Just to follow this up quickly, following a couple of days in the Bury records office last week:
I now know conclusively that Charles Guest (my great-great-great-great grandfather, 1770-1855) was the son of Ralph Guest (great x5 grandfather, 1743-1830), and so a brother of the George Guest who was famous as the organist at Wisbech in Cambridgeshire and as a composer (Amazon lists some of his works, though they're not available).
I was intrigued that there was only this one Guest family in Bury St Edmunds, which puzzled me. Right at the last minute, I found a newspaper article in the Bury & Norwich Post for 15th December 1824, which gave a little biography of Ralph Guest.
Ralph Guest, it appears was born in Broseley in Shropshire.
Ralph showed some musical ability as a child, but didn't really develop it.
In 1764, he moved to London when a "business opportunity" arose for him when he was 21.
In 1768 another opportunity then arose in Bury St Edmunds where he became an assistant to a Mr H Bul[...], and after a while he set up in business there himself (not sure what his business was though - though I have found a
reference to him charging £122 11s 4½d for for the refurbishment of the soft furnishings of St Mary's Church, Redgrave in Suffolk so probably he ran a draper's*. [that's the equivalent of just under £7000 in today's money]).
On January 26th 1769 he married Sarah Prick at St Mary's in Bury St Edmunds
In 1777/8 he was an overseer of the poor for the parish of St James in Bury St Edmunds.
In 1795 Ralph Guest took over the choir of St Mary's and subsequently became organist when St Mary's got an organ. On becoming organist, he gave up his other business.
It was really interesting to sit there looking at (and touching very gently and just at the edges!) all these little slips of paper that Charles had been handling back in the 1810s/1820s, notes he'd signed, receipts he'd made people write out when he'd paid them, his calculations for how much poor rates people should be paying. Similarly reading the Vestry minute books for St James' Parish in B-S-E for c. 1770, and finding his father Ralph Guest signing his name on the list of people present - his actual signature! (Bears comparison with another side of my tree, most of whom couldn't write 100 years later, and the only thing my grandfather could write in cursive - as opposed to block capitals - was his name.)
Another interesting thing I found in the archives (though no direct link to the Guests) was a letter, which when I read it made my jaw drop. It was an example of the Advance Fee Fraud letter that is so common nowadays by email. Nothing new under the sun!
* actually, now I think about it great grandfather Guest (Hezekiah William John Guest (1886-1959) was the manager of a furnishing fabrics company.
Is there any chance anyone could check early directories for me and find out what trade H. Bul[...] (the newspaper must have been tightly bound when it was microfilmed, as the end of the name curves off and is illegible) and Ralph Guest were pursuing in Bury - I suppose the period would be 1768-1800 ish. The ones on historicaldirectories.org don't start until later.
