Recorded Immigration Into Lowestoft  1436-1544

Much is heard today regarding illegal immigration into the UK from across the English Channel and occasionally the North Sea - most of it driven by difficult and dangerous conditions in the particular home countries of origin or by the perceived opportunity to start a more financially rewarding lifestyle than is possible in those same nations. During the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, there were successive periods of immigration from the near-continent of Europe into England, which can be accessed by Internet on a site hosted by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (University of York) and called England’s Immigrants, 1330-1550. The data in the table below derives from this site and the people recorded are placed in alphabetical order of surname within the respective time-frames present - though with Christian names preceding, in all cases where known. The reason for entry into Lowestoft, be it long term or of shorter duration - mainly, not able to be determined - can probably be termed economic migration, but personal factors other than financial ones cannot be ruled out. It is also likely that at least some of the incomers would have known about the town through established cross-North Sea trading links. Putting “Suffolk” into the search panel, rather than “Lowestoft”, reveals the county-wide spread of such people - totalling just over 1,600 in all.

European Immigrants, 1436-1544

Explanations 

1. Additionally, Mangle (Scotsman), Martin Cornelius (Dutchman), Cornelius ? (Dutchman) and Lucas Martinson (Dutchman) are also named in the 1524-5 Lay Subsidy, but not in the England’s Immigrants, 1330-1550 data. Mangle and Cornelius ? were wage-earners, Martin Cornelius and Lucas Martinson both merchants of middling status and probably connected with the herring trade. All of the wage-earners named in the Subsidy were probably servants of one kind or another, either in-house or working for one of the more substantial merchants in his business (fishing/fish-curing/maritime trade). The word “servant” was flexible in its use and would have applied to activity in quite a wide range of areas. For instance, the term “servant in husbandry” was once widely used to describe the occupation of farm labourer.

2. The first recorded collection of immigrants in the table (that of 1436, recorded in the Calendar of Patent Rolls derives from documentation relating to the requests made by immigrants to Parliament that they be granted right of settlement in England - known as “denization”(deriving from the word “denizen”, meaning someone resident in a country, but not born there).

3. The 1544 entries relating to William Cowdere and James Phelip derive from Westminster Abbey Muniments (WAM) recording the process of denization for incomers to England and are dated 1 July. The former man is shown to have been resident in the country (but not necessarily in Lowestoft itself) for thirteen years and the latter for eleven. Both of them were living with a man named Nicholas Gosse, who is found referred to in a manorial rental of 1545 (Suffolk Archives, 194/A10/ 71) as occupying a dwelling somewhere on the east side of the High Street, with a fish-house premises below on Whapload Road, and paying an annual lord’s rent of 8d. This identifies him as a merchant of some kind involved in the curing of red herrings.

4. The three national taxation lists of 1440, 1456 and 1483 classified all incomers from the continent (male or female) as either occupying their own house or not - with the non-householders probably being single people without families.

5. The Occupation column shows the incomers’ individual trades, where stated in the documentation. Square brackets are used where the trade is evident from the person’s surname. There is clear evidence in the Table of occupation being used to identify people - a process which led to this becoming the permanent family title.

6. A webster was a weaver, a cordwainerand soutera shoemaker (the latter deriving from the Latin word sutor, which itself came from suere meaning to sew) and beer brewerreferred to the use of hops in the beverage both as preservative and flavouring agent. The Dutch were pioneering the use of hops during the 15th century and brought the practice with them into England. Ale had been the traditional English beverage - a sweeter drink than beer, and which kept less well, though it too was sometimes flavoured with mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) to flavour it and improve “shelf life”. The berries of the Wild Service-tree (Sorbus torminalis), known as “chequers”, were also used as an additive - and this led, in turn, to the name being adopted for the drink itself and also the taverns which sold it. Thus, public houses which still carry the name “Chequers” have nothing whatsoever to do with the draughts-board signs which usually adorn them. 

7. Of the thirty occupations discernible there are five shoemakers, five tailors, five coopers, five brewers, three skinners, three servants, one weaver, one smith, one hatmaker and one mariner referred to. Thus, the concentration as seen is very much geared to the production of footwear and leather, to clothing and to the production of alcoholic drink - with the trade of coopering geared to the last-named, as well as to the manufacture of the casks used convey all kinds of wet and dry goods (especially the red herrings cured in town). 

