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Myles Standish, Born Where? The State of the Question: Part 2

It has been claimed that a thorough search has been made of all possible English parish records, without finding any reference to Myles Standish.⁷ It should not be assumed that further research is unnecessary. For example, an Elizabethan Bishop of Peterborough reported Edward Standish of Standish as a recusant, mentioning that Standish lived principally in Lancashire but sometimes at a house named Wolfage in the parish of Brixworth in Northamptonshire. ("Recusants" were people who refused to give up Roman Catholicism when the nation became officially Protestant.) I doubt if the Brixworth parish registers have been searched for Standish information.⁸ Because a baptismal record might turn up in some parish distant from the expected home parishes, the present absence of information not only fails to provide an answer, it gives no nudge in either direction. Moreover, if a distant baptismal record were to be found, one would still need to demonstrate where the infant's mother ordinarily lived (assuming that such an anomalous baptism was not simply indicating the birth of a namesake instead of the Myles Standish in whom we are interested). An unexpected baptismal entry will most likely not resolve the dispute.

Ignoring the problem of accounting for the lands in the Isle of Man, Nathaniel Morton wrote in 1669 that Standish "was a gentleman, born in Lancashire, and was heir apparent unto a great estate of lands and livings, surreptitiously detained from him; his great grandfather being a second or younger brother from the house of Standish."⁹ As Nathaniel Morton was personally acquainted with Standish, he might have heard from Standish about where he was born. Given the documented travel back and forth from the Isle of Man to Ormskirk (in the case of Thomas Standish mentioned below), it is quite possible that Myles Standish was born in Lancashire and also belonged to the Manx branch of the Standish family. Perhaps Myles' mother was from Lancashire and gave birth while visiting her parents. Morton's choice of words, however, closely reflects the phrases in Standish's will. As Secretary of the colony, Morton was familiar with that document (with the other court records, it was in Morton's care), and he may merely have been restating information he thought could be inferred from Standish's claim to be from the house of Standish of Standish, a place that is in Lancashire.

Standishes of the Isle of Man
Thomas Cruddas Porteus, writing in 1914 and 1920 argued for a Manx heritage.¹⁰ Myles listed "Ormskirk" first among the lands he claimed, with "Newburrow" also among them. Porteus discovered that a certain Gilbert Standish held lands at Ormskirk and Newburgh confirmed in 1502, and that Gilbert's son Robert inherited these lands.¹¹ They were augmented by Robert's marriage to Margaret Croft who, as a widow in 1529, possessed lands specified as "Ormskirk, Bosgoghe, Croston, Mawdisley, Wryghtington, and Newburghe." These lands are those mentioned in Myles' will, but without naming the Isle of Man. From Robert and Margaret (Croft) Standish, they descended to Thomas, their eldest son. Thomas moved to and lived on the Isle of Man, but he traveled back and forth to Ormskirk in connection with land and his arranged marriage, that ended in divorce by reason of nullity, the bride having been not quite ten at the time, and the groom under nine.¹² Before the divorce years later, however, the couple had had at least one son, whose status evidently became that of a bastard. It is possible that this proceeding could be the legal manoeuvering Myles Standish indicated with the word "surruptuously." "Surruptuosly" is a term referring to legal sleight-of-hand, rather than merely to something done in a hidden way; "surreptitiously" is an inadequate alteration of it, although the two words are related. What precise irregularity is meant in Myles' will is uncertain. Young emphasizes Porteus's discovery that in 1540 Thomas "transferred his Lancashire lands" to four trustees who held the land "for the use of the said Thomas for his life" and then for the use of Thomas's daughter Anne for five years, then to devolve on Thomas's brother John, "or anyone else who is next heir to Thomas," also for five years. "After the five years, they are to hold for the use of the right heir of Thomas legitimately begotten; in default for the use of John his brother and John's legitimate heirs, in default for the use of Huan, another brother of Thomas, and Huan's heirs."¹³ This arrangement is so full of ambiguity that later disputes seem inevitable.

Porteus's discovery clearly points to the lands mentioned by Myles Standish. Only through some connection with these sixteenth-century events could Myles Standish have imagined he had any claim to those particular lands. Of notable significance is Myles' claim not only to lands in Lancashire, but also in the Isle of Man. Clearly he thought he was related to, and one of the descendants of, the family of Thomas Standish of Ormskirk and the Isle of Man, from whom all the Standishes on the Isle of Man descended.

