Loosemore of Devon - Chapter 1

Sources

The written word can all too easily wear an aura of truth which belies the doubts, reservations and plain fallibility of its author.  We acknowledge at the outset that even ignoring the ever-present possibility of error in transcription or interpretation, the results of any enquiry such as this must be limited by the quality of its sources.  Lucky is the genealogist who can base his story on family correspondence and papers detailed enough to permit cross-checking of dates and the establishment of exact family relationships back to the earliest times.  Histories of ordinary families must make do with lower quality information, largely derived from official or semi-official sources, some of which are summarised here.

Records of births, marriages and deaths since the start of civil registration in England and Wales on 1st July 1837 are preserved in the custody of the Registrar-General. ^[1]   Failure to register was not an offence until 1875 and hence early records are by no means complete.  However, these records provide easy access to a limited range of information on everyone registered, back to 1837.  Wills proved after 12th January 1858 are deposited at the Principal Registry, in Somerset House. ^[2]   The decennial census returns offer further scope for family research for the period 1841-1891 inclusive and are available for inspection at the Public Record Office. ^[3]   All censuses have been conducted under a guarantee of confidentiality; more recent returns will remain inaccessible until 100 years after the census date.

For some 300 years prior to 1837 by far the most prolific source of genealogical information is contained in the vast collection of parish registers which until recently were held in Anglican churches under conditions varying from comparatively safe to appalling. ^[4]   Luckily, most are now deposited in county Record Offices where they are preserved under archival conditions and conserved as and when budgets permit.  Many are only available for general examination as photographic copies on microfilm or microfiche.  The oldest originals date from 5th September 1537 when Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s Vicar-General and Lord Privy Seal, ordered that paper registers be maintained of baptisms, marriages and burials in every parish; the order was repeated in 1547. ^[5]   Like many powerful men within Henry’s court circle, Cromwell was convicted of high treason and executed, on 28th July 1540.  By an ecclesiastical canon of 1597, reinforced in 1603, all registers were to be of parchment; earlier registers were to be transferred, especially from 1558 onwards, thus accounting for the relatively large number which start from this latter date as well as for the large numbers of errors and omissions in those early volumes. ^[6]   Additionally, annual transcripts (now known as bishops’ transcripts) were to be sent to the bishop’s registry of each diocese.  In 1642-3 the episcopacy was abolished and bishops’ transcripts ceased for 18 years, while parish registers were improperly or imperfectly maintained during the Commonwealth period, a combination of events often presenting researchers with impenetrable conundrums.  Burial in a woollen shroud was required by Act of Parliament from 1st August 1678, to protect the wool industry, with a £5 penalty for burial in linen. ^[7]   The Act was not formally repealed until 1814 so registers should record, for this whole period, the name of a person swearing the affidavit, though for very many years it was imperfectly obeyed.

Comprehensive changes were instituted following Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, which took effect on 25th March 1754. ^[8]   New registers were required, in a standard printed format with spaces for signatures or marks of the parties, witnesses, and the officiating priest.  The Stamp Act of 1783 taxed all register entries at 3d, except for paupers.  This Act was repealed in 1794 but it is instructive to note the sudden increase in numbers of those declared to be paupers over this short period. ^[9]   A milestone was reached with the Parochial Registers Act of 1812, with a result that once again all parishes started new registers.  Henceforth baptismal registers included residence and occupation of parents; burial registers included residence and age at death; new bishop’s transcripts were started.  This was the last major change before the introduction of civil registration in 1837. ^[10]

Information recorded in early parish registers is very variable, both in quality and quantity and, for example, may be no more than is given in one entry in the Tiverton marriage register: ‘1562, Robert Loosemore was married, 24 January’, there being no mention at all of his bride.  Even when both parties are named the step backwards in time which is necessary to identify their birth dates and thus reach the previous generation is always liable to error.  One looks for an appropriate entry in a baptismal register pre-dating the marriage by 20-30 years and then infers a circumstantial connection.  The validity of this procedure in any particular case can be judged only by considering all the alternatives.  It usually relies for its success on the small size of many rural communities which limits the number of e.g. ‘John Loosemore’ in circulation at any time.

