Journals of a Time Traveller

The convergence of genetic evidence and documentary research has brought a new level of precision to my recorded genealogy, allowing me to trace the odyssey of my paternal lineage: yDNA haplogroup L-SK1414 > FGC51040 > FGC51036.

In the mid-18th century, my Brooker ancestors emerge from the shadows of surviving parish records. On November 1, 1746, my 6 x great-grandparents, John Brooker and Mary Gardiner, were married at St John’s College, Oxford. They were not scholars; rather, John was a copyhold tenant of the College. At the time, the vicar of St Mary’s in Long Wittenham was non-resident, living in Oxford. It was more practical and cost-effective for the couple to travel to Oxford for the ceremony than to pay the fees required to entice the vicar back to their home parish.

The marriage register identifies both John and Mary as residents of Long Wittenham, Berkshire. In 1746, the parish was primarily held by two landowners, including St John’s College. As tenants on this manor, John and Mary would have practiced communal farming within an open-field system—a landscape defined by individual strips allocated to various tenants, a practice that persisted long after the medieval period.

While Mary was born and raised in the nearby parish of East Hagbourne, identifying John’s origins has proven more elusive. I once hypothesized that he belonged to the Brooker family of East Hagbourne; however, rigorous genealogical research—utilizing a process of elimination to rule out other John Brookers of similar age and nomenclature in neighboring Berkshire parishes—disproved that theory. Consequently, the specific birthplace of my 6 x great-grandfather remains a mystery, as he first appears in the historical record in 1746.

My 6 x great grandfather John Brooker? As visualised by Google Gemini AI.

While there is no definitive documentary record of John Brooker’s origins, the evidence suggests a clear migratory pattern. Based on yDNA STR markers that indicate a shared paternal lineage with the Chandler family of Basingstoke, I hypothesize that my Brooker ancestors migrated northwards across the North Wessex Downs of Hampshire and Berkshire between the 16th and 18th centuries. As explored in Act 9, I suspect that the wool trade and sheep farming may have provided a catalyst for this movement. I have mapped this target area below to illustrate the potential path of this migration.

Source ©  OpenStreetMaps Modified by myself.

There are several parishes within that target zone, where I see both Brooker and Chandler entries in the same registers, even on the same page. STR comparisons of our yDNA suggests a convergence between 1540 and 1600 CE.

The story of John does not end in 1746. John and Mary had at least six children baptized at St Mary’s between 1749 and 1763, including my 5 x great-grandfather, Edward Brooker, in 1757. Edward witnessed the parliamentary enclosure of Long Wittenham's open fields in 1809. It was his son, John Brooker Jr., who—like many others dispossessed of land tenure—fell into the poverty of the agricultural laboring class. He eventually drifted landless across the river and eastward through Oxfordshire in search of work.

Our yDNA lineage—descended from Ice Age ibex hunters in the Zagros Mountains, Early Neolithic goat herders, and Chalcolithic priests—has traversed millennia. It has survived the rise of the Ur III civilization, the era of Hurrian merchants in the Mitanni Empire, and the bustle of Phoenician temples. From Levantine mariners on 15th-century Italian galleys to Tudor wool merchants in Basingstoke, our ancestors have occupied every stratum of history. Now, they toiled in the soils of Oxfordshire for others.

I just read "Robert Kett and the Norfolk Uprising" Joseph Clayton. First published 1912.

I have read the story years ago, but reading this book brought to me just how a significant, and underplayed story this was. I don't think that it is well known outside of Norfolk. 16th Century English peasants were rebelling against a background of both religious strife, and from economic changes in agriculture - where many people were being cast aside as surplus to requirement, as land owners enclosed the old medieval communal arable fields to replace the old commonwealth with sheep pastures, that were becoming more profitable. Many English peasants were losing their livelihoods and homes, while at the same time, laws were introduced to punish the homeless poor with whipping, mutilation, slavery, and hanging.

Peasants uprisings were popping up all over England, but often lacked leadership, and were easily suppressed. However, here in Wymondham in 1549, a local land owner named Robert Kett, and his brother William, sided with the rebels, destroyed their own enclosures, then joined them. Robert Kett led the rebellion to the walls of the nearby City of Norwich. At it's peak, his peasant army reached an estimated 20,000. An army to suppress them which included Italian knights was sent from London. They were beaten by the peasants, who then took control of Norwich. Kett held courts in front of an oak tree, known as the "Tree of Reformation", on a wooded hill just outside of the City, where he held his main camp. Rebels captured wealthy landlords and farmers from the surrounding countryside, and they were tried for crimes against the people. None were executed. The maximum punishment was to be gaoled in the City. It seems that Kett was quite a humanitarian for his time, and in some ways reminds myself of another Norfolk man 300 years later, Thomas Paine.

A second more organised army with artillery was sent from London. The rebels withdrew from the City back to their hill camp. In the ensuing battle though, the rebels not only held, but appeared to be winning, to the point when the mayor and alderman started asking the army to leave. Then fresh reinforcements arrived from London, 1,500 Germanic knights. At the same time, desperate for resources, Kett abandoned his hill base, to fight the reinforced army in a dale on the edge of Norwich. This mistake cost him the battle. Some of the peasants bravely held out, to the point where the aristocratic general almost begged them to surrender, with personal promises of pardon. When they did surrender, he did of course, hang them, as was the practice in many suppressed uprisings in English history.

Robert and his brother were captured, tried in London, then brought back to Norfolk to be executed. Robert was hung and gibbeted from the walls of Norwich Castle. William was hung and gibbeted from the West Tower of Wymondham Abbey, only 150 yards from where I now live. 

From a population genetics point of view, I would be interested to know just how many ethnic German and Italians were in London at this time - that their mercenaries were so available to the Crown.

From a genealogical point of view, I do wonder if, or who any of my ancestors were in that 20,000 strong peasant army in 1549.