Show Posts

This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.


Messages - Robert Keiller

Pages: [1]
1
Surrey / Re: John Longhurst 1496
« on: Thursday 09 December 21 22:15 GMT (UK)  »
Sorry to pick up an old thread.

I've been tracing Longhurst ancestors in Ewhurst/Ockley and have a detailed construction of the tree for descendants of John Longhurst d 1574, but earlier than that I cannot go. I've seen references on this site to Longhurst births and marriages back to late 1400s. Can someone tell me the sources for these? (I have reviewed the Ockley/ Abinger/ Wotton/ Ewhurst parish registers)

Thanks
Robert

2
London and Middlesex / Re: john oxlade
« on: Monday 30 December 19 23:09 GMT (UK)  »
Something else that might be of interest and which I haven't seen noted anywhere else.

John Oxlade appears to be referenced in the 1794 trial of Robert Watt in Edinburgh for high treason. This trial followed the arrest of organisers of a Scottish convention, supported by English Corresponding Societies. The charge against the defendants was based on a supposed plot "the pike plot" to arm thousands of supporters with pikes and violently overthrow the government in Scotland. The accused were all found guilty; Robert Watt was executed and the other defendants transported to Botany Bay.

One of the witnesses for the prosecution, John Taylor, a government spy, reported that at a meeting of the LCS he had seen a walking stick designed to be converted into a pike by screwing a dagger to it. Also that an altercation had arisen from a man in the name of Oxlade who was wearing red clothes. Some members objected on the basis that red was a mark of aristocracy. Oxlade said that "he had been in a military line, and held a place in the society ... in the same situation. That the London Corresponding Society was not without places of a military resort".

The same year John Taylor was a key witness in the prosecution of John Thelwall of the LCS. This time his evidence was discredited as unreliable by the defence barristers and John Thelwall was acquitted (along with Thomas Hardy, founder of the LCS, and all other defendants).

When John Oxlade was arrested in 1798, a key point of evidence against him (according to his narrative) was a pike found in his house. He explained that "he had held a commission in the London Militia and had been a member of the Artillery Company". This seems to confirm that John Oxlade was the earlier Oxlade and at least partially corroborates John Taylor's evidence at Robert Watt's trial.

So, how close did John Oxlade come to a treason trial? Could there have been enough evidence to prosecute based on the physical evidence of a pike (and also, according to John Oxlade himself, a musket) and John Taylor's testimony at Robert Watt's trial? Or was John Taylor too discredited by the Thelwall trial to be asked to testify again? Does this perhaps explain why John Oxlade was amongst a group of prisoners treated more harshly than other LCS members arrested the same time?



3
London and Middlesex / Re: john oxlade
« on: Friday 27 December 19 17:31 GMT (UK)  »
Apologies for coming late to the party, so to speak, but I have been tracking down the forebears of my ancestor Mary Oxlade wife of William Crawford, saw this thread and thought I could contribute.

It seems to me that the Oxlad references belong to a different family - the 1788 marriage of William Oxlad does not match either William Oxlade b 1743 (then married to Eleanor Waller) or  his son William Oxlade b 1768  (William Oxlad was already a widower according to marriage record). Likewise the baptismal records from Mitcham are almost certainly from other branches of the Oxlade family (there are other records for Oxlades in Mitcham dating back 50 years or so). Also, if William Oxlad is unrelated to William Oxlade, bookbinder, then the 1803 burial for William Oxlad is almost certainly not that of William Oxlade, bookbinder. Furthermore, there is no reliable record for the death of his son, William, born 1768 - although there is a burial in Dulwich College for 1769, this is more likely to be William, son of Richard Oxlade, baptised in Dulwich 1768.

So, William Oxlade of Portsea could be either William, b 1743 or his son. It is not necessary to assume that John Oxlade was printing in his father's name. Other than his marriage to Mary Ann Terry in 1813, there may be little to connect John Oxlade to Portsea. One point of interest, though, is that John and Mary Ann were living in Peerless Row when their children, Henry, John Thomas and Sarah Elizabeth, were baptised. Peerless Row was also the address of William and Mary Crawford.

I am, however, a little perplexed by John Oxlade presenting himself as a bachelor at his wedding to Mary Ann. In 1798,  John Oxlade, bookbinder, and his wife Ann, baptised a daughter, Ann, a couple of months before his arrest. So why present as a bachelor ( unless it is a simple mistake)?

Pages: [1]