MRP: Lee
Lee (alias Leigh), Essex
Editorial history
30/12/11, CSG: Created page
Leigh in Essex & the Moyer family
In the early seventeenth century a number of important mariner and merchant families lived in Leigh and neighbouring Eastwood, in the county of Essex. Also living in Leigh was the cleric and author of the Pilgrimage, Samuel Purchas.[1] According to a genealogical study of the Purchas family, the families included "the Moyers, the Salmons, the Goodlads, the Haddocks, the Bonners, the Harrises, the Hares, the Cockes, Richard Hare, and many others..." The study cites Camden as stating that Leigh was “well stocked with lusty seamen” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[2]
Lee is on the north shore of the Thames estuary, just to the east of Benfleet and Canvey island, and about fifteen miles downstream of Tilbury and Gravesend. A local website states that Leigh began as a fishing village, but that by the sixteenth century had become a fairly large and prosperous port with a deep water channel, known as the Leigh Road.[3] However, the channel silted up in the eighteenth century and the town’s importance decreased. The same site states that ships of up to 340 tons have been recorded as built at Lee.
Manorial records collected by the Heathcote family, who were descendants of Samuel Moyer, and which are now in the Cambridge County archives, Huntingdon, enable the family structure, land holdings, titles and occupations of the Moyer family to be reconstructed surprisingly well. They show that the Moyer family was in the Leigh area, on the Thames estuary, at least from the 1545, and that they held small amounts of land in several manors in the area as well as being mariners.[4] The manors they appear in from the mid-C16th are the manors of Prittlewell[5] and Mylton Hall. In the 1650s Samuel Moyer himself appears as lord of the manor of Hawkesbury and also of Pittsea, both in the same area of Essex.[6]
There was a close relationship between the Moyer family and maritime and merchant activities from the mid-sixteenth century and for the subsequent one hundred and fifty years. The earliest Moyer mariner reference is in 1550 to a James Moyer, who appears separately in related manorial records described as a "mariner" and a "yeoman."[7] Ninety years later, Lawrence Moyer, brother of our Samuel Moyer, is described as a mariner, the same occupation as his and Samuel’s father, Captain James Moyer.[8] Both Lawrence and James commanded major ships. Lawrence commanded the Hercules in 1643, a 468 ton, 128 man, 28 gun ship, and James commanded the Royal Merchant in the late 1620-1636/37 period, a ship which is variously described as of 500 or 600 tons, which he part owned.[9] Lawrence Moyer commanded the Hercules as a parliamentary ship, and in late June 1643 was instrumental in preventing the surrender of the city of Hull to royalist forces by landing the crew of the Hercules in Hull, securing the city and arresting Captain Hotham.[10]- ↑ Samuel Purchas, Purchase his Pilgrimage or Relations of the world and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation to this present, vol. 1, and Hakluytus Poshumus; or Puchas his Pilgrimes, containing the History of the World in Sea-Voyages, and Land Travels by Englishmen and others, vols. 2-5 (5 vols, London, 1613-1625)
- ↑ H.W.King, 'A sketch of the genealogy of the Purchas family', in Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, vol. 4 (Colchester, 1869), p. 169. The accompanying footnotes refer to Lawrence Moyer, mariner, whose grandson was Samuel Moyer, and whose family was subsequently connected to the Heathcotes; Robert Salman "a wealthy Merchant and Mariner, afterwards Master of the Trinity House", who died in 1641 and was buried in Leigh; William Goodlad of Leigh "Chief Commander of the Greenland Fleet" for twenty years, who was also Master of the Trinity House, and who died in 1639 and was buried in Leigh. "Ten or twelve of his family [Goodlad], all mariners, were contemporary with Purchas"; Captain Richard Haddock, a Master Mariner, who was a contemporary of Purchas; the maritime family of the Bonners at Leigh in the time of Purchas; Richard Harris of Leigh, an Elder Brother of Trinity House, who was buried at Leigh in 1628; the Hare family of Leigh, several of whom were mariners; Abraham Cocke of Limehouse, who had a disasterous expedition to the River Plate in the reign of Elizabeth; and Richard Chester, Esq., of Leigh, mariner, Elder Brother of the Trinity House, and Master of the Society in 1615, who was buried in 1632 in Leigh (Ibid, p.169)
- ↑ http://www.oldleigh.com/history.html, viewed 10/09/10
- ↑ Cambridge County Archives, CON 3/5/11 [n.d.]: XXXX: referring to “Laurence Magott & John Mower, quer.” conceeding to another party “3 messuages, 3 gardens, 9a. land & 4a. pasture with apps. in Pryttelwell & Legh.” DATE?
- ↑ Prittlewell is XXX miles from Leigh, now part of Southend
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- ↑ Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, vol. 42 (XXXX, 1964), p. 46; John Rowland Powell, The navy in the civil war (XXXX, 1962), p. 200
- ↑ K.J.Allison (ed.), ‘Hull in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in History of the County of York East Riding, vol. 1: 'The city of Kingston upon Hull' (London, 1969), pp. 90-171, viewed at BHOL, 09/09/10
