Richard Whitlock (abt. 1583 – 1642), London Merchant and Owner of Beches Manor, Wokingham, Berkshire, England

Sir Henry Saint-George and Richard Saint-George, The Visitation of London, Anno Domini 1633, 1634, and 1635, vol. 2 (London: 1883), p. 347

Or, Subtitled: “I Richard Whitlock Citizen and Merchant of London”

Richard Whitlock (abt. 1583 – 1642), father of Richard Whitlock (1616-1666), was born prior to 12 December 1586, when his father John Whitlock made his will at the Holt estate, the dower house of Beches manor, at Wokingham in Wiltshire.[1]  Though most of Wokingham is in Berkshire, at this point, the Holt house was in a detached part of Wiltshire that comprised part of Wokingham. John Whitlock’s will states that his son Richard was the youngest of John’s sons, and was, along with brothers Clement, De la Beche, and Thomas, under 24 years of age. Richard’s birth year has been conventionally estimated as “about” 1583. A brass memorial plaque for Richard’s wife Katherine Burchett/Brechette Whitlock on the north chancel wall of All Saints church at Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, England, states that Katherine died 2 April 1649, aged 54, which would give Katherine a birth year of 1595.[2] That birth year is confirmed by the baptismal register of the church of St. Gregory and St. Martin at Wye, County Kent, which shows Katherine Byrchet, daughter of David, being baptized in that parish on 18 May 1595.[3]

Extract from 12 December 1568 will of John Whitlock, Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 11/74, pp. 169-171

James Whitlock (1651-1716), Virginia Immigrant: English Roots

Brightwell Baldwin parish register, 1546-1704, Oxfordshire, England, in Anglican Parish Registers, Oxfordshire Family History Society and Oxfordshire History Center, available digitally in Ancestry database Oxfordshire, England, Church of England Baptism, Marriages, and Burials, 1538-1812

Or, Subtitled: In Which We Connect James Whitlock, Virginia Immigrant, to His English Roots

My American ancestral roots run largely back to colonial Virginia and are largely English. I have a sprinkling of colonial immigrant ancestors who came to Maryland, the middle colonies, and the Carolinas. But the bulk of my colonial ancestors were English folks who came to Virginia in the 1600s. And the Whitlock line is one of my rare ancestral lines in which I can pinpoint this family’s place of origin in England — and trace it back with confidence into the 1400s (and, in the case of families married into the Whitlock line such as the de la Beches, to the 1100s).