Mary Yate (Tattershall) - Mary or Elizabeth?

Find A Grave says Dorothy Stephens was buried at St Olave's in 1613, but Richardson says Hanney 18 Feb 1642/3.

The Hanney registers should be out there somewhere.

As for John's wife, Richardson just says he married Elizabeth ___. But he does cite this chart

https://archive.org/stream/fourvisitationso5657ryla#page/292/

The pedigree was signed off on by George Tettershall himself, so presumably he'd know his own sister. (He was unusually specific in giving his age - not only how many years, but as of what day!)

So was the "Elizabeth" a slip of the mind of Thomas Yate, or a slip of the pen of the person writing the probate account (contrary to what I thought, the information wasn't in the will proper), or had Mary Tettershall Yate decided she'd had enough of being a Mary and wanted to change her name, or did John Yate really have two wives (seems a bit far-fetched), or is there some other explanation?

Parish records for Lyford may not exist as far back as the 1540s, unfortunately, as there is no official ercord at Familysearch.org - just a lot of say-so records.

The parish church of Saint James the Great, West Hanney was the mother church of the parish.[1] The church of St. Mary, Lyford was built in the Middle Ages as a dependent chapel.[1] East Hanney had a dependent chapel of St. James by 1288 but it was dissolved in the 16th century.[1] (Wikipedia)

The Victoria County History reference for "Parishes: Hanney" is helpful for the specific history of the churches, but iffy when it comes to the Yates of Lyford (they missed the skipping of a generation from Thomas Yate to *grandson* John Yate Jr).

Victoria County History reference says: The registers previous to 1812 are as follows: (i) baptisms 1582 to 1654, marriages and burials 1564 to 1654; (ii) all entries 1666 to 1699; (iii) baptisms 1666 to 1766, marriages 1699 to 1753, burials 1678 to 1783; (iv) baptisms 1766 to 1812; (v) marriages 1758 to 1793; (vi) burials 1783 to 1812; (vii) marriages 1792 to 1812.

A further complication is that the Yates were recusant Catholics and might not have utilized the parish registers anyway.

Tagging the VCH reference just in case: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/berks/vol4/pp285-294

Yes they're said to have had resident chaplains. But hopefully they'd be buried at the church.

Burial was about the only thing that recusants couldn't circumvent, so they tend to show up in the parish burial records if nowhere else. (Findagrave.com has too many say-so records, probably taken from the International Genealogical Index, which is a random mixture of sourced and unsourced records, sometimes reliable, sometimes not.)

One other note: any time you see "January" or "February" (or to some extent "March") in an English-derived record prior to 1752, *watch out*. Most of the rest of Europe went onto the new improved Gregorian calendar in 1582, but the English (and their subsidiaries and colonies) stuck with the old Julian calendar until 1752, complete with beginning the year on March 25.

Have had some vehement, not to say vicious, objections to the theory that Mary Tattershall Yate might have changed her name, so that leaves the alternate possibilities: Thomas Yate got it wrong; the probate account writer got it wrong; or George Yate had a (probably step)mother named Elizabeth. Short of digging into the parish burial register, the matter admits of no resolution.

Mary (Tattershall) Yate had a mother whose name was Elizabeth and was probably Mary’s middle name. Based off of the Tattershall pedigree in the Berkshire Visitation, it is almost certain that John Yate, Sr. did not marry twice. He certainly didn’t marry a second wife named Elizabeth White either.

George Yate grew up at Ufton Court with the Tattershall family where it certainly appears he was Mary Elizabeth Tattershall’s biological son.

John G. Hunt’s 1976 article on the English ancestry covers all the speculation about the name “Elizabeth” in the records and gives plausible reasons for it. He also squashes some of the far fetched speculations of a second wife of John Yate, Sr. and the various family surnames assigned to her.

In sum, there’s no reason to believe that John Yate, Sr. married twice and secondly to Elizabeth White or that George Yate was the son of his father's second wife.

All the evidential evidence points to John Yate having one wife and George Yate being the biological son of Mary Elizabeth (Tattershall) Yate!!!

KM - the 17th century is generally too early for middle names (with *extremely* rare exceptions, mostly male and showing an "interpolated byname" rather than a true middle name).

So that leaves it that somebody (most likely the probate account recorder) got her name wrong.

Maven B. Helms - whether Mary Tattershall used Elizabeth as a secondary (middle) name or an alias as a Catholic recusant, there is zero evidence that John Yate, Sr. married twice. The 1665 Visitation of Berkshire certified by Mary's brother, George Tattershall, Esq., explicitly states that John Yate had just one wife (Mary Tattershall). Furthermore, when the pedigree was certified in 1665, the mysterious second wife of John Yate would have been married to him before his death. If there was a second wife confirmed of John Yate, such a pedigree would have annotated that.

And yes, women in the 17th century could have more names than just a given and surname. Either way, Mary's mother was an Elizabeth and other Tattershalls used aliases to thwart Protestant authorities in this time period, as the Tattershall family were Catholic recusants. If you want to go with the notion that the recorder confused her name with her mother's, then go ahead with that theory. Again, there isn't any real credible evidence that John Yate, Sr. married twice and to a second woman sometime in the 1640s, contrary to what some like David Boles (amateur genealogical blogger) seem to believe.

Even when they started with the "middle names", which was generally later in the 17th century (if at all), it was usually short simple compounds (Mary Ann, Mary Jane, Mary Sue, Sarah Jane, etc.)

So I think the probate account recorder goofed. (Most likely suspect, as not being all that familiar with the family.)