William Dickinson (1604-1677) of Streetgate: Children 1
William had three children (Isabel, Elizabeth, Daniel) by his first wife, Janet, and eight children (John, Margaret, Agnes, William, Joseph, Nathaniel, Rebecca, George) by his second wife, Elizabeth. The elder children had an inheritance from their wealthy grandfather, Anthony Steele, and made much better marriages than their younger siblings.
The first five (Isabel, Elizabeth, Daniel, John, Margaret) were born before Isabel Pearson of Mockerkin died in 1645. She gave legacies to four of them, but not to John. This rather suggests that he had died by then.
Isabel Bowman (1632-1681)
Isabel was baptised 15 July 1632 and married her second cousin, Henry Bowman of Lingcroft on the 21st August 1655. This was a perfect match, in terms of consolidating local power and wealth. The Bowmans had two farms contiguous to Streetgate, and junior lines extending into Ullock and Cockermouth. One of these ran the local ecclesiastical court, a relic from a family connection with an Archbishop in the sixteenth century. An old local power merging into the new.
There was no church wedding, as this was the Commonwealth and weddings were solomnised only by the local JP. So the wedding party rode to Tallentire in Bridekirk, and back again, to be married by Lancelot Fletcher, J.P., of Tallentire Hall. Pickering Hewer was still keeping the Lamplugh parish register, and noted that it was 'a very stormie daye'.
Steele and Bowman
Isabel's husband died by 1665, still a young man, having had four children with her. His probate was dated 10 February 1664/5, the same day as that of his brother Pickering (named after Pickering Hewer). Perhaps an accident killed them both? She died in 1681. During that period of widowhood, she had an illegitimate child Hannah Dixon als Bowman, still a minor at her death, for whom she made careful provision in her will. The two Bowman farms, Lingcroft and Hodyoad, were split between her sons, Joseph and William.
Showing the family bondsmen at Isabel's death.
Elizabeth Tubman (1634-1702)
Elizabeth was baptised 9 November 1634 , and married Richard Tubman of Muncaster Mill, on the 6th October 1656, again at Tallentire in the presence of Lancelot Fletcher. She was buried 11 June 1702.
Quite what happened here isn't clear. Richard Tubman moved to Tallentire, the ancestral seat of the Fletcher family, and became very prosperous, with his descendants becoming merchants and landed gentry of a higher status than the Dickinsons.
As the marriage is recorded in the Bridekirk register, it seems that he was already at Tallentire before the marriage. Did he meet Elizabeth at that stormy day marriage of her sister in Tallentire a year earlier? Was William impressed enough by this young man that he encouraged the match? Did Lancelot Fletcher encourage it?
It is likely that Richard Tubman played a similar role for Lancelot Fletcher as steward as William did for John Lamplugh.
Whatever, this was a marriage that looked to the future. Whereas the Bowmans entered into a history of decline (and, in the senior branch of the family, bankruptcy), the Tubmans rapidly climbed the local social ladder. The next generation married into the Christians of Ewanrigg, the generation after that into the Irtons of Irton, old gentry families.
Daniel Dickinson (1637-1699)
Daniel, the third child and first son, was the heir to Streetgate. More on him later.
His marriage continues the social networking above. He married Elinor Jackson (1642-1727). She is described in the private family tree as from 'Swinsty' in Holm Cultram, because Daniel comments in his diary that her parents, Lancelot and Elinor Jackson, lived there before moving south to spend their last years with their daughter at Streetgate. However, she is also described in notes to the tree as being from Lamplugh Hall at the time of the marriage - either she was there as a maid to Mrs Lamplugh, a form of finishing school, or she was there temporarily to keep she and Daniel apart during courting.
Swinsty was the property of a family that was then running the parish of Holm Cultram. It had been rebuilt in 1654 by John Jackson, who was 'foreman of the XVI men' in various years between 1649 and 1679. Further building was done in 1667 by his brother James, who was Bailiff of Holm Cultram from 1650 to 1683. Clearly Lancelot was connected to this family, and Daniel by marrying his daughter Elinor around 1670 had forged a useful political alliance with another parish. The problem is that Elinor was baptised in Lamplugh, as was her father, so what's the connection with Holm Cultram?
Lancelot was the son of Matthew Jackson of the Green and then of Scalesmoor in Lamplugh, and was born in 1609. Matthew had a string of children baptised at the Green, but moved to Scalesmoor in 1611/2. His wife Isabel died in 1613 (possibly the farm wasn't well sited - it was rebuilt a few fields away in a later century). Not surprisingly, with at least five young children and possibly seven, Matthew promptly remarried. And here comes the interesting part. After two infant deaths, the first recorded surviving son, James, was baptised in 1617. This has to be James Jackson of Swinsty. There's no baptism record for his brother John in Lamplugh, but that isn't a problem. What seems likely is that his mother Mary brought Swinsty as a dowry with her, and he and his brother hot-footed it up there as soon as they could.
Elinor was probably merely of Lamplugh, but may have been promoted as a pretty, connected, accomplished future wife, even if not necessarily as someone with a dowry. She may well have spent some time with her uncles in Swinsty. She was probably a personal maid at Lamplugh Hall, learning the necessary genteel graces, rather like a nineteenth-century finishing school. Daniel's daughter Faith did the same.
Not only did Daniel marry around 1670, but in 1671 James' son, Richard, married into the Chamber family (they had been Hereditary Keepers of Wolsty Castle in Holm Cultram), and Edward Lamplugh was Seneschal there in 1672. This was a alliance of family and self-interest that was happening around the country, and was soon to develop into the English party system.