The Legacy

Acknowledgements

A very big thank you to Rose Marie and Phil for all your support and unconditional love throughout the writing of this book. Your patience, expertise and advice have been a tremendous blessing. I could not have done it without you!

Thanks also go to my special dad for giving me a lifetime love of reading, history and genealogy.

Thank you to Gail, my faithful friend and sister in Christ, for your constant reassurance and listening ear.

I am very grateful to the staff at the Buckinghamshire records office, whose help over the years has been invaluable.

Many thanks also go to Long Crendon Baptist Church, both for the warm welcome and encouragement and also for the precious gift of William’s marble tablet, which has a special place in my garden.

Foreword

This is a saga bridging two centuries. It is a tale of family, friends and foes; poverty and provision; faith and fortitude; plans and purpose. It speaks of lessons to be learnt, minds that are mended and hearts that are healed. This is a story about connection and love: God’s unfailing love for us.

It is an account of the life of my great, great, great, great grandfather, William Hopcraft; some of it told in his own words. It is also a narrative of my journey as a Christian, as I weaved together the spiritual lessons handed down to me.

When researching my family tree, I discovered more than names and dates on headstones. I uncovered a treasured thread of bloodline history. It was the missing piece of a jigsaw that I had been looking for. It made the picture complete. God used a passion of mine, to perfect a healing in me and to bring me into the fullness of His grace.

Although narrated as a story, this is a true account of William’s life and a true report of my journey so far. More importantly, God’s truth runs throughout, as a beacon of light, carried from age to age. The historical and emotional descriptions are based on knowledge, personal experience and, at times, my imagination.

Now that the preamble is over it’s time to introduce you to my 4th great grandfather William Hopcraft and tell you about the legacy lessons left on a shelf for nearly two hundred years.

PART ONE

William’s Story

New Life

It was a spring day, the season of new life and fresh beginnings, when William’s lungs took their first breath and he cried his first cry. He was Robert and Ann’s first boy, a son, who would learn to walk and work in the footsteps of his father. Ann did not tarry in bed for long; not for her were the privileges afforded to the ladies of society. She had water to fetch, food to cook and a house to clean. She also had to care for Annie, who at two years old, was too young to understand the impact her new brother was about to make on the family.

Every night, once the children were asleep, Ann would begin her evening shift. Sitting near the window, a single tallow candle her only source of light, she deftly, moved the bobbins across her work. Twisting and plaiting the fine thread, creating luxurious lace to adorn dresses that she could only ever dream of wearing.

Ann knew that William’s future seemed bleak. He had been born into an unrelenting cycle of poverty, with no way out. His surroundings were crude and sparse but not in a romantic ‘baby in the manger’ way. There was no luxury in the place they called home. It was small, dark and draughty.

An old homemade wooden table took central place with two hard upright chairs providing their only form of comfort.  The straw-filled bed was low and rough and the only pillow they possessed was the one on which she used to make her lace. Food was a daily challenge, sometimes they had enough to fill their rumbling bellies and other days they felt sick with hunger; the type of hunger that twists your stomach until it feels like it is eating itself. The outlook for their lives was grim. Ann was aware that there was little potential for change but as she looked into her son’s innocent eyes, she dared to have a glimmer of hope that a better life lay ahead.

The Hopcraft family were not unique to the situation in which they found themselves. They were in the same economically sinking boat as most of their neighbours. They muddled through but the anxieties and concerns of hardship etched their way into the lines on their faces. The poverty trap had caught them and they were ensnared in its grasp. Ann thought about a different life. She imagined herself with enough food on the table and clean soft clothes against her children’s skin. She thought about them growing up and who they would become. She reflected on all that was to come; the next ten years, the next twenty years but she never anticipated the influence and inspiration her son would be in two hundred and forty years’ time.

She had no idea that her William would one day leave an inheritance that would reach through the generations, to touch the heart of his great, great, great, great granddaughter. They did not have an inkling… but God knew.

William was born on Thursday 18th April 1776 and the legacy, that would take many years to reach its fulfilment, had already been established.  God always has a plan!

Eight days later, on the Friday, the family spruced themselves up and walked the mile journey to their parish church, to get their newest arrival baptised. The high stone tower and fourteenth century architecture of the church of St Nicholas dominated the east end of the village of Long Crendon. It was dimly lit and chilly inside, with memorial slabs, set into the grey stone floor, marking the graves of well-known villagers. It housed a timeworn pulpit, old tombs and a number of scruffy wooden pews. The family stood quietly, waiting, in the shadows, for the vicar to call them forward towards the font. Their insignificance emphasised by an extraordinary oversized pew, set aside for the rich and honoured among the congregation. It rose above them, to ten feet high, dwarfing them with its lofty attitude.

