While I admit it is possible that there may be inaccuracies, I have done my very best through genealogy related web services, directly contacting parish’s for records, family webpages and Facebook pages, newspapers, personal books, papers or literature, to trace my own Carlton lineage back as far as I am able.
Sometimes, an issue (or headache) can simply be related to the misspelling of a surname, as recorded in a C17 parish register, a birth or christening. Carlton, having at times being spelled Charlton, Carleton, Careton or Carlson.
The further one goes back, the more cloudy accuracy can become, with records obviously not being wholly precise or flawless on all occasions, in such a largely illiterate society. Some considerable effort, at times, is required to stitch the fragments together.
Often the pieces of the puzzle won’t quite fit and common sense guesstimates - based on the repeated findings of others looking for common ground - have to be considered more logical rather than absolute fact, such is old record keeping,
Having said that, the end of the line as far back as both fact and logic goes, ends or begins with John Carlton (1536-1571) and his wife Alice Charlton Carlton (1536-1574). The following information of him was recorded/provided by Richard Carlton via Family Search website.
John Carlton (1536-1571)
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John Carlton (or Charlton) was born in Fillongley, Warwickshire, in 1536.
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Prior to 1564 John's whereabouts is largely unknown, thus his marriage to Alice Charlton Carlton (also born in Fillongley) and the baptism of 6 of their 7 known children remains a mystery.
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Their youngest son, Stephen Carlton, was born at Northbourne, Kent in 1564.
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The record of Stephen's birth is the earliest known record of our branch of the Carlton family.
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The Lower Hardres parish register records Carlton’s from 1564 to 1662, all descendants of John.
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John Carlton was buried July 10, 1571 in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, at Lower Hardres (now Lower Hardres & Nackington) as he had so desired.
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Alice Charlton Carlton was also buried there on February 16, 1574.
Fillongley is a village and parish in the Hemlingford hundred of Northern Warwickshire. It is located 10km’s south-west of Nuneaton and an equal distance north-west of Coventry. Fillongley has the unique distinction of being further from the sea than any other settlement in Great Britain, being 120 km’s from the nearest coastline.
Much of northwestern Warwickshire, including parts of modern day Coventry, Solihull and Birmingham, was covered by the ancient Forest of Arden, which was still the case at the time of the Domesday Book. The remaining southern area, not part of the forest, was called the Felden.
In medieval times, there were two castles in Fillongley. These might not have existed at the same time, and neither would have survived into the 16th century world of John Carlton, or his bride Alice Charlton (Carlton).
Both born in 1536, the ancestral catalysts even predate William Shakespeare (1564-1616) - born just 41km’s down the road in Stratford-upon-Avon - by 28 years.
Even more ironically, it appears that absolutely nothing is known about John and Alice until the birth of their son, Stephen, registered as being at Lower Hardres, Canterbury, Kent, in 1564. Which by chance, is the same year that young Mr. Shakespeare was born, baptised on 26 April.
And the tyrannical Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was on the throne when both entered the world.
England had became more prosperous under the rule of Henry VIII (1491-1547) - and the handful of monarchs between he and Elizabeth - life for the well-off, more and more comfortable, opulent, luxurious.
But there was little change for ordinary folk. 90% lived in the country-side working on farms for Yeoman (often tenants themselves) and farm life meant long hours and hard work, from dawn till dusk.
But jobs were not always easy to find and Tudor governments, were not at all tolerant of able-bodied people without one, peregrinating from place to place. ‘Sturdy vagabonds’ without a fixed place in society were a threat to law and order and there were hordes of commoners without work, wandering around looking for some form of employ. Most were illiterate and particularly poor.
John Carlton, had decided to Take the family and head south from Fillongley, ending up in Kent. To look for work?
An AI image of John and Alice Carlton and five of their children, younger than Stephen, of which absolutely nothing is currently known. Standing in a meadow in Lower Hardres, near Canterbury, circa; 1564
Prosperity had ignited an agricultural boom, following the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The Tudor King had reclaimed over 2 million acres of land. Land he promptly sold to his gentry pals, to fund his military ambitions in France and Scotland.
It was an act which also sparked phrenetic growth in trade and industry, as England became more and more, a commercial country. Mining of coal, tin, and lead flourished, as did the iron industry. Naturally, towns were booming and grew with the population.
In the 15th century, England was guesstimated to have had around 2 1/2 million inhabitants, but It was certainly on the ascend. By 1525 it had risen to around 3 and by 1600, toward the end of the Tudor dynasty, it was in excess of 4 million.
In Tudor Times, the parish became the basis of local government. The priest of the village church also owned land and villagers had to give up one tenth of what they produced to the church.
Because information is so scant, there are a couple of practices common throughout Western Europe during the Tudor period, which might help determine the status of John Carlton. But of this I cannot be certain, as medieval demography poses a series of methodological challenges, even to to historians.
Amongst trends underlying the lives of the rural and urban dwellers of any area, it was the wealthier families who recorded the dates of the births, baptisms, marriages or deaths of their close relatives.
Affluence was another factor which impacted on the size of families. Lack of it directly effected the ability of the poor to properly feed their children and to have access to health practitioners. This, in turn, largely determined both fertility and life expectancy.
Malnutrition and physical frailty were detrimental to both fertility and then healthy pregnancies, augmented as always, by the risk of miscarriages.
The richer the folk then, the larger their families tended to be.
In rural England, post the Black Death (1353), the average number of children in landowning peasant families was slightly below two. Amongst the wealthiest noble households, it climbed to as high as five and by C19, could be eight to ten.
Ironically though, C16 rural dwellers, even if impoverished, may have had a better chance of seeing their children reach adulthood than their urban peers. Life in rural settings had inherent risks, but chances of survival were actually statistically better in the countryside.
Overpopulation, pollution and poor general health in some cities, contributed to an ‘urban pathogen load’, which enhanced rates of child mortality and hampered fertility. So clearly, the nuances of these broad demographic trends, when studying human populations, are many and varied.
Some women who had miscarried were terrified of becoming pregnant again, some scared of dying during childbirth, while others, in mourning, felt an instant need to replace their lost child.
But in its most common denomination, wealthy families were usually larger than humbler equivalents and urban families may have been smaller than rural ones.
By Richard Carlton’s assessment, John and Alice, already had six children before Stephen and he, allegedly the last of their offspring, has a parish registered birth and christening at Lower Hardres, Canterbury.
Should this be accurate intel, one can only really ‘assume’ that John and Alice Carlton were either gentry, at least in some form, or John perhaps - and probably more likely - a Yeoman (a class intermediate between peasantry and landed gentry).
Yeoman were usually landholders and cultivators of their own patch, small landed estates. Upon occasion, they were the middle ranks of servants, in an English royal or noble household.
But by historical dictionary definition; ‘a person qualified for certain duties and rights, such as to serve on juries and to vote for the knight of the shire, by virtue of possessing free land of an annual value of 40 shillings’.
We can rule out nobility, as the Nobles, who held vast land and titles, didn’t roam too far from their heraldic estates and mansions. Unless of course, John had been cast out, or banished from Fillongley for some reason.
If not for the benefaction of Leofric and Godiva, Coventry may have remained a place of little importance. But the abundant grazing land around the town was well suited for sheep farming and wool production.
With wool as the headliner, Coventry (supplied by outlying areas, including Fillongley) become a centre of many textile trades by the 13th century. England’s fourth largest city at the time, it also had a small but thriving trade in glass-making, painting and tile manufacture.
So what did John do?