Davies Family History (continued)
Jenkin
& Martha - the Englefield Davieses
(Return to the Merthyr Mawr Davieses)
We
have discussed the tragic circumstances that threw Jenkin (#146) and
Martha (#147) together, so we need search no further for reasons why
they should wish to move away from Merthyr Mawr, or for that matter,
from Glamorgan. The relationship between them had clearly developed to
the point at which they would have married had they been able to, but
the Affinity restrictions of the 1835 Marriage Acts and the associated
Deceased Wife's Sisters Act 1835 prohibited such marriage in England
and Wales, and it was not until the Deceased Wife's Sisters Act
was finally repealed in 1907 that a man was legally entitled to marry
his deceased wife's sister. So they left Glamorgan to live together as
man and wife without marrying. What brought them to Englefield,
specifically, remains a mystery that I hope to be able to clarify one
day.
But
having once arrived there, why anyone should choose to stay is not a
source of mystery at all. Englefield is an idyllic fragment of rural
England. I use the present tense here because, having visited the
village in 2002 with cousin Colin (#41), there seemed to be no evidence
there of the passage of time, and we could imagine that very little had
changed since Jenkin and Martha arrived there in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
The Englefield Estate
is a quintessentially English country estate, with, at its heart,
Englefield House, seat of the landowner, the lord of the manor. A house
on this site is recorded in the Domesday Book, though the present house
dates from Tudor times. In
the ownership of only two families since the Norman Conquest,
Englefield has been in the hands of the Benyon family for the last
three hundred years. When Jenkin and Martha arrived, the resident
landowner was Richard Benyon, M.P.
Extending
to some 14, 000 acres, the Englefield estate comprises, in addition to
the House and its surrounding deer park and lakes, a large Home Farm of
2000 acres, some 3000 acres of woodland, and a number of let farms,
covering most of remaining 9000 acres.
One of those let farms was named Wickcroft, and it was to Wickcroft Farm that Jenkin and Martha came, as tenant farmers, in 1857. It must have been difficult for Jenkin, who had been raised in a god-fearing family, to live a lie, but this, it seems, he and Martha were obliged to do, given the law which forbade them from marrying. All the evidence I have so far found, points to the fact that, when they arrived in Englefield, they presented themselves as a married couple; and obviously they lived that way. The lack of a marriage certificate certainly did not prevent them from going on to produce a family of fourteen children!
Perhaps
it was the ever-present consciousness of this deceit that drove Jenkin
to do far more for his community than the average public-spirited
citizen. He quickly established himself as a responsible and
respectable member of the community, a "public man much respected for
his integrity and business tact", as his obituary was later to claim,
giving freely of his time to assist those less able or less fortunate
than himself. From his early years at Wickcroft Farm, he became an
Overseer of the Poor of the Parish, and a Guardian of the Bradfield
Union (which managed the affairs of the local workhouse). When the
first County Councils were established in 1888, he was elected,
unopposed, as Councillor for the Bradfield Division of Berkshire, and
served on a number of committees; he was returned again, unopposed in
1892. Within the agric ultural community he was no less prominent,
being a member of the Royal Agricultural Society, the Royal
Agricultural Benefit Institution, and the Berks and Oxon Chamber of
Agriculture, on the committee of the Reading Fat Stock Association, and
joint secretary of the Pangbourne Agricultural Society. See the
database for more detail on the activities of Jenkin Davies.
Shortly
after Jenkin and martha arrived at Wickcroft Farm, their first child
Jenkin (#155) was born; he and each of the 13 brothers and sisters who
would follow him into the world over the next 23 years, including my
grandfather William Wiltshire Davies (#12), was baptised with his
mother's surname - Wiltshire - as a middle name. The 1881 Census return
for Englefield shows all 12 of the children so far born to Martha (the
last child, Margaret, was born in 1881 but after the date of the
census), and Anne's surviving son, Ebenezer, all living at Wickcroft
Farm.