Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
NameWilliam Henden 
3120, 9G Grandfather
3120, 9G GrandfatherBirth1640, Hothfield, Kent, England
Death1700-1703 Age: 60
FatherWilliam Henden (1596-1650)
MotherElizabeth Covert (1607-)
Spouses
1Dinah Counsell 3120, 9G Grandmother
3120, 9G GrandmotherBirth1643, Barrow Gurney, Somerset, England
Death1700-1703 Age: 57
FatherRev. William Counsell (1610-1674)
MotherJane (Unknown) (ca1615-1664)
Notes for William Henden
The following essay was written by Graham P. Steer and is reproduced here, taken from the website of Hendon researcher, E W Hendon.3122
WILLIAM HENDEN OF MAIDSTONE
by Graham P. Steer
(transcriber’s note: This William Henden was the grandfather of Richard & Josias Hendon and migrated to America c1700)
William Henden (bapt.1640 at Hothfield) was the son of William Henden and his second wife, Mary Covert, and was born at Hothfield where his parents lived from the late 1630s. The years of William’s childhood were marred by the Civil War between the autocratic high-church King and his democratic Puritan Parliament under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The Hendens, who had relatives at Court, were probably sympathizers with the King, but lived in an area which was pro-Parliament. Whether they moved away from Kent as this time to avoid conflict is not known. The King made his capital at Oxford, and the west country including Cornwall, Devon and the southwestern counties rallied around him. Did William’s parents take the family there for safety, or did they move elsewhere in order to be more anonymous? Sometime at the beginning of the Civil War, young William’s half-sister, Mary Henden, married Robert Blanchard of Wiltshire, which suggests that the family may indeed have gone to the west country.
When the hostilities were over and Parliament triumphed, the Hendens were no doubt distressed at the outcome: the King was tried and executed, the Puritan religion was enforced. Henceforth, there were to be no celebrations at Easter or Christmas, which were regarded as normal working days, there were no more “celebrations” in church, no more baptisms or Christian burials, and marriage was reduced to a mere civil contract. Taverns, which provoked lewd entertainment, were shut down too. This continued until the late 1650s, when Oliver Cromwell gave up his position as Protector of the Realm.
By the 1650s, William Henden had become a young man and possibly a headstrong one, if we read between the lines of the Will of his older (half)-brother, John, who was an apothecary at Maidstone. Interestingly, this John Henden occupied property belonging to Sir John Henden of Biddenden, a staunch royalist, and this suggests that the family of Hendens at Hothfield were also royalists, otherwise Sir John would not have leased them the shoppe and house in the High Street at Maidstone. Apothecary John died in 1659 leaving a long complicated Will in which he mentions his married sister, Mary Blanchard and his younger unmarried sister, Anne Henden, as well as his younger half-brother William, whom it seems benefits from the inheritance of properties in three places. This inheritance enabled him to become a “Gentleman”, and as such he went in search of a wife.
His sister, Mary Blanchard, lived in or around Bath in the 1660s, and when her husband died and she remarried at Batheaston in 1666, no doubt William was there to wish her well and possibly ‘give her away’, as eldest surviving brother. It has been surmised that William Henden might well have met his future wife, Dinah Counsell, through his sister Mary, as she was a resident in an area and in social circles which would have brought them into contact.
However they met, William married Dinah at Marksbury in 1669. Dinah’s father was the Rector of Marksbury and came from an old family established at Barrow Gurney which had acquired property from the monastic lands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. The ancestor’s name was Richard Counsell. Amongst his great-grandchildren was William Counsell (born 1610), Dinah’s father, who together with his cousin, John Counsell, went up to Oxford University to study at Gloucester Hall (which is now Worcester College). Another cousin was Josias Counsell, who was certainly acquainted with the Rector of Marksbury and his family. It can be no coincidence that some of the children of Dinah and William Henden bore names traditional in the Counsell family: Jane (born 1670) named after Dinah’s mother, and Solomon (born 1671) named after her late teenaged brother. Surrounded by their Counsell relatives at Barrow Gurney and ever-conscious of family history, the children of Dinah and William Henden would have known more about their mother’s family than their father’s. Ancestral Counsell names were therefore preferred to traditional Henden names, when it came to the choice of names for their grandchildren. Richard and Josias would have been logical names to commemorate the founder of the family at Barrow Gurney and a favorite kinsman.
