The Willand Connection

The Willand Connection
Amos The Mystery
The Exeter Merchant
Henry The Inheritor
The Last Esquire
To Tiverton (Slowly!)
The Tradesmen

At least one Ayshford left the obscurity of rural life and entered the business world of Exeter, at this date a bustling gateway to Europe for the flourishing woollen trade of Devon and the western counties.

We find him in the Protestation Survey of 1642, Edward Ayshford of St. Petrocs parish. He would have had to be at least 18 and was apprenticed to Thomas Tacke, merchant. By a statute of 1563 an apprentice had to be freeborn, 10 to 18 years old to begin training and would serve for around 7 years before being eligible to trade on his own account. A further rule ensured that he had to be at least 24 before he could take on his own apprentices, to be a "Master".

Edward would have lived in, ruled by his master''s wife, Joan. Over time he would have run errands and kept the shop, depending on his age and experience. Here too he may have met his future wife, Elizabeth Holditch, sister of Joan Tacke, on a visit from her Totnes birthplace. They would be pretty much the same age. Marriage however would be out of the question until he had set himself up in business. This he could not do, in Exeter, until he was elected a Freeman in 1651. Even so, it was only after 5 years trading for himself and maybe paying off loans from his master or others that he finally married Elizabeth in Exeter Cathedral in 1656. She was 33 years of age. In the will of his master of the same year he is called the "husband of my sister in law" and left £10.

Edward & Elizabeth had 3 known children, all baptised in St. Petrocs church. Edward in 1657, Elizabeth in 1600 (died young) and Anna in 1663 who went on to marry John Glanville in 1688. The family continued in one of several properties in St. Petroc for the rest of their lives. The Poll Tax of 1600 and the Hearth Tax of 1671 have them in a substantial house of 7 hearths. In the countryside such a dwelling would have been the home of a gentleman. Even in Exeter, Edward was always referred to using the respectful term "Mr".

Family connections were kept up in 1671 when Edward witnessed the will of his cousin in law Philip Holditch and in the same year his own apprentice Thomas Taylor was admitted a Freeman of the city as a woollen draper. His master's widow, Joan Tacke, died in 1676 and left £100 to "my brother Edward Ayshford of the city of Exeter and to Edward and Anna his children".

Edward died in 1678 and his widow is mentioned once more in 1684 when she is left £20 by her Nephew Thomas Tack, junior. She died in 1691 and was buried in St. Petrocs alongside her husband.

We do not KNOW that Edward of Exeter is the son of Edward of Halberton but there is a certain appeal to the notion that when Henry the Inheritor (mentioned later) married for the first time in 1706, it was in St. Petrocs church. Did Edward, junior, born 1657 and maybe living in Ottery St. Mary, make his house available for the reception?