The motivations given for people to emigrate to Virginia often include those of economic gain and escape from the stifling English class system; the latter leading to the former. A motivation of a starker kind was an escape from political terror, which can be explained through a brief account of families connected to Mells, in Somerset, of which, a case can be made, derived Sergeant John Harris of Virginia.

His ancestor may have been “Thomas Harrys”, a tenant of Glastonbury Abbey, who is recorded thus: Harrys v Dyar. Plaintiffs: Thomas Harrys. Defendants: Thomas Dyar, knight. Subject: Tenement in the late abbot of Glastonbury’s manor of Greinton. Somerset. 1544-1551. (C 1/1228/15-18). In 1545, the manor was granted to Sir Thomas Dyer, d. 1565. The John Horner who came to possess the Manor of Mells, a village near Frome, 6 WSW. of Glastonbury, was not his namesake who was steward to the late Abbot of Glastonbury, though undoubbtedly related. The intermarriage of the Symes with the Horners brought them much land, and brought about their lordship of the Fulgham family at Potminster.

“The late abbot” (Richard Whiting) lived at Mells. Depositions as to the late abbot of Glastonbury (Somerset) taken at Wells (Somerset) before Nicholas Fitzjames esq. and John Mawdleyn gent, king’s surveyors. Sir Thomas Way, priest, 68, formerly monk of Glastonbury, deposes that he knows of no reason why the late abbot ought to have delivered £100 to Robert Burges, or that he delivered it, and that Robert married a niece of the late abbot. Sir Thomas used to serve the late abbot as his chaplain and often heard the late abbot say that Robert should not lose out due to the costs he had to incur in repairing the decay to his house at Mells, and that such costs should be allowed to him.

Thomas Whyting of Pilton (Somerset), 63, deposes that Robert Burges (his probable brother-in-law) married the niece of the late abbot but bestowed nothing upon her or promised anything. However, Robert took a tenement from the late abbot in Mells with two mills which at the time were in great decay, delivered £100 to him and requested that he make the repairs. In so doing, Robert incurred costs of about 300 marks.

Thomas Harrys of Mells (probably the tenant of Greinton), carpenter, 50, deposes that the tenement and mills were in great decay, and that for his labour he received £7 from Burges. He also received £10 for repairing the grist mill.

His descendants, Richard Harris, bapt. Aug. 24, 1589, who m. Edith Burges, Jan. 14, 1607, in Nunney, and (possibly) Sergeant John Harris, bapt. Oct. 1, 1587, in Nunney, were first-cousins (by this estimate). Richard Harris probably married into the same Burgess family as the aforesaid Robert Burgess, and he and his cousin would have been well aware of the fate of Bishop Richard Whiting.

He graduated from Cambridge in 1483, and was, at first, a royal favourite, but was executed (in 1539) for treason in the form of remaining loyal to Rome against the dictate of a powerful, paranoid psychopath, otherwise known as Henry VIII. The Bishop, with two of his men, were fastened upon sledges and dragged by horses to the top of Glastonbury Tor which overlooks the town. Here they were hanged, drawn and quartered, with Whiting’s head being fastened over the west gate of the now deserted abbey and his limbs displayed at Wells, Bath, Ilchester and Bridgwater.

Unhappy the mortal who lives only on the smile of princes!

The same applied in the following reign, with the Catholic half of England praying for a successful Spanish invasion.

Hollywood it was not, and an escape from political terror (murder dressed as execution) was a prime motivation for emigration to Virginia.

copyright m stanhope 2017