William and Dinah most likely lived at the Rectory at Marksbury to look after Dinah’s aged and widowed father, who no doubt had great pleasure in performing the baptisms of his grandchildren; Jane in 1670 and Solomon in 1671. His remaining grandchildren were not born during his lifetime. The records of Solomon’s entrance to Cambridge University state that he was indeed born at Marksbury and that his father was “baliff”, probably to the Lord of the Manor at the present-day Barrow Gurney.
The Rev. William Counsell died in 1674 and was buried at his church, being commemorated on a large wall monument in Latin. The monument lists the Rector and his wife and their son, Solomon, but there is no mention of Dinah and William Henden although the blank marble suggests a space was reserved for their details. If they were in the country one would have expected the details to have been provided, but the entire Henden family seems to have disappeared without a trace.
After the death of her father, Dinah gave birth to two further sons: William in 1676 and John in 1679, both born and baptized at Marksbury. As far as we have been able to research in both Kent and Somerset, none of William and Dinah’s family have had a marriage or burial recorded in the records.
*************************
Graham Steer, who has done a lot of research on the Hendens, has suggested that William and Dinah Henden may have have drowned on a voyage to America about 1700.3120,3123
WILLIAM HENDEN OF MAIDSTONE
by Graham P. Steer
(transcriber’s note: This William Henden was the grandfather of Richard & Josias Hendon and migrated to America c1700)
William Henden (bapt.1640 at Hothfield) was the son of William Henden and his second wife, Mary Covert, and was born at Hothfield where his parents lived from the late 1630s. The years of William’s childhood were marred by the Civil War between the autocratic high-church King and his democratic Puritan Parliament under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. The Hendens, who had relatives at Court, were probably sympathizers with the King, but lived in an area which was pro-Parliament. Whether they moved away from Kent as this time to avoid conflict is not known. The King made his capital at Oxford, and the west country including Cornwall, Devon and the southwestern counties rallied around him. Did William’s parents take the family there for safety, or did they move elsewhere in order to be more anonymous? Sometime at the beginning of the Civil War, young William’s half-sister, Mary Henden, married Robert Blanchard of Wiltshire, which suggests that the family may indeed have gone to the west country.
When the hostilities were over and Parliament triumphed, the Hendens were no doubt distressed at the outcome: the King was tried and executed, the Puritan religion was enforced. Henceforth, there were to be no celebrations at Easter or Christmas, which were regarded as normal working days, there were no more “celebrations” in church, no more baptisms or Christian burials, and marriage was reduced to a mere civil contract. Taverns, which provoked lewd entertainment, were shut down too. This continued until the late 1650s, when Oliver Cromwell gave up his position as Protector of the Realm.
By the 1650s, William Henden had become a young man and possibly a headstrong one, if we read between the lines of the Will of his older (half)-brother, John, who was an apothecary at Maidstone. Interestingly, this John Henden occupied property belonging to Sir John Henden of Biddenden, a staunch royalist, and this suggests that the family of Hendens at Hothfield were also royalists, otherwise Sir John would not have leased them the shoppe and house in the High Street at Maidstone. Apothecary John died in 1659 leaving a long complicated Will in which he mentions his married sister, Mary Blanchard and his younger unmarried sister, Anne Henden, as well as his younger half-brother William, whom it seems benefits from the inheritance of properties in three places. This inheritance enabled him to become a “Gentleman”, and as such he went in search of a wife.
His sister, Mary Blanchard, lived in or around Bath in the 1660s, and when her husband died and she remarried at Batheaston in 1666, no doubt William was there to wish her well and possibly ‘give her away’, as eldest surviving brother. It has been surmised that William Henden might well have met his future wife, Dinah Counsell, through his sister Mary, as she was a resident in an area and in social circles which would have brought them into contact.
