Many of the sponsors of this web page are descended from Richard Glanvill and Sarah Couch, married at St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth on June 8, 1758.  We are convinced that this Richard Glanvill is the same person who married Mary Halse on 19 January 1755 in Ashburton, Devon, having been baptised there on 26 February 1735.  We are convinced that these two Richards are one and the same, though we have yet to find definitive proof.

On 31 August 1722, in Ashburton, Devon, a Richard Glanvill (or Glanville) married Elizabeth Sainthill (or St. Hill).  They had eight children: Thomas, Joan, Richard (who died young), another Richard (who lasted only a few days), a third Richard ("our" Richard), Elizabeth (who died in her second year), a second Elizabeth and Roger.  It is worth noting that Richard's father was named Edward. These names are part of our evidence.

Thomas married Ann Halse, and Richard married Mary Halse.  The two Halses were sisters, daughters of Roger Halse (born 1700 in Ashburton).  The Halses, Glanvilles and Sainthills were all well-to-do families: there is talk in "Records of the Anglo-Norman House of Glanville from A.D. 1050 to 1880" of Richard's son Roger losing 40,000 pounds, not a trivial sum today, but a sign a substantial wealth in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

The only child of Richard and Mary, also named Mary, was baptised on July 25, 1755.  Richard's wife died shortly thereafter, being buried on 9 May 1756, from causes unknown to us.  At that point traces of this Richard come to a stop.  There are no records of any Richard marrying or dying in the Ashburton area in the many years afterwards that could correspond to our Richard.  As far as we know, all of Richard's siblings died in Ashburton: Thomas (1765) and Roger (1820) certainly did.  But there is no sign of our Richard.  [Two Richards did die in Ashburton, in 1770 and 1772, both described as "Richard, son of Richard".  We do not think the death of an adult in his mid-thirties would have been recorded in this way.  Moreover, had our Richard remained in Ashburton, it would have been unusual for him not to have remarried.]

Meanwhile, in June 1758, in the church of St. Andrew's, Plymouth, Sarah Couch, daughter of bargeman William Couch, was getting married to a tidesman named Richard Glanvill.  We know these professions because the marriage was performed under license, and the license describes William as a bargeman "of Maker" and Richard as a tidesman "of Plymouth".  The usual method of obtaining permission from the church to marry was through banns, which required the announcement of the intended betrothal during church service, for each of the three Sundays prior to the wedding, and normally, the attendance of the happy couple.  Maker, home to the fishing villages of Kingsand and Cawsand, was a parish across the bay from Plymouth.  Licenses were a common way for fishermen and navy men to gain permission to marry.  Perhaps this was because their seafaring life did not allow them to give their betrothed the benefit of three weeks notice.  Shore leave was apt to be a busy period for seamen.

There was another reason for haste in the Richard/Sarah marriage.  On the 7 November 1758, one Richard Glanvill "son of John and Sarah" was baptised in Maker.  Though Glanvill was a relatively common name in Cornwall, there is no record of any in the parish of Maker before November 1758, and there is no sign of any John, let alone one married to a Sarah.  We conclude that the baptism record is in error and that this was in fact the first child of Richard and Sarah.  Richard and Sarah had three more sons, none called Richard, an unlikely omission if the 1758 Richard was not theirs.

A tidesman was a customs official who inspected boats to collect tax on imported goods.  Smuggling was a way of life in those days and Maker was a well-known haven for smugglers.  Most of the men in Maker were fishermen, smugglers or customs officials, and some played more than one of these roles.

The children of Richard and Sarah were Richard, Elizabeth, Edward, Sarah, Thomas, Roger, Jane, Ann Couch, Maria and Susanna.  Here we see a strong connection to the names of the children of Elizabeth Sainthill.  No mystery about the names Richard and Sarah, but the second child was Elizabeth, not Sarah; it could be, if Richard was who we think he was, that these first two children were named after his parents, and the third child after his grandfather.  Thomas and Roger were the names of his brothers back in Ashburton. Perhaps this is coincidence.  Richard, Elizabeth, Edward and Thomas were all common names back then, as they are now.  But Roger was not. From 1688 to 1818 only three Rogers were born in Maker; Roger Winecott, who lasted but a few days in 1706, this one, and a second (Roger Haynes) born in 1782.  So where did the inspiration for the name Roger come from? Roger, we think, was the name of his brother and one-time father-in-law.

Jane was the name of his mother's mother, or perhaps a variation on the name of his sister, Joan.  Ann, Maria and Susanna are a mystery.  Sarah's parents were named William and Mary (Thomas).  Maria might have been a tribute to her, but modified from Mary to take account of the fact that Richard's first wife was Mary.  Moreover it would be confusing to call another child Mary, since his first daughter Mary (born 1755) was probably living with them.  No Mary Glanvill dies or marries in Ashburton who could have been Mary Halse's daughter.  There was, however, a Mary Glanvill who died in Maker on 17 April 1782.  This Mary died at age 26, exactly the age Mary born 1755 would have been.  No Mary Glanvills were born in Maker and no Marys married a Glanvill in Maker.

