De Clayton Family Sources

Date: 1066 to 1500
Location: Lancashire, England
Surnames/tags: Clayton Medieval Pre_1500

Contents 1 Summary 2 Surnames in the 11th Century 3 Origins of place name - Clayton 4 Places with name Clayton in Lancashire 4.1 Clayton Manor 4.2 Clayton le Moors 4.3 Clayton le Woods 4.4 Others 5 Clayton family links with each 5.1 Clayton Manor 5.2 Clayton le Moors 5.3 Clayton le Woods 6 Causes of the Misinformation 7 Conclusions 8 Sources

Summary

There is a large body of information relating to the early sources of the Clayton family which needs re-examining, as it is difficult to find much correlation between Wikitree profiles and what is known sourced detail. One of the problems is that many of the profiles on Wikitree refer to Clayton, Lancashire as a location without being more specific. This profile is intended to be a summary of the arguments and a robust foundation for further research

Surnames in the 11th Century

There was no standard recognition of the concept of a family name or surname in either the Norman or Anglo-Saxon communities in England after the conquest in 1066. People tended to be distinguished from each other by where they came from, "de" in Norman French. Some Norman families continued to identify themselves as coming from their location in Normandy after arriving in England after 1066. Many of these families are detailed in "The Origins of some Anglo Norman Families" by Lewis C Loyd, 1951. There is no menion of Clayton or Ceaudebec (where one of the de Claytons may have come from) in Loyd.

Origins of place name - Clayton

The origin of the place name is from the old English, clorg-tun, meaning Settlement on Clay (soil). There are Clayton place names in England today, some of whom trace their origins to before 1066, in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire and Sussex. ^[1]

Many of these are mentioned in Domesday, but those in Lancashire do not seem to have been included. Lancashire itself is not directly in Domesday, but the Claytons mentioned in Yorkshire and Cheshire are not in areas in present day Lancashire.

It is therefore apparent that people with the LNAB de Clayton may not be related to each other.

Places with name Clayton in Lancashire

Clayton Manor

Clayton Manor, now usually called Clayton Hall, still exists in Clayton, a present day suburb just East of Manchester. It is a moated 15th Century house built on the foundations of a previous 12th Century house. ^[2]

Clayton le Moors

Clayton le Moors is a village thirty miles North of Manchester and three miles East of present day Blackburn. There is another Clayton Hall in Clayton le Moors, the seat of the Grimshaw family since the 1340s.

Clayton le Woods

Clayton le Woods is a village close to Leyland about ten miles West of Blackburn.

Others

Clayton le Dale just North East of Blackburn does not seem to have recorded history back to medieval times.

Clayton family links with each

Clayton Manor

All the sources relate that Robert de Clayton fought at Hastings, and was rewarded by William I with the Manor of Clayton. ^[3] Because we do not know his LNAB, it is not possible to verify this, and it is a little puzzling that Clayton in Lancashire cannot be located in Domesday.

What we do know is that in 1194, Cecilia de Clayton the surviving heir of the Clayton Manor de Claytons married Robert de Buron, ^[2] ancestor of the poet Lord Byron, and that the Manor stayed in the hands of that family until at least 1533 when Sir John de Beron was listed in the Visitations. ^{[4] [5]}

Clayton le Moors

Clayton le Moors appears to have been in the hands of a Clayton family until about 1347, when the heir married into the Grimshaw family who built Clayton Hall there. They lived there until about 1715. There is still a later building called Clayton Hall on the site. ^[6]

Clayton le Woods

There are sourced details of some early members of this de Clayton family in the British History website account of Clayton le Woods ^[7]

A brief summary of what is known is as follows:

• Gerald de Clayton - died about 1213
• Robert de Clayton, his son - known to be alive in 1242
• John de Clayton - known to be alive in 1288
• Warine de Clayton - succeeded in about 1288
• Robert de Clayton - known to be alive in 1302
• John de Clayton - died in 1312
• Adam de Clayton, his heir
• John de Clayton his heir who died in 1401
• Ralph de Clayton his son who died in 1421.

These names and dates do not seem to correlate with present Wikitree profiles.

There therefore does not appear to be a Clayton Manor in Lancashire throughout this period as is described in the profiles currently on Wikitree.

Causes of the Misinformation

The earliest recital of the tree related in the de Clayton family history appears to be in Revd William Betham's Baronetage of England published in 1803 ^[8]

This was taken up as part of an attempt to link the Quaker American Clayton families to Charlemagne in a paper to the Historical Society of Delaware in 1904 delivered by Henry K Hepburn ^[9]

This information was then taken up and embellished first by James Bellarts in "The Descent of some of our Quaker Ancestors from Adam" 1991 ^[10], and then by Bill Putman in "The Clayton Family - The branch from England to America" revised in 2009 ^[11] There is no sourcing in any of the above publications.

A more sceptical view was expressed by Cheska Callow Wheatley in "The Quaker Clayton Family" when she said, "Unfortunately, back in the 1970s , the late Jim Bellarts who was publishing the "Quaker Yeoman" got hold of this and he also published it as our William's ancestry and since then it's been hard to keep it from spreading around as the gospel truth!" ^[12]

Conclusions

Pending further investigation, Clayton and de Clayton profiles before 1500 which rely only on a Bill Putman source will have a link to this page, an explanatory Research Note, an Uncertain Existence Category and an encouragement of further research placed on them.

It is surely essential for any future work to clarify which of the Clayton locations is relevant on each profile. It also seems to be necessary to amend the LNAB to de Clayton for all these profiles until at least 1400.

Sources

1. ↑ Clayton Surname, Meaning History and Origin at https://selectsurnames.com/clayton/ (Accessed July 28 2023)
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Wikipedia contributors, "Clayton Hall," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clayton_Hall&oldid=1155215656 (accessed July 28, 2023).
3. ↑ Robert de Clayton in The Clayton Family History at https://www.billputman.com/the-genealogy/patterson-related-families/Clayton1.pdf (Accessed July 28 2023)
4. ↑ Sir John de Beron in the Visitations of Lancashire Pt I Page 55 Edited by William Langton, 1876 at http://johnhoughton.me.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1533_visitation_pt1.pdf (Accessed July 28 2023)
5. ↑ Clayton Manor in https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp282-287 (Accessed July 28 2023)
6. ↑ Clayton Hall in Grimshaw Families at http://grimshaworigin.org/early-prominent-grimshaw-families/clayton-hall-grimshaw-family/ (Accessed July 28 2023)
7. ↑ de Clayton Family in Clayton le Woods at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol6/pp29-32#h3-00 (Accessed July 28 2023)
8. ↑ Clayton of Adlington Lancashire. Wm Betham. History of the English Baronets. 1803 Vol 3 Page 409 at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015082589543&seq=437 (Accessed August 4 2023)
9. ↑ The Clayton Family. Henry K Hepburn 1904 at https://archive.org/stream/claytonfamily00hepb/claytonfamily00hepb_djvu.txt (Accessed July 28 2023)
10. ↑ James Bellarts The Descent of some of our Quaker Ancestors from Adam at http://www.familysearch.org/eng/library/fhlcatalog/supermainframeset.asp?display=titledetails&titleno=502009 (Accessed July 28 2023)
11. ↑ Bill Putman The Clayton Family. 2009 at https://www.billputman.com/the-genealogy/patterson-related-families/Clayton1.pdf (Accessed July 28 2023)
12. ↑ Cheska Callow Wheatley in The Quaker Clayton Family" at http://www.geocities.ws/cwheatley2000/claytonfam.html (Accessed July 28 2023)