A few very large indexes have been, or are being, compiled from the enormous repository of information contained in parish church registers.  By far the most comprehensive is that currently being undertaken by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), with the eventual object of including information on everybody—literally, everybody.  Field camera teams are gradually microfilming all parish registers, mainly baptismal, individual entries being computer-processed after manual transcription, and tabulated alphabetically, for each country.  The result, known as the IGI (International Genealogical Index), is generally accessible via the Internet and as a series of microfiches for each county in England and Wales.  Present cover is far from uniform across the country and transcription errors are inevitable, but the IGI is an invaluable initial search aid. [11]

The Boyd Marriage Index is another heroic compilation, assembled and indexed manually by the late Percival Boyd and subsequently augmented by others. [12]   It is estimated to contain 13-16% of all marriages in England for the period 1538–1837 and is also arranged by counties, in three series of volumes with a somewhat arbitrary indexing convention.  The Pallot Index is a commercial undertaking run as a non-profit-making operation of more limited scope, though nonetheless it is said to contain several million entries, concentrating on London and Middlesex registers over five decades or so prior to 1837. [13]   Increasing numbers of local indexes, mainly of marriages, are being assembled, often by Local History Societies, which may be consulted by arrangement. [14]

Other sources, especially those covering the period before 1538, are less convenient to use and can hardly be summarised here.  They include the various series of official Rolls, particularly Patent and Fine Rolls; Lay Subsidy returns and Muster Rolls; records of the central courts of Law, notably Chancery and Common Pleas; records of the State Paper Office and of the Court of Augmentations; Feet of Fines and Enrolled Deeds, especially for land conveyancing; Inquisitiones post mortem; records of local manorial courts; and other miscellaneous parish records.  Wills proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) date from 1383 and are preserved either at the Public Record Office or Somerset House; wills proved in local ecclesiastical courts are not common, in Devon at least, before 1660. [15]

Very few of these sources contain personal information.  They usually indicate only that a person has made contact with a local or central bureaucracy, and an individual entry records only the bare result of that contact.  Our view of each early Loosemore has thus to be inferred from very little data and it is unfortunately true that, at a distance of over 400 years, most of them must remain essentially unknowable in any truly personal sense.

Dates

Two important changes to the English calendar occurred in 1752.  Firstly, until that year England had followed the Julian calendar in which all centennial years were leap years, so that by the close of the 16th century a discrepancy of ten days had accumulated between the date of the spring equinox (then 11th March) and its date at the time of the Council of Nicaea (21st March). [16]   The Gregorian calendar, introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 to correct and remove this discrepancy, was not adopted in England until September 1752, by which time the discrepancy had reached 11 days.  Accordingly, in that year the day after 2nd September was decreed to be not 3rd but 14th September.  No account has been taken of this change in the present history: dates before and after 2nd September 1752 are given exactly as quoted in the original sources, so 3-13th September 1752 will not appear anywhere.

The second change concerned the New Year which, until 1752, started on 25th March.  Hence, for example, January 1500 followed December 1500, rather than vice versa as at present.  All parish register entries for the period 1st January–24th March inclusive thus appear to be one year earlier than in current nomenclature.  The change to New Style dates in 1752 also incorporated this change in the start of the New Year to 1st January. [17]   In order to avoid confusion in comparing dates prior to 1752 with those found elsewhere, all references in the ambiguous period are here given in Old Style/New Style, e.g. 18th February 1621/2 means 1621 in the Old Style and 1622 in New Style.

Until the 19th century official dates were customarily expressed in regnal years, that is, from the day on which the reigning monarch acceded to the throne.  For example, the regnal year 2 Elizabeth I extends from 17th November 1559 to 16th November 1560 because Elizabeth I acceded to the throne on 17th November.  Similarly, 27th January 2 Edw VI would normally be written 1549, as would 28th January 3 Edw VI, because Edward VI acceded to the throne on 28th January 1547.  Note that regnal years prior to 1752 are always quoted in Old Style, even by modern authors.  In this history, dates are generally expressed in calendar years except where reference is made to the official title of a statute or other official document.

Loosemore: the name

Geographical Distribution of the Personal Name

A useful first step when thinking about a family history is to examine how the name is distributed across the country.  This is a necessary preliminary if any study is intended of its earliest history, since it will quickly direct attention to that part of the country from which the family originated.  As an approach it is likely to be unrewarding for a common name such as Smith, Jones, Brown and the like, but it proved much more successful with Loosemore.

