The Hancocks Part 1: A Cornish Inheritance
Thomas & Grace Hancock (About 1620-1679)
This story is part 1 of my family line that lived in Cornwall until Samuel Hancock and Elizabeth (nee Menear) migrated to Australia in 1876. We begin in the 1600s with Thomas and Grace Hancock in St Austell, Cornwall.
Cornwall
I’m a tinner, I’m a tinner,I’m a tinner brave and true,And when I go down to Wheal FortuneI’ll bring up riches for you.But leave ‘ee the Knocker’s pasty,And whistle not underground,For they that do spite the little folkWill never more be found. 1
Cornwall lies at the far western tip of England, projecting into the Atlantic like a peninsula. For centuries, the River Tamar formed a natural boundary: until bridges were built in the late nineteenth century, it effectively separated Cornwall from the rest of England. The county’s rugged coastline, carved by wind and sea, discouraged invaders and shaped the lives of those who dwelt there.
Long before the arrival of Romans and Anglo-Saxons, the inhabitants, people of Iberian and Celtic stock, developed in isolation. Daphne Du Maurier described them as being molded by the harshness of their land, becoming as resilient and weathered as the granite cliffs and moors that surrounded them. Tales of smuggling and shipwrecks abound in Cornish folklore, often tied to the fishing communities that thrived along the coast. My own family, however, were engaged in farming and mining, and no evidence has emerged of smugglers in our lineage.
Cornwall’s mining heritage stretches back to the Bronze Age, around 1800 BC, when tin was first produced. Early miners, known as tin streamers, recovered grains of tin from riverbeds, where they had been deposited over millennia from exposed veins in the rock. They crushed the gravel in mortar stones, washed it to separate waste sand from the heavier tin, and smelted the ore until molten, pouring it into moulds while impurities floated to the surface. Later generations discovered copper and lead at the junctions of granite and slate, requiring increasingly sophisticated methods of extraction. This deep connection between land and livelihood shaped generations of Cornish families, including the Hancocks.
A Land of Stone and Hedge
While the Farrs wrestled with the flat, waterlogged fens of Lincolnshire2 , the Hancocks lived in a landscape carved from granite and shaped by wind. The Farrs knew water; drains, dikes, fens, floods and cottages. The Hancocks knew stone; granite outcrops on Hensbarrow Downs, the great Cornish hedge (which is not a hedge at all, but a wall of earth and stone topped with furze and blackthorn.) and the ancient longhouses where families and livestock shared a single roof.
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| 1814 John Cary’s Travellors Companion |
Thomas & Grace Hancock
“The moor is wide, the hearth is small,
Yet all is home beneath one wall.” 3
When Thomas Hancock, my eighth great-grandfather, was born around 1620, the Cornish moors stretched wide and wild—strewn with weathered outcrops and divided by towering hedgerows into a patchwork of small, irregular fields. Each acre had been won from the land through generations of toil. After rain, slate roofs gleamed against the grey sky, and the rhythm of rural life echoed across the valleys.
Though no records place a Thomas Hancock at Holy Trinity Church in St Austell during this period, I have recently discovered that he had made a will, probably on his death-bed, and his occupation was a "tinner". Grace also made a will on her death-bed, which has uncovered even more important information about her family. To find out more, read this story.
It is likely that Thomas was born in St Austell or a nearby parish. They would have married during the chaotic English Civil War record gap (c.1645–1655). With no record of their marriage, geneologists have hit a wall at this point. Thomas was likely born in a mining town and either himself or his family moved to St Austell to pursue better mining opportunities. I believe Grace was born in 1628 in St Austell.
St Austell itself was still what travel writers called “a mean market town.” John Leland, writing in the 1540s, dismissed it with a single line: “At St. Austelles is nothing notable but the paroch chirch.” Yet for those who lived in its orbit, it was the center of everything—a place to trade, to gather, and to hear news from the wider world.
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| Reproduced courtesy of Mac Waters as featured on cornishmemory.com |
The Hancocks likely lived not in a clustered village street, but in a house with a garden and by the time of Grace's death, they also had an acre of land. This will be looked at in more detail in the story of their wills.
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| A renovated long house |
Outside, the Cornish hedge marked the edge of survival. To the north, Hensbarrow Downs stretched across the granite uplands—wild, heather-covered common land where families grazed sheep, cut turf for fuel, and gathered furze for baking ovens. To the south, the land fell into more sheltered valleys, where oats and barley could be coaxed from thin, acidic soil.
