While the final evidence for the Elizabethan Carpenters still
waits in Family History Center microfilm, a number of obvious points
need to be made in light of new data. The old data of the Upton Scudamore
and Marden
Carpenters was very good data, but was interpreted wrongly. As I had pointed
out months
ago, Upton Scudamore William Carpenter was born much later than the dates
usually given due to
his son Christopher being still an active man well into the 1600s. This
evidence for this
was found in the Victoria History of Wiltshire. Moreover, Upton Scudamore
was a manor of the Hungerford estate. An important controlling family in the
Hungerford Estate finances was the Carpenter family, and more importantly a
clothier Thomas Carpenter in the very early
1500s. Evidence for this was found in the Hidden Abstracts of Probate
Documents. The Marden Carpenters themselves point back to a Thomas Carpenter
who had title to the church
land in Marden in the early 1500s. This data I also presented from the
Victoria History of Wiltshire. Upton Scudamore William and Marden Robert
were more likely siblings than
father and son.
The Hidden Abstracts of Probate Documents have completely altered any
discussion
of Elizabethan Carpenters. A William Carpenter was found in the adjacent
town of Shalbourne.
Again, the Hungerford family were the controlling entity that town of Great
Bedwyn.A search
of the Hungerford Estate documents will be made.
A good reading of the Hidden Abstracts will clarify the whole social
situation in
Shalbourne, Great Bedwyn and back to Hungerford. Shalbourne and its lands
were
controlled by Sir Alexander Chocke (see abstract 7585). Chocke himself was
the son-in-law of Sir Anthony Hungerford (see 12321). These families were
intermarried in many ways and controlled the common pasturage for sheep (see
10950) in the 1500s that was processed into cloth in Hungerford.
The husbandman and Yeoman families of Shalbourne and Bedwyn have their
clothier
counterparts in the market town of Hungerford. The Halls, Shadwells and
Bennets are other examples in the Hidden Abstracts. None of this should be a
surprise because this was the basic economic and social history of the area
at the time. Everyone was in the wool and cloth business.
If the Carpenters were not in the wool and cloth business, they would have
been
the EXCEPTIONS.
BC