Who were the Holbrookes in England before Thomas the immigrant?
The question
Thomas Holbrook, who sailed from Weymouth, Dorset, in 1635 and settled at Weymouth, Massachusetts, was the son of William Holbrooke “the elder” of Glastonbury, Somerset, yeoman. Above William the line rests on inference. This thread follows three questions. Were William’s parents Thomas Holbrooke of Norton Malreward and his second wife Edith? Who was Edith before she married, and who was her first husband, a Sanders? And can anyone be found above Thomas of Norton Malreward? Family accounts tie the family to the medieval de Holebrok knights of Suffolk, and Mollie’s typescript calls Thomas the son of “Sir Thomas Holbrooke of Broadway”; the records are the test of both.
Trail
- 30 Sep 2026William’s will, and Lord’s Thornbury parents
William Holbrooke “the elder” of Glastonbury, yeoman, made his will on 11 Dec 1625 (proved 1 Feb 1625/6). As Lord (1942) summarises it, it names sons Thomas, John “if he be livinge” and William the younger, daughter Basell, and grandsons Thomas Holbrook Jr., Edmund Tyly and Clement Weaver Jr. (Will of William Holbrooke the elder of Glastonbury, yeoman, A. Roberts Lord, Holbrook and Allied Families (New York, 1942)). The St John’s register has Thomas’s marriage to Jane Powyes on 12 Sept 1616 and his son John’s baptism in 1618 (Parish register of St John the Baptist, Glastonbury, Somerset). So William is Thomas’s father. The original will survives at the Somerset Heritage Centre (D/D/ct/1/H/137) and has not been read. The register begins only in 1603, so William’s baptism and his older children’s cannot be in it.
Lord proposed as William’s parents Thomas Holbrook and Constance Thayer, married at Thornbury, Gloucestershire, in 1560. The FamilySearch index reads the bride as “Tawier,” Thornbury had its own Holbrooke family, and the FamilySearch tree attaches no parents to William.
- 1 Oct 2026The north Somerset wills
The register copies of seven Prerogative Court wills, downloaded from The National Archives, showed a Holbrooke family around Chew, Norton Malreward, Queen Charlton and Marksbury from 1503. Roger Holbroke of Chew (1503, TNA PROB 11/13/574) named a son Thomas as one of his executors. Nicholas Derell of Marksbury (1546) and his widow Alice (1551/2) named “Thomas Holbroke of Norton Malerward,” whom Alice called “my sonne in lawe,” and his children John and Johan (Will of Nicholas Derell of Marksbury, Will of Alice Derell of Marksbury, widow). Robert Holbrooke of Queen Charlton, yeoman (1616/17), left a ewe and a lamb to “William Holbroke the sonne of John Holbrooke my brother deceased” (Will of Robert Holbrooke of Queen Charlton, yeoman). On these alone the research put a north Somerset origin for William at 60-65%, and about 40% that he was Robert’s nephew. Both were below the 80% standard.
- 1 Oct 2026William’s own statement, 1617
Burton W. Spear’s Search for the Passengers of the Mary & John, vol. 26, prints Robin Bush’s abstract of a deposition that William Holbrook of St John’s, Glastonbury, yeoman, gave on 9 May 1617 in a Wells church-court tithe case: 19 years at Glastonbury, before that 20 years at Compton Dando, before that at “Norton Mareward,” where he was born; aged 65 (Deposition of William Holbrooke in a Wells church-court tithe case). So he was born about 1551-2. His children born before about 1598, the immigrant among them, were probably born at Compton Dando, which has no register or bishop’s transcript before 1602/3; that is why their baptisms have never been found. The deposition rules out Lord’s Thornbury couple, married eight years after William’s birth, and makes Robert’s nephew William a different, younger man. Spear cites the book as “D/D/Cd 42 50”; it is probably now SHC D/D/cd/50 (1616-1618), a fragile volume. Only snippets of Spear have been read.
- 1 Oct 2026Two wills that name a son William
Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Joseph Neal (1945), pp. 125-128, from page images, abstracts two wills (Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Joseph Neal (Portland, 1945)). Thomas Holbrooke of Norton Malreward, yeoman, made his will on 11 Jan 1571/2 and was buried there on 11 Mar 1571/2. It is lost, known only from an abstract, and names sons John the elder, Thomas, William, John the younger and Robert, daughter Margery, wife Edith and “his wife’s son” Richard Sanders. It leaves William the lease of “the park” at Compton Dando (Will of Thomas Holbrooke of Norton Malreward, Parish register of Norton Malreward, Somerset).
