Thomas Rivett

Maltster, Derby

From Wikitree:

Thomas Revett II was the only son of Thomas Revett I and his second wife Mary. His father died when he was two, leaving provision in his will for his education. His mother died when he was fifteen and ‘Her son Thomas was granted administration of her goods and chattels’ while a Derby maltster named Henry Werden (possibly his uncle who lived in the same road and two doors away from the Rivett house) was nominated as his sponsor.” [46] “He may have continued to live in the Rivett house in the care of his mother’s attendants, himself taking an increasing interest in the malt business, or he may have gone to live with Francis Agard, his future father-in-law, in the Sadlergate half a mile away. Wherever he was, Thomas’s romance with Rebekah Agard prospered, and in due course the Derby All Saints recorded the marriage on 28 January 1677/78 of Maister Thomas Revett and Mistris Rebekah Agard. Thomas was then no more than twenty years old, Rebekah being possibly younger.” [47]

In the same year Thomas was appointed a Chamberlain of Derby, one of four to be named biennially to keep custody of the town’s Rent Rolls and other revenue returns. It was presumably his standard of education (provided for him in his father's will) as well as his status as a citizen of Derby which qualified him, in spite of his youthfulness, for so responsible a post”. [47]

The following year in March 1678, just fourteen months after their marriage, their son, Thomas III was born. Thomas III was baptised at All Saints on 22 March 1678/9, just a year before his father, Thomas II, aged just 22, himself died, and was buried there on 17 March 1679/80 - before reaching his twenty second birthday. [47]

Despite his youth Thomas II he became considerably more prosperous than his father had been, living in a big house with lots furniture on a "fine street running parallel to the Derwent River”. His will listed not only the family house in the Morledge and the Sadlergate property brought to him by his wife, but another house, a shop and a slaughterhouse, all also in the Morledge, while the probate inventory totalled nine hundred and twenty-one pounds. The inventory shows that there was by this time more furniture in the Morledge house (including no less than forty chairs) and a substantial “somer house” (with then more chairs) in the garden. [48]

The Derby Revett descent hung by a very thin-spun thread at this period. Had Thomas II, his father’s only child, not survived into manhood (the Great Plague occurred when he was seven years old), had he not married young, had he not had a son before he died two years after his marriage, and had this son not survived to marry and raise a family in his turn, the Derby Rivett line would have ended there and then and the Rivett-Carnac family would not have come into existence.(p.50)

Sources

   "Rivett Family of Repton and Derby (1538-1909)" by Douglas Rivett-Carnac

   Derbyshire Parish Register of Marriages v 9.

   Manors of Suffolk