The English ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct ...

Reinold and Matthew Marvin 149
lowed his younger brother Matthew, who had gone thither
three years earlier. The record of Reinold's departure for
New England has not been found, but many emigrants
sailed from Ipswich, and it is quite likely that he took pas-
sage thence, being nearer than London. His father be-
queathed to him various " Landes, medowes, woodes and
pasters, called Moysses." From the amount that Reinold
was directed to pay to his mother from his father's estate, as
compared with what we know was paid for rentals of land in
that neighborhood, these lands must have been either quite
extensive or very productive. With his brothers Robert
and Matthew, and his sister Elizabeth, he was also made a
residuary legatee in his father's Will.
which he was charged." It was " returned to the Council in accordance with an order
of the King in Council, made 23 April, 1637, upon occasion of a complaint then ex-
hibited against the proceedings of the sheriff." In this document, under " Tendringe
Hundred, Bentley Magna," it appears that " Reynold Maruen " of that Parish, paid in
1636 two shillings and sixpence as his proportionate tax. In the neighboring Hundred
of Leyden, one Edward Merven, of Pateswicke, paid the same year one shilling, four-
pence; to which branch of the family, if any, the latter belonged, I have not dis-
covered.
I have been unable to find a copy of this manuscript in America, but as it is well
known that a large proportion of the early New England settlers came from Essex,
and as this is a carefully prepared official list of "every inhabitant . . . . assessed" in
that County, there can be little doubt that, if it could be transcribed and published, it
would be a most valuable aid to genealogical research, and enable us to ascertain the
English homes of many families, the exact location of which is now unknown. Green,
in his History of the English People (iii: 180), remarks that the imposition of this
tax gave a fresh impulse to the emigration to New England, which had somewhat fallen
off, and that those who went, as a result of this illegal and tyrannous order, were
largely composed of the more prosperous classes, " men of blood and fortune." A
longing for unrestricted religious privileges was the incentive which brought many of
the earlier settlers across the ocean, while of those who came after 1635, a large num-
ber were led by the desire for greater civic freedom than could be enjoyed under the
exactions of King Charles I and his advisers.