Edith Holbrocke of Compton Dando, widow, made hers on 12 Nov 1592 (proved 13 Feb 1592/3). It leaves a feather bed to her son William, a bed to her son Robert, 10s. to her “cousin and godson William Horsington the younger,” and the rest to her son John, including debts owed her by her sons Richard and Thomas Sandes. William and Robert Holbrooke were overseers and witnesses (Will of Edith Holbrocke of Compton Dando, widow). The original survives (SHC D/D/ct/1/H/135) and has not been seen.
Same birthplace, same generation, same Compton Dando holding: the research judged William of Glastonbury to be Thomas’s son at about 85%, and Edith his own mother at about 75%. Against Edith: Davis thought Thomas’s two eldest sons and probably Margery (baptised 1555) were children of an earlier wife, and if Margery was, Edith married Thomas after 1555 and would be William’s stepmother. Davis, who did not know the deposition, had made William a grandson of Thomas through John the younger.
- 1 Oct 2026Compton Dando leases and the Horsington accounts
Archive catalogues (the documents are not yet seen) describe a lease for lives of 30 Apr 1565 from John and Anne Hungerford to “Edyth Holbrooke, and Robert and John her sons” (Bristol Archives AC/D/26/8, Lease for lives of property in Compton Dando, John Hungerford to Edith Holbrooke and her sons). They also describe executors’ accounts of 23 Mar 1592/3 in which “William Hollbrooke” was overseer and administrator for William Horsington the elder of Compton Dando, with “letters of tutorship for William the Younger,” the boy Edith called her cousin and godson (SHC D/D/cta/H/37). That is an independent record of a William Holbrooke acting at Compton Dando in the years William of Glastonbury says he lived there. William is not in Edith’s 1565 lease; his father gave him a separate holding, the park. On this the research file raised the Thomas-to-William link to 85-90%.
- 1 Oct 2026Leads for Edith’s own family
No record names Edith’s parents or her first husband’s forename. Two leads, both unproven. The Horsingtons, yeomen of Corston and Compton Dando: “cousin” then covered many kinds of kin, and the printed abstract of John Horsington of Corston’s will (1536, TNA PROB 11/25/610) lists his sons but no daughters. And, for her first husband, Thomas Saunders, son of William Saunders of Chew Stoke (will 15 Dec 1539, TNA PROB 11/28/50). The Saunders name runs through the same circle: Alice Derell’s daughter Agnes Saunders, and the Elen Saunders who married Thomas’s son John in 1556.
- 1 Oct 2026Above Thomas of Norton Malreward
“Roger Holbroke and John Holbroke” were sworn as sureties at the bishop’s manor court of Chew in 1463 (SHC DD/CC/B/131911a/8, printed in Ambrose Heal, Records of the Heal Family, 1932, p. xxvii), so Roger of Chew was an adult forty years before his will of 1503. His son Thomas fits the Thomas buried at Norton Malreward on 10 Apr 1558 better than the testator of 1571/2, who was fathering children in the late 1550s, so Roger is more likely a grandfather than a father. That is inference.
A Chancery suit of 1533-1538, Ive v Holbroke (TNA C 1/833/14, catalogue only), was brought against “Elizabeth Holbroke alias Hedge and Thomas, her son” over pasture in Chew Stoke, and an Elinor Holbrooke alias Hedges, widow, of Chew Stoke left a will in 1627; Robert of Queen Charlton’s widow was Elnor. One hypothesis is that Elizabeth’s son Thomas was Thomas of Norton Malreward. Davis had abstracts of every Somerset Holbrooke will from 1457 to 1631 and still did not link Thomas to Roger, so the link is probably not in the wills.
- 1 Oct 2026The Suffolk knights and “Sir Thomas”
Lord (1942) links the family to the de Holebrok knights of Holbrook, Suffolk, and Mollie’s typescript calls Thomas “son of Sir Thomas Holbrooke of Broadway” (Mollie Frances (Holbrook) Pfeiffer, Holbrook-Low family typescript, Books 1-9), with no source. The Suffolk main line ended with daughters in 1376 (Copinger, The Manors of Suffolk). Three people of the surname were already taxed in Somerset in 1327 (Kirby’s Quest), none at Chew or Norton Malreward. No record connects the Somerset family to Suffolk, and a separate, local origin of the name is likelier. The review of Mollie’s typescript the same day marked the “Sir Thomas” claim incorrect.
- 1 Oct 2026Y-DNA
The FamilyTreeDNA Holbrook project’s group for Thomas of Weymouth’s descendants (haplogroup J-FTD548) rests on two Big Y testers, probably second cousins, who match each other but no other Holbrooks; their closest matches are mostly Freemans. The administrator’s write-up of 26 July 2025 asks whether another lineage entered that line and calls for more distant cousins to test. The English-origin Holbrook testers in the project are in a separate group (T-M70). So the family’s Y-DNA signature is not yet confirmed.
