John Cooke of Horkesley & afterward of Pebmarsh

John Cooke
BURIAL: St John the Baptist Churchyard
Pebmarsh, Braintree District, Essex, England
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/174162271/john-cooke

John Cooke was the son of Robert Cooke and Elizabeth Belknap.

He married about 1518 Mary Matilda Newton daughter of Sir Peter and Joanne Agnes Kyffyn Newton.

Known Children:
Robert Cooke 1520-1559 Md Joan Elizabeth Sydney Died Wickford, Essex, England

Name: John COOKE
Given Name: John
Surname: Cooke
Sex: M
Birth: 1490 in Horkesley, , Essex, England
Death: 1539 in Pebmarsh, , Essex, England

Marriage 1 Ms NEWTON b: 1493 in Horkesley, , Essex, England
Married: 1518 in Pebmarsh, , Essex, England
Note: CHAN22 May 2007

Children

1. Robert COOKE b: 1520 in Wickford, , Essex, England

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Biography

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Cooke-1122

Yeoman (independent land owner) John Cooke was born ca. 1490 in the Essex village of Great Horkesley. He was the son of Robert Cooke of Little Stambridge, about 20 miles away, and his wife, name Unknown. He grew up in Horkesley and then moved to Pebmarsh where he married Mary Newton of that village in 1518. The couple took up residence in Pebmarsh. Most genealogies state that their son Robert Cooke was born in Wickford two years later; it's possible but Wickford is 35 miles to the southwest and the family definitely lived in Pebmarsh.

In the Visitation of Essex, 1634, the Cooke family entered a gentry-style pedigree, stating that their first Pebmarsh ancestor [John] had come from the Essex parish of Horkesley and that "the ancient arms of this family of Cooke remaineth on a grave stone in Horkesley Church where one of the Ancestors lieth buried with the said arms."

These arms were: Sable, three bendlets argent; Crest: a cockatrice statant argent, wings or, beaked and combed gules. They can still be seen, not in the church of Horkesley, but in that of Pebmarsh. These arms were exemplified or confirmed by the Clarencieux King of Arms in 1585, as belonging to John Cooke of Pebmarsh, son of Robert Cooke of Little Stambridge, with the difference of a field azure.

Pebmarsh is an agricultural parish, like Horkesley and Little Stambridge, divided into several small manors, even today, most no bigger than large farms in size. In the 15-16th Centuries, turbulent times in England from the War of the Roses to the establishment of the Anglican church and overthrow of the monasteries, many yeoman families in places like Essex gained considerable wealth and position by leasing the manors of absentee lords and letting them out to local farmers and stockmen. They thus raised their status to that of local gentry, even if not part of the hereditary landed nobility.

The Cookes, Newtons and Sydays (Sydeys) of Pebmarsh and other nearby parishes in Essex were among those fortunate families who acquired large holdings at this time, not only in Pebmarsh but in the neighboring villages of Alphamston, Lamarshe, Bures St. Mary and in the town of Halstead. Later, during Cromwellian times (1650's), their Puritan leanings, added to their wealth, brought them into regional and sometimes national prominence. Several of their sons and daughters also formed the heart of the Great Puritan Migration from England to the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies, inter-marrying and creating virtual interlocking dynasties, linking the New World to the Old. Several leading Puritans came from Essex or neighboring Suffolk, including Massachusetts Bay colony's first governor, John Winthrop (b. 1588 in Edwardstone, Suffolk).

John and Mary (Newton) Cooke had a son, Robert Cooke, no doubt named for his paternal grandfather, in 1520, either in Pebmarsh or Wickford, Essex. Unfortunately, in 1523, possibly in childbirth, Mary (Newton) Cooke died at the family home in Pebmarsh, Essex, England. Robert Cooke was her only child. Around 1545 Robert Cooke married Joan (Johan) Syday (aka Sydney), daughter of John Syday, a wealthy yeoman, who at the time of his death in 1539 owned the leases of Berwyke (Berwick) Hall in Toppesfield, Essex.

John Cooke also died in Pebmarsh in 1539 and was buried in the local church with his coat of arms.