no surname, as everyone who was around them knew who they were and who they belonged with. That leaves genealogists with a harder task to follow a line back or forward.
England has experienced major historical events over the course of centuries. These impacted the laws, the way of life, and the lives of its inhabitants. It is interesting to consider how these changes affected individuals as well as nations, and people including the Leonards. These changes also impacted how and where records of households and individuals were kept. And this has major implications for genealogical research.
1066 – Victory by the Norman French at the Battle of Hastings. This changed just about everything. It brought the Norman French to power in England under William the Conqueror, displacing almost all of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy. Under a new class structure introduced by the French, farm laborers became serfs bound to the land in exchange for certain rights and responsibilities for its use. Middle English language incorporated many French words. French became the language of The Court, eventually replacing Latin for official records. Land was now either awarded to the monasteries or the King’s favorites, requiring a more modern system of inventorying properties for the purpose of assessing taxes and land values.
1088 --The Domesday Book was created, listing lands and their value for taxation and to give the crown better control. It is a valuable compilation of all the property in England at the time, including the location, the owner, the inhabitants, a description, and the value. Feudalism was imposed based on the European model. The population was divided among classes imposed by statutes and custom. Most people were slaves, farmers or laborers.
1215 – Magna Carta signed by King John.
1250 – Requirement for families to adopt surnames. Surnames became more prevalent around 1250 AD in England and western Europe. They were a way to differentiate among people who had the same given name. As populations grew and people moved from place to place, it became more necessary to distinguish them based on family for legal, tax, inheritance, and census purposes. Surnames could derive from a person’s location (like Albert Marsh, Albert Dell), parentage (Albert Johnson, Albert Swenson), occupation (Albert Wainwright, Albert Miller), class/status (Albert Knight, Albert Barron), nickname (Albert Strong, Albert Long), or religious affinity (Albert Peterman, Albert Leonard (as in St Leonard)). Extra complexity can occur when aliases are created. If there were too many Albert Dells, one might get an alias like Albert of Swinton to help keep a payroll payment going to the right Albert. While surnames were required, families had some latitude in the choice of name. Since saints were celebrated, some families chose names of familiar saints like Saint Leonard. Given names could also be formally assigned according to custom, wherein the first son was named after the father’s father, the first daughter after the mother’s mother, and so on. Middle names were rarely used before 1775.
Manors expanded in medieval England. . Under the feudal system, all lands belonged to the King, who could allocate land to whomever he chose. The land grantee had certain rights under their tenancy. The major expansion occurred by the mid 1300s when there were over 1,100 manors. The manor was sometimes a fortified set of buildings with one large structure for the manor lord to live in with offices and public rooms and other outbuildings for worship, farming and other activities. Villages were often organized around these manors and many of the local people worked for the manor lord who was part of the aristocracy. The class structure made distinctions between the landed “gentry” and those who labored, soldiered or were merchants. The manor had its own court system to manage the affairs of the area and dealt with land issues, tenancy, inheritance etc. Records were kept that would identify those involved in those courts.
1337 – 1453 – Hundred Years War. Wars required the mobilization of soldiers and that required additional record keeping. They also required wood, to build ships with tall masts. This was competition with the use of wood to make the charcoal used in ironmaking. These conflicts culminate in the order to conserve wood for the fleet that necessitated a move by many iron forges from southeast England to the midlands and west.
1348-53 -- The Black Plague reached England. This changed the population size in dramatic ways, losing up from 40 to 75 percent percent of the population in a short time. It caused upheavals in the social, religious and economic relationships. Laborers found that they could negotiate higher wages and more favorable working conditions in the aftermath of the Black Plague. The plagues reoccurred over the centuries, intermittently through the 17th Century. The rise of towns after 1348 to 1352 created a newer trade economy, more markets, merchants, fairs, and movement of people. Some trades required literacy.
1381 – The Peasant Revolt. Also called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, the revolt challenged the ruling order. New laws to suppress the revolt limited movement and collaboration of the disgruntled peasants.
1450 – Printing press invented. Brought to England in 1476. This was a revolution in terms of literacy, spread of information, and record keeping.
1517 – Martin Luther attacks the sale of indulgences in Germany. Reformation begins.
1534 – Parliament passes the Act of Succession, Act of Supremacy, and Act of Treason, making King Henry VIII the head of the Church of England. This abolished Papal authority over the Church of England.
1572 – Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in France. The massacre of thousands of Protestant Huguenots by Catholics created new tensions and incitement to emigrate for some of the persecuted.
1618-1648 – Thirty Years War
1621 – Pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock. This marks the beginning of the migration and occupation of “New World”. Leonards followed soon after in the 1630s and 1640s.
