1555 - John Littlejohn of Ashburton

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Record
Date 1555/56
Topic John Littell and John Wreyfforde hand in amount collected on All Souls' Eve.
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Ashburton.
File:West Street , Ashburton.jpg
Ashburton street view. West Street; photo by Mike Crowe. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Commons.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2015-08-25. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2017-05-08.

Record

6d. for ryppyng up the presse bouft of John Liteljohn and settyng up the same in the vestrye.[1]

Source notes

This entry figures in the accounts for 1555-56 under the heading "Paid".
"bouft": bought.

IRHB comments

Men surnamed Littlejohn are found in the records too often to be of much interest unless they have something else to recommend them. This Littlejohn is found in Ashburton almost 70 years later than a John Little (see Cross-references below). Ashburton was (and is) a small town; was John Littlejohn a descendant of John Little? There is at least one considerably earlier example of a John Little appearing at a locality years before a person surnamed Littlejohn.[2] Although two examples are hardly enough to build a hypothesis on, it does seem likely that Littlejohn arose as a surname for people whose father was named John Little. John Little of Ashburton is also mentioned in the accounts for 1557-58. There were Robin Hood-related entertainments of some sort at Ashburton (see Cross-references below), but there is no reason to think that John Littlejohn owed his name to playing Little John in these.

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Background

Also see

Notes