This or that John Lovelock? |
The Tangley Tree has a John Lovelock as its progenitor. John married an Elizabeth in the church of St Michael in Tidcombe in Wiltshire on 18 May 1761. In a curious partial echo of the marriage entry which initiates the Lieflock Line we find that the Tidcombe entry reveals that John was not a 'local' but came from Tangley, just under 5 miles away. Elizabeth, however, was 'of this parish', although curiously her surname of Cruse, which she shared with one of the witnesses, Thomas, does not appear anywhere else in any of the Tidcombe Registers, nor indeed in the Registers of any of the adjacent parishes nor of the parishes beyond those.
Continuing with the echoing theme, the earliest mention of a Lovelock in the Tangley Registers is the baptism on 6 December 1761 of Thomas the son of John and Elizabeth. A curious coincidence that the earliest Lovelock mention in the Easton Royal Registers was also a baptism on 6 December.
But if there is no record of any Lovelocks in Tangley before 1761 where did John come from? The presumption is that he was born some time between 1730 and 1740 to be of an average age at marriage for the times. Casting about for candidates one is naturally led to consider the Tidcombe Registers. It may have been Elizabeth's home parish as declared, making it the natural place by convention for her to be married in, but perhaps it was originally John's also.
There are two very eligible candidates as it happens: John the son of Stephen and Elizabeth Lovelock baptised on 14 March 1736 (New Style), and John the son of William and Mary Lovelock baptised on 29 July 1736. At this remove it seems incredible that in a village whose population probably hovered for years at little above 200 two Lovelock boys presented for baptism so closely in time would be given the same name. There is no record of a burial of the earlier John, which might well have excused William and Mary.
If John was indeed the son of Stephen and Elizabeth we are scarcely any better off, because that is the first appearance of the couple in the Tidcombe records, and the collection we present as the 'Lovelocks in Wiltshire' data has no record of their marriage. The Tidcombe entry in Volume 16 of the Victoria History notes that the Registers are missing for the period 1702 to 1730, which is possibly when Stephen and Elizabeth married, and perhaps when Stephen was born. There are also gaps in the Bishop's Transcripts from 1701 to 1712 and 1716 to 1722. If on the other hand John was the son of William and Mary we may be able to add another generation as a William the son of Thomas and Jone was baptised on 10 December 1682. That would mean, however, that William was 54 when John was baptised, and 55 when his daughter Esther was baptised in the following year, which may be thought to be a little old for the times. But, like Stephen, William the father of John could have been born in one of the undocumented periods.