Felix Daniel; Elmsted; Honeywood; Dodd; Daniell; Mantell; Hastingleigh

1. Felix Daniel, gardener of the Friars; 2. A possible Elmsted and St. Paul’s connection between the Daniell, Mantell, Honeywood and Dodd families; Miss Honywood Frances Dodd.
—Greg Ramstedt, 7 October 2010 (gregramstedt@comcast.net)

For the past ten or fifteen years I rather doubted that James Daniell (1707-1758) of Longport, Canterbury, was the son of Felix Daniel and Mildred Terry. The memorial tablet on the wall at St. Paul’s Canterbury gives his age at death as 51. Sure enough, there was a possible christening for him in nearby St. George the Martyr parish on 7 December 1707, the son of Felix and Mildred. In the early 1980s I included Felix and Mildred on the pedigree and in Ancestral File, but I was always bothered that Felix is such an unusual name, and that the names Felix and Mildred are not used anywhere in the later generations of my Daniell family. By the 1990s I added the word “challenged” to my PAF database between the generations of James and Felix, and this caveat carried over to my Rootsweb WorldConnect submissions. Now, I’m thinking that James really was the son of Felix, and there are two pieces of evidence that may support this theory.

Felix was a ‘gardener’ at the friary, and a gardener didn’t seem important enough for the origins of a family that eventually attained much social prominence. (I will have to go through the parish registers again to see where I learned that he was a gardener at the friars. The marriage license of 1702 indicates that Felix was a gardener of St. Lawrence. St. Lawrence is a hamlet in St. Paul’s parish and in the old Longport manor. See http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63695.) Felix is an uncommon name which I thought might be Huguenot or Walloon, and supposedly there was a large French protestant population in Canterbury.

About seven weeks ago I found James Daniell and Jane Mantell’s March 1743/1744 marriage allegation, and I was so surprised to see that James was a gardener at the time they wedded. Both the marriage record (St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London) and the allegation (Faculty Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury) give their home parish as “Almested.” A google search quickly led to Elmsted, Kent. The fact that both Felix and James were gardeners, I think, greatly increases the chances that they were father and son. Also, additional circumstantial evidence is found in the Canterbury marriage license of 20 June 1730 between Catherine Daniel and George Abbot, which was to take place either at Pelham or Elmsted, Kent. Catherine is christened on 23 September 1709 at St. George the Martyr, Canterbury, and is the next younger sister to James Daniell (1707-1758). Again, we have a tie-in with Elmsted, which just a few years later in 1744 is the residence of James Daniell, gardener.

To see Felix and Mildred’s family, go to:
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=gregramstedt&id=I268

James Daniell’s 1758 will states: “I give unto Jane Daniell my loving wife that house and land being in the parish of Hastinleigh in the county of Kent known by the name of Little Coomb now in the occupation of Frances Wood . . .” (Will dated 6 March 1758 and proved in the Archdeacon’s Court of Canterbury on 12 March 1759). The Mantells were from Monks Horton and Sellinge, just a short distance away. Three of Jane Mantell’s siblings were christened in Elmsted parish, which is also next to Hastingleigh. The property in Hastingleigh came into the hands of James’s son Francis Daniell (1749-1793). According to The Poll for the Knights of the Shire to Represent the County of Kent--1790, ‘Francis Daniel’ owned a freehold property consisting of a house and land in ‘Hastingligh’ which was occupied by F. Wood.

The house and lands then passed to Francis’s son Francis Daniell (1773-1858). In his diary, he calls his property Little Court, which I suppose may be another name for Little Coomb. On 2 October 1805 he writes: “Purchased the leasehold part of South Harton Estate for £373 and wrote to Rashleigh of London for the Title Deeds of my estate at Little Court, near Horton Priory in Kent.” Francis Daniell was living at Knowle in Bovey Tracey parish, Devonshire, in 1805. South Harton was in the adjacent parish of Lustleigh and had been in his wife’s family for many years. One gets the impression that Mr. Daniell is considering selling Little Court to help finance his purchases in Devonshire. On 16 June 1807 the diary shows: “I left London this morning and after a very unpleasant hot, dusty journey arrived at Canterbury and on the 18th visited my property at Hastingly in Kent.”