Family memory regards Devon as the Loosemore heartland, an opinion which is supported by the knowledge that John Loosemore, my paternal great-grandfather, was born in Witheridge parish, Devon.  Reference to the IGI provided useful corroboration.  A search through 23 English counties over the full period covered by the Index (1538–1837), for Loosemore entries plus close name variants yielded the following results:-

Table 1: Distribution of Loosemore in IGI

Even after making allowance for the inevitably uneven coverage of parish registers within the IGI in its incomplete state, these figures are powerfully suggestive.  Predictably the Boyd Marriage Index mirrors these findings, listing, for example, no entries for Worcestershire, Suffolk and Middlesex, but 126 for Devon of which 57 pre-date 1750.  The Pallot Index, covering a restricted date range, with a greater concentration on London and Middlesex registers, contains only 11 entries, none earlier than 1801.

Further evidence for Devon as the Loosemore ancestral home is provided by the number of family wills proved in the Exeter diocesan courts; up until 1858 this was one important responsibility of ecclesiastical courts.  Unfortunately, most early Devon wills had been preserved in the Exeter Probate Registry until the disaster of 5th May 1942 when the entire city centre, including the registry, was destroyed in an air-raid.  No copies of any of the lost wills survive although a list had previously been published of testators and dates of probate.  Exeter diocese covers Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset as well as Devon but there is no record of Loosemore wills in Cornwall and Dorset among those lost.  Of the three recorded in Somerset, one related to Brushford and two to Dulverton; both parishes are extremely close to the Devon border at Oakford and might easily have referred to inhabitants of this parish or its immediate neighbourhood.

Devon was divided ecclesiastically into the three archdeaconries of Barnstaple, Exeter and Totnes; those local courts were authorised to grant probate of wills when a testator owned property in one archdeaconry only.  No early Loosemore family wills were proved in the south-western archdeaconry of Totnes.  12 were proved in the archdeaconry court of Exeter and 42 in that of Barnstaple, of which 9 and 14 respectively were earlier than 1750.  A further 14 were proved in the Exeter Consistory court, 12 before 1750, and 6 in the Principal Registry court, 4 before 1750.  Loss of all the documents is a grievous blow to any attempt at writing a family history. [18]

The frequency with which the name Loosemore occurs in Devon by comparison with other counties is overwhelming and henceforth attention will be directed exclusively to this county.  Even within Devon the occurrence of Loosemore is strongly localised, almost all the early mentions being concentrated in a narrow swathe of country extending across the north of the county south-east wards from Barnstaple in the west, through South Molton to Tiverton and then Upottery in the east, with a subsidiary grouping around the county town of Exeter.  The whole area is no more than 50 ´ 15 miles in extent, while the great majority of names occur in a small number of high, remote parishes spread over perhaps 25 ´ 15 miles through a wild region west of the Exe valley formed as the river runs southwards from Bampton through Tiverton on its way to Exeter.  These high wet moors of north Devon lie at or above 600 feet, their poorly drained and heavy, infertile, clayey soil derived from an underlying rock formation known as the Culm Measures. [19]   They are bounded on the north by the southern edge of Exmoor, on the east by the Exe valley, and on the west by the river Taw.  To the south the land gradually falls away to create a softer, more fertile region before climbing again towards Dartmoor.

Even today the locality, mainly contained within the ancient judicial and administrative divisions of Witheridge and South Molton Hundreds, is sparsely populated, with a scattering of small villages whose size has changed very little in the past 500 years.  In addition to Oakford, our story will be built around such names as Creacombe, Rose Ash, Mariansleigh, Meshaw, Rackenford, Witheridge, Bishops Nympton, Knowstone, Molland, Twitchen and a few others, all self-contained communities rooted firmly in the land, their people tough, hard-working, conservative, bound by tradition.

Spelling of the Personal Name

IGI entries plus others found in local parish registers exhibit a wide range of spelling variations, including Loosemore, Loosmo(o)re, Loosemoor(e), Loosamore, Losmor(e), Losemore, Loosmoor, Lusmoor, Lus(e)more, Lusimore, Lusamore, Lous(e)more, Lowsemore, Lewsemore, Lewesmore, the first three being the most common.  Loosemore appears in 480 IGI entries, of which 139 (30%) are prior to 1750; figures for the other common variants are Loosemoor(e): 50 (27, 54%); Loosmo(o)r(e): 96 (49, 51%).  Lose¼ or Luse¼ appears only 9 times, 8 before 1750, though the frequency of the former would have been substantially higher had early Tiverton registers been included in the IGI.