1641 to 49 – English Civil War. Again, this created tensions between factions, causing migration. Wars created the need for canons, guns and all of the iron goods that wars required.
Historical changes impact today’s genealogical research. How and where and why and by whom records were kept make some facts easier than others to find. The puzzle pieces are scattered, and the researcher must find them before trying to fit them together.
In summary, there were some very important changes in the period between 1200 AD and 1500 AD that require a different approach to genealogy and limit what is available. If we are sensitive to the changes, we’ll see more of them and understand what they mean. For example, I’d heard that England was a class society. But I ignored class as a dimension of society as something that only a few snobs would find of interest. Then I found that their laws even set out what colors and fabrics various classes were permitted to wear and that such designations were not just in the 1200s when people didn’t know better, but even in the 1800s.
The Leonards tended to remain iron refining and related trades. It paid relatively well. They trained their sons in these trades, probably apprenticing them at a young age and “growing up” in the trade. This is clearly visible in the generations after James Leonard 1620-91, and evidence supports it being the family tradition before James.
The Leonards were not the only family with a tradition in the iron trades. Others included the Vintons, Prays, Russells, Pinions, and Tylers.[2] As noted, many of these same families were represented among the iron workers recruited by Thomas Foley to work at the Saugus Iron Works in Massachusetts in the 1640s. Thomas Foley 1617-1670 was an active shareholder in the Company of Undertakers of the Saugus ironworks. He was a son of the Mayor of Dudley, which is about 4 miles south of Bilston, where the Leonards were said to have resided. He was an important Worcestershire ironmaster. He also owned ironworks in Monmouthshire. He could have been involved with the Leonards working at the Hanbury works in Pontypool.
We find these same Foley and Hanbury families working at furnaces and forges in various parts of England and America in the 1500s and 1600s.
A number of these families originated in France and before that, in what is now Belgium, where a particular technology for refining iron was developed in the mid-1400s. Where you find these families, you are likely to find others, as well as a furnace or forge nearby.
We know the trail of iron refining development and production, from the Bray in France to Sussex in England in the 1500s to the Midlands in England later in the 1700s and 1800s, with a branch off to America in the 1650s and thereafter. By following the trail, we know where to look for Leonards.
The Y-DNA of the ironworking Leonards has been identified through their descendants. While we can retroactively test previous generations for their Y-DNA, we can identify those direct male descendants of Leonards currently alive and trace back their ancestry.
Advances in the identification of family patterns in autosomal dna (the other 22 chromosomes) is leading toward the integration of traditional genealogy and genetic genealogy such that we will have a new tool in narrowing the search for ancestors and proving the accuracy of their identification.
Written records useful for genealogical purposes are rare prior to 1500, the exception being those of noble families with feudal and manorial obligations to the crown. In England, churches weren’t ordered to maintain records of births, marriages, and deaths until 1538; and many didn’t fully comply until well after that. In addition, many of the early church records are missing, and presumed destroyed in the intervening years. Listing the birth of a child without the names of the parents doesn’t give much interlocking information to establish the chain of relationships. The name of one parent alone, usually the father, sometimes isn’t sufficient to place the family unit in an ancestry or descendancy. The result is that it is difficult to trace with accuracy and proof the “iron” Leonard families before 1600 and sometimes after.
Léonard is the French spelling of the name. If the “iron” Leonards were of French derivation, they would have spelled the name this way and pronounced it with a silent “d” at the end.[3] English clerics may have added an “e” on the end (Leonarde) so that the “d” would be pronounced rather than skipped.
The first recorded French iron worker came to England in 1491, before the first furnace using the new “blast” technology was put into action, Newbridge in Sussex, in 1496. In 1520, there were only two in operation, but the Wealden iron industry grew rapidly in the period from 1520 to 1548. By 1548 there were 53 furnaces and “iron mills” in operation in the Weald, according to a complaint by the coastal towns of Sussex over the use of wood for charcoal for iron refining.[4]
The expansion of iron works between 1520 and 1548 was also accompanied by an increase in immigration by French iron workers from 11 in the period 1506-1510 to 39 in the 1521-1525 time frame before dwindling to 11 in 1536-1540.[5]
An ironworks during this period would ordinarily employ a clerk who kept the records, an ironmaster, a deputy ironmaster, a filler and a founder at the furnace, a fyner for each hearth, and a hammerman, plus a number of laborers and outworkers, such as miners for the ore, woodcutters and charcoal makers, and transporters.[6] The clerk was on an annual salary and was the highest paid, followed by the ironmaster and so on down.
