Ayletts of the 16th and 17th C
Not my personal ancestors, but an interesting bunch of small gentry Ayletts originally from the Rodings in Essex (UK). One of their descendants is the probable founder of the enslaving Plantation Ayletts in Virginia.
My family
Wheelwrighting in Tillingham
My own Aylett ancestors were wheelwrights in the remote Essex village of Tillingham and then nearby Woodham Mortimer from the 1700s to the 1880s. Then my Aylett great grandad left Essex and the family occupation for the Metropolitan Police, and his children mostly became white collar workers.
more of my family
Another of my great-grandfathers, John Broomfield, joined the small ultra Protestant group, the Plymouth Brethren, as a young man. He worked in a shop making brooms and baskets with co-religionists in Taunton, Somerset, and when they retired to Canada, took over the shop. A big social jump for a man who was said to have taught himself to read from the Bible.
Yet another great-grandfather, Charles Warner, was a mason all his life. He sometimes had to walk 7 miles to his work (and back) while his boss drove there in a pony and trap and did not offer him a lift. His wife, Selina Coram, was an identical twin, daughter of a self-made farmer, who cut her off when she married ‘beneath her’ as he saw it.
People
Robert Aylett first worked for Archbishop Laud, but somehow escaped his fall. He became a prominent judge in the Civil War period, working for both Houses of Parliament and was also a minor poet; he had no children.
John Thurloe - Cromwell's spymaster
John Aylett, born in Colchester in 1629, worked for Thurloe, then had an adventurous naval career until he was blown up on Henry Morgan’s flagship in 1669.
1648 Siege of Colchester
Another Essex John Aylett, born in Magdalen Laver in 1595, was a wildly enthusiastic royalist in the Civil War. One of his exploits was escaping from the Parliamentary siege of Colchester
Alice Aylett 1663-1731
Alice Aylett, daughter of an impoverished Royalist family, and unmarried, somehow managed to finish her life as a Grande Dame in Hornchurch, her will full of glitzy jewels and property.
testimonials
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Sam Donovan
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