The reason for so many forms is easily understood.  At a time when literacy in rural districts was uncommon among ordinary people, personal names were important only in spoken communication between parishioners.  Before standardisation of spelling became widespread towards the end of the 18th century, spelling of names in parish registers depended, therefore, on the phonetic interpretation of the officiating clergyman or parish clerk, who was often little better educated than were his flock.  When spoken, all the forms listed above are easily recognizable as versions of a single name and we may accept with confidence that they have a common origin.  Little significance should be attached to the dates at which the various forms are found, but there is some indication that the Lowse, Lews, and Lose forms are somewhat earlier versions, while Loosemore followed by Loosmore have become the most common spellings since the mid-eighteenth century.

In the face of these different spellings the form Loosemore has been adopted here when general reference is made to ‘the Loosemore family’.  Where direct reference is made to a source in which the name is spelt differently, that spelling is quoted.  Similarly, the place-name is generally referred to as Loosemoor as this form is found on current O.S. maps; where reference is made to a source offering a different spelling, that variant has been preferred.  The convention demands a clear head on occasions as the same person’s name may be spelt differently in different references but it is preferred over the use of a single impersonal spelling.  Opportunities for confusion are not numerous.

Two names, together with their close variants, having a superficial similarity to Loosemore have been excluded from the IGI summary in Table 1 and from the geographical pattern outlined above, viz. Luzmo(o)r(e), and Luxmo(o)re; they are also given separate entries in the IGI.  Luzmoor/Luzmore has 14 IGI entries in Cornwall, the earliest being in 1842, and 36 in Devon dating from 1686; of 112 baptisms registered in these names from 1837 up to 1988 most were in Cornwall.  There is a very strong presumption that all the Cornish group are descendants of William Loosemore of Bishops Nympton in Devon who moved to St. Erth, near Penzance and married there in 1824.  His eldest son was baptized Loosemore, but all of his nine younger children received the family name Luzmoor or Leuzmoor.  We may assume with confidence that the changed spelling merely reflects the soft burr of the Cornish accent, accepting Luzmoor/Luzmore as variants of Loosemore.  Devon Luzmores are all descended from Robbartt Loosemore of Broad Clyst who married twice though his descendants, who lived in the Exeter/Topsham area, were children of his first marriage in 1664.  Their children were baptized as Lusmore, a name which took various spellings in following generations before settling as Luzemore or Luzmore.  We may also accept these as variants of Loosemore.

The Devon IGI lists 155 Luxmo(o)re entries; a batch of almost 50 wills examined at the Devon Record Office date from 1644–1844, only 9 of which are earlier than 1750.  Early wills are grouped close to the Cornish border at Broadwoodwidger; later the name is also found around Okehampton, Moretonhampstead and Crediton.  The earliest known mention of Luxmore occurs in two Coinage Rolls for Tavistock stannary dated June and September 1523.  A reference to John Luxmore has been reported in a 1552 Bracton manor court roll, while Richard Luxmore appears in two Feet of Fines dated 1583 and 1586. [20]   We shall examine etymological aspects of this surname in the next section.

Etymology of the Place-name

In Devon the only known occurrence of the place-name Loosemoor is in Oakford parish.  East and West Loosemoor were both recorded there as recently as 1809. [21]   West Loosemoor has since disappeared as we shall see in Chapter 3, but East Loosemoor is still marked on the current series of O.S. maps.  Our main interest will be centred on this location in Oakford parish, within Witheridge Hundred, for only here was the place-name adopted as an hereditary personal name.  However, we note first that other similar place-names have existed in other parts of the country since early times.

