Another West Country Payne Family

I've spent more time on this blog site discussing colonial and pre-colonial Paynes in Somerset (places like Hutton/Criston) than I have on the Paynes of Gloucestershire. There were at least two major and quite distinguished Payne families in Gloucestershire that are profiled in two different visitations of that county. The first and earlier visitation (1623) details the Paynes of Rodborough. The later visitation (1682-3) provides information on another group of Paynes in the area of Coletrope. Both Rodborough and Coletrope are south of the city of Gloucester and near towns and villages such as Standish, Quedgeley, Stroud, Tuffley, Stonehouse, Paganhill, and Painswick. Those two locations are less than ten miles apart, but the coat of arms given for the Paynes of Rodbourough and Spillman Court (1623: argent, a chevron azure between three mullets pierced gules) is quite different from that of the arms of the Paynes of Coletrope (1682-3: three roundles and on a chief embattled three roundles).

More attention has seemed to been placed by Payne researchers on the Paynes of Rodborough. Patrick Payne has presented evidence of a linkage of these Rodborough Paynes (many in the clothing business) to the Paynes of Huntingdonshire and the Paynes of Suffolk (both branches which had later American settlers/colonists). Patrick has suggested that there were three brothers (Robert, William, and Edmund) who were sons of Thomas Payne and Margaret Pulteney. Robert's branch became the Paynes of Huntingdonshire, William's branch became the Paynes of Rodborough, co. Gloucestershire, and Edmund's branch became the Paynes of Suffolk. In 2004 and based on the material that Patrick graciously shared with me then, he provided much more information on the colonial American connections of the Paynes of Huntingdonshire and the Paynes of Suffolk than he did for the Rodborough Paynes. Although the Paynes of Rodborough had connections to colonial trade and merchants, I've yet to find any definite proof that descendants of these Rodborough Paynes settled in America. This certainly seems an open possibility, though.

The Paynes of Coletrope seem just as interesting as those from the Rodborough family. Both of these two Payne branches produced mayors of the city of Gloucester. Thomas Payne from the Rodborough branch was a high-profile business leader in the mid-1500s who had an impressive home in Gloucester and was said to have entertained visiting royalty there. The Paynes of Coletrope actually had a son, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all who served terms later as mayors of the city of Gloucester, and one of these Paynes was a member of Parliament in the late 1600s. Capel Payne (son of a Capel Payne) married the daughter of Sir George Hampson (4th baronet). Capel's wife Jane was one of the original five women of the bedchamber of the Princess of Wales (Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, son of King George II, and mother of King George III). Jane Payne served the Dowager Princess for over thirty years (1736-67). Her father-in-law, Capel Payne of Westminster, was of the Inner Temple, and one of his Majesty's learned counsels of the Court of the Dutchy of Lancaster. This Capel Payne's father was Robert Payne who married Anna (dau. of William Capel of Gloucester). Robert Payne was Gloucester mayor in 1692 and 1703 and a MP for the county from 1695-98. Robert Payne's brother Edward was a London grocer. Their father was also a Robert Payne who had earlier served as Gloucester mayor and had married Elizabeth Veale from Longford, Glou. The earliest Coletrope Payne given in the 1682-3 visitation was another Robert Payne who died in about 1620 and married a daughter of Wayte. It seems likely this was an Elizabeth Wayte who married a Robert Payne in 1584 in the nearby town of Standish.

Many questions remain about these two Payne families of Gloucestershire. Although the two visitations display contrasting Payne coats of arms, their proximity and the presence of clothiers and Gloucester mayors in both families suggest the likelihood that Robert Payne (m. Eliz. Wayte) of Coletrope is a yet-to-be traced descendant of William Payne of Rodborough and Spillman Court. Perhaps further research by myself or others will better answer this and other questions about these two Payne families.

More Colonial Connections

This is a rather long post that I'm also putting on the Payne Rootsweb listserv.

