Clazie from France?

[heiserca]

Thank you for the speculation.  We continue to await any evidence either for or against a Continental connection.

[Mike in Cumbria]

Thank you for the speculation.  We continue to await any evidence either for or against a Continental connection.

What sort of evidence, for or against?

[richarde1979]

Well of course your right, back this far much of genealogy is reduced to speculation, due to the sparsity of source material, though you can still attempt to make fairly informed guesses, from what small evidence does exist.

I would certainly not go as far as to rule out a continental connection, there is clear evidence of Dutch 'Clase' families settling in England, as stated in my previous post.

In your post Tuesday 28 August you stated  "Records at Colchester, Essex showed families with surnames Claise, Clayse, Clayce as early as 1564, and clearly identified those families as "French Protestants"  Do you have more information on that as that would be firm evidence there is a Huguenot link if true.

That said it could just as easily be this was a native name in Scotland. The fact the name first appears in records in 1665 I think can not be treated as particularly significant due to the nature of Scottish parish records themselves. Most of my Scottish families are traced back to this sort of period 1650-1750, as records for the ordinary people rarely tend to stretch back any further, and even then are sparse.

[heiserca]

The names that I mentioned at Colchester, Essex are nothing new: they are on the IGI, easily searchable.  Nathaniell Claise, 1570; Henrye Claise, 1564; Peter Clayes, 1567; John Clayes, 1604. But there is no known connection between them and the Clazie names at Berwick-upon-Tweed and in Berwickshire, which usually included a middle z. 

[richarde1979]

Hi Hieserca

The reason I ask is because you stated "Records at Colchester, Essex showed families with surnames Claise, Clayse, Clayce as early as 1564, and clearly identified those families as "French Protestants"

The IGI doesn't show any indication these men were French Protestants. Where did you get this information, is it contained in the original register that you have had access to?

If an original record exists positively identifying the surname with French protestant refugees in England at such an early date then that would be very significant. Of course it would not prove your Berwickshire family have the same origin, but would definitely make it more possible than would seem the case at the moment.

I would say though that perhaps there is still a little too much emphasis in your own thoughts on this towards the significance of the spelling of the name. I think the Clazie's of Hutton Berwickshire are more likely to be linked to the, much closer geographically, Claise's of Essex, then to the far flung Clazie's of Southern France, because spelling at that time was so fluid as to be of little overall importance.

For example, it may have simply been dependent  on how the local parish clerk decided it should be spelt more than any other factor.  The fact that in the near by parish of Berwick upon Tweed the same family name is present at same time but without the 'z' spelling again points more that way than any other.

I think it would take an extraordinary leap of faith to link the Hutton family to the Netherlands and France on the basis of that evdence alone,  the other factors do not really support it.

[richarde1979]

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~walkersj/Colchester.htm

Found this website that does mark that family of foreign origin. But they are not French they are Dutchmen from the Netherlands, and quite possibly since Nicholas Claes appears it could well be linked to the same groups of families noted in the Huguenot Society records as Fishermen from Zeeland.

Either way it is worth noting this family is not French or Huguenot. The author of that website is a bit confused in some of his facts. For example he states French Protestants (Huguenots) fled into the Netherlands and then again to England. This DID happen much later in the 1660's onwards when the North part of the Netherlands the United Provinces was an independant state and a religious safe haven, but this was not the case, certainly before 1610 at very earliest, when all of the Netherlands was under Spanish control and protestants under an even more brutal opression there, than in France. For Huguenots to flee there in the mid and late 16th century would have been plain daft, jumping from the frying pan into the fire so to speak.

I believe the author has been confused by the fact that many of the protestants who fled the southern most part of the Netherlands at this time were ethnic Walloons. Walloon is a sister language of French, and alot of Walloon lands were later annexed into France by Louis XIV, but these people were not French and therefore not 'Huguenots' though the author is not the first to confuse them as such since.

[richarde1979]

Some really wild speculation for you.........Going through your old posts, the first evidence you have for the surname Clazie in Hutton is 1665 with a Jon Clazie dlelivering a Bell. You also know this bell was made at Middelburg in Zeeland. There is absolutely no evidence of that surname in use amongst the French Huguenots or being bought to the British Isles by them, but there is evidence from elsewhere in the country of Dutchmen by a similar surname coming to England and settling 100 years previous from the exact same place Zeeland! Could it not actually be that Jon was a Dutchmen from Zeeland, delivered the bell and then decided to stay! Perhaps he is the original source of the Berwick Clazies!

Whether true or not, I believe the Clazie surname appearing in the South of France is likely a red herring and clouding the wider picture. My money would be on the Hutton Clazie family being either Dutch or native Brit in origin.

[heiserca]

You may be entirely right, but so far we've been unable to prove the source of the name.  Jon Clazie delivered the kirk bell to Hutton in 1665.  He was rewarded with 16 shillings "for drink", so he likely didn't have to bring it terribly far.  A cross-Channel voyage with a heavy bell would have been worth more than the price of a drink!

Before 1665, everything is opaque.  In Churchill's phrasing, "...a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Clazie is sufficiently like Claise, Classey, Classie, Clayce, other names found in parts of England, so it might be related to them.  But the identical spelling - Clazie - is now found in France, the Netherlands and Berwickshire, all in the space of 70 years.  That changes the perspective.  Why shouldn't they have a common origin?  Speculation is all we've got.  Evidence remains just beyond reach...

[richarde1979]

"But the identical spelling - Clazie - is now found in France, the Netherlands and Berwickshire, all in the space of 70 years.  That changes the perspective?"

See, I guess we differ there as I'm not so convinced it does. It might just as easily be a reflection that this is generally the date when records start appearing, if you see what I mean. It could be the surname Clazie/Clasie was common in all these places long before it first appears in written records, but in most European countries it's a similar story, registers before the 18th century tend to be fragmentary if kept at all, and before the 16th century largely non existent. Of course it could have a common origin all the same, Norman or perhaps even further back and it's a Germanic patronym with related Frankish and Saxon forms. If it was in use as a forename too that might suggest the latter.

In regards Jon Clazie's 16 shillings, perhaps the drink was just a courtesy for the delivery man rather than the actual fee? Still according to the old money to new converter tool on Ancestry 16 shillings in 1665 is about equivalent to 65 pounds in today's money, which even at todays exhorbitant prices, would buy me a good 18 pints of my favourite tipple at my local watering hole, so it was a good drink all the same!

It's also worth bearing in mind he delivered the Bell 16 March 1665. The second Anglo-Dutch War had broken out 12 days earlier, and would last over two years until 31 July 1667. This was primarily a naval war, a series of pitched battles between the British and the Dutch at sea. This may have made it impossible for him to return if he had bought the bell over before hostilities broke out. Maybe after two years stranded in Berwick, he'd found a girl fallen in love and decided to stay put even when safe to return?..Oh well it's a pretty picture I paint, but could bare no relation to the truth. Well you did invite wild speculation at the start....hope I've delivered that at least!