The records now preserved on the Isle of Man are inadequate for the construction of genealogical charts showing exactly what line of descent Myles believed gave him rights to claim regarding this property. There are no baptismal records that early, no marriage or burial records from the time, and land records are both fragmentary and, when present, not conceived for the purpose of proving genealogical descent. Myles Standish's claim to be descended from a great-grandfather who was a "second or younger brother" suggests that his immediate ancestors might not appear among the heirs of property for two or three generations. Nonetheless, in 1984, George V. C. Young revisited Porteus's arguments, summarizing them as the basis for an attempt to fill in the gaps with syllogistic demonstrations for proposing a particular genealogical connection that Young found compellingly reasonable. Young's syllogisms fully accounted for the documents he presented. Presuming all evidence was accounted for, the implications Young drew were believable. He had shown that Myles Standish might fit into an identifiable gap in knowledge of the family, but this possibility provides no certainty. Young's syllogisms do not constitute proof of historical events, only an indication of a possibility. For his proposal to remain possible, additional new evidence that might be found would need to be capable of being incorporated without contradicting the argument. Even if new evidence could be considered consistent with the argument, the demonstration would still indicate nothing more than a possibility. Young, like Porteus, concluded that Myles must have been a descendant of Huan, Thomas Standish's younger brother. Through Huan's son John, Young traced a possible line to Myles, whom he considered to have been an eldest grandson.¹⁴

Arguing in this fashion, and attempting to explain why Myles did not inherit when another grandson named William did, Young (a gifted lawyer) stretched the Leiden hospital records that mention an invalided English soldier recorded as "Myls Stansen," beyond what they mean, to use them as terms within his syllogism.¹⁵ Young also relied on onomastic assumptions (i.e. suppositions related to patterns of name-giving) that could be demolished easily, and were, by Reginald Kissack.¹⁶ Kissack stressed that in all Manx records no one named Miles (or the spelling variant, Myles) is found, and that Young had sought a far-fetched possible Anglicization of a Celtic first name (Maolmhuire), that itself does not show up in Manx documents. Kissack stressed that the Standishes of the Isle of Man consistently, as far as the record indicates, called their sons Edwin, Reginald, Peter, Huan, Gilbert, John, or William. As Kissack says, "There may be no baptismal registers in the Island till 1596, but land records list scores of names of individuals (chiefly male), and never once is the name Myles found."¹⁷ Kissack then pronounces in conclusion, "It is quite inconceivable that any Manx family would have christened a son Myles in 1584. And Standishes least of any." Kissack has nothing beyond this onomasticism to prove that "Myles" could not have been born on the Isle of Man and that the Standishes were the least likely of any to name a child "Myles." He rejects Young's theory that Myles was a forgotten older brother of William, regarding the inheritance.

Kissack next examines the possibilities of constructing a genealogical chart that would account for known land documents and produce a candidate about whom one might assume that he left the island and changed his name in later life to Myles. Kissack comes tantalizingly close, then retreats from some suggestions. Concentrating on a grandson named John, who for this theory needs to have been older brother to a William, Kissack points out that documents published by Young show that this John was this William's younger brother. That eliminates the hypothetical possibility that the John under scrutiny had somehow changed his name to Myles. Kissack successfully demolishes his own straw man. But in this part of his rhetoric, Kissack chooses to overlook what he had previously noted — the glaring absence of complete records of baptisms (as well as of marriages, and burials), not to mention the imprecision for genealogical purposes of the records associated with land transfers, which themselves seem far from complete, not providing a record of all uncontested transfers and succession of title. In the absence of baptismal records, there is insufficient information to support a dogmatic announcement that the name "Myles" was inconceivable in late-sixteenth century English-Manx society. Therefore, while neither Kissack nor Young can provide a genealogical network that would incorporate Myles Standish into an account covering the known Standishes on the Isle of Man, this says no more than that with incomplete records such a demonstration has been impossible. It does not prove that no such relationship existed or could have existed.

