Dear Tim, I made no such assumption, but, as you will know from your own researches, the quality and consistency of the pre-Victorian registers were poor. (you will recall that I had already mentioned about the sixteenth century ones (it was in Henry VIII's day that registers were first introduced as a compulsory measure - sadly a compulsion not very frequently monitored it seems!)). These early registers rarely compared with the consistency or quality of entry compared to those which came much later.
If you are lucky enought to find early records, and these happen to contain people that you can positively identify (both of which things are hit and miss at best in certain areas for the reasons outlined previously), then you are lucky indeed.
I hope that you would agree that it would be very unlikely that the chances of replicating these finds across the whole time specturm in any one parish, or to any significant degree across a collection of parishes, is very small indeed. This point is perhaps acentuated by one particular aspect of church history in England.
For a whole variety of reasons there existed within the English church a structural factor that in itself caused discontinuity of record keeping. The existence of Minster churches in some areas were an issue. The lesser parishes within a diocese were clustered for pastoral reasons around a Minster church - sometimes this was the mother church from which the other parishes were formed, others were simply because the population was small and had simply been attached. The historical record demonstrates how the clergy would bicker, to the extent of resorting to law, to defend the rights of ether the Minster or the local parish to carry out certain rites and to pocket the attendant fees. The records, where they were made, were retained in the church carrying out the rite. bear in mind that whereas a small community may have had a parish, with clergy, the Minster's rights might in effect reduce the ability of the smaller church to being an adjunct, or chapel of ease.
For example in Southampton. The parish of St Mary was established in the Anglo-Saxon vill and port of Hamwic, which was sited on the eastern facing bank of the peninsular on the River Itchen. In time the town migrated to the western facing ban on the River Test leaving St Mary's church isolated beyond a salt-marsh. Nonetheless, it was the Minster church and periodically over a period of about six hundred years, the Rector of St Mary's claimed the rights, and the fees, to carry out marriages and baptismals during certain periods of the year. This along with seniority over certain tithe rights made for an uncomfortable co-existence between St mary's and the five newer parishes that were established after 1066 in what became the walled town.
This example is far from unique. In Croydon, a parish and manor owned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the church was the Minster for a fairly large swathe of East Surrey - bringing all the parishes within the 'peculiar' of the Archbishop - a state that was retained by the church until well into my lifetime. The effect was that Croydon had certain rights including being the only church authorised to conduct services on certain holy days (pre-reformation), which required the folk from these distant parishes to trek up to Croydon to celebrate the masses and to leave offerings.
My point is that even if you believe your family to be of a particular parish, the chances of having an unbroken and auditable trail of records, even to the beginning of the Victorian registers, is quite slim. Going back to the fourteenth century, I'd be surprised, where they do exist, if the rate of continuity is greater than 10% across that period, and probably far less.
I can understand where someone starts recording their family from the present and painstakingly through parish records and other corroborating evidence manages to trace their ancestry back to the sixteenth century. However, unless they are of one of the great families, then the chances of consistent and reliable evidence before then is slight. The evidence even for the great families is often bogus for reasons of the methodology of gathering the data for the records - such as in visitations etc.
Going back to your earlier statement/question, in response to Dennis and Frank, in which you said "I was not asking a question. I was opening a discussion." which I have been joining in with because I think that it is good to talk these things through. You made the statement "The internet is a fast way to pass on information but unfortunately it is also a very rapid means of propogating misinformation" - a statement to which I wholeheartedly concur.
In response to Franks' note about a possible location of Holcombe you said 'so my question has to be "Is there any evidence, local history, church records, parish registers, burial records to support my theory".'
I am assuming that you theory was whether any particular parish named Holcombe had the records you cite as evidence for the people that you are looking for? My admittedly long-winded replies have been by way of exploring reasons why it might be that even in the event that this Holcombe did have records such as yiu describe containing the correct names for the people being sought - there remains no absolute means of confirming that these are , in fact, the correct family. The reasons being 1) the name is derived from common physical features in the local landscape and is therefore a) common, and b) highly likely to include entirely unrelated people; 2) the quality and continuity of records is likely to be insufficient to derive an absolute assurance of the identity and relationships of the people in question.
My concern therefore is that placing a high level of reliance upon any such records without good corroborating evidence is tantamount to creating the very type of misinformation that we both agree is not useful.
Regards
John
