Widow Anne Baynton Batt signs her maiden name

The item below may show that well-born women could use their maiden
names (or previously-married names) in the period of interest to
possible Skipwith descendants:

F. J. Routledge, ed., _Calendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved
in the Bodleian Library_, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,18[_]-1872),
5:420:

Sept. 1 [1664], Boston. Anna Baynton to Clarendon. Loyal professions.
Asks favour for a poor widow. Her father had a wine licence confirmed
by Sir Lionel Cranfeelde, afterwards Lord Treasurer, for three lives.
Writer forfeited it through her trustee failing to pay some part of the
rent to the wine office. Hopes the King has not empowered the new
commissioners to annul this grant. Asks him [Clarendon] to consider her
desperate case and get this licence restored to her.

This is clearly the widow Anne (Baynton) Batt of New England (her
husband died in 1661). Moreover, her husband was very closely related
to the letter's addressee, Lord Clarendon (see _Notes and Queries_ 220
(1975), p. 29). One might have thought she would use her married name
to stress the connection to Lord Clarendon, but it seems to be a common
view that the Bayntons were somewhat higher up the social ladder than
the Batts.

Nathaniel Taylor...

Interesting. On the other hand, despite any Batt-Clarendon connection,
since this petition concerns her father's wine license, the use of her
maiden name has a certain logic. And haven't we seen other instances of
widows using either their maiden names, or, if widowed more than once,
whichever of their marital names was the most prominent, without regard
to the order of the marriages?

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/

mjcar...

This is the fourth time that you have posted this extract over the past
five years, so it would be interesting to know how, as it is apparently
only an extract of the original document, do we know that the
petitioner signed as Anna Baynton?

John Brandon...

I assume the editorial practice would be to take the name *as signed*
and insert it as a header to the calendar entry ["Anna Baynton to
Clarendon"], but I admit it would be helpful to see the original
document.

Possibly her marriage had not been very happy, as her husband was
"accidentally" shot by one of the sons ...

John Brandon...

As Savage puts it, he "was casu. k. 10 Aug. 1661 by a s. firing at a
mark in the orchard."

mjcar...

No doubt an interesting tale in there somewhere!

It is curious that the "high-class" Ferdinand Baynton should have been
an inn-keeper: not a terribly patrician undertaking in the early 17th
century. Do you happen to know the source for his having followed such
a profession? I have only seen a PROCAT reference which calls him
"gentleman, of Salisbury" [E 44/140, dated 17 June 17 James I - i.e.
1619]

Is it not possible that the document refers to her as Anna (nee)
Baynton in order to assist her identification as the daughter of the
original grantee (she may have been called Anna Baynton in the grant
for lives) - a possibility that you have adverted to previously?

I assume you are correct in your identification of her as the wife of
Christopher Batt, but how certain is this?