12 S. IV. Nov., 19J8.]
NOTES AND QUERIES.
305
claim descent from John Crosborough, or
Henchman, of Dodingfcon Magna, through
the paternal parent of the remaining five,
.and (2) that there was but a single issue
invariably male of the ten or eleven
-consecutive unions which practically do
duty for the Henchman " tree " in the work
enumerated above.
It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that the Hensmans of North- amptonshire are all to be accounted for by .a casual change of name or by the reversion to an older form of the substantive. Accord- ing to a Midland journal of some repute, The Northampton Independent of Jan. 9, 1909, their publishable history did not begin in the latter part of the seventeenth century, as
"" the Hensman family can trace their descent back to the fifteenth century. . One was Mayor of Northampton in 1573, and another was mayor twice in the seventeenth century, at which period the right of arms was granted them [sic] .... and it was from Pytchley, and afterwards the village of Bozeat, not many miles distant, that the Hensmans of Northampton descended."
It is unfortunate that the paper's in- formant did not make a passing reference to the name by which his progenitors were known in the fifteenth century, the more so as the final phrase of the quotation fails to make it clear whether the Hensmans of the present day living in the county town, in contradistinction to the mayors in question and to those domiciled elsewhere in the shire, were sprung from Bozeat.
Inasmuch as during the period under review railways were unknown and the
topographical factor was of the first im-
portance, the point is material ; as cer-
tain papers in the possession of the
writer disinterestedly compiled by the
Vicar of Bozeat, Wellingborough furnish
abundant geographical evidence of the
suggestion that some members of the family
branched from the Henchmans of Welling-
borough. The Bozeat registers were totally
" destroyed by fire " in 1729, at which
period a decadal gap (1736-45) likewise
occurs in the marriage books of Pytchley.
The conflagration which razed Northampton
in 1675 did not leave many genealogies
behind. None the less it is possible, with
the aid of the above manuscript, to show
that from within about half a century of
the date of the supposed general change
in the patronymic, circa 1675, the forbears
of the last of Northampton's mayors of the
name were all either born or married at
Bozeat, thereby inferentially substantiating
the fact that in the sixteenth century the
Henxmans were concurrently represented
in Northants by at least two " aliases,"
Hensman and Henchman. (It is obvious,
by the way, that " Hens," like " Hinx," is
a rather closer approximation to " Henx "
than any syllable ending in " ch.") So
many members of the family have been
named Thomas, Hannah, and after the
maternal Dexter that the branches may
well have been confused. The following,
embracing as it does only the more relevant
data, is not without interest as constituting
probably ^a record in genealogical coinci-
dence :
John Hensman,=r=M. Toms
b. 1733 (? Jones),
at Udell. | Bozeat, 1757-
Hannah Hensman,=pThos. Goff,
b. 1736, Odell. Bozeat,
4. 1762.
Thos. Hensman, =fMary
b. 1773 ;
d. 1846.
Dexter,
Bozeat,
1798.
I
Thomas, b. and d. Odell, 1773.
John Dexter,=j
b. Odell, 1771 ;
d. 1846.
^Elizabeth Bland,
Thrapston,
1793.
Thomas =r=Hannah Dexter,
Hensman, h Bozeat, 1767.
b. 1743,
Odell.
Hannah,=f Humphrey
Beale (?),
Bozeat,
1792.
Win. Hensman, b. Bozeat, ]811
(Mayor of Northampton 1857-8).
Not the least significant of the foregoing is the incidence of the name Humphrey, which happens to have been borne by Oharles II. : s clerical benefactor at Stone- henge (1651), and which, like Dexter, is doubtless a surname employed baptismally iri order to preserve an identity more or less lost in marriage. The ambiguity of the reference to Hannah Hensman jun. is
due to the fact that one of the witnesses
to her parents' nuptials was Humphrey
Bottoll (? Bettles), and the conclusion logic-
ally follows that if their daughter wedded a
Humphrey, one was the son of the other.
The father of John, Hannah, and Thomas sen. was Henry ; and a transcript from the burial registers of Odell, Beds (four miles from Bozeat), dated May 10, 1774. in which
