As usual, I will make references to some pop culture alternatives to history books as I go, because while they are at best guesses at what happened put into an interesting format, they are factors that influence how I envision the time periods so distinctly different from our own. I mention them because I believe you too may find them helpful in visualizing the eras. Plus, they're entertaining.
In 1485, King Henry VII became the last King to win the throne of England on the battlefield. In the War of the Roses, both sides were of the greater Royal House of Plantagenet.
Henry's House of Lancaster (not to be confused with Lannister from Game of Thrones) were associated with the Red Rose, while the House of York was associated with the White Rose. The war lasted over 32 years. Talk about an epic family feud!
At the conclusion, victorious King Henry VII married Princess Elizabeth of York, uniting his claim to the throne with the vanquished house. You may have seen The White Princess, a mini-series based on this marriage, and otherwise, you might want to check it out.
If you have been watching the sequel to that series, The Spanish Princess, you know that Tudor King Henry VII's heir apparent Arthur married Princess Catherine of Aragon in 1501. They were both just 15 years old but their marriage had been arranged years earlier. Catherine was the daughter Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain, who through their sponsorship of explorations of the Americas spearheaded by Christopher Columbus became the richest monarchs in the world. Obviously, England was especially pleased for this union of royal fortunes.
Unfortunately, Arthur died just 5 months after the marriage ceremony.
When Arthur died, his younger brother, Harry, who was only 11 years-old, became heir apparent to the English throne. If you've watched The Spanish Princess, you now should understand the extent of the liberties taken with regard to history that dramatizations sometimes take, because in the TV show, young Harry is something of a sophisticated Romeo when he actually would have been nothing more than a little boy more concerned with playing soldiers and such.
In any case, Arthur's early death meant that Princess Catherine was something of soiled merchandise on the royal marriage market, but she navigated around this by swearing the marriage had never been consummated.
England, of course, still wanted her enormous dowry and decided to essentially accredit her account that she and Arthur had not shared a marital bed as husband and wife. Princess Catherine remained in England as Aragon's Ambassador.
When Henry VII died in 1509, 17-year-old Harry (the casual spoken name for Henry back then) became King Henry VIII, and soon thereafter married 23-year-old Catherine of Aragon, making her Queen of England. As to whether there was a great romance as The Spanish Princess dramatizes is questionable, but it was supposed to have been a good marriage, keeping in mind that "good marriage" apparently meant the King could have mistresses on the side.
A bigger problem for the royal marriage than Henry's commitment to monogamy were several stillborn babies and then the death of the long awaited male heir within weeks of his birth. They had one surviving child together, Mary Tudor, who went on to become Queen of England for five years upon the death of her father. She earned the name Bloody Mary for her heavy-handed efforts to reverse the Protestant Reformation.
When King Henry VIII tired of his very Catholic Spanish Queen, he sought to annul their marriage of over twenty years.
Henry claimed that the original Papal approval to allow him to marry his brother's widow was invalid because Catherine and Arthur had indeed consummated their marriage. Henry claimed the church should have realized that at the time. Never mind that Henry himself wanted the Catholic Church to approve his marriage to Catherine.
Henry VIII wanted his longtime chaplain and most powerful adviser, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who had risen to the position of Lord Chancellor, to convince the Catholic Church to annul the wedding so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. The Cardinal was unsuccessful.
In 1529, when Wolsey failed to gain papal approval, he was dismissed from royal service and returned to life as Archbishop in York.
The Protestant Revolution had already been at philosophical and even violent odds with the Catholic Church elsewhere in Europe for years by this point.
Anyway, according to Wikitree, Walter Charles Strickland became the head of the family at age 14 "at the date of his father's inquisition post mortem." I at first thought that meant the Spanish Inquisition, but the father died of illness related to asthma (and I would guess medical treatment for that, based on what I understand about "doctors" of the period), so that must be a legal term for settling affairs.
In 1908, a Kendal Publisher released a book by Daniel Scott which indicates the father died from illness. Chapter Eight of The Stricklands of Sizergh Castle: The Records of Twenty-five Generations of a Westmoreland Family is called Three Notable Walters. It quotes a contract wherein the second of these three successive Walters, the father of our subject, agreed to pay a total of 20 pounds sterling to Dr. Alexander Kenet in 1526 to bring him to "perfect health of all his infirmities and diseases contained in his person, and especially stomach, and lungs, and breast, wherein he has most disease and grief." Scott goes on to say that "Despite these attentions, Sir Walter died on January 9th the following year, when he was only about 31 years old."
Wikitree goes on to say that upon his parents' death, young Walter was made a ward of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Henry VIII's former Lord Chancellor).
Within a few months, however, the mercurial Henry accused Wolsey of treason, one of the King's favorite crimes to hang on those who had fallen out of royal favor. Wolsey died before his trial at the end of 1530.
Times were obviously changing fast.
Henry VIII appointed a new Archbishop who approved his annulment. Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn in 1532. When the Pope learned of the annulment, he ex-communicated both Henry and his new Archbishop of Canterbury.
Rather than recant, Henry officially married Anne Boleyn in January of 1533.
Within months, the Act of Succession of 1533 declared Catherine's Catholic daughter Mary "illegitimate," though of course history would unfold to subsequently make her Queen against her father's wishes.
