Little Maplestead, Essex Genealogy

England Essex

Parish History
Little Maplestead St John the Baptist [St John Of Jerusalem] is an Ancient Parish in Essex.

The diocese of Chelmsford was created in 1914, prior to this Essex parishes were in the jurisdiction of the Bishops of London until 1845 when they transferred to the diocese of Rochester. The diocese of Chelmsford has 474 parishes and 600 churches and is the second largest region in the church of England outside London.

MAPLESTEAD, LITTLE (St. John of Jerusalem), a parish, in the union of Halstead, hundred of Hinckford, N. division of Essex, 2¼ miles (N. by E.) from Halstead; containing 407 inhabitants. It comprises 1063a. 3r. 19p., of which 845 acres are arable, 98 pasture, and 72 woodland and plantations; the soil is fertile, and the scenery finely varied. The living is a perpetual curacy; net income, £54; patrons and impropriators, the proprietors of the Hall farm, whose tithes have been commuted for £205. The church is ancient, and remarkable as one of the few remaining models of the Holy Sepulchre; the east end is semicircular: the church is said to have had the privilege of sanctuary. Juliana, wife of Fitz-Aldhelm de Burgo, in the time of Henry I., gave the parish to the Knights Hospitallers, who had a commandery here.

From: 'Manton - Marazion', A Topographical Dictionary of England (1848), pp. 251-253. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=51132&amp;amp;strquery=great maplestead Date accessed: 16 February 2011.

Little Maplestead once had a friary called Little Maplestead Preceptory.

It is however perhaps most famous for its round church, the Church of St. John the Baptist. This is one of only four round churches now surviving and was built by the Knights Hospitallers.

The charters under the heading of Maplestead fill about a fifth of the great chartulary of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem in England, and those relating to other possessions of the Hospitallers and Templars in Essex about the same space. This large proportion was no doubt partly due to the accident of preservation, but it is clear that the grants made to the Hospital in Essex considerably outnumbered those in any other county. Moreover, the chief house of the Hospital at Clerkenwell was itself founded, probably in the first half of the reign of Stephen, by an Essex man, Jordan Briset. The town and church of Little Maplestead were granted to the Knights Hospitallers by Juliana the daughter of Robert Dosnel. Her husband, William FitzAudelin, the dapifer of Henry II, confirmed the grant, and he also made another grant to them of the church by a later charter, apparently after the death of Juliana, dated 16 March, 1186. The establishment of the preceptory probably took place somewhere about this date; it may have been any time after the first grant of the town. Nearly 600 charters are transcribed on the pages headed Maplestead in the chartulary; and the authority of the preceptory probably extended over the possessions to which these relate. Some of the grants are made specifically to Maplestead and some to the Hospital in general. Several are earlier than the foundation of the preceptory, and one grant of land in Lambourne is dated as far back as 1148. There is mention of a seal of the preceptory, though no examples of it are known. Morant says that to this preceptory belonged a 'farrye clark,' whose business it was to officiate in divine things, and quotes a memorandum from a rental of the manor that 'The vicar of Bornam payeth by yere to the Farrye Clarke 40s. or else the Farrye Clarke may goe to Downmow Priory and take the challys or the masse book or any other ornament for his dewtie.' A full account of the bajulia of Maplestead is given in the report of the possessions of the Hospital in England made by Prior Philip de Thame to the Grand Master in 1338. There was a messuage with a garden worth 10s. yearly; 380 acres of land worth £12 13s. 4d. and at Odewell 180 acres of land worth £6; 16 acres of meadow worth 32s.; 30 acres of pasture worth 30s.; profits of underwood amounting to 8s.; rents amounting to 26½ marks; a dovecote worth 3s. 4d.; perquisites of court and fines worth 20s.; the tenth of the church of Maplestead, worth £6; and lands farmed for 100s. at Bobbelouwe and for 66s. 8d. at Assebrugg. Besides this there was the fraeria or voluntary contribution from the neighbourhood, which amounted to £22. The total receipts for the year thus amounted to £77 16s. 8d. The expenses amounted to £37 16s. 8d. Of this £7 16s. 0d. was paid for 52 quarters of wheat for baking bread, £5 4s. 0d. for 52 quarters of malt for brewing ale, £7 16s. 0d. for flesh, fish and other necessaries for the kitchen, £3 9s. 4d. for robes, mantles and other necessaries for the preceptor and brother, 20s. for the stipend of a chaplain, 40s. for the stipend of a chaplain celebrating thrice weekly in the chapel of Odewell, 13s. 4d. for the fee of the steward prosecuting the business of the house, 40s. for the stipends of four clerks collecting the fraeria, 26s. 8d. for the stipends of a bailiff, a cook, a baker and a porter, 5s. for the stipend of a palfreyman, 3s. for a page for the stable, 40s. on the visitation of the prior for two days, 40s. on gifts to the sheriff, his clerks and others, 20s. on the repair of the houses, 3s. for rent paid for lands in Maplestead and 5s. 2d. for lands in Odewell, 6s. 8d. for suits of two courts, and 8s. 6d. to the archdeacon for procuration. Thus £40 remained to be paid into the treasury. John de Haulee, esquire, was preceptor and Edmund de Roos, esquire, brother. In 1463 the 'hospital of St. John of Little Mapulstede' was farmed by John Syday; which probably means that no more Hospitallers resided there. In the Valor of 1535 the possessions of the Hospitallers in Essex, including those which had previously belonged to the Templars, were valued at £432 2s. 1¼d. yearly. The Hospital was dissolved in 1540. The manor of Little Maplestead was granted in fee to George Harper on 18 April, 1542, in an exchange; and two days later he had licence (fn. 10) to alienate it to John Wyseman and Agnes his wife.

From: 'House of Knights Hospitallers: Preceptory of Little Maplestead', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 2 (1907), pp. 178-179. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=39855&amp;amp;strquery=little maplestead Date accessed: 16 February 2011.

Little Maplestead is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex County Council.

Civil Registration
Birth, marriages and deaths were kept by the government, from July 1837 to the present day. The civil registration article tells more about these records. There are several Internet sites with name lists or indexes. A popular site is FreeBMD.

Church records
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Census records
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Probate records
Records of wills, administrations, inventories, indexes, etc. were filed by the court with jurisdiction over this parish. Go to Essex Probate Records to find the name of the court having primary jurisdiction. Scroll down in the article to the section Court Jurisdictions by Parish.

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