Vital Statistics
John Pinsent: 1626 – 1663 GRO1733 (Knighton)
Philippa Wilmeade: 1631 – xxxx
Married: xxxx: xxxx, xxxx
Children by Philippa Wilmeade:
Thomas Pinsent: 1652 – 1711 (Married 1) Katherine Parker in 1677: 2) Margaret Ball in 1689; Knighton)
Julian Pinsent: 1654 – xxxx
John Pinsent: 1656 – 1656
Joan Pinsent: 1657 – xxxx
John Pinsent: 1659 – xxxx
Robert Pinsent: 1661 – 1729 (Married Elizabeth Delve, 1684, Kelly)
Family Branch: Devonport
PinsentID: GRO1733
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John Pinsent was one of the two middle sons of Thomas Pinsent of “Huxbeare” by his wife, Julian Stidstone. He grew up with two brothers, Robert and Thomas, whose lives can be traced and a third, William Pinsent, whose life is less certain. He also had five sisters, one of whom we know died young. The others are, as yet, unaccounted for. Their father was an affluent yeoman who owned two farms, “Huxbeare” and “Knighton,” in Hennock. The former seems to have been the more important of the two.
Hennock’s “Churchwardens’ Accounts” show that Julian Pinsent paid the parish rates for “Huxbeare” and for four other tenements (“Downend”, “Knighton”, “Warmhill” and “that which was Pinsent’s”) when her husband died. He had lived through the Civil War and, somehow, managed to maintain his estate. He died in 1649. She held them for a while and then dispersed them among her sons. Robert Pinsent, her eldest son, took “Huxbeare”, “Cressida Down” and other ancillary properties and John, the next in line, was given “Knighton”, “Warmhill” and “Pinsents”.
The parish accounts refer to a payment “for the writing of John Pinsent’s indentures to Robert Pinsent” in 1652. The documents are long gone; however, they probably related to the break up of their father’s estate – which must have occurred sometime before John married. Why the parish paid, I am not sure! John’s younger brother, Thomas Pinsent, was left out; however, he acquired a tannery at “Slade” in 1657 through a, presumably pre-arranged, marriage to Julian Wilmeade. John Pinsent, meanwhile, paid the rates for “Knighton” and “Warmhill” from 1650 through until his death in 1663.
“Warmhill” is a Domesday listed farm on the side-slope below Hennock village. How long it had been in the family, I am not sure; however, the “Bovey Tracey Court Rolls (C.R.72)” show that Roger Pynson held two houses and 2 furlongs of land there from the Lord of the Manor when he died in 1429. His wife, Joan, received a life interest after which it was to go to Giles and Joan Sayer. The parish records, on the other hand, tell us that Robert Pinsent of “Warmhill’s” daughter Alison was baptized in Hennock in 1545. There were, and still are a cluster of houses at “Warmhill”. They are mostly recreational cottages, nowadays.
The Pinsents, Wilmeades and Meardons were land-owning families in and around the parish of Hennock and, as will become apparent, they seemed to have tried to keep it that way. John Pinsent married Philippa Wilmeade around 1652. I do not know exactly when as there are breaks in the parish records. His brother Thomas married her sister Julian in 1657.
John and Philippa had four sons but only three survived. The eldest, Thomas Pinsent inherited “Knighton” when his father died in 1663. However, he was only eleven years old at the time and it must have been held “in trust” for him until he came of age. His mother married John Soper, by license, in Exeter in 1665 (Exeter Marriage Licenses) and he, presumably ran the farm in the meantime. Presumably John and Philippa knew there was an abundance of potters’ clay in the neighbourhood but they were more interested in the old farmstead adjacent to a small tributary of the River Teign. The relevance of the clay grew throughout the 1700s and the farm seems to have been absorbed into a clay-workers village in the latter half of the 18th century.
The middle son, another John Pinsent, is a loose end. I do not know what became of him. He may have died young. John’s youngest, Robert Pinsent, received an inheritance from the Wilmeade family that included a soap boiling operation and other land in “South Kelly” in what was then Hennock. It is through Robert and his wife Elizabeth (nee Delve) that the “DEVONPORT” branch has come down into modern times. Their descendants expanded the business into a successful operation in Moretonhampstead in the late 1700s. They ran a well-known drapery business in Devonport (and an equally well known brewery in Newton Abbot) in the 1800s and then moved into the legal profession. Sir Richard Alfred Pinsent founded “Pinsent and Co.” the modern-day firm of “Pinsents” in Birmingham, in the 1870s. It is still a going concern today. Their lives are discussed elsewhere.
It is not clear what happened to John and Philippa’s two daughters, Julian Pinsent and Joan Pinsent. They would have been children when their father died in 1663. John was a young man (by modern standards) when he died at the age of 36 years. Once again, the family farm had to be held “in trust” for an eldest son.
Family Tree
GrandParents
Grandfather: Robert Pinsent: 1562 – 1626
Grandmother: Dorothy Carpenter: 1565 – 1643
Parents
Father: Thomas Pinsent: 1597 – 1649
Mother: Julian Sidstone: xxxx – 1663
Father’s Siblings (Aunts, Uncles)
Simon Pinsent: 1587 – xxxx
Robert Pinsent: 1589 – 1650
Dorothy Pinsent: xxxx – 1590
William Pinsent: 1591 – 1591
Helen Pinsent: 1592 – xxxx
Thomas Pinsent: 1597 – 1649 ✔️
George Pinsent: 1599 – xxxx
John Pinsent: xxxx – 1600
Male Siblings (Brothers)
Robert Pinsent: 1624 – 1671
John Pinsent: 1626 – 1663 ✔️
Thomas Pinsent: 1633 – 1701
William Pinsent: 1638 – xxxx
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