Volume 1

History and genealogy of the Briggs family, 1254-1937 / by L. Vernon Briggs.

  • Briggs, L. Vernon (Lloyd Vernon), 1863-1941.
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: History and genealogy of the Briggs family, 1254-1937 / by L. Vernon Briggs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    133/530 (page 77)
    John Cudworth (Coitsworth, meaning the place by the hill) married Margery Oldham, daughter of Richard, Mayor of Old¬ ham, about the middle of the fifteenth century. Their great- grandson was Rev. Ralph Cudworth of Warneth, who married Jane, daughter of Arthur Ashton. A son of Rev. Ralph and Jane (Ashton) Cudworth was the Rev. Ralph Cudworth of Aller in Somerset County, England, who w'as Vicar of Coggshall in Essex in 1606, and later Chaplain to King James I. He died in 1624. He married Mary, daughter of John Machell. They had two sons, Ralph, known as “Intellectual Cudworth,” author of “Intellec¬ tual System,” and James (Gen. James of Scituate). (From “Boston Transcript,” notes by “Piedmont,” in reply to inquiry, 30 Dec. 1931.) James Cudw7orth’s first home in Scituate was near the bridge at the Harbor. In a letter to his stepfather he de¬ scribed it as “but a mean one,” although it was still “the biggest” one in the settlement, and was therefore used for religious services before the first Meeting House was built. In 1638, he with my ancestor Anthony Amiable and others, on account of troubles which occurred in Mr. Lothrop’s congregation, appear in a grant of land at Sippecan, “for seating of a town and congregation.” This was not ac¬ cepted, and instead they went to Barnstable in 1639/40. James Cudworth took with him from Scituate the son of his neighbor, Thomas Byrd, as his servant or apprentice. The control which the early settlers had over their ap¬ prentices is shown in the following record or official ac¬ count : Jan. 4, 1641, Thomas Byrd, servant to Mr. James Cudworth of Barnstable, for running away from his sd Master, and breaking a house or two in Barnstable and taking some apparrell and victualls, is sentenced to be once whipt in Plimouth and once whipt at Barnstable, before the next Court of Assistants; and when his sd master comes, then order to be taken for the payment of his fees, etc. His father was undoubtedly the Thomas Byrd mentioned in Deane as “cultivating land on the Third Cliff before 1628.”