8. In general terms, the named occupations may perhaps be taken to show the town’s development and growth during the 15th century, as recovery from the Black Death of 1348-9 continued and as its economy began to develop in both fishing and maritime trade. It is also interesting to note that thirty-two of the sixty-eight people recorded overall (sixty-four in the Table and four in the 1524 Lay Subsidy only) - 47% by proportion - had come into town at the beginning of the so-called “Great Slump” (c. 1440-80). Which stretches to 56% if the six people who came in during 1436 are added. Set against this, is the fact that only four entries (6%) were recorded while its effects were being felt and that the eleven noted in the tax assessment of 1483 (16%) may be indicative of recovery beginning to take place.

9. Using the documentation available, only two of the people present in the table can definitely be shown to have settled in the town: Everard Wresteler (1483) and James Phelip (1544). The former’s will was written on 14 March 1486 and proved on 15 July 1487. He had married the widow of a local mariner, Agnes Whyte, who also made a will on 3 May 1479, as she was about to set off on a pilgrimage to Compostela in North-western Spain, leaving Wresteler the house in which they lived for term of his life, in the event of her death - which shows that he had already been living in Lowestoft for a number of years before his inclusion in the alien Subsidy list of 1483. Agnes Wresteler’s own will was proved on 10 November 1487, which would seem to show that both she and her second husband were both in failing health during the same year. James Phelip is found classified as a “denizen”in the Lay Subsidy of 1568, paying the sum of 2d in tax and with his surname spelled as Phillip. He also features in the parish registers in the baptism of a daughter Jone [sic] on 22 November 1561, with his surname given as Philyp and his occupation still stated as mariner. His burial entry of 17 December 1588 describes him as a roper (i.e. rope-maker) - surname Philip - which means that he had come ashore at some stage in his later life and gone to work in a sea-related activity. His wife, Alice, was buried six days later on 23 December.

10. There are two other possible long-stay incomer connections to be made - the first of which is John Fley (1456), who may have been the ancestor of a man named Robert Fly found in the 1524-5 Lay subsidy as paying the sum of 6d on £1 worth of goods - which identifies him probably as a tradesman/craftsman of some kind. The surname Cooper also turns up three times (one wage-earner and two tradesmen/craftsmen) and there is a chance that one or other of these individuals might have been connected with either of the men of that name and trade in the 1483 entries.

11. Overall, much (perhaps even most) of the immigration into Lowestoft was probably of a relatively short-term nature, with the town serving simply as a convenient entry-point. It is noticeable that, of the thirty-two people recorded in the largest influx of 1440, ten of them are recorded as having already moved on elsewhere.

12. The one other notable time of immigration from the near Continent of Europe into Lowestoft occurred between September 1571 and January 1576, when thirteen Dutch families (identifiable by marriages, baptisms and burials recorded in the parish registers) found temporary refuge in the town, having fled from Spanish persecution of Protestants in the occupied Netherlands. It would be well over three centuries later before Belgian refugees found their way to Lowestoft in the autumn of 1914, following the outbreak of World War 1, or a Kindertransport Train from Harwich arrived in December 1938 carrying Jewish children fleeing from Hitler’s persecution of their people.

13. None of these Dutch families stayed in Lowestoft beyond the overall time of temporary settlement, but there is no indication of where they went to. Norwich is a strong possibility because of a notable Dutch community there, many of them connected with the weaving trade - and Great Yarmouth is another, where the long established autumn herring fishery had led to an in-town population of people from the Netherlands.

14. Three of the most interesting parish register entries regarding the Lowestoft incomers of the 1570s concern the same family. On 23 December 1571, Fraunces Audrians [Francis Adrians] and Mary Anthomison had a son Anthony baptised - the infant’s Christian name referencing his mother’s maiden name, presumably. Eighteen months later, on 3 June 1573, a son John was baptised for this couple under the parental names of Audrian and Mary Fraunces - an obvious reversal of the husband’s Christian name and surname. Even more intriguing is that the surnames of both the husband and the wife may possibly have been of Jewish origin at some point in the past. So, had the change been carried out by the man himself? Or was it an error made by the parish clerk of the time, Robert Allin (draper), the grandfather of the town’s famous 17th century Naval commander Sir Thomas Allin?

15. Whatever the case, it is likely that this union was a second marriage for Fraunces Audrians, to a younger woman, because on 10 November 1573 his daughter Margaret married Wyllyam Cornelison ( a fellow Dutch incomer) - with his name again being recorded in its altered form.

CREDIT: David Butcher