The most obvious example is the modern Lowsmoor Farm in Avening parish, Gloucestershire, first mentioned as Louesmere in 1192.  Other early references to this habitation are Lowesmore (1192), Lewesmere or Lowesmore (1399), Losemore (1542).  Old English place-names generally contain two elements, the adjunct or defining element and the base or generic element.  In Saxon names the adjunct precedes the base, as in this example, and the derivation is from hleo (shelter) and mere (lake or pond), hence shelter near the pond.  The alternative adjunct hlose (pigsty) is thought to be unlikely in view of the early ‘lewes’ spelling.  Lowesmore also occurs in Claines parish, north of Worcester.  Early references to this habitation are as Losmore (1232), Losemore (1270 and 1275), Losemere (1416).  The derivation is said to be Old English (Saxon) hlose + mere hence pool with a pigsty by it.  The element ‘Loose’ is found by itself as a Kentish village just south of Maidstone.  Early references are found as Lose (1100), Loses (1187-8), Lose (1192, 1204 and 1240).  Almost as early (1200) is a reference to Stephen and William de Lose in Suffolk. [22]

Loosemoor in Oakford parish is first mentioned definitely in the Eyre Roll for 1249 though a possible reference occurs in the 1238 Eyre Roll (both for Devon); we shall discuss the context in more detail in Chapter 3.  Its derivation is said to be from the two Saxon elements hlose + mor, hence pigsty on the moor. [23]   We can begin to discern dimly a picture of the rough, wild countryside around Oakford many centuries ago from the names of other early recorded settlements now forming part of that same parish:

Table 2: Early settlements in Oakford²³

None of these places is named in the Domesday Survey of 1086, but this omission should not be taken as implying a later origin for the names, for all except Western belonged to one of the seven Domesday manors in what is now Oakford parish.  Loosemoor, Harton and perhaps Highleigh were vills within the largest manor, Alforda, the modern Oakford village; Swineham was part of the manor of Espreweira, the modern West Spurway.  Western may have belonged to an eighth manor so far unidentified. [24]

We should not be surprised that all the names so far mentioned have Saxon origins for it has been observed that of about 3000 names in Devon earlier than Domesday only about 120 are earlier than Saxon.  The 21 most frequently found bases can be divided into three groups:

    (i)   helps and hindrances to travel:  ford, bearu, broc, etc;

   (ii) topographical features: cumb, dun, hyll, burh, mor, torr, etc;

   (iii) enclosures and habitations: tun, cote, land, hamm, etc.

Names derived from the first two groups tend to mark conditions preceding regular settlement while those from the third group are found to relate to conditions after settlements had been established. [25]   It is not surprising that mor names, implying swampy or moory ground, have a very small percentage of adjuncts derived from personal names.

We conclude that the name Loosemore, with its other modern variants, is one of a large group of personal names derived from a place-name describing a topographical feature recognized locally in Anglo-Saxon times, several centuries prior to the Norman conquest, probably before the locality was permanently settled.  Our history must start, therefore, with a brief look at Saxon Britain.  We shall not expect to find examples of the adoption of the place-name as a personal name before the 13th century since ordinary people did not assume an hereditary surname at earlier times.

Etymology of Luxmoore

Before leaving the subject of name derivations a word is needed about the family name Luxmo(o)re.  It is not mentioned in the standard place-name texts for Devon; no modern study of Cornish place-names has been published.²³  However, in a detailed Luxmoore family history it has been proposed 20 that this family name derives from a place-name in an area of north-east Dartmoor, part of Lydford parish, known as Lukesmore; on the 1st edition O.S. map of 1809 it is said to be spelt Lucksmoor.  The personal name first appears in a Lidforda manor court roll for 25 Edw I (1296/7) when Jordan de Lukesmore was fined 12d.  After some 135 years the next mention occurs in a court roll for the manor of Bracton, now Bratton Clovelly, a village 4 miles north-west of Lydford village, when on 11th October 10 Hen VI (1431) John Lukesmore successfully defended himself in a case involving straying farm animals.  Another Bracton court held in January 1552/3 shows the crucial spelling change when John Luxmore was awarded 4d in a case concerning a white sheep.  The Bratton Clovelly parish register for 1558 records the burial of Isott, daughter of John Luxmore.

The etymology of the name is said to be Luk-es-mor, or the moor belonging to Luk.  The Saxon Luc, or Luk , was pronounced short as in the modern spelling ‘luck’, hence Lukesmore and Luxmore would have sounded alike.  Several spelling variations are found, e.g. Luxmore, Luxemore, Luxmoore, the last being most common in recent times.  This derivation has been accepted by the English Place-Name Society, which has

…no doubt that the two names [Loosemore, Luxmoore] have quite different origins and originally the surnames came from two different places … [26] .

For this reason the name Luxmore, with its spelling variants, is excluded from the present study.

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