I have looked through Brian J. L. Berry’s excellent pdf publication Hastingleigh: 1000—2000 A.D. which can be found at www.hastingleigh.com, where I saw references to Little Coombe (but not Little Court). I could not find the names of James Daniell or Francis Daniell in his paper. I could not find the occupier Frances Wood either.

The pieces of the puzzle were quickly falling together. The fact that both Felix and James were gardeners greatly increases the chances that they are father and son. I don’t quite know how I should think of the term ‘gardener of the Fryars’ about 1700. I see that there were three friaries in Canterbury—Grey, White and Black. It looks like there is much archeological digging going on now at the Whitefriars. Since Felix and Mildred apparently are living in St. George the Martyr’s parish, my perusal of a map suggests that perhaps Felix worked at the Whitefriary. I’m not really sure what a whitefriary is, or was, especially 300 years ago.

From the Whitefriars: The Big Dig website (www.canterburytrust.co.uk/news/whitpg01.htm) it sounds like the Whitefriars was a residential area with lots of gardens at the time Felix probably worked there. It says, “After the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538, Canterbury Whitefriars was converted for use as an important residence and remained in that use for 250 years. Early maps of Canterbury in 1540 and 1640 show the area to have been dominated by the former precinct, with domestic properties filling most of the road frontages across the area, many with extensive gardens.”

Perhaps Felix did enjoy some social status, otherwise he would not have been acceptably in marriage to Mildred Terry, whose family appears to be prominent (especially with Knowler connections). I also have a vague sense of continuity from about 1600 to 1800 in St. Paul’s parish with christenings, marriages and burials of the Knowlers, Terry, Daniells, and Mantells, but it may all be coincidental.

Elmsted and St. Paul’s parish Canterbury seem to be a central part of the puzzle. Miss Honywood Frances Dodd (died 1753) gave away a lot of money through a trust beginning with Jane (nee Bell) Mantell, then Jane (nee Mantell) Daniell, and ultimately to James Daniell (1744-1802) and Francis Daniell (1749-1793). I really want to learn who this Miss Dodd was. I found that there is a long-standing titled Honeywood family at Avington in Elmsted, and a couple of their daughters had married men by the name of Dodd. The Mantells have a very distant relationship with another group of Honeywoods through the Turneys of Brockhill in Saltwood parish, Kent. But why would this spinster woman Miss Dodd make Jane (Bell) Mantell, Jane (Mantell) Daniell and the two boys her heirs? Is there a more recent family relationship between them?

Who is Miss Honywood Frances Dodd? I think I know how she may fit into the Honywoods of Evington, Elmsted, Kent. In The English Baronetage, 1741, page 108, (printed for Tho. Wotton, and found on google books) we find that Sir William Honywood (1650/51-1745), 2nd Bart., of Evington, Elmsted, Kent, and his wife Anna Christiana Newman (1657-1736) had two daughters who married men named Dodd. Their eldest daughter Anna Christiana Honywood (1675-1739) married in 1696 to John Dodd of Broxton, Cheshire, where the Dodd had been for centuries. Their two surviving children may not have left descendants. The other daughter of Sir William Honywood was Elizabeth Honywood (born 1682 in Elmsted) who married in 1704 to Joseph Dodd, storekeeper in his majesty’s navy, at Chatham. Elizabeth and Joseph had a daughter Frances, according to this 1741 publication. I suspect that this Frances is the same person as Miss Honywood Frances Dodd. I don’t know how John Dodd and Joseph Dodd may be related to each other.

So, if I have found the identity of Honywood Frances Dodd, the bigger question remains as to why she left her estate to the Mantells and Daniells. Honywood Frances Dodd was buried in St. Paul’s parish, Canterbury, on 1 December 1753. The Mantells and Daniells are closely associated with this parish. I first discovered the Mantell and Daniell memorial tablets in St. Paul’s on a trip to England in 1983.

