These research notes are provided as-is and contain supplementary working research.
Analysis
John's trade points back to a Norfolk textile family
John's tailoring is an origin-bearing handle that points back toward a Norfolk textile family. He is styled a tailor in his own Braintree records, and in this period a craft passed most often from father to son. The father the identity work proposes for him, Francis Gurney, was himself a Merchant Taylor - apprenticed in London in 1599, free of the Company in 1606 - whose commercial life ran through Norwich and who in 1622 joined a scheme to teach the poor of King's Lynn to spin worsted-yarn, alongside a Great Ellingham woolchapman; the wider Gurney family sat in East Anglia's worsted-and-woollen economy for generations. So the trade sets a specific expectation - a tailor's son of a tailoring family should be traceable to a master - and strengthens, without proving, the association with Norfolk, the Gurney family, and Francis in particular. The parentage conclusion is held to the identity work.
Why this conclusion
- Depends on Finding Occupation: a tailor by trade, a husbandman by economyThe orientation rests on the colonial occupation fact - that John was a tailor - whose canonical home is the Braintree-community unit.
Related context
- Provides context for Finding John's tailoring learned off the enrolled books (informal/country training)The father-son and family-textile expectation is the context against which the double documentary silence, and the informal-training reading, are weighed.
Sources
- Historical Manuscripts Commission. "The Borough of King's Lynn: Miscellaneous Writings." Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part III. British History Online., HMC, 11th Report App. III, 'Borough of King's Lynn: Miscellaneous Writings' - 17 Oct 1622 agreement of Francis Gurney, merchant-taylor of London, with Martin Hill of (Great) Ellingham woolchapman, to teach Lynn's poor to spin worsted-yarn
- Scott, M. (2024). Merchant Taylors' Company of London: Apprentices 1583-1800 [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN 9263. DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-9263-1. Print companion: M. Scott, The Merchant Taylors Company of London: Apprentices 1583-1800, British Record Society vols 136-138., Scott (2024), UKDA-SN-9263: Francis Gurney's own Merchant Taylor binding, COMB sheet row 1829 / Freedoms row 25149 (vol. 3a, binding no. 611, p. 37) - apprenticed 1599, free 1606
Topic file location: Origin — trade and training
Technical details
- Research item:
G13-RI-000088 - Graph revision:
244 - Machine-readable JSON:
/assets/g13-graph/findings/G13-RI-000088.json
This is one research item from the John Gurney research graph; the fuller narrative treatment is in the linked topic above and the research library.