At present the earliest known distribution for the I-Y33765 clade, in both Sweden and England, is very localised; in Sweden within Tjust, Småland and in England within the Chew Valley, Somerset. Until recently it has appeared that in England the clade also had an ancestral lineage from south Gloucestershire but it now seems more probable that this too represents a genealogy that can be traced originally from the Chew Valley area.
Previously I have suggested that the genetic and historical evidence make it possible that migration of the clade from Scandinavia to England occurred in the late Viking period most probably with the participation of a man or several men from Tjust in the campaigns of Sweyn Forkbeard or his son, Cnut the Great. Following Cnut becoming the English king in 1017 it seems to me that an I-Y33765 male very likely became a resident in one of several manors in North Somerset that, in Domesday are recorded as being held by men described as "the Dane" (Lewis, 2016), and that it is his descendants who are now testing positive for the Y-DNA SNP, I-Y33765 and for the more recent English mutations. Up until now all five of these men, representing three lineages that are distinct over the last two to three hundred years, have variants of the Clement hereditary surname.
In this article I intend to begin an investigation of the documentary evidence for the connection between the "Dane" who first set up his home in north Somerset circa 1020-1060 and the three I-Y33765 "Clement/s" genealogies that originate out of Chew Valley in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To do this I will describe what I consider to be a plausible historical narrative based on documented sources to follow the hereditary surname "Clement/s" in the manors and parishes of Chew Valley over 600-700y. In this first installment I will consider the years 1060 to 1538.
At the outset of this period Domesday gives us evidence for just a single Scandinavian manor, Clutton, that we may reasonably propose to be within the catchment of the River Chew. Domesday records that in 1060 this manor was held by Thorkil "the Dane" (Lewis, 2016). At that time it seems to have been an "outlier" from a significant grouping of five Scandinavian manors further west adjacent to the Severn estuary. Thorkil held two additional manors in that group, Chelvey and Backwell. Domesday also records that in 1086 the ownership of Clutton had passed to Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, who was a powerful Norman landowner and friend of William the Conqueror and that Gregory's tenant at Clutton was William de Monceaux. In addition Geoffrey held the manor of Cameley which joins Clutton on its southern boundary and the manor of Farmborough which is contiguous to the northeast. While Geoffrey kept the lordship of Cameley his tenant at Farmborough was again William de Monceaux.
Figure 1: Distribution of individuals named Clement in the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll of Somerset (red circles). The 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll for Somerset contains the names of about 10,000 inhabitants of that county whose movable assets were assessed at a value of ten shillings or more. Only five persons with Clement variant surnames are included. Three of these live in the Hundred of Chewton Mendip, each within 1km of the Manor of Clutton which, in 1060, was held by Thorkil "the Dane". According to the entry in Domesday recorded in 1086 the Manor of Clutton contained 23 households including 10 villagers, 12 smallholders and a slave. Because of it's Scandinavian ownership, for perhaps two generations before the Norman Conquest, it is plausible to speculate that I-Y33765 males lived in one or more of the Clutton households in 1060. The map of Somerset used to illustrate this article was produced by Emmanuel Bowen in 1750.
It seems to me Greoffrey's Lordship over Clutton, Cameley and Farmborough may be significant for our investigation. These three manors skirted a large portion of the southern slopes above Chew Valley and it is in Cameley and Farmborough that we have our earliest documented use of the Clement surname in the area.
Figure 2: Documented locations for Clement individuals in the vale of the River Chew before the introduction of church registers circa 1538 (dates in red) and earliest documented locations for Clement genealogies that are derived for I-Y33765 (dates in purple).
First in Cameley in 1283, William Clement is recorded as witness on a deed for land tenure (Somerset Heritage Centre, DD/HI/A/47/8) and some forty years later Adam Clement is recorded as liable for 12 pence tax at "Hentone [Blewitt] et Cameleghe" in the Lay Subsidy Roll of 1327 (Dickenson, 1889). In the same year, in the Camley tything of [Temple] Cloud (entered as Londe in the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll), Johanne Clement was assessed at 12 pence and Willelmo Clement at six pence. So the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll for Somerset records three men with the Clement name living within a kilometer of Thorkil the Dane's manor of Clutton. The 1327 Roll lists about 10,000 inhabitants of Somerset whose "movable goods" were valued at more than ten shillings and was drawn up in the first year of the reign of Edward III. In this Somerset population survey only five individuals are named Clement; they are the three we have noted in the Hundred of Chiwton (Chewton Mendip) and one each in the hundreds of Coker and Wyntestok (Winterstoke) (see Figures1 & 3).