That the name "Myles" is unknown in Manx records implies to Kissack that Myles Standish could not have been born on the Isle of Man, unless he had changed his name. Here, however, it is Kissack who pushes beyond the available evidence, because onomastics proves nothing about possibilities for future change. Onomastics describes existing patterns and cannot exclude the possibility that parents in naming a child might diverge from past habitual custom. Name-giving was shifting under Protestant, especially Puritan, influence in the later sixteenth century. The list of names with explanations of their meanings, appended to the 1560 Geneva translation of the Bible, clearly influenced parents to experiment with previously uncommon or effectively unknown names. Moreover, the emphasis on virtues rather than medieval saints also produced new first names, such as Faith, Prudence, Charity, Hope, and Fear (of the Lord). "Miles" can be imagined as a reference to the Christian Knight (Miles Christianus). Not merely the famous book by Erasmus, Enchiridion Militis Christiani (1501), but also Sir Philip Sidney, as the embodiment of the Puritans' ideal Christian knight, could have inspired parents to use a new name for their infant.¹⁸ The onomasticator can only look at a new name and observe that it had not been used in this or that family previously. He cannot credibly pretend to make such a pronouncement as Kissack's, that "It is quite inconceivable that any Manx family would have christened a son Myles in 1584. And Standishes least of any."

Both Young and Kissack mention that the documentary record in the Isle of Man is incomplete, particularly noting the absence of baptismal records from the period when Myles Standish must have been born. Instead of resting in that guaranty of ignorance, however, both authors attempt to create genealogical trees that would, without inconsistencies, account for all the scattered documentation that is preserved, with which they are familiar. Both then draw conclusions from their own efforts, as if the record had been complete, forgetting that the reality of people and events must have been greater than what is indicated by the fragmentary record. Doing so, they overlook that Myles Standish's origins can, on the one hand, be described as not proven with genealogical exactness by the existing documentation, and, on the other hand, still be considered to be suggested fairly certainly as Manx, from Ormskirk, ultimately from Standish, by the list of properties in Myles Standish's will, including the claim of inheritance rights to land in the Isle of Man and the explicit statement of descent from the house of Standish of Standish.

Myles Standish's birth is not documented on the Isle of Man. One cannot, however, conclude on that basis that he was not born there, as the extension of the reasoning would be that no one was born there in the time, considering no one's birth there is registered in that period. The absence of Myles' name from baptismal records in Lancashire that are preserved for the same period, and that include the members of the Lancashire Standishes, is more problematic. That should be conclusive evidence that Myles was not born in those branches of the family, except for the possibilities, however slight, that not all births were recorded or that Myles' mother might have given birth away from home — while visiting friends or relatives at some distance, for example. This last hypothesis, however, merely exemplifies the cautious admission that exceptional circumstances can be imagined that obligate one to stop short of dogmatic pronouncements based on absence of expected evidence.

CONTINUED

⁷ Charles Edward Banks, The English Ancestry and Homes of the Pilgrim Fathers, Who Came to Plymouth on the "Mayflower" in 1620, the "Fortune" in 1621, and the "Anne" and the "Little James" in 1623 (New York: 1929; reprinted "with additions and corrections" -- Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 82-83: "Although an almost nation-wide search has been made for the record of his baptism and every existing parish register in Lancashire has failed to produce the information in the county where he is said to have been born (Morton's New England's Memorial), this does not necessarily mean that such a record is non-existent as the author has been given credible information that an English vicar a generation ago told his informant that he had found the record; it was in his possession and that he intended to make it public in a special article. As this plan never materialized the information either died with him or possibly remains among the posthumous papers of this vicar, in possession of his descendants. [...] The author spent the best part of a year in England searching every available Standish clue in all classes of records but without adding anything to our present knowledge." No doubt it was a pleasant trip.

⁸ See State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, p. 566, cited by Hill, Gentlemen of Courage [note 3], p. 135.

⁹ Nathaniel Morton, New-England's Memorial [note 4], p. 262.

¹⁰ See T. C Porteus, Captain Myles Standish: His Lost Lands and Lancashire Connections, A New Investigation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920); T. J. Porteus, "The Ancestry of Myles Standish," New England Historical & Genealogical Register, Oct. 1914; Young, Pilgrim Myles Standish [note 3], pp. 10-14. 37-43 (excerpted from Porteus' 1914 article). In 1984, Young brought me photocopies of every document used by Porteus in this argument. I read all of them in that form, and I found no errors of transcription or reasoning.

¹¹ "Newburgh" and "Newburrow" are the same place, with different spellings.

¹² For the details of the arranged marriage and of the divorce, see T. J. Porteus, History of the Parish of Standish (Wigan: J. Starr & Sons, 1927), p. 176, cited by Young, Pilgrim Myles Standish [note 3], p. 14. According to Young, Thomas had two younger brothers, John and Huan. "What happened to John, the second son of Robert, is unknown," says Young, who does not give any further attention to John as a possible ancestor of Myles. See Young, Pilgrim Myles Standish [note 3], p. 11. This is a serious oversight, because even if other speculative possibilities are rejected, this lack of information leaves an opening for alternative speculation.

