Braddon Family History

Date this site was last edited: 16 June 2010

Early Distribution of Braddons in Devon and Cornwall

In Burke's Colonial Gentry is the assertion that ' this family in ancient times came out of Northumberland and the first member to reside in Cornwall was Stephen Braddon, the Elizabethan MP for Bossiney. As a variant on this it has been asserted that the Devon Braddons were a branch of the Bradden family of Northamptonshire. There is no evidence of this; it could well be that this attempted linkage to a grander family with its own coat of arms was an attempt at aggrandisement by the upwardly mobile. But as both the evidence below and 'The Parochial and Family History of Trigg Minor' (by Sir John Maclean pbd. 1876) show, there were Braddons in Devon before 1550.

When family settlement patterns are, through the availability of such records as Parish Registers, first discernible in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, we find Braddons settled in the South Western counties of Devon and Cornwall and only rarely elsewhere.

Even within these counties there was a concentration in two localities: in the Southeast of Devon around Ottery St. Mary and Teignmouth and, most particularly, in the border areas of Northwest Devon and Northeast Cornwall.

The homes of the earliest Braddons can most easily be appreciated through distribution maps.

Braddon/en events in Cornwall and Devon before 1643.*

*from 1569 Muster Rolls for Cornwall and Devon, 1524-7, 1543-5 and 1581 Devon Subsidy Rolls, 1641 Cornwall and Devon Protestation Returns and IGI.

It is clear that there were extended Braddon families in these two areas in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The distribution chart shows that of the 138 Devon and Cornwall 'Braddon' references before 1643, 103 are to be found in the NW Devon and NE Cornwall area and 35 in South East Devon.

In the South East of Devon we find many Braddon references in the town of Ottery St Mary (later Samuel Coleridge's birthplace) from the 1524 Subsidy Rolls until the end of the seventeenth century, including evidence that they played a prominent part in the town administration. In the next village of Feniton lived Fastian Braddon, Constable during the Civil War and others. North of Ottery at Kentisbeare there are, in addition to written records of the family, the 1696 monuments to Roger and Lewis Braddon. At Colyton lived Nicholas Braddon who in 1685 was sent into slavery in America as punishment for joining Monmouth's rebellion.

Near Teignmouth we find many references to Braddons in this age; In Teignmouth alone there are 19 Braddon 'events' in the seventeenth century, including 7 wills. Add 3 more wills in neighbouring Combeinteignhead and the picture emerges of a well established and, on the face of it, extended family. Such speculation does assume that those with the same name are related; this is not guaranteed to be the case, although likely, in such a small community.

But when we look at the Braddons dispersed through Devon and Cornwall, it is improbable that they share an ancestor - the Ur-Braddon, if you like. As we have already seen, there was more than one Braddon location and more than one individual would be named after the place of origin. The answer, anyway, lies beyond any hope of discovery or interpretation centuries later.

We can be confident that the activities of Braddons in this coastal area looked seawards. In 1586 Will Braddon, master of the ship 'Angell' of Topsham was sailing to Newfoundland.

The second area where we find Braddons in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was, as we have said, North West Devon and North East Cornwall. In village after village we find evidence of a continuous Braddon presence over these years and indeed through until the nineteenth century. In particular in Abbots Bickington, Bradworthy, Huntshaw, Monkleigh, Parkham, Sutcombe and West Putford in Devon and in Kilkhampton and Launcells just across the border in Cornwall there are well-established families. The interlinkages between these groupings would be a fascinating future study; suffice to say many shared only the name and possibly genes, as there were immense differences in social status and wealth, even in the same village. Tax returns show prosperity and poverty co-existing.

The fact that there were no Braddons listed in the Cornwall 1524 or 1543 Subsidy Rolls while they are recorded for North West Devon (and the other two areas) suggests that it was only in the second half of the sixteenth century that a Braddon presence in Cornwall was established.

Among these early Braddons were Stephen Braddon who was elected MP for Bossiney in Cornwall in 1559 and again in 1562, William Braddon the Civil War commander and Republican Member of Parliament from St.Gennys and his son Laurence who was imprisoned in 1683 for rashly challenging King Charles II over the circumstances of the death of the Earl of Essex.

These 'celebrities' were the exceptions, though. Most lived, generation after generation, in their home villages as landowners or agricultural labourers, farmers or clergymen.