The church was obliged to open its doors to this ordinary little family. They were without wealth or social standing, but child mortality was high and the parish church had a duty to baptise infants by the second Sunday following their birth.

As Ann anticipated William’s christening, she held him tight, tenderly stroking his head before tracing a finger down his rosy cheek. He was perfect. Just like the others had been. Thoughts of two more beautiful babies intruded into her mind, along with the unwanted images of them in their tiny makeshift coffins; pale grey skin contrasting against their black woollen shrouds. Mary and Elizabeth had never reached the age of three. She had fed, nurtured and loved them and then they were gone; flickering flames blown out by a harsh cold wind, leaving an indelible shadow on the wall of Ann’s heart. Now she had another new life to take care of and despite the euphoria of his birth, doubts and fears for his future were creeping in.

Once they were called to the front of the font, the event was quick and functional with no pomp or ceremony. William’s head was sprinkled, a few words spoken and a fee of one shilling and six pence was hurriedly received and recorded.

Peace of mind, for Ann and Robert, came at a financial but worthwhile cost. If their newborn was to die, at least he had been presented to God and baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It was a dedication of a type and unbeknown to them, a precursor of things to come.

Within the next five years, Ann had two more sons. They named their second son Robert, after his father, and then came their third son Richard. It was a difficult birth. Ann’s natural relief, as her son was born, quickly turned to tragic sorrow as she stared down at his lifeless body.

As she walked to the graveyard, an all-encompassing sadness enveloped her. The devastating feeling of loss was an emotion that she had become accustomed to but it was felt no less keenly than that of her first two children. In her world, the death of a child was commonplace. She had borne six children and buried three. Her heart was half-empty but the harshness of her life left no time for the freedom of public grief. She had to lay to rest the face of her sadness. She concealed it in the earth along with her son. There was work to be done.

There were no more babies for Robert and Ann. They continued to live, work and raise their young family in Long Crendon, a small village in Buckinghamshire, England. They came from Crendon stock and this was their home. Their parents and grandparents before them had lived the same tough, meagre lives; an unyielding circle of trying to make short ends meet.

They lived on the east edge of the parish in a cottage nearby the site of Notley Abbey; an Augustinian abbey, founded in the 12th century that had suffered the ravages of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 by the hands of Henry the Eighth. All that endured, as a shadow of the monastic community, was a miserable old farmhouse and a few remnants of the cloisters that now formed cow stalls. The river Thames ran close by and a relic from the days of the monks, an old water mill remained, with overgrown reed-filled fishponds and a smell of stagnant water. This was William’s playground, his little feet squelching in the soaked soil, where men of faith had once toiled the land.

Their home was not a quintessential English rose covered country cottage with a vegetable garden and sweet peas growing in a pot by the door. It was a small, basic, dilapidated dwelling, with no running water or sanitation. The whole family lived and slept in one room, with a small back scullery where Robert plied his trade. There was no expectation of privacy for any of them. Ann rose early every morning to clear out the embers, from the night before and, if they had enough fuel, light a new fire for the day ahead. Water was fetched, in a bucket, from a village well, and chamber-pots emptied of their slops and vigorously scrubbed.

Their living conditions were appalling. The winter days were, damp, dark, and often cold with animal-fat-spitting candles their only night-time form of light.  The fire, when they had one, was both a curse and a blessing. The warmth from the orange flames a welcome relief from the biting chill in the air but the smoke that filled the room made everything smell of ash. On a bad day, it would cover the whole room in a dusting of soot. Ann had to keep her precious lace wrapped up in linen and stored in the back in an old wooden box. Dirty lace meant no sale. It was better to be cold and be able to work than to be warm and starve.

Ann conjured up hot meals for her family in a large black pot, hung on a metal rail over the fire. Vegetables in watery gravy, served with bread, was their standard fare with mutton stew as a tasty rare treat when life was looking up.

The outdoor days of summer were something to look forward to. They could clear their lungs, taking long, deep, breaths to fill them with fresh air. Ann and the other women in the neighbourhood sat outside and let the sun add a blush to their sallow faces as they chatted together, all the while creating beautiful designs in lace. The sunshine brought more freedom for the children and the sound of their laughter as they played together was a welcome noise after the silence of winter.

William’s childhood was already mapped out. His lot in life was to live in wretched poverty with no formal education or any perceptible prospect of ever