¹³ Young, Pilgrim Myles Standish [note 3], pp. 38-39 (documents taken from Porteus's 1920 publication [note 7], chapter 9).

¹⁴ Young, Pilgrim Myles Standish [note 3], p. 29.

¹⁵ I think that "Myls Stansen" probably was an attempt by a Dutch clerk to record the presence of Myles Standish. The records of the St. Catherine's hospital in Leiden (specifically, Gasthuis Archieven, nr. 53) are discussed by me in "The Pilgrims and Other English in Leiden Records: Some New Pilgrim Documents," The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, CXLIII (1989), pp. 195-212. See also my editorial remarks at the end of Youngs article, G. V. C. Young, "Pilgrim Myles Standish: His European Background," in Jeremy D. Bangs (ed.), The Pilgrims in The Netherlands, Recent Research, Papers Presented at a Symposium held by The Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center and The Sir Thomas Browne Institute, September 7, 1984 (Leiden: Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center, 1985), pp. 35-43. The hospital records are explained in more detail in a chapter on Myles Standish, forthcoming in my book on the Pilgrims in Leiden. The records do not in themselves bear any relation to events beyond what they mention. One simply cannot suppose that a hypothetical message about a confused hospital record of a death was sent as a notification to Standish relatives, especially because that hospital death record most probably was not referring to Standish, but to a patient named Nijs Sickem whom Standish replaced after Sickem's death. Nor can it be assumed that this imagined message played a role in any legal proceeding having to do with inheritance matters -- a category of litigation for which typically some sort of sworn and witnessed deposition acceptable as a court document was required.

¹⁶ R. Kissack, "Was Myles Standish a Manxman?" published in the Proceedings of the Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society, and republished online. Young answered Kissack's objections in two pamphlet supplements: More About Pilgrim Myles Standish, First Manx-American (Peel: Manx-Svenska Publishing Co., 1987); Ellenbane Was the Birthplace of Myles Standish, First Manx-American (Peel: Manx-Svenska Publishing Co., 1988). In the first pamphlet, p. 12, Young quotes my comment on his initial paper, thus, "The meaning of 'Myles', the links between the Standishes and the Laces and the introduction into America of the custom of 'Dooiney-moylee' all support the contention that Myles Standish was Manx, a view also supported by Dr. Jeremy Bangs, formerly Curator of Leiden Pilgrim Documents Center and now of Plimoth Plantation, who made the following written comment on the author's paper: 'Despite these two points of reservation' (relating to the wounding of Myles Standish and to Myles Standish's commission), 'Mr. Young's exposition of the logical implications of the various legal documents appears fully acceptable, and there is no doubt about either Myles Standish's Manx origins or his military experience in the Netherlands.'" To this I respond that I have never commented on links between the Standishes and the Laces, nor on folk customs with odd names. I have no opinion on whether those items strengthen any argument. The reservations I expressed at some length, which Young parenthetically condensed, indicated that the "Myls Stansen" document is not absolutely certain to be a reference to Standish and that no reliable evidence is known to exist that would document Standish as having held the rank of lieutenant while a soldier in The Low Countries. The implication, perhaps too subtly expressed in my editorial note, is that a syllogistic argument depending for any part on implications derived from the Leiden 1601 document or Standish's supposed officer's rank must be considered weak. Young's elaborate speculation about why Myles was deprived of his inheritance is based on an imaginary message from Leiden to the Isle of Man referring incorrectly to Myles' death. Kissack equally misjudges my work (and that of other authors) when he describes the published 1984 symposium papers as an "addendum" to Young's Pilgrim Myles Standish. See Kissack's text with its note 10.

¹⁷ Kissack omits "Thomas" but seems to think that the seven names he lists represent some sort of restrictive onomastic pattern. The restrictiveness is Kissack's inference for which he provides no evidence. Kissack notes in another place that while baptismal records on the island begin in 1596, in Lezayre parish where the Standishes lived, there are no baptismal records until "a century later."

¹⁸ Several publications with "Miles Christianus" in their titles testify to the fact that the concept was alive at around the time of Myles Standish's birth, for example, a thirty-six page pamphlet by Miles Mosse, Miles Christianus, or, A just Apologie of all necessarie writings and writes, specialie of them which by their labored writings take paines to build up the Church of Christ in this age, [...] (London: J. Wolfe, 1590).