However they met, William married Dinah at Marksbury in 1669. Dinah’s father was the Rector of Marksbury and came from an old family established at Barrow Gurney which had acquired property from the monastic lands after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. The ancestor’s name was Richard Counsell. Amongst his great-grandchildren was William Counsell (born 1610), Dinah’s father, who together with his cousin, John Counsell, went up to Oxford University to study at Gloucester Hall (which is now Worcester College). Another cousin was Josias Counsell, who was certainly acquainted with the Rector of Marksbury and his family. It can be no coincidence that some of the children of Dinah and William Henden bore names traditional in the Counsell family: Jane (born 1670) named after Dinah’s mother, and Solomon (born 1671) named after her late teenaged brother. Surrounded by their Counsell relatives at Barrow Gurney and ever-conscious of family history, the children of Dinah and William Henden would have known more about their mother’s family than their father’s. Ancestral Counsell names were therefore preferred to traditional Henden names, when it came to the choice of names for their grandchildren. Richard and Josias would have been logical names to commemorate the founder of the family at Barrow Gurney and a favorite kinsman.
William and Dinah most likely lived at the Rectory at Marksbury to look after Dinah’s aged and widowed father, who no doubt had great pleasure in performing the baptisms of his grandchildren; Jane in 1670 and Solomon in 1671. His remaining grandchildren were not born during his lifetime. The records of Solomon’s entrance to Cambridge University state that he was indeed born at Marksbury and that his father was “baliff”, probably to the Lord of the Manor at the present-day Barrow Gurney.
The Rev. William Counsell died in 1674 and was buried at his church, being commemorated on a large wall monument in Latin. The monument lists the Rector and his wife and their son, Solomon, but there is no mention of Dinah and William Henden although the blank marble suggests a space was reserved for their details. If they were in the country one would have expected the details to have been provided, but the entire Henden family seems to have disappeared without a trace.
After the death of her father, Dinah gave birth to two further sons: William in 1676 and John in 1679, both born and baptized at Marksbury. As far as we have been able to research in both Kent and Somerset, none of William and Dinah’s family have had a marriage or burial recorded in the records.
*************************
Graham Steer, who has done a lot of research on the Hendens, has suggested that William and Dinah Henden may have have drowned on a voyage to America about 1700.3120,3123
Notes for William Henden
For an excellent treatise on William and Dinah Henden, see Graham Steer’s page on Ancestry.com.3123
Notes for William Henden
Following from Graham Steer, the foremost Henden family researcher.3123
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE HENDENS ?
After graduating from Cambridge University and being ordained a priest in the Church of England, Solomon Henden, Dinah and William's eldest son was appointed vicar of Llanhaden in Pembrokeshire in 1694, and remained there until his death in 1745. He was apparently unmarried. He had money and property in Wales which had probably come from the sale of the estate at Barrow Gurney, but he forgot his roots there. Nor were his particulars inscribed on the family memorial tablet in the little church at Marksbury where his grandfather had been Rector.
What happened to the Hendens at Barrow Gurney after 1700 is a mystery. They disappeared from the records, and being gentry they should have been recorded somewhere. Even more mysteriously, Dinah and William Henden, their sons William and John, and Dinah' s brother William Counsell also disappeared. Several theories have been put forward, including some kind of disaster at sea when the family was crossing the Atlantic to the American colonies, and this is quite feasible.Was the family lost? Did Dinah`s brother perish too, for her nephew, John Counsell of Bath, sold the family estates at Barrow Gurney in 1703 on his 21st birthday, presumably just after coming into his inheritance. No burial for his father has been found. Just as these tragic events took place, William Hendon appeared at King and Queen County in Virginia in 1704 when he was listed as being the proprietor of a small plantation of 70 acres. He was the survivor of the Barrow Gumey Hendens, and was probably waiting for his family to join him in the prosperous plantations of Virginia. But what really happened to them?
Could it be that they were on their way to Virginia but they perished because they were elderly? Were they shipwrecked? Did they ever make it to King and Queen County? We cannot know for certain. If they arrived in Virginia, their fortune from England would have bought more than a 70 acre plantation. Sofar, there is little evidence except the absence of what should have been.
There have been several legends told about the fate of the Hendens, including the following two which bear scrutiny: that three Henden brothers started to America in three different ships - one ship was wrecked off the coast of Ireland and the brother returned to England, while the other two made it to America. A second legend has it that two brothers, Josias and Richard, who were related to Sir John Henden of Biddenden in Kent, fled to America to avoid service in the Navy after their uncle was killed in the service. At least two other stories passed down by word of mouth register a family connection with an aristocrat and boats which passed or sailed from Ireland.