This was a landscape of solitude and dispersed settlement. Narrow lanes ran between high hedge-banks, creating the sensation of traveling through green tunnels. A family might live within sight of one or two neighbours, but often a good walk from the next house. On market days, the lanes filled with carts and livestock. Most days were quiet, the silence broken only by the call of curlews on the moor or the distant ring of hammer on stone.
Thomas and Grace: Building a Family
Thomas married Grace prior to 1650, and together they had at seven surviving children:
John Hancock (1654–1690)
Jane Hancock (1656–after 1679)
Robert Hancock (1661–1743), who married Prudence Clements (1668–1753)—my direct ancestor
Margaret Hancock (1667–1691)
Samson Hancock (? - ?)
William Hancock (? - ?)
Seven children meant more hands to work and greater productivity. From an early age, children could mind livestock, gather fuel, help with the harvest, spin wool, and contribute to the household economy. In their teenage years, boys could begin work and they likely worked with their father as tinners.
The Self-Reliant Lives of My 17th-Century Cornish Ancestors
To truly understand the world of Thomas and Grace Hancock, we must step back into 1670s St Austell, Cornwall, and discard the modern image of the industrial miner. Thomas and his sons were not low-wage day labourers working deep in dark, hazardous underground shafts. Instead, they were "yeoman-tinners"—proud, independent, self-employed capitalists who occupied a stable and respected position in the middle tier of Cornish society. Operating under an ancient legal framework known as the Stannary System, they held unique legal rights. By digging small turf pits at the corners of a square plot of moorland, they could claim an independent "Tin Bound." Rather than paying rent to a wealthy landlord, they simply paid a small percentage of their finished tin metal directly to the lord of the soil, keeping the remaining profits entirely for themselves.
Their daily work was dictated by the seasons and the flow of the local rivers. Rather than tunneling underground, Thomas and his sons practiced a highly skilled method known as "tin streaming" or "shoding" under the open sky. They skillfully diverted local streams through wooden channels to wash away the rugged moorland topsoil, exposing heavy, dark pebbles of raw tin ore embedded in the gravel. Training for the Hancock sons was an intimate, multi-generational family affair. From a young age, the boys worked alongside Thomas, learning how to read the landscape for mineral deposits, manage the wooden sluice gates, and handle the family's three sturdy packhorses used to transport heavy sacks of ore to the local granite blowing houses for smelting. Thomas also taught his sons the complex legalities of the trade—how to register bounds, avoid being cheated at the regional Coinage Halls, and navigate Cornwall’s independent Stannary Courts.
When the summer sun dried up the moorland streams, the family seamlessly shifted their focus back to their agricultural smallholding. They used their packhorses to plough their single "eaker" (acre) of arable ground, tended to their garden, and managed their livestock, including their "four fevinos" (pigs). This beautifully diversified lifestyle provided the Hancock family with a resilient safety net. They produced their own food, manufactured their own textiles using their home spinning wheel, and successfully built a life of proud financial independence. The legacy they left behind was not one of poverty, but of remarkable self-reliance, securing a comfortable home and a respected local name that survived the challenges of 17th-century life.
1672: Thomas’s Death
Thomas Hancock died in September or November of 1672, probably in his late forties or early fifties, leaving Grace a widow with grown and nearly-grown children. Thomsin would have been twenty-two, John eighteen, Jane sixteen, Robert eleven, and Margaret only five. I believe William and Samson were older than Robert, so they were likely at home supporting the family as tinners and working on the the land Grace inherited.
In an era when a woman’s legal and economic identity was largely subsumed by her husband’s, widowhood brought both vulnerability and a measure of independence. Grace would have been responsible for managing the land and resources Thomas left, ensuring younger children were cared for, and maintaining the family’s place in the community.
Grace lived for seven more years, dying in 1679. Margaret was twelve and she would have been raised by Jane, as Thomsin was now married with a young child of her own. (She likely married a cousin named Richard Hancock shortly after her father's death in 1673.) William and Samson were probably working together as tinners and had leased land together, as their inheritance was shared. Grace had maintained the family's wealth since her husband's death, and the children were adequatly provided for in her will, so she would have died knowing she had left her children in good standing.
Robert Hancock (1661–1737), Thomas and Grace’s third son and my seventh great-grandfather, was eighteen when his mother died. He would have had many years of work experience by this age. With his inheritance and family connections, he was in a position to adquately provide for himself as a tinner, and likely established himself as a yeoman like his father.