- 2 Oct 2026Two free downloads
Two more wills came from The National Archives. Richard Holbroke, merchant of Bristol (proved 1457, TNA PROB 11/4/176), was to be buried at St Stephen’s, Bristol (diocese of Worcester), and names his wife Margaret and “Richard my son and heir,” with no land and no other Holbrookes: a dead end for the Somerset family. John Horssyngton of Corston (1536, PROB 11/25/610) names sons Richard, Giles, Thomas and William and no daughter, so it neither shows nor rules out that Edith was a Horsington. These readings are recorded only in the old Holbrook-Low tree; the archive does not yet hold the transcriptions.
- 6 Oct 2026“Sir Thomas” marked disproven
When Mollie’s typescript was checked claim by claim on the site, her statement that Thomas was “the son of Sir Thomas Holbrooke of Broadway” was marked disproven. William’s will names his son Thomas; William was a yeoman born at Norton Malreward; and no source for a knight has been found. The title may come from the Suffolk Sir Thomas de Holebrok (d. 1360).
Where it stands
Thomas the immigrant’s father, William Holbrooke of Glastonbury (c. 1551-2 to 1625/6), is proven. William’s page records Thomas Holbrooke of Norton Malreward as his father, inferred and probable at about 85% (the research file’s last pass put it at 85-90%), and Edith as his mother, probable at about 75%. Lord’s Thornbury couple is disproven; Davis’s John the younger stays on William’s page as a possible alternative. Whether Edith was William’s mother or his stepmother turns partly on Margery (baptised 1555), whose mother is left unlinked until it is decided; Thomas’s page gives his marriage to Edith as by about 1550, while Margery’s page leaves open a marriage after 1555. Edith’s maiden name and her first husband’s forename are unknown. Thomas of Norton Malreward’s own parents are unknown; whether he was a son or grandson of Roger of Chew is the open question on his page. A descent from the Suffolk knights is unproven, and “Sir Thomas” is disproven. None of the documents below has been ordered yet.
Next
- Three free will downloads (The National Archives, signed in to a free account): William Saunders of Chew Stoke, 1539 (PROB 11/28/50); Thomas Horsington of Corston, 1612 (PROB 11/119/416); Edward Saunders of Chew Stoke, 1591 (PROB 11/78/75). William Saunders’s son Thomas is the candidate for Edith’s first husband, and the later wills may name Holbrooke or Sandes kin.
- Spear, vol. 26, read in full (archive.org, free to borrow). Only search snippets of the 1617 deposition abstract and of Spear’s Norton Malreward and Compton Dando transcripts have been read.
- Edith’s original will and William’s 1617 deposition (Somerset Heritage Centre, D/D/ct/1/H/135 and probably D/D/cd/50; email somersetarchives@swheritage.org.uk with their Research and Copying Request Form; £44 an hour in 15-minute steps, minimum £22, replies in about 10-12 weeks). The will may describe her son William, name his children or name her own kin; if it ties him to Glastonbury, the Thomas-to-William link would rise to the high 90s. The deposition book is fragile and may not be copyable.
- The rest of the Somerset batch (same request, £44-£88 in all): William’s original will (D/D/ct/1/H/137), which would settle who his overseers were; the Horsington accounts (D/D/cta/H/37); the Compton Dando deeds (DD/BR/su/6), whose leases for lives may name William and his sons; and the Holbrooke will abstracts (DD/X/HBS/1), including the Dundry wills and Elinor alias Hedges (1627). Skip DD/X/HBS/1 if Davis’s typescript at NEHGS has the same abstracts.
- Ive v Holbroke (TNA C 1/833/14, “Order a copy”: a £9.92 page check, then a quote). The bill should say how the Chew Stoke pasture came to Elizabeth and her son Thomas, and may name her husband. The best chance at the generation above Thomas.
- Edith’s 1565 lease and the Compton Dando surveys (Bristol Archives, AC/D/26/8, AC/M/6 and AC/M/11/13; archives@bristol.gov.uk, quote on request). The surveys may list William’s holding, with the lives named, before he left about 1598.
- “The Horsingtons of Corston, Pucklechurch, 1510-1673” (Bath Record Office, Acc/269/6; archives@bathnes.gov.uk, quote on request). May show whether Edith was born a Horsington.
- Davis’s own notes (NEHGS library, 97 Newbury Street, Boston; entry by donation, manuscripts may need membership): his typescript Holbrook Records, England 1544-1698 (call number G HOL 604, not in the online catalogue) and Mss C 1374, four Holbrook family wills. A family member in Boston could visit. They may show how far Davis got above Thomas.
- A Y-DNA test (FamilyTreeDNA Holbrook project; test fee) by a male-line Holbrook descended from Richard Blackmer Holbrook. A third, independent line would show whether J-FTD548 is really Thomas of Weymouth’s signature. It cannot reach the Suffolk knights, whose male line ended in 1376.