Whatmore Family History

Excommunication by a Church Court was quite a serious matter in the sixteenth century. Lesser excommunication excluded the guilty person from attending church, whilst greater excommunication excluded the person from the company of all Christians until he or she  was granted absolution.  Excommunicates might be refused burial in the churchyard and their wills might not be proved by church courts.  As to whether by this time it was believed that persons dying whilst still excommunicate would automatically be consigned to Hell, I am uncertain. A person could gain absolution by doing penance or by convincing the Church Court that they had been sufficiently punished.  A common cause of excommunication was failure to attend church by Catholics and non-conformists and such excommunications could go on for years. Such people were termed ‘recusants’.

The Church Court records for Cleobury Mortimer have survived and they shown that between 1680 and 1684 a Margaret Watmore was listed as an excommunicate. Unfortunately the records do not show why Margaret had been excommunicated nor  whether she eventually did penance and had the excommunication lifted.

Cleobury Mortimer church prior to restoration. Painting by John Homes Smith. Copyright: Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society and reproduced here by their kind permission.

Margaret is described as the wife of Edward and must surely be identified as the mother of the four children baptised at Cleobury Mortimer between 1680 and 1690. In each case the father is shown as Edward. The children were: Edward 1680, Ann 1683, William 1687 and George 1690. Being excommunicated doesn’t seem to have prevented the baptism of one’s children - but in any case there is no record that Edward was also excommunicate at this time.

Unfortunately that is all we know of Edward and Margaret, but if we assume that she had no further children after 1690 because she was past the age of child-bearing (i.e. about 45) then she will have been born about 1645. We might also assume that Edward was also born about this time. If they married when they were in their twenties then they probably had other children of whom we know nothing. Unfortunately neither the baptism not the marriage of Edward can be traced.  The reason for this may be the chaos caused by the Civil War and the period of  the Commonwealth. In 1653, the role of the church in recording baptisms and marriages was abolished and to each parish was appointed a ‘Parish Register’ who was supposed to record these details. Being political appointments, many of these registers may have been lax in carrying out their duties or even illiterate. With the Restoration in 1660, recording baptisms,marriages and burials became the duty of the clergy once more, and in many cases the newly restored or newly appointed clergy regarded the actions of the ‘Parish Registers’ as invalid and they seized and destroyed what records they could find. Edward and Margaret’s own baptisms, their marriage and the baptisms of their early children many have been amongst the records destroyed.

The descendants of Edward and Margaret Watmore of Cleobury Mortimer

Edward was not a common name in the Shropshire Watmore family at that time, and of the three shown on the IGI for this period Edward the son of Edward and Mary of Neenton, died soon after his baptism in 1608.  Edward, son of  George and Elizabeth of Cleobury Mortimer and baptised in 1655, died in 1676. The only other Edward is the one born in 1633 at Neenton and who died in 1710. This Edward married a Margaret and would appear to be an ideal candidate for the husband of the Margaret who was ex-communicated. Unfortunately this Edward lived all his life in the parish of Neenton and his will refers only to his daughters and makes no mention of the children whom we know were born 1680 - 1690 at Cleobury Mortimer.

It is frustrating for those of us who are descendants of Edward and his excommunicate wife ( which includes myself) that we cannot get this line any further back - but undoubtedly Edward was a descendant of the main branch of the family at Stottesdon.

If anyone can thow any light on Edward’s immediate forebears, I would be pleased to hear from them.

Information about the Church Courts and excommunication, and about ths appointment of ‘Parish Registers’ during the Commonwealth was taken from ‘Ancestral Trails’  by Mark Heber which is a very detailed and useful reference book.