In the recently published volume in honour of SDNQ’s President, Dr Robert Dunning, Writing the history of Somerset, is a paper on the activities of Edward Curll by Mary Siraut.1 Since the paper was submitted for publication a few additional facts have come to light.
Curll was a sequestrator for Catsash Hundred in the mid 1640s. Siraut mentions that his family was ‘probably an offshoot of the Bedminster family’.2 It is worth pointing out that the Bedminster family were of more genteel stock than his status as a member of a ‘clothing family’3 suggests. Edmund Curll may have worked for William Bridges of Weston, a clothier, who supplied cloth to John Smythe of Ashton Court in 1549.4 Perhaps of a subsequent generation Edward Curle, described as a ‘gentleman’ was also associated with the Smyth family and was a servant to Hugh Smyth of Ashton Court. A grant of annuity was drawn up in 1581, between Hewgh Smyth and George Wynter for £6 13s 4d ‘payable after the death of Hewgh provided that during the lifetime of Hewgh’s wife, Mawde, the said Edward does not serve any other person or refuse to serve her or to travel on her business’.5 Edward died on 20 September 1596 and his inquisition post mortem was taken at Axbridge on 8 January 1596/7 when his son and heir Hugh was aged 17.6 His will was written on 27 December 1595 and proved on 10 November 1596, in which he is described as a gentleman. He left lands in Lyng, Brushford, 117 acres in Broomfield and a tenement and barn in West Weston (i.e. Weston-super-Mare). Also mentioned are his children Hugh, John, Alice, Constance, Joane and Marie, and his wife Ellin.7 The latter died in 1613 at Bishport (in Bedminster).
If this family in Bedminster provided an ancestor of the sequestrator then he most likely arrived at Batcombe after 1581. The reason for this thinking lies in the fact that no member of the Curle family appears in the 1581 subsidy return for the parish of Batcombe,8 but they were well established there by the 1630s. In 1636, Edward Curll was at odds with the Bisse family who owned the manor of Batcombe. The issue at stake was a lease that Edward, described as a clothier, had taken out, but subsequently the lease had, allegedly, been granted by the Bisse family to someone else. Edward had leased an estate in South Meade from John Cleeveland on 11 January 9 Charles I, 1633/4 for £193. Edward spent £100 manuring the land to increase its profitability and claimed it was ‘verie muche ymproved thereby’. All was well until James Bisse made a ‘voluntarie conveyance of the inheritance’ of all his lands for the term of his and his son’s lives in tail to his grandson. Bisse then claimed Edward’s lease was ‘not made accordinge to the power in the said voluntaire conveyance’. To make matters worse Edward claimed that the Bisse family deliberately wanted to ‘avoide and frustrate’ his estate. Also, how the second conveyance was ‘secrett and unknown’ to him, stating that it was ‘against the rule of equitie that suche secrett conveyances should hurt or prejudice purchasers for valuable consideracions’. Edward wanted the Bisse family to ‘ratifie and confirme’ his estate and used the High Court of Chancery in an attempt to recover his losses.9
The Bisse family included several generations of men named James, as if the different Edward Curles were not confusing enough! This line of the Bisse family was closely related to Edward Bisse esquire (d.1644) of Spargrove, who served as a colonel in the Royalist army.10 This family’s loyalty to the Crown was totally at odds with Curll’s activities in Catsash Hundred and beyond. Therefore did the dispute in 1636 drive Curll to such extreme lengths, admittedly some years later, in persecuting Royalist supporters or at least contribute towards it?
Perhaps it is worth pointing out that none of the Curle family signed the 1641 petition supporting the Royalist reply to the London petition,11 but Siraut suggests how Edward, who later became a sequestrator, does appear in the Protestation returns, although his father does not.12 Does the lack of members of the Curle family in the petition, submitted to parliament in December 1641, prove how by this time they were firmly against popery, Church and State but of good Protestant / Puritan stock?13
One aspect of Edward’s work as a sequestrator that has come to light involved his use of the court of Quarter Sessions for the city of Wells. Siraut mentions a letter he wrote to the Committee for the Advance of Money on 21 August 1649, concerning the estates and goods of Hugh Fry and Richard Mogg of Wells, servant of the sheriff of Somerset.14 The very next day the examinations of two key witnesses were recorded by the mayor and a fellow justice in the city’s Session book:
[p.160v] The Informacion of Edward Curll of Batcomb sequestrator against Elizabeth Oldmixon on behalf of the state taken 22 die August 1649
That the said Elizabeth Oldmixon was in the howse of Richard Mogg of Wells (the 6th day of this instant August) whose estate this informant by order of the Comittee for advance of money sitting in the painted chamber westminster did seize and secure, and did lock the studdy doore and in it sealed a trunke which was very heavy: which lock of the studdy dore twas the next morning found to be unlockt and so hampered that the key would neither lock nor unlock it, and the leather of the trunk about the lower seale of the Trunk cut round, and so the Trunk opened and that which was in it taken out which was of most valew, and the cut leather sealed downe againe, there being in the trunke as this informant conceiveth when he sealed 3 or 400li or more, or things of that weight the trunk being as heavy as this informant could well lift with one hand.
