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Austrey Villagers

The Austrey Gentry- the Kendalls

Although they comprised only a handful of families throughout the period, the Austrey gentry occupied a position of prominence in the parish. Their names frequently crop up as witnesses to wills and land transfers.  They also head the lists of subscribers to the Protestation Oath and hearth tax. The gentry were distinguished from those immediately below them on the social ladder by wealth, hereditary title, office and landholding. As in Myddle and elsewhere their place in the village social order was symbolised by seating arrangements in the parish church.

The Kendalls, who had been established in Austrey well before 1550, occupied a position similar to that of Moores in Appleby.  For most of the early modern period they were the only gentry family living in the parish and their inventories show increasing prosperity.  Henry Kendall, who died in 1592 with assets worth £108 left a large brood of children by his second wife, Margaret. His eldest son and grandson consolidated the family fortune within the parish and by the 1660s the family had moved into a new hall.  Some idea of their wealth is contained in Henry Kendall's inventory drawn up in 1673, which lists a silver tankard, a salt cellar and spoons, a clock, a gun, a Geneva Bible and a Spanisb Table brought from London.  Henry's goods were altogether valued at £418.0.4. Up to the Civil War, the only other gentleman known to have been living in the parish was John Perkins, a retired gentleman, who died there without surviving issue in 1618. The noticeable gap in the register entries for Kendalls between 1642 and 1647 marks the time that Henry and his son were part of the garrison at Maxstoke Castle. A heraldic visitation of Warwickshire in 1682 marks a high point of Kendall influence in the parish for they were the only armigerous family recorded.  It also begins their decline as between 1682 and 1717, when the name disappears completely from the parish, they were gradually supplanted by newcomers like the Lilleys and the Levings.

The new gentry families included local Warwickshire 'gentlemen' like William Page of Newton Regis, who acquired John Robinson's tenement holding in the 1660s, and Richard Wise, also described as a gentleman, However, some came from further afield. The most prominent newcomer was Robert Lilley of Belton, a wealthy Leicestershire attorney, who purchased holdings of Robert Crispe, yeoman and Robert Taylor the wheelwright, both well-established families. Benefactions in the wills seem to suggest that that the new gentry consolidated their links with the established families by marriage.

The wealth of the gentry was closely linked to farming.  As well as being visible symbols of their affluence and power, the houses of the gentry served as agricultural processing workshops, becoming by the late 1600s veritable hives of activity for bread-making, beer-brewing, bacon-curing, cheesemaking and other subsidiary industries. There are frequent references to bacon flitches and processing equipment in the gentry inventories. Henry Kendall for example left 500 cheeses in storage in 1673

Sources and Notes

'Observations Concerning the Seates in Myddle and the Familyes to which they Belong', Gough's Myddle, ed.  D. Hey (1981), 77.

In 1621 use of precious metals 'in guilding and silvering of beds, houses, swords, stools, chairs &c.' listed among the 'Causes of Want of Money in England and Wales': See Seventeenth Century Economic Documents eds.  J. Thirsk, J.P. Cooper (Oxford, 1972), 12;

L.J.R.O. inventories, Henry Kendall, 1592, Henry Kendall, gent.,1673; The gun was probably trained band equipment. Cf. a musket in inventory of Thomas Mould, clerk (1619)

P.R.O. will John Perkins, 1673, PROB 11/132/71.

L.J.R.O. wills, Richard Wise, 1666, William Page, 1676, Robert Lilly, 1687

Marriage links see P.R.O. wills, John Smith, 1687 PROB 11/402/191.

Accounts of Austrey gentry from Mr Scott Hooper of Prospect,