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son and daughter in a family to be given their parents' names - or those of their grandparents.
Other children were named after uncles or aunts. Continuity and tradition were important in rural
communities then.
But it is here, at Matthew Honeycombe, who married twice and lived in St Cleer, that the family
tree breaks; the line of succession snaps. For no baptismal entry in a parish register has been
found for Matthew, and so we do not know exactly who his parents were, or who his father
was. However, we can assume -since he married for the first time in 1682 - that he was born
about 1660, the year in which the monarchy was restored in England and Charles II became
king.
There are two likely candidates in St Cleer for Matthew's father, a John Honeycombe and two
Anthony Honeycombes.
If one of these is ever proved to be his father, we can take the line of succession back for
another generation or so. We might then connect the Honeycombes in St Cleer to one of the
large groups of Honeycombes living in three other villages in eastern Cornwall: Callington,
Menheniot and Calstock - the latter village being the ancestral home of al! the Honeycombes,
where a house of that name (though differently spelt) existed in 1327 and in which a John
Honeycombe dwelt.
His name, the earliest known reference to the surname that there is, appears in a tax return,
called a Lay Subsidy, drawn up in 1327. The name is
spelt 'Honycome' then. The house, named in an Assession Roll (a record of land transfers within
a manor) for the manor of Calstock in 1333, is written 'Honyacombe'.
The name is descriptive of the valley at the top of which the house was built. It derives from an
Anglo-Saxon adjective and a Celtic noun - 'honiga' meaning honeyed or fruitful (the 'g' is soft
and pronounced like a 'y')i and 'combe', meaning valley (pronounced 'coom'), a Welsh word to
this day, spelt 'cwm'.
The earliest Honeycombes to be found in records relating to St Cleer, where Matthew lived and
died, are named in the Protestation Returns of 1641, the year before the Civil War began, and
eight years before the execution of Charles I. Every male over the age of 18, in every village,
town and city, was invited to swear an oath and sign a declaration opposing any 'plots and
conspiracies to subvert the fundamental laws of the kingdom and to introduce Arbitrarie and
Tyrannical government1.
The Honeycombes in St Cleer who signed or made their mark in 1641 were three: Anthony
senior, Anthony junior, and John, one of whom must have been Matthew's father. Two
Honeycombes signed in Callington, five in Calstock and one or two elsewhere.
Not all the returns for Cornwall have survived, although they are the most complete in England
and can be seen in the House of Lords Record Office. Four Cornish parishes are missing,
including those of St Austell and Truro, and we know some Honeycombes were living there in
1641. Nonetheless, of the 30,000 men listed in the Cornish returns, only 14 are recorded as
being Honeycombes, and the largest group of them lived in or around Calstock at that time.
Many Honeycombes, however, are named in the manorial records of Calstock - in the
Assession Rolls and Court Rolls maintained for centuries by the Duchy of Cornwall, whose
dukes owned the manor (and still do). Clearly these Honeycombes were all related in some
way, and in particular connected to the John Honeycombe who actually lived in Honeycombe in
1327 - the year in which Edward II was deposed and brutally murdered, and his son crowned
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