Mary Bernard

Bef 1609 - Aft 1683  (> 75 years)

• Name	Mary Bernard  [1]
  Birth	Bef 24 Sep 1609  [2]
  Baptism	24 Sep 1609	Worksop, Nottinghamshire, England   [2, 3]
  Gender	Female
  Death	Aft 1683  [2]
  Person ID	I39907	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of LD
  Last Modified	9 Jan 2024

  
  

  Father	Rev. Richard Bernard,   b. Bef 30 Apr 1568   d. Aft 21 Mar 1641, Batcombe, Somerset, England (Age > 73 years)
  Family ID	F23439	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Roger Williams,   b. Abt 1606   d. Between 27 Jan 1683 and 15 Mar 1683, Providence, Providence, Rhode Island (Age ~ 77 years)
  Marriage	15 Dec 1629	All Saints, High Laver, Essex, England   [2, 4, 5]
  Children	+ 1. Mary Williams,   b. Aug 1633, Plymouth, Plymouth Colony d. 1681 (Age ~ 47 years)
  Family ID	F23433	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	9 Jan 2024

  
  

• Notes

  She was a "gentle waiting woman" to Joan Altham at Otes in High Laver, Essex. As G. Andrews Moriarty (citation details below) explained, writing in 1959, "Girls of gentle families taking employment in the families of friends or relatives were [then] described as 'servants' or 'maids'", but those terms did not have the same connotation as today. "Today they would rather be described as 'companions.'" Joan Altham, known in her family as "Jug", was a daughter of Sir James Altham and Elizabeth Barrington. In 1629, Joan married Oliver St. John (~1598-1673), who went on to be a member of the Long Parliament and the Rump Parliament, Solicitor General, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and Chief Justice of the King's Bench, in a career of remarkable complexity through the English Civil War and the subsequent Restoration. After the death of James Altham, his wife Elizabeth married Sir William Masham of Otes, to whom Roger Williams was chaplain before his emigration to New England. Elizabeth herself was a daughter of Sir Francis Barrington and his wife Joan Cromwell (called by Moriarty "the redoubtable Puritan"), daughter of Henry Cromwell and an aunt of Oliver Cromwell. Frances Cromwell, sister of Joan Cromwell, was the wife of Richard Whalley, who presented Mary Bernard's father the Rev. Richard Bernard to his vicarage at Worksop, and Frances and Richard were the parents of the regicide Edward Whalley who died in New England while evading capture following the Restoration. Another child of Francis Cromwell and Richard Whalley was Jane Whalley, to whose hand the young Roger Williams unsuccessfully aspired in the spring of 1629. All of this is mentioned to give some idea of the interconnections among Puritan-leaning gentry families in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

  
  

• Sources

  [S6074] George Wightman of Quidnessett, R.I. (1632-1721/2) and Descendants: Waitman, Weightman, Whiteman, Whitman, Whytman, Wightman, Wyghtman by Mary Ross Whitman. Chicago, 1939. [S7187] G. Andrews Moriarty, "Bernard of Epworth, Co. Lincoln." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 113:189, 1959. [S7185] Winifred Lovering Holman, "Roger Williams." The American Genealogist 28:197, Oct 1952., year and place only. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011. [S7185] Winifred Lovering Holman, "Roger Williams." The American Genealogist 28:197, Oct 1952.