If our theory is correct, Richard missed an opportunity to send a clearer signal: his grandmother, Edward's wife, was called Charity. Charity was still a popular name at that time: a Charity Moon was christened in Maker in 1758 and there were a few others around too.  Sarah was careful to be remembered, through her daughter Ann Couch Glanvill, though about Sarah we have no doubts.

How Does It Fit Together?

So far, our only evidence that the two Richards are one and the same comes from the coincidence of the disappearance of Richard and his daughter Mary from Ashburton in 1756, and the emergence of a Richard and possibly his daughter Mary in Maker in 1758, and from the similarity of the names of Richard and Sarah's children to those of Richard and Elizabeth Sainthill.

There is however some direct evidence that connects the two Richards.  The will of one Elizabeth Glanville of Ashburton mentions a cousin, John Waymouth.  Undoubtedly this is the John Waymouth (born 1795 in Rame, near Maker) who married Eliza Glanville, daughter of Roger, son of Sarah Couch.  This Elizabeth, we assume, was the daughter of Ann Halse.  Sadly, only the notes made by Silas Waymouth from the will survive, the will itself having been destroyed during the bombing of Exeter in the war.

We also have three Richard Glanvill signatures (see elsewhere).  One is on the marriage entry for Richard and Mary in 1755, another is on the marriage license of Richard and Sarah and a third is on the register entry of the marriage of Richard and Sarah.  The signatures look quite similar.  Educated handwriting was perhaps more uniform in those days than it is today, but there is a certain flourish about the signature(s) that suggests a connection.  And how did Richard of Maker come to have an educated hand if he was not the Ashburton Richard?  He was a tidesman and perhaps that required literacy, but Sarah too signed her name and her signature was uneven.  [Richard's son Edward marked his register entry with an X, a rather shocking decline in one generation.]

Richard was buried in Maker on Christmas Day 1787, five years after Mary.  At the time, he was living in a rented house in Rame presumably with Sarah since she died much later.  There is no grave that we have found.

This is the evidence we have, and the reader can decide if it is compelling.

So, what really happened?

If the two Richards are the same one does wonder what led to this turn of events: why did Richard abandon Ashburton for the relatively distant, and sleepy Maker?  How did he go from being a mainstay of society in landlocked Ashburton in mid-1756 (assuming he was still there when his wife died), to being a "tidesman of Plymouth" in 1758?  There is no evidence that Richard of Maker ever had contact with Ashburton.  All of his children married in Maker.  However, Richard's grandson, John Spriddle Glanvill (son of Edward), married in Ashburton in 1801, when he was 17 years old.  His bride, listed as Margaret Madge, was probably Margaret Mudge, born 1785 in Maker.  One wonders how, at such a tender age, they married in such a distant place as Ashburton, unless, of course, Richard's son Edward, had, after his father's death, reconciled with his rich, aforementioned cousin Elizabeth.

Families have split apart for generations.  Maybe Richard quarreled with his father. Maybe Richard was not viewed by his father as a suitable person to inherit the family wealth.  Yet Richard wasn't all that estranged since it seems he patiently named his children for his parents and siblings.  Maybe Mary died in questionable, or unflattering circumstances.  Maybe Richard went to sea to escape the loss of his wife.

One last observation may suggest the connection is true.  We saw that Richard had a child named Ann Couch Glanvill.  It was quite common then, as it is now, to use a wife's maiden name as the middle name of one or more children.  Less common is to name a child after a maternal grandmother; for example Richard Glanvill, son of Edward and Ann Spriddle named his daughter Ann Spriddle Glanvill and Thomas Glanvill named his son William Couch Glanvill after his mother.  But there is something especially persistent about the desire to keep a Glanvill link in later generations, which may reflect the power of an oral tradition about the one-time wealth of the family.  Susannah Glanvill, daughter of our Richard, gave four of her sons the middle name Glanvill.  Maria Glanvill, daughter of Roger, named her son Edward Glanville (Andrew).  Roger's daughter Eliza, gave none of her 12 children the middle name Glanvill, but her son Silas (Waymouth) named a child Ernest Glanville, who had a child Elizabeth Glanville.  Silas's son Arthur had two children with the middle name Glanville.  Other examples are listed elsewhere on this web site.

Four of us have been studying the mystery of Richard Glanvill for quite some time.  We feel like we know every street and every inhabitant of Maker and Ashburton in the eighteenth century.

The Mystery Solved

We wrote the above paragraphs before we solved the mystery on 22 April 2004.  On that day we followed up a note on one of the family trees in the book "Records of the Anglo Norman House of Glanville 1050 - 1880" by William Urmston S Glanville-Richards.  We know that the book is far from accurate in many places but this note said of a daughter of Thomas Glanvill of Ashburton: "Joanna Glanville, baptised 10 Sep 1761, married Mr Adams, took out probate for her sister Elizabeth's will twice for 9000 pounds".   The will of Joanna Adams was available from the PRO and we found that it gave the proof that we needed to solve the mystery.

Our transcript of the will of Joanna Adams has been added as a page in "Our evidence".  The will lists many of the cousins of Elizabeth and Joanna (they both died in 1840).  Included among those cousins are the descendants of Richard Glanvill of Maker and also John Waymouth who married Eliza Glanville of the same family.

The origin at Ashburton of Richard Glanvill of Maker is therefore proved.  Our group was thrilled with the discovery of this very useful will.