The said Elizabeth Oldmixon being examined whether she knoweth who or by whom the said Trunke and study doore were broken open she sayeth that she knoweth the said study doore and trunck ware boothe locked and sealed up on Monday the vjth of August instant night But by whome the said study doore or trunck weere broken upp she knoweth not nether doth she know of any stranger that was in the howse or that went to the study or the trunck that night And being asked whether she knoeth that James Sandford weer once in the said Study or at the howse the said vjth day of August at night or the vijth day of the same moneth in the morning she sayeth that she knoweth not wether her remembrance did see him there And being demanded whether she would take her oath thus her examination is trew she sayeth that she will not take her oath for it that the same is trew but the same examinacion is trew
[signed] Elizabeth Oldmixon
[signed] Examined Bartholomew Cox
[p.161r] An Birken servant to the said Richard Mogg being examined whether she knoweth that the study doore of the said study of the said Richard Mog or the trunck of the said Richard Mogg were broken up she sayeth that she knoweth not And being demaunded whether she knoweth who broke up the said study doore or the said trunck she for her part sayeth that shee did it not neither doth she for her part know whoe did it And being asked whether she would take her oath that this her examinacion was or is trew she sayeth that she was never sworn in all her like And therfoore she will not be sworn at this present
The marke of Ann B Birkyn
[signed] Bartholomew Cox maior
Thomas Salmon15
Richard Mogg of Wells appeared in the pages of SDNQ in June 1915. In that article it mentions how Curll wrote to the Committee explaining how Mogg had ‘broke open the study door and a trunk which I had sealed, on pretence that there were in it things of great value belonging to the high sheriff’.16
Edward’s will was proved by his widow Jane on 8 July 1653. As his will was made five months before he died is it possible to think that, as Siraut states, he was ‘worn out in parliament’s service’,17 exhausted by his activities as a sequestrator.18 However, the question over his ancestry remains to be solved because if Edward was related to the Bedminster family then none of the lands belonging to his namesake at Lyng, Brushford, Broomfield and Weston-super-Mare19 are mentioned in his own will over half a century later.20
1. A.J. Webb and A.F. Butcher eds, Writing the history of Somerset, “Family, community and religion”, essays in honour of Robert Dunning (2018), 100-106.
2. M. Siraut, ‘A sequestrator’s lot is not a happy one: Edward Curll, sequestrator of Catsash hundred’ in Webb and Butcher, Writing the history of Somerset, 101.
3. Siraut, ‘A sequestrator’s lot ...’ in Webb and Butcher, Writing the history of Somerset, 100.
4. J. Angus, trans., J. Vanes, ed., The ledger of John Smythe 1538-1550, B.R.S. 28 (1974), 311-12.
5. Bristol Archives, AC/S/1/14 grant, 27 February 1581. See also T.N.A., STAC 5/C2/10 for a case involving Edward, gentleman, described as a servant of Hugh Smyth, 12 Eliz.
6. H.W. Forsyth Harwood ed., The Genealogist, new series 14 (1898), 63.
7. T.N.A., PROB 11/88/292 will of Edward Curle of Bedminster, Somerset, proved 10 Nov. 1596.
8. A.J. Webb, ed., Two Tudor subsidy assessments for the county of Somerset: 1558 and 1581-82, S.R.S. 88 (2002), 41. Unfortunately the return for Bedminster is incomplete and may include members of the Curle family.
9. T.N.A., C 8/78/23 Curle v Bisse, 1636.
10. F. Grigson, Genealogical memoranda of the family of Bisse (London, 1886), 56.
11. A.J. Howard, ed., A Somerset petition of 1641 (1968), section z7; this section is missing from the published transcript but the original has been checked.
12. Siraut, ‘A sequestrator’s lot ...’ in Webb and Butcher, Writing the history of Somerset, 101.
13. Howard, A Somerset petition, section z7.
14. Siraut, ‘A sequestrator’s lot ...’ in Webb and Butcher, Writing the history of Somerset, 105.
15. This transcript has been taken from the original at Wells City Archive. I am grateful to Dr Julia Wood, Wells City Archivist for permission to publish the two examinations. A modernised transcript first appeared in print in the appendix to the Third report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts (London, 1872), 350-1.
16. E.J. Homyard, ‘Richard Mogg of Welton, Somerset’ in SDNQ, 14 part cx (June 1915), 245-51.
17. Siraut, ‘A sequestrator’s lot ...’ in Webb and Butcher, Writing the history of Somerset, 106.
18. J. Matthews and G.F. Matthews, eds, Abstracts of probate acts in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 6 (1911), 244.
19. T.N.A., PROB 11/88/292 will of Edward Curle of Bedminster, Somerset, proved 10 Nov. 1596.
20. T.N.A., PROB 11/231/459 will of Edward Curle, clothier of Batcombe, Somerset, dated 20 January 1652/3.
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