In 1534, the Acts of Supremacy named King Henry VIII head of the Church of England, and Protestants ruled England for the first time.
Meanwhile, back at Sizergh Castle, with the death of Cardinal Wolsey, Walter subsequently became ward of Arthur Darcy and then his uncle, Thomas Strickland.
There's a funny note about him being "only slightly" involved in the Northern Rebellion of October 1536. I believe this refers to the "Pilgrimage of Grace," which sought to reverse King Henry VIII's break from the Catholic Church and to overturn the reform policies of Sir Thomas Cromwell, including the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
As an aside, I happened to read a good book about this time period called Dissolution on our Celebrity Eclipse Southern Caribbean cruise, having found it in the ship's library. I couldn't recall the name of that book to recommend it while writing this, but I recalled it seeing it on our balcony table while in port in Curacao and was able to look up the title on my blog. A couple of days ago I happened to look at that post before emailing its link to some friends who will soon be cruising to Curacao, or perhaps I wouldn't have remembered. That's probably of little interest to you, but it's fascinating to me as to how my brain works to somehow organize information. I won't bore you any more than I already have with details about this period, but the book by C.J. Sansom does manage to slip in quite a few details of the era within a period murder mystery.
Back to 1536, the main leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion was Robert Aske, but right below his name in a Wikipedia article on the subject is that of Sir Thomas Darcy. Looking him up, I learned he happens to be the father of Sir Arthur Darcy, Walter's guardian after Cardinal Wolsey.
I would guess that upon discovery of Sir Thomas Darcy's involvement in the rebellion against the crown, Arthur Darcy would have been deemed an unacceptable guardian for young Walter, leading to the appointment of Thomas Strickland to that position.
Upon assuming his role as guardian, Uncle Thomas must have convinced the authorities that young Walter had been led astray by his prior guardians, because Walter was pardoned. However, it should be noted that unlike his father and grandfather, who were Knights with the title of Sir Walter, the third Walter never received a title higher than Esquire.
On April 28, 1537, just six months after the rebellion, 21-year-old Walter, having reached the proper legal age, took full control of his own estate.
Despite his family's Catholic history and his own involvement in rebellion, Walter quickly became trusted by the English government upon receiving control of his properties. Within a year, he was serving as a juror for trials of rebels, including some of his own relatives.
When Walter was "overlooked" in appointing aristocrats to help in "keeping peace and administering justice," Deputy Warden Thomas Wharton wrote to Thomas Cromwell on July 12, 1537, to attain an appointment for his "great friend."
The trust of Wharton proved well-founded when Walter became something of a hero in defending England. Walter gathered 200 Kendal archers at Solway Moss in 1542, helping defeat the Scottish uprising that supported the Catholic reign of King James V. When describing the battle in a letter, Wharton referred to Walter as his "nigh cousin," indicating a strong bond.
King James V was not actually in the battle, but the agony of this bitter defeat apparently contributed to his death a short time later. He was survived by a six-week old daughter, who was named sovereign of Scotland upon his death. That was Mary Queen of Scots.
Getting back to our family tree's ancestors, Walter Charles Strickland Esquire's wife Alice Tempest is listed as the mother of both Thomas and William, which would make them full brothers.
The theory that Sir Thomas Strickland, the Parliament member and scoundrel, was the child of Walter and Alice is on pretty firm ground, as he is much more visible in history books.
To be the full brother of Thomas, William must have been born later than his estimated birth date of about 1530. After all, Alice Tempest would have been only ten years-old at the time and didn't marry Walter until 1561, when she was 31 years old. William's son Edward, however, was reportedly born in 1551, so it would be impossible for William to have been born around the time that Walter married Alice.
My alternative theory is that Alice was not the mother of William.
If we assume William was born in 1530, then that would have been about the time that Walter's father died. Walter's father was also named Walter (1493-1528), so an easy explanation would be that William was born possibly in 1528 or 1529 and was actually an uncle of Thomas rather than a brother. However, no records of such seem to support that, keeping in mind that I'm relying on records available online found by other amateur sleuths rather than digging through original records on my own.
Going with Walter Charles Strickland Esq as the father of William like "ancestral voters" seem to agree, then I would conclude that in fact William must have been born later than 1530 (although it would be possible for a 14-year-old to father a child).
On March 8, 1535, 18-year-old Charles was contracted to marry Margaret Hamerton of Wigglesworth, but no documents of the actual marriage itself seem to exist.
Margaret died May 3, 1538, possibly taking her own life according to Wikitree. I think a good alternative theory is that in fact William was born to Margaret, who died during childbirth. I would surmise suicide may be only a Wikitree theory based on the fact she died at only 22 years of age. Death during childbirth seems in that era seems far more likely to me.
In a slight contradiction, the ancestral voters show Walter marrying Agnes Hamerton in 1537 just as he gained control of his estate, but with no clear end to that relationship. I think Agnes was actually Margaret, which would fit my second theory exactly.
Just to make things more confusing, Walter Charles Strickland Esq did have a sister and an aunt named Agnes, which might help explain where that name came from.
Anyway, my final answer is: William was born on about May 3, 1538, and his mother is Margaret Hamerton of Wigglesworth, daughter of Sir Stephen Hamerton. Just to be clear, however, our family link to Walter Charles Strickland Esq was probably through Sir Thomas rather than William.
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