The best and most easily available transcription of the _Bevis_ passenger
list is the oldest (see Samuel G. Drake, "The Founders of New England," _The New
England Historical and Genealogical Register_ 14[1860]:336-37):
"SOUTHAMPTON.--The list of the names of Passeng[er]s Intended to shipe themselues,
In
the Beuis of Hampton of CL.Tounes, Robert Batten M[aste]r for Newengland, And
thus by vertue of the Lord Treasurers warrant of the second of May w[hi]ch was
after the restraynt and they some Dayes gone to sea Before the Kinges
Ma[gis]t[rat]es Proclamacon Came vnto South'ton." [Because the abbreviated
words
end with one or two letters in superscript (which cannot be duplicated on the
mailing list)--and, in at least one case, for clarity--I have inserted the
missing letters in brackets. Drake puts the appropriate letters in superscript
but does not supply the missing letters.] I'll send the images (two pages)
to John R. for posting online.
As is clear from the partial image of the original record posted by John R.,
the Carpenter section of the passenger list reads as follows:
62 - - - - William Carpenter
33 - - - - William Carpent Jn [following a bracket of the two
Williams is "of Horwell Carpent[e]rs"]
32 - - - - Abigael Carpenter
10 & vnder & fower children
14 - - - - Tho: Banshott Servt.
As the list's preamble indicates, by 2 May 1638, "they had some Dayes gone
to sea." The actual departure date is not known, nor is the date of arrival.
Since the average voyage from England to Massachusetts took five to eight
weeks, they would have landed, probably at Boston (the point of all but a
handful of Bay Colony arrivals), in June or July 1638.
It is reasonably certain that "Horwell" refers to the parish of Whorwell
(now Wherwell), located in Horwell Hundred, Hampshire (see
<
http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/hantsmap/speed1/sp1su44f.htm> and
<
http://www.geog.port.ac.uk/webmap/hantsmap/hantsmap/speed1/spd1gaz.htm>).
Whorwell/Wherwell
(about 15 map miles south-southeast of Shalbourne) had a tradition of religious
dissent: at least two of its vicars, Stephen Bachiler (1587–1605) and
probable brother-in-law John Bate (1605–1633), were nonconformists. It lies,
moreover, on a straight line from Shalbourne to the _Bevis_’s port of departure,
at Southampton.
The Carpenters remained at Wherwell no more than a few months and perhaps
only a day or two. Their tenancy at Shalbourne had ended by September 1637,
but the burial there the following January of an Alice Carpenter raises the
possibility that the surviving Carpenters were then still living in or very near
Shalbourne. It is possible that they paused at Wherwell only long enough
to obtain from sympathetic authorities the _certificates of conformity_ (one
for each man) that customs officials would require for the Carpenters to leave
England and from which the residence recorded for them on the passenger list
was probably copied (see "Focus on the _Planter_," _Great Migration
Newsletter_ 15, no. 4, online at <
www.greatmigration.org> [subscription website;
printed issues available]).
Gene Z.
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