It seems to me this evidence from the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll substantiates a particular concentration of the Clement surname in the Chew Valley area adjacent to the Manor of Clutton in the early fourteenth century. In other words, about ten generations after Domesday records that manor was held by a Scandinavian lord, "Thorkil the Dane", a group of households of the "middling sort" in the neigbouring parish of Cameley represent the highest density (60%) of the Clement surname.in the whole of Somerset. Other deeds mention the same Clement family at Cameley in the period up until 1387. Given the association between the Clement surname and the I-Y33765 SNP and the migration of that mutation from Scandinavia circa 1000, it seems to me we might interpret this documentation as supporting the possibility that men with this haplogroup whose patriarch had originally lived in the manor of Clutton had moved into Cameley during the two centuries 1086 to 1283 and had subsequently lived there at least until the later fourteenth century (Figure 2). It is possible that sometime later some of these Clement lineages moved into the upper Chew Valley around Stowey and the Harptree villages. In 1283 Cameley was held by the de Marisco family who had gained it by marriage circa 1200.
By 1154 ownership of Geoffrey's manor at Farmborough had passed to William de Ferenberge who at that date gave some land to the Abbey of Keynsham. The manor of Farmborough is in the Keynsham Hundred. In the lay Subsidy Roll of 1334 at "Farnbergh" John Clement was assessed for 2 shillings tax. This suggests to me that by the mid fourteenth century the I-Y33765 mutation had also moved from Clutton into Farmborough. This is the first record we have of expansion towards the lower Chew Valley around Compton Dando (Figure 2). By the late 14th century Farmborough had passed to the
Stafford family, who held it until 1470.
The earliest documentary evidence we have at present for the Clement name in the lower valley of the River Chew is circa 1518 when Thomas Clement, husbandman of Compton Dando, is the plaintiff in a dispute over two manors in that parish, Grubbeswick and Sewardswick for which he and his wife, Johan, held the lease (National Archive C1/487/1 & C1/487/2). The defendants are John Rede, husbandman, and Isabel Clement, widow, both of Burnett. This proceeding in the court of Chancery and the almost contemporary Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1522-24 and 1524-25 in the lower Chew Valley parishes together record some ten Clement individuals in that area. It seems to me this number of Clements with sufficient goods to be subject to taxation suggests the family, and hence I-Y33765 men, were living there for decades before the 1520's (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Documented locations for Clement individuals in the parishes of the lower Chew valley (Keynsham Hundred) before the introduction of church registers circa 1538 (dates and locations underlined
in red). The supposed original locus for I-Y33765 in the Manor of Clutton circa 1060 is circled (near bottom centre) as are it's hypothetical centres during the late 13th and early14th centuries in Cameley and Temple Cloud.
In 1538,
Henry VIII ordered that every parish should provide a register in
which the priest would record each baptism, marriage and burial within his congregation. In the Chew Valley surviving parish registers record events from the mid 1500's and using these we can construct more coherent genealogies. Clements YS32045, who is I-Y33767+, has such a family history that originates with the
marriage of his seven times great-grandparents, Francis Clement and
Katherine Peacocke, at St Mary, Compton Dando on 29 July 1663. It seems to me that at present the most plausible hypothesis we have to explain the several similar I-Y33765+ genealogies whose origins are clustered in the Chew Valley is that their common patriarch lived in the vicinity of the Manor of Clutton at the time of Domesday.
Click on images to enlarge
References
Dickinson, F.H.(1889) Kirby’s quest for Somerset. Nomina Villarum for Somerset of
16th of Edward the 3rd. Exchequer Lay Subsidies 169/5, which is a tax
roll for Somerset of the first year of Edward the 3rd. County rate of
1742. Hundreds and parishes etc. of Somerset as given in the census of
1841. Somerset Record Society, Vol 3. 360pp
Lewis, C.P. (2016) Danish Landowners in Wessex in 1066, in Danes in Wessex, Eds Ryan Lavelle & Simon Roffey, Oxbow Books, p 172-211
