By way of disseminating some further information on the Downing family, which has been taxing several of us in recent weeks. I attach some further findings on this thread (which should actually be for Downing of Shenington not Sherrington).
THE CHILDREN OF ARTHUR DOWNING OF LEXHAM
Part 1
It has long been established that Arthur Downing of Lexham was the son of Geoffrey Downing and Elizabeth Wingfield of Great Dunham in Norfolk. Arthur was born or baptized on 10 May 1543 at Belchamp St. Paul in Essex and he had two sisters, Elizabeth and Katherin, both born at Belchamp St Paul. This is confirmed by Parish records. It is also known that Arthur married Susan Calybute of Castle Acre in Norfolk on 1 August 1570 at Clare Parish Church next to Belchamp St Paul. Susan, who was aged seventeen, was Arthur’s second cousin through his Wingfield connection; she was a considerable ‘catch’. The Calybutt family were substantial land owners at Castle Acre, and Susan was one of four daughters, without a brother, named as heirs to their father. As a result of this, Arthur seems to have inherited the substantial Lexham estate, adjacent to Castle Acre, through his wife.
It had always been assumed that Susan Calybute was Arthur’s only wife, as confirmed by the combined version of the 1563, 1589 and 1613 Visitations of Norfolk, prepared by the Harleian Society in the 19th Ccntury. Yet, if the visitations are looked at separately, the 1563 visitation shows Arthur with four children John, Dorothye, Anne, and Suzan, suggesting that they were born prior to the date of the Visitation. This cannot be right, as Arthur was 20 in 1563 and Susan was 10. Although there is an addendum, included in 1570, confirming that Susan Calybute had now married Arthur at the age of seventeen. John and his three sisters can only have been born after 1570. The visitation record does not mention Susan’s son Calybute Downing, suggesting that he was born after the visitation had taken place. We have an unverified record that Calybute was born in on 1 June 1574, 43 months after the marriage, but as he was the fifth child he could not have been born until later, unless Susan had twins beforehand, and we have no evidence of this.
To add to this complication, there are baptismal records of nine children of ‘Arthur Downing’ at Weasenham All Saints between 1580 and 1589. These do not include Susan’s son Calybute, but do include a son called Wingfilde baptised in 1587. Weasenham is about three miles north of Lexham, and although it was badly damaged in Cromwellian times, it remains significantly more imposing than the Saxon churches at East and West Lexham. We also have a record that ‘Arthur Downing’ married Anne Pears, a widow, on 28 November 1587 at Swaffham, about five miles south of Lexham. It is thus possible that Anne was the mother of the two youngest children born at Weasenham All Saints in 1588 and 1589.
See part 2