The thread that ties all of these people together seems to be in the area of Elmsted, Kent, which includes the neighboring parishes of Hastingleigh, Monks Horton and Sellinge. The Daniell family is rooted in Hastingleigh and St. Paul’s Canterbury. The Mantell’s seat is at Horton Priory in Monks Horton parish, but they seem to live in St. Paul’s Canterbury, and they baptized three of their children at Elmsted. The Honywoods have their seat at Evington in Elmsted.

There is also a heavy royal navy connection between these areas, with the family of Admiral Rooke being from Monks Horton and St. Paul’s. Some of these neighbors may have influenced William Mantell (chr. 23 April 1713 in Elmsted) to enter the navy. Another of Sir William Honeywood’s daughters, Thomasine, married Josiah Burchett, Secretary of the Admiralty.

Honestly, I may be making too much of a possible family connection between the Daniell/Mantell and Honywood/Dodd families. Perhaps, Miss Honywood Frances Dodd was simply a close friend to Jane (Bell) Mantell or Jane (Mantell) Daniell, and chose them to receive her estate.

In trying to probe deeper into Mantell relationships, we really don’t know anything about the Bell family. Jane Bell married 19 October 1708 in Sellinge, Kent to Walter Mantell (1687-1741) of Horton Priory. Perhaps in some unknown way the Bells are related to the Dodd or Honeywood families. I have never attempted to trace the Bells, but a good place to start would be the will that Augustine Bell of Monks Horton wrote in 1653 and which was proved in 1661 in the Archdeacon’s Court. An inventory survives in connection with that will. Jane Bell would have been born well after this will was written, but perhaps Augustine was her grandfather. I have not looked at the will yet.

While Felix may have been a gardener in St. Lawrence hamlet in St. Paul’s parish, Canterbury, when he married in 1702, he seems to have married into a well-established family--the Terrys. Mildred Terry’s father, Michael Terry was christened in St. Paul’s parish in 1637. Terry family baptisms, marriages and burials in St. Paul’s go back to about 1600. In 1632 another Michael Terry married in Canterbury Cathedral to Mildred Knowler. Mildred Knowler’s parents may have married in St. Paul’s in 1611 and may be connected to the Knowlers of Herne parish, a family with late-Medieval origins. Mildred’s father may be the Thomas Knowler of Herne whose 1617 will was proved in the Consistory Court in 1618. The Terrys really need to be properly researched.

When discussing the origins of the Daniell family, I must mention Philip Daniell (1846-1881) and Mabilia Daniell’s book entitled Biographical History of the Family of Daniell or De Anyers of Cheshire 1066-1876 which was published in 1876 and can now be found with Google Books. While it is a very useful book in many respects, there are several errors on the Mantell and Daniell families found on pages 30 and 31. At present, I see no proven links back to earlier Daniells in Daresbury, Cheshire. There is a Daniell (and Mantell) coat-of-arms on the memorial plaques in St. Paul’s church, Canterbury, and it definitely bears a close resemblance to the Daresbury Daniell’s coat-of-arms, but it is possible that my Canterbury Daniells adopted it informally as their own. Those wall tablets were there by the 1790s, so it seems probable that the “nouveau riche” James Daniell (1744-1802) needed a suitable medieval family of Daniells as adoptive forebears to help facilitate his entry into the society of social elites.

I corresponded with Jacqueline C. H. Martineau (1915-2002) many years ago and she sent me a copy of an old Daniell pedigree scroll made in 1870 by her uncle James Whiteman Daniell (1854-1932). It attempts to connect James Daniell (died 1758) to the Daresbury Daniells, but then he crosses out the link when he realized that it was not supported by evidence. Jacqueline is a granddaughter of Col. James Le Geyt Daniell (1831-1919).

One could enter into a discussion of the various Daniell coat-of-arms, but I’m not really sure they ‘prove’ any particular ancestry. The socially ambitious frequently used other family’s coat-of-arms to suit their pretenses. Maybe my Daniell family of Canterbury had rights to use these arms, but I think we have a lot of work to do yet before James and Felix’s genealogical origins are known.