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Three of Robert's four brothers, Matthew, William and Richard, were, respectively, a
husbandman (or tenant of a small farm), a fisherman, and a miner.
The eldest, John, was probably also a small farmer like his father.
The fisherman, William, born in Calstock in 1763, would sire another William, a copper miner,
six of whose children emigrated in the 1860s to Australia. But more about them later.
Robert's father, Matthew, our William's grandfather, is recorded as having been a farm labourer
at the time of his marriage to Deborah Deebie in January 1755, when he was 29- Matthew may
have been or become a yeoman farmer, like his younger brother William. This type of farmer
owned his land. But none of these brothers, including a third one, John, did very well. The latter
died in the poorhouse, and Matthew and William were paupers when they died.
Matthew, who was the oldest brother, died in 1787 in Calstock, three weeks or so before his
62nd birthday. Born at the end of the reign of George I in January 1726, in the village of St
Cleer, some 15 miles to the west, he settled in Calstock a few years after his marriage, about
1760. The fact that ail three brothers died in poverty suggests a series of rural and family
misfortunes: bad landlords, bad debts, bad crops, bad luck or bad behaviour Rural life could be
as harsh as it was hard, less full of Cobbett's 'happy days', especially as childhood waned.
Matthew's father, Jonathan Honeycombe, on the other hand, was almost certainly a prosperous
yeoman or husbandman in St Cleer, and a well regarded man, as eventually he became a
churchwarden (about 1760) and an overseer of parish affairs (about 1763). Born in the reign of
Queen Anne, and soon after Marlborough's victory at Malplaquet, in August 1709, he married
Grace Hasdon in St Cleer in October 1726, two months after his 17th birthday. It seems he had
to marry her, for their son Matthew was born two months after Jonathan and Grace exchanged
their wedding vows in church.
Jonathan died in July 1774, a few weeks before his 65th birthday and as the American colonists
prepared themselves for their War of Independence. He was buried in the graveyard of the
parish church of St Cleer. So was his father, Matthew, in September 1728.
It is this Matthew who is the only begetter of all the Honeycombes in the world today. There
were other branches, other families of Honeycombes, but they died out in the 19th century. As
a result, Matthew's children and their descendants became pre-eminent as progenitors. If it had
not been for Matthew, his two wives and their two surviving sons, no Honeycombes would exist
today.
Matthew may also have been a yeoman or husbandman, like his second surviving son, Jonathan.
Or he could have been a stonemason, like his first son, John.
This John was born in St Cleer in November 1683, the first child of Matthew Honeycombe and
Joan Rainolde, who had married in St Cleer in October the previous year. Their second son,
another Matthew, died, aged five, in 1693. They had no other children, as far as we know.
When Joan died, in June 1707, her erstwhile spouse, Matthew Honeycombe, remarried the
following month.
One wonders at his haste. Perhaps Joan had been ill for some time. But it was not because his
second wife, Jane Bennet, was pregnant. His first child by her, yet another son called Matthew,
was born in May 1708; he died three weeks later. Jane's second son was Jonathan, the future
churchwarden, and ancestor of the main line of Honeycombes in Australia; he was born in
August 1709.
Jane also had a daughter, who was given her mother's name. It was customary then for the first
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