Our story begins in 1586, just as the Parish Registers of St Mary's Church in Bottesford, Leicestershire began following a law passed by the then reigning Queen Elizabeth I.  Thanks to this enlightened lady, we have been able to trace our heritage with reasonable accuracy on a number of lines back through time to discover more about our forebears and the tiny farming village of Bottesford.

    Following is an extract from a thesis presented in "English Naming Patterns 1558 - 1620 of Whickham, Durham; Hartland and Bottesford, Leicestershire".  I have unfortunately mislaid the name of the student, but felt that the information included was invaluable at describing the life and times of an early Bottesford.

    The parish of Bottesford lies in the midlands at the apex of Leicestershire bordering Nottingham and Lincoln counties. Though distant  from major Leicester towns, it is sandwiched between Grantham and Nottingham allowing easy access to enterprise.

    It lies in the hundred of Framland, four miles north of Belvoir (pronounced beaver), where anciently stood an abbey and the still present Belvoir Castle.  The Duke of Rutland, lord of Bottesford Manor, resided at the castle.  The manor was held by owners of Belvoir since the Norman conquest.  Because of its proximity to Belvoir Castle. Bottesford was the scene of bloodshed and devastation during the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century.

    Bottesford includes the hamlets of Easthorpe and Normanton, making it one of the largest parishes geographically in the county.  Framland had bold hills and fertile valleys, well stocked with game,encouraging much hunting.  Two ranges of wolds, woodland pasture on which sheep grazed when common fields were under crop, extend into Bottesford.  The villages lies in the heart of the Vale of Belvoir, the rich pasturage area of northeastern Leicestershire.  It is comprised of flat, arable clays suitable for farming and grazing, and is situated on the River Deven, where Fleming Bridge  was built in the sixteenth century.

    This farming community, in the heart of England, was influenced by national occurrences because of its proximity to major towns and particularly to Belvoir Castle.  The year 1540 opened a decade in which the coinage of England  was debased, causing a sharp rise in prices.  It also marked the first major sales of monastic land, following the monastic dissolution in 1536.  This was inportant to Bottesford because of the Abbey of Belvoir.  The upward trend in costs sent the price index of wheat soaring from 100 in the 1530's to 222 forty years later, and to 466 by 1612.

The immediate effect of the rise in prices on the Leicestershire farmer was to yield him far more profit from the sale of crops and stock than costs from increased expenses.  Economic activity in Bottesford focused on agricultural pursuits.  The Vale of Belvoir "had the finest corn land in Europe".  Its fertility more than compensated for difficulties in cultivation due to its heavy, wet nature.  The inflation of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries brought prosperity to farmers of Bottesford, leading to a rise in village population from 715 in 1603 to 870 in 1676.  During the later sixteenth and into the seventeenth centuries the Vale of Belvoir produced peas, barley and wheat.  Peas, which were easily grown, were important because of their use for both human and animal consumption.

    From 1440 to 1540 the expanding market for wool produced the first erious wave of enclosure in Leicestershire.  The steadily expanding market for meat, particularly in London, alsos hastend the enclosure process.  A small number of Bottesford peasants began to take the initiative in enclosing their fields.  By 1607 they were responsible for some twenty percent of enclosure in the area.

    By the 1640's this tide of rural prosperity began to recede.  The outbreak of the Cdivil War in 1642 turned a gentle decline in agricultural prosperity into a steep fall. Enclosure was destructive to the small farmers, causing Bottesford residents to seek employmetn elsewhere.  After 1650, the development of convertible husbandry, based on nitrogen fixing legumes, transformed the agricultural economy of England.  The value of heavy clay soils as premium  corn land, following enclosure, was transferred to large-scale grazing.  By 1700 eastern Leicestershire was a vast reservoir of wool for the rest of the nation.  This movement to pastoral farming produced a decline in  need for labour, leading to a reduction in the population of Bottesford from about 870 in 1767 to 772 in 1792.

