STEPHEN ALDOUS of Fressingfield, Suffolk, England, was almost twenty-nine years old in 1636 when he married ANNE MILLES. Their first child, a son they named STEPHEN, turned out to also be their only child. He was two months old when the new father passed away. His death must have saddened many in Fressingfield, because his burial entry has the notation "married a year" after it, whereas most entries of that period just have the name and date. He evidently expected to be called from this earthly life, probably as the result of a serious illness or accident. Whatever the reason was, he wrote a will on the tenth of April 1637, less than two weeks before his death. He got someone else to write it down, but he signed it, and the signature looks as though made by an unsteady hand.
As was customary in wills, he first bequeathed his "soule into the hands of Allmighty god my creator & Savior & my body to the earth from whenc it cam." and then touched upon "my temporall goods, cattell, chattells, Tenemts, lands household stuffe & utensills of houshold whatsoevr." He gave his wife ANNE "my Tenemt wherin I now dwell," all his land, also all his "goods cattell & chattells." ANNE was to have them as long as she lived, "upon Condicon that she the said Anne my wife shall maynteyne & kepe and godly educate STEVEN ALDOUS my sonne in good & sufficiet mannr, untill he shall come unto his age of Foure and Twenty yeares." After that she was to "pay . . . unto him the said STEVEN . . . the yearly . . . sume of Five poundes . . . all the residue of years . . . of ye naturall life of hir the said ANNE my wife." After her decease the lands and goods were to become STEPHEN's.
We learn from the Manor Court Rolls of the Manor of Chevenhall alias Chepenhall that the name of at least part of STEPHEN's property, and maybe all of it, was Babilons alias Bourneys alias Peasley, property which had belonged to his ancestors for generations.
STEPHEN was buried at Fressingfield on the twenty-fourth of April in 1637. Widow ANNE eventually married again, and later became a widow the second time. As the widow DAINES she is recorded in the Manor Court Rolls as dying just previous to 17 March 1697, at which time her son STEPHEN was admitted tenant of the property left to her by her husband STEPHEN ALDOUS many years before. The same Court Rolls state that he had received the premises in October of 1628 after the death of his father, also STEPHEN.
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