William Payne of Watertown and Ipswich (Massachusetts), his partners, and kin were very involved with iron mining there. There was also early mining activity along the Rappahannock River in Virginia near where John Payne (d. 1689) resided. There are some records also, including those that researcher Patrick Payne has previously mentioned, in which colonial Paynes in Virginia had business connections to others in New England.

The two early American mining initiatives were supported and financed at times by business interests in England, particularly from investors and iron merchants in the Bristol area. Wealthy Puritan, and later Quaker, merchants in Bristol and London were very active in colonial markets of tobacco, iron, sugar, and certain other commodities. Patrick has also shared many surnames of traders and mariners who did business with and/or were related to Paynes in this colonial era. Certain surnames, such as Brayne/Braine and Knight, though, seem to me to show more or continuing involvement with London area or West Country Paynes.

The Lyde family of the West Country could certainly be added to that surname list. Lyonel Lyde was mayor of Bristol (Engl.) in 1735, and he resided for a while earlier in Virginia. He was a wealthy iron and slave trader and was also one of the most active merchants importing tobacco from Virginia into England. He married Anna Maria/Marie Payne after the death of his first wife, whom he had married in Virginia. This Anna Maria was the daughter of Benjamin Payne who resided at times in both Chippenham and Marlborough in the county of Wiltshire. Benjamin Payne (d. 1714) was a surgeon who also worked in other towns in that county, such as Hilmarton and Preshute. His wife was Mary Mortimer, the daughter of William Mortimer of Lyneham, Wilshire, by his second wife. Benjamin Payne’s heiress was this Anna Maria who married Bristol mayor Lyonel Lyde. Lyonel Lyde apparently named one of his trading ships, the Anna Maria of Bristol, after his wife and/or his daughter. This ship and its cargo were seized by the Spanish in 1724 on a voyage from Jamaica to Bristol, but, through negotiation, were returned or restored to its owners a few years later.

Not much seems available to identify the particular ancestors of this Benjamin Payne, surgeon, of Wiltshire. The book History of Hertfordshire does show the arms of the four families in Sir Lyonel Lyde’s (son of mayor Lyonel and Anna Maria Payne Lyde) heraldry, including the arms of his maternal ancestors, the Paynes and Mortimers. The Payne arms were “lion rampant sable, on a chief gules, three crosses crosslet fitchee.” Of the many Payne arms in heraldry books, this description seems a bit closer to me to the known ones for the Paynes of Hutton, Somerset or perhaps the Jersey Payns. Paynes in the 1500s in Hutton (Soms.) had at least one family connection to Paynes who came from the Lulworth, Dorset area and probably derived from the influential Robert and Roger Fitzpayn line a couple of centuries earlier in the West Country. The early Paynes from certain parts of Dorset and Devon have been linked by a few, as well, to the early Jersey Payns.

Cornelius Lyde was a son of mayor Lyonel Lyde’s first wife, he was a Virginia planter, and, like his uncle Stephen Lyde, he resided in King William County. Lyonel Lyde’s children by his second wife, Anna Maria Payne, included a daughter Anna Maria who married merchant Chauncey Poole of Bristol, a son Samuel, and another son, Sir Lyonel Lyde of Bristol. Stephen Lyde of Virginia (brother to mayor Lyonel and uncle to Sir Lyonel Lyde) married Elizabeth Gwynn, and as a widow Elizabeth Lyde married John Tayloe. Several of these Lydes and this John Tayloe owned shares in the Iron Mines and Iron Works of King George County, Virginia. Iron ore from here and also Maryland was supplied to the English forges of wealthy ironmaster and merchant, Edward Knight. This Edward Knight of Wolverley (Worc.) was the son of Richard Knight and Elizabeth Payne. Their grandson, Richard Payne Knight, son of Rev. Thomas Knight, was a well-known English classical scholar and connoisseur best known for his theories of picturesque beauty. Richard Knight of Downton (Herts) had mining interests also in the county of Shropshire where Elizabeth Payne was born as the daughter of iron trader Andrew Payne of Shawbury. Again, as with Benjamin Payne of Wiltshire, very little seems easily available about this Andrew Payne of Shawbury in Shropshire. Andrew Payne was probably born there in about 1645. Andrew's wife was named Elizabeth also, and other than this daughter (Elizabeth, b. 1671), Andrew Payne seems to have sons Robert and Rafe Payne who were born there in 1662 and 1665.