    Amidst the peaks and valleys of economic conditions in Leicestershire, Bottesford was particularly susceptible to vagaries of the harvest.  As David Levine indicates:
 

"Because the village's agragarian economy was heavily committed to pastoral farming, a bad harvest left the population in distress.  This problem was compounded by the village's location and the inadequacies of the system of food distribution.  The heavy clay soil of the Vale of Belvoir made the roads almost impassable in wet weather after they had been cut up.  In addition, Bottesford lay more than 12 miles from navigable water, which made it even more difficult for the villagers to receive adequate food supplies from outside after road communication was obstructed."

    The largest group of landholders, the gentry, were responsible for county administration.  They did not live on a lavish scale as developed by the nobility of later decades.  The yeoman, descendants of the free tenants of the manor, were the most substantial inhabitants of the village next to the Manners family.  The class of yeoman commanded social respect and conferred on its owner recognition of dignity and standing.

    The Manners family, as lords of Bottesford manor, derived their wealth from rents, trade and produce.  The Duke of Rutland owned fifty-four percent of the land in Bottesford.  The rector of the parish, appointed by the Duke, owned fourteen percent.  This economic, social and political power held by the Manners family enabled it to keep out rural industry, believing it would force up the poor rolls, diminishing their tenantry's ability to pay rent.  These resident landowners, among the wealthiest members of English nobility, regulated the town closely, maintaining its rural character.

    Because Bottesford was dominated by its landlord, the size of the community was regulated by social rather then economic forces.  Children without work in their native parishes were forced to go elsewhere.  Such emigrants usually had one of two destinations, the local town or London.  This migration from Bottesford changed the construction of the village.  Bottesford residents left the parish because of political pressure.  This pressure periodically changing the village's population came partially from royalist and parliamentary forces moving in and out during the Civil War.

    The War began in Leicestershire in March 1642 as a context between royalists and parliamentarians for control of the county militia.  The county was divided in the fighting that followed.  Even local disagreements were strong, for Belvoir Castle became a royalist stronghold in January 1634, although the Earl of Rutland was a parliamentarian.

    Bottesford's demographic structure was shaken by the battles of the war.  Every able-bodied man in the village had to fight.  Twenty thousand Englishmen contended at Naseby.  Parliamentarian soldiers ravaged Bottesford during the final battles of the war, causing death and destruction for the remaining residents.

    More gentry families prospered, while the farm labourer, comprising most of the population, was left at a bare subsistence level.  Starvation came to him during times of famine, plague or other disasters, all fairly common occurrences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

    Bottesford residents were forced to emigrate in search of work following the inflationary period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  The Manners family, lords of Rutland, allowed no business or industry into Bottesford for fear of losing economic control.  They had power over all Bottesford real property.  As economic problems created unemployment, inhabitants went elsewhere fro work.  Hence, fewer generations were found in the parish over time than in Hartland, where residency was stable.

    The plague had devastating consequences.  In 1610 the Bottesford clerk recorded:  "the dyeing poisoned many, th' infection was so greatte whereatte it come it scarce left any."  One in six died that year.  Similar consequences came in the 1640's because of war.  Bottesford was heavily damaged as battles were fought within a few miles of its borders.  All able-bodied men were forced to fight.  Besides these men being killed or injured, their families and property were also harmed as the Scots and other combatants ravaged Bottesford.  The effect of these battles on family life was that many husbands were killed.

    Also included in the thesis was a paragraph on one of our lateral lines - the Calcraft/Wright marriage.
 

    "A more intriguing case is that of John Calcraft and Ruth Wright, residents of Bottesford, who had a son Wright Calcraft baptised 28 May 1708.  This Wright had a son also named Wright born 1740.  Wright (born 1740) had a daughter Mary Calcraft who married Thomas Guy.  Their first child was Mary, first son Thomas (both named for their parents), second son was Wright, named for his grandfather, and second daughter was Calcroft, her mother's maiden name."

    A rather sad little paragraph was included, which I feel should also be included in our story.  It made me wonder if this was how our ancestors felt as each of their infants succumbed to some ailment or another.
 

   "Parental love was the most deeply rooted of all human instincts, and showed itself especially in the mother's tender and loving care of the helpless baby.  But it was futile to grieve in the face of infant deaths.  Rather should the truly Christian mother be glad that God had taken her child to himself. "

• The Painters, Paintars, Payntors, Penters of Bottesford