What seems to have happened is that very soon after William Hendon (the spelling changed in America) registered his 70 acres of Plantation, he died leaving a wife and two young children. The boys would have had little memory of their father but they may have heard stories of an aristocrat (Sir John Henden or Sir Edward Henden) and an English Lord (the Earl of Thanet at Hothfield), and possibly mixed up the details. As it turned out, they were indeed related to Sir John and Sir Edward Henden, and as their father had lived near Bristol, his boat had probably left for America from there, sailing past the southern coast of Ireland. The fact of three brothers is intriguing, as Dinah and William had three sons: Solomon, William and John. Solomon, as we know, studied at Cambridge and became vicar of Llanhaden in Wales. Did he try and fail to reach Virginia by boat? His position as a clergyman puts this into doubt. Was John the uncle who was killed in the navy, according to the legend? That leaves just William. As William certainly made it to King and Queen County, we must surmise that John and his parents probably did not. Were they drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of county Cork, Ireland? Did anyone survive and return to England? The absence of their names in any records suggests not. Here is an area for future investigation.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO THE HENDENS ?
After graduating from Cambridge University and being ordained a priest in the Church of England, Solomon Henden, Dinah and William's eldest son was appointed vicar of Llanhaden in Pembrokeshire in 1694, and remained there until his death in 1745. He was apparently unmarried. He had money and property in Wales which had probably come from the sale of the estate at Barrow Gurney, but he forgot his roots there. Nor were his particulars inscribed on the family memorial tablet in the little church at Marksbury where his grandfather had been Rector.
What happened to the Hendens at Barrow Gurney after 1700 is a mystery. They disappeared from the records, and being gentry they should have been recorded somewhere. Even more mysteriously, Dinah and William Henden, their sons William and John, and Dinah' s brother William Counsell also disappeared. Several theories have been put forward, including some kind of disaster at sea when the family was crossing the Atlantic to the American colonies, and this is quite feasible.Was the family lost? Did Dinah`s brother perish too, for her nephew, John Counsell of Bath, sold the family estates at Barrow Gurney in 1703 on his 21st birthday, presumably just after coming into his inheritance. No burial for his father has been found. Just as these tragic events took place, William Hendon appeared at King and Queen County in Virginia in 1704 when he was listed as being the proprietor of a small plantation of 70 acres. He was the survivor of the Barrow Gumey Hendens, and was probably waiting for his family to join him in the prosperous plantations of Virginia. But what really happened to them?
Could it be that they were on their way to Virginia but they perished because they were elderly? Were they shipwrecked? Did they ever make it to King and Queen County? We cannot know for certain. If they arrived in Virginia, their fortune from England would have bought more than a 70 acre plantation. Sofar, there is little evidence except the absence of what should have been.
There have been several legends told about the fate of the Hendens, including the following two which bear scrutiny: that three Henden brothers started to America in three different ships - one ship was wrecked off the coast of Ireland and the brother returned to England, while the other two made it to America. A second legend has it that two brothers, Josias and Richard, who were related to Sir John Henden of Biddenden in Kent, fled to America to avoid service in the Navy after their uncle was killed in the service. At least two other stories passed down by word of mouth register a family connection with an aristocrat and boats which passed or sailed from Ireland.
What seems to have happened is that very soon after William Hendon (the spelling changed in America) registered his 70 acres of Plantation, he died leaving a wife and two young children. The boys would have had little memory of their father but they may have heard stories of an aristocrat (Sir John Henden or Sir Edward Henden) and an English Lord (the Earl of Thanet at Hothfield), and possibly mixed up the details. As it turned out, they were indeed related to Sir John and Sir Edward Henden, and as their father had lived near Bristol, his boat had probably left for America from there, sailing past the southern coast of Ireland. The fact of three brothers is intriguing, as Dinah and William had three sons: Solomon, William and John. Solomon, as we know, studied at Cambridge and became vicar of Llanhaden in Wales. Did he try and fail to reach Virginia by boat? His position as a clergyman puts this into doubt. Was John the uncle who was killed in the navy, according to the legend? That leaves just William. As William certainly made it to King and Queen County, we must surmise that John and his parents probably did not. Were they drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of county Cork, Ireland? Did anyone survive and return to England? The absence of their names in any records suggests not. Here is an area for future investigation.
Notes for Dinah (Spouse 1)