Tracing the large and diversely located Knight family is challenging also, but it shows Knights related to the wealthy ironmasters Richard and Edward Knight marrying other Paynes in iron mining areas of Sussex/Surrey, such as near East Grinstead. The related Knights of Bristol, including Sir John Knight, were also among the most prominent of slave traders and sugar merchants doing business in places such as Barbados in the West Indies (where a large number of Paynes were located prior to 1700 and interacting in records with settlers there largely from Bristol and West Country families). Also as a relative was the Giles Knight who married an Elizabeth Payne (daughter of a George Payne) as his second wife. Giles Knight was apparently born around 1610 and probably at Lingfield in the county of Surrey. Records conflict as to whether Giles Knight married Elizabeth Payne in Lingfield, Surrey or later after he moved to Gloucestershire and to another mining area. There were many children from Giles Knight’s marriages, first to Elizabeth Williams and then Elizabeth Payne, and at least one of the children, and perhaps more, settled in the Byberry area of colonial and Quaker Pennsylvania. At least one Knight from this line apparently moved somewhat later to the Quaker settlement area around Albemarle and Chowan in early North Carolina.

I could provide more details in places above. I’ve been aware of most of these Payne names and places for years, but only recently have I seen a few more linkages among them. I haven’t posted these names and others, largely because I’m still trying to investigate and better understand them. I often arrive at apparent dead ends, though, where I can no further find information about individual lines with strong colonial connections, such as the Benjamin Payne of Chippingham, Wiltshire or the Andrew Payne of Shawbury, Shropshire. There’s a chance though that someone might recognize one of these Paynes and provide us with more details. The linkages of these particular Paynes to certain colonial business sectors probably add more support to Patrick Payne’s claims about a Payne merchant-mariner colonial network. I doubt that many Paynes who have been identified through the years on this list as merchants and mariners in England, America, etc. were part of a very formal and carefully organized Payne business network. However, I do believe that Paynes, Payns, Paines, etc. in colonial and pre-colonial England were very often descendants of medieval Paynels, Fitpayns, etc. who were involved with royalty and their business and personal interests. A continuing Payne entrepreneurial and patronage background appears to exist in which these descendants often worked together on business interests, particularly wine, cloth, iron, and sugar. Perhaps strong conflicts caused by the Reformation era, the English Civil War, and the later heated debates and ill feelings on the issue of anti-slavery (within England and led by the Quakers) distanced branches and members of these Payne families and has resulted in nothing like an overarching Payne history having been written. We can see plenty of evidence of Payne families who took opposing sides as Catholics vs. Protestants, royalists vs. parliamentarians, and Dissenters/Quakers vs. Puritans. I'm not sure that many Americans today realize fully the high level of personal antipathy or hatred that these political and religious conflicts caused in colonial England. Continuing torture over years (such as with Henry Neville Payne) and the executions of various Paynes in those eras likely created that level of ill will among countrymen and family branches.

Partial list of references:
* Genealogical memoranda of the family of Ames [descendant of the Lydes], p. 51. www.archive.org/stream/.../genealogicalmemo00ames_djvu.txt
* A2A: Wiltshire and Swindon Archives, Testimonials for surgeons, midwifes and schoolmasters
* A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant baronetcies ... John Burke, Sir Bernard Burke, 1841, pp. 330-331.
* History of Hertfordshire. J.E. Cussans, 1972, p. 238.
* Masters and men: in the West Midland metalware trades before the industrial revolution. M. B. Rowlands, 1975, p. 64.
*The trade of Bristol in the eighteenth century. Edited by W. E. Minchinton, Bristol Record Society, 1957, p. 146.