Hearth Tax Lookup

[DRH123]

Is there anyone here with a copy of the Derbyshire hearth tax assessments book willing to do a lookup, please? I'm interested in the Brocksop family, particularly in Chesterfield parish but anywhere they may turn up. (They come with lots of different spellings, even sometimes Brockshaw or similar.)

Thank you
David

[Designer Jeans]

This isn't what you are looking for, but you have had no other replies so

There are no Brocksopp's listed in 'The Free and Voluntary Present 1661 Derbyshire' but there are a few on https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ (search Brocksopp and Chesterfield or Brocksopp and Derbyshire)

Might be better than nothing if you don't already have them.

[DRH123]

Thank you for looking in the "Free and Voluntary Present" list. There were definitely two and quite possibly more property-owning Brocksopps in Chesterfield parish at that time, so I suppose they must have taken the "voluntary" aspect at face value and declined. Some were Quakers and heavily fined for it, so it would be understandable if they didn't want to contribute any more. I'm hoping that as the Hearth Tax was not voluntary they may still turn up there.

Thanks also for the suggestion of the National Archives. I had already tried the Derbyshire RO catalogue, with some success, but I hadn't thought of the NA. There does appear to be one document there concerning the particular Brocksopp I'm having the most trouble with, so that could prove very helpful.

Happy new year
David

[Designer Jeans]

Our ancestors may well have known each other.  My Matthew Hopkinson and his brother in law Thomas Fowkes/Foulks, both of North Wingfield were also Quakers who were imprisoned and fined. 

[DRH123]

Thomas Fouke was a witness at the wedding of Isabell daughter of Thomas Brocksopp in 1662, and both Thomases were witnesses at many of the Chesterfield Quaker weddings over the next 10 years or more, so I'm sure they knew each other. (My direct ancestor is - I suspect - Thomas's brother Edward Brocksopp, of Hasland in Chesterfield. The frustrating thing is that although I know he had many children and grandchildren few of them are recorded in the Chesterfield parish registers or the Quaker registers. I suspect that he belonged to some other group of Non-conformists with no surviving records.)

David

[Designer Jeans]

It certainly wasn't easy being a Quaker in those times

(In 1657) In this Year alſo Thomas Brockſopp and Anthony Wright, for refuſing to put off their Hats at a General Seſſions in Derby, were by the Juſtices ſent to Priſon, and detained ſeveral Days.

On the 3d of September (In 1665) a Juſtice of the Peace came to a Meeting near North-Wingfield, and took the Names of all preſent: After which he and another Juſtice iſſued Warrants, ordering their Appearance be fore them at Chºſierfield on the 14th of the ſame Month ; which being obeyed, one and thirty of them were ſent to the Houſe of Correction, of whom thirteen, namely, Edward Curtis, Thomas Farnſworth, Godfrey Fowlds, Henry Harvey, Thomas Taylor, George Brough, William Brough, Abraham Cundy, john Frith, john Crºſs, Anthony Woodward, Hercules Harvy, and Thomas Brockſºpp, were kept there till the next Seſſions about three Weeks after.

Matthew Hopkinson and his wife Ann (nee Fowkes) are buried in North Wingfield, but Thomas and Mary Fowkes and their family emigrated to America http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bobwolfe/gen/mn/m3629x3630.htm 

I sympathise with the missing baptisms.  I am trying to find presumed siblings, Cecily, Judith, Ann and Thomas Fowkes (circa 1624).

Good luck with Edward Brocksopp, butcher of Hasland!