Several French immigrant Léonards are listed in the denization roles in 1544 and 1550.[7] They include James Lenarde, born in Picardy, France, who was at the King’s Forge at Newbridge on 1 July 1544, and John Lyonarde, French-born, a fyner, who had been in England 30 years. There are several other Leonards in the denization roles who could have been ironworkers/immigrants. Also, there is no guarantee that with borders relatively porous and demand for workers high, some immigrants didn’t apply for or get listed in the denization roles. The denization roles exist for only a couple of years, and it’s a matter of speculation as to whether there were other branches of the Leonard family represented among the French iron workers in the Weald.[8]
Another source of information identifying French iron workers is contained in the so-called Subsidy (tax) roles of the 1500s.[9] These rolls identify some of the better-paid ironworkers and their employers. Among the Leonards mentioned are James Lyvarde, 1572, working for Anthony Pelham in the Hundred of Foxearle, Martin Quinto, 1552, Johan Leonarde, 1560, Roulande (or Rowland) Leonard, 1560, Marten Le Mowle (aka Quinto and Leonard), 1572, and an unnamed Leonard, 1576, in the Hundred of Shoyswell, another unnamed Lenarde in the Hundred of Rushmonden, and John Leonard, fyner, 1550, in the Hundred of Hawksborough, and Jacobs Leynarde, 1540, in the Hundred of Westerham. John Leonard was a finer at Bevilham (Hawksden Forge) 1549-1551.
Anthonie Pelham, 1492-1566, a member of the English aristocracy or merchant class, and entrepreneur, apparently was an ancestor of the “iron Leonards” thru granddaughter Eleanor. He may have had a hand in recruiting them from France.
French families associated with the Leonards include the Pinyons in the Hundreds of Netherfield and Loxfield, Vintons in the Hundreds of Hawksborough and Staple, Russells in the Hundreds of Henhurst and Loxfield and Hartfield and Rotherfield and Daneshill Horsted, Tylers in the Hundreds of Loxfield and Daneshill Horsted and Streat. As pointed out by Bowman, it is likely that the French ironworker families lived close to each other in migrant communities and intermarried, at least in the first two generations in England. Judging by marriages from the late 1500s on, it appears that they married English women and were probably thoroughly anglicized.
One member of the French family who appears to have gone directly from Sussex to America is Ralph3 (Anthony2, Peter1) Russell[10] bap.1607, Buxted, Sussex, m. Anne Humphrey, 1633, Maresfield, Sussex, lived in Withyham in 1636 and 1638 and in East Grinstead from 1641 to 1647. “By 1650 he was at Hammersmith ironworks in New England, where he was a covenant servant working as a forgeman. In 1652 he was involved, with Henry and James Leonard and some local residents, in a scheme to set up a bloomery forge on the Two Mile River near Taunton. He later moved to a more ambitious plant at New Haven in Connecticut. The locality where he set up another forge was later called Russell’s Mills.”[11]
[1] Kevin Stroud, History of English Podcast, Episode 138, Family Matters, 2020.
[2] Robert E. Bowman, Glimpses into the English and Continental Ancestry of Certain Braintree and Sugus Ironworkers of about 1650, The Essex Genealogist, pp.63-77.
[3] Jean Léonard and Léonard, son of Henry Léonard, are mentioned as charcoal makers in Belgium in 1509-10 in Pierre den Dooven, “L’Art de Charbonner et Les Delits de Forets au Pays de Franchimont.” Franchimont is a castle in Theux, province of Liege, Belgium. The castle was besieged in 1487. For the areas where iron refining was occurring and the immigration routes of the refiners and supporting workers (charcoal makers), see Danielle Arribet-Deroin, “Les Fouilles archeologiques de Glenet (Compainville, Seine Maritime.”
[4] Henry Cleere and David Crossley, “The Iron Industry of the Weald, “ Merton Press, 1995, p. 117.
[5] “The Iron Industry of the Weald,” p. 119, based on the work by Brian G. Awty.
[6] “The Iron Industry of the Weald,” p. 142.
[7][7] Denization by English law is the act by which a foreigner becomes a subject of England, but does not have the rights either of a natural born subject nor one who has been naturalized.
[8] There are historical reasons why England was making efforts to secure its borders during this period. King Henry VIII is attempting to get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon. This eventually results in his declaring himself head of the Church of England and ex-communication by Pope Clement VII, with invasion threatened by the Holy Roman Emporer, Francis I. But there were also motivations to secure more iron for armaments.
[9] Brian G. Awty, “Aliens in the Ironworking Areas of the Weald: The Subsidy Rolls, 1524-1603.” pp.13-78.
[10] Anthony’s wife’s name was Elizabeth Kidd, and Peter Russell alias Munnion was married to Alice LNU.
[11] Awty, unpaginated manuscript on Russell family, his sources Hartley and Swank.