Thomas never saw his grandchildren and when Grace died, there was likely only young William, Thomsin's son. They could not have imagined that their descendants would survive civil war, navigate religious upheaval, endure the Industrial Revolution, and eventually cross oceans to build new lives in Australia. Though their own lives were relatively brief, they passed down knowledge, provided an inheritance, cultivated resilience and stong community ties, and held fast to the land and each other. In the shadow of moorstone walls and beneath the shelter of towering hedgerows, they laid the foundations of a family that would weather centuries.
The Fires of Summer and Winter
The Hancocks’ year was marked not just by the church calendar but also the older rhythms of festivals that blended Christian and pagan traditions. These festivals offered respite from daily grind and strengthened community bonds across the turning of the seasons.
On Midsummer Eve, the darkening sky filled with smoke from dozens of bonfires lit on every hill and headland. The Royal Cornwall Gazette described it vividly:
”No sooner had the tardy sun withdrawn himself from the horizon, then the young men began to assemble… drawing after them, trees and branches of wood and furze… Tar barrels were presently erected on tall poles… pretty female children tript up and down in their best frocks, decorated with garlands… The joyful moment arrives, the torches make their appearance, the heaped-up wood is on fire!”
The smell of burning tar and woodsmoke drifted for miles. Young men leapt through flames, testing their courage. Children danced in circles, their garlands wilting in the heat. From every high place, fires answered each other across the darkness—a network of light connecting farm to hamlet to town, a defiant assertion that despite poverty and hardship, this community was alive and unbroken.
Six months later, at the winter solstice on 21 December, fires blazed again, but now they marked not abundance but survival, not the height of summer but the return of light from deepest darkness. In homes across St Austell, families constructed the Cornish Bush. This was a three-dimensional wreath made from withy circles woven through each other. They weredecorated with holly, ivy, and mistletoe, with an apple hung at the center and a red candle secured above. On the night of the 20th, just before midnight, the candle would be lit and families would dance beneath the bush in circles, welcoming the God of Light, celebrating the rebirth of the sun that ancient peoples had honoured long before Christianity arrived in Cornwall.
The Yule log, or the “Mock” as it was called in Cornwall, was brought in with ceremony. A massive ash log, it would be laid on the hearth and set burning, meant to last through all twelve days of Christmas. In some households, farmers would burn the “ashen faggot”—bundles of ash branches tied together with withies (willow strips), each bundle representing good luck for the coming year. As the faggot burned, the withies would burst with loud cracks, and bets were placed on which would snap first, with proceeds going to charity. Any household that did not burn the ashen faggot risked years of bad luck; some believed it protected against evil spirits and the Devil himself.
On 23 December came Tom Bawcock’s Eve, celebrated particularly in the fishing villages but remembered throughout Cornwall. The legend told of Tom Bawcock, a brave fisherman from Mousehole who had sailed out into a terrible winter storm when his village faced starvation, returning with a massive catch of seven different fish that saved the people from famine. To commemorate his courage, families ate Stargazy Pie. This is a fish pie with the heads protruding through the crust, their eyes seeming to gaze at the stars. It was a festival of gratitude for those who risked their lives to feed others, a reminder that community survival depended on individual bravery.
At harvest’s end came another ritual: Crying the Neck. When the last handful of corn stood in the field, one of the reapers would lift it high and shout: “I ’ave ’un! I ’ave ’un! I ’ave ’un!” The rest would answer: “What ’ave ’ee?” “A neck! A neck! A neck!” “Hurrah for the neck!” Then came the feast of salted pork, barley pasties, ale and cider flowing, and dancing that lasted until dawn.
These festivals connected the Hancocks to rhythms older than Christianity, older than the Norman Conquest, older perhaps than written history itself. They were the threads that bound community together when law and economy seemed designed to tear it apart, the moments when even the poorest families could feast and dance and remember that they were part of something larger than individual struggle. When future generations of Hancocks left Cornwall, they carried these memories with them: the smell of tar-barrel smoke, the taste of Stargazy Pie, the sound of withies bursting in the Yule fire, and the shout of “A neck! A neck! A neck!” echoing across golden fields at harvest time.
Part 2 of a Cornish inheritance will look at the lives of Robert Hancock & Prudence Clements & Robert Hancock and Rebecca Mufford: Generations of Endurance
Notes:
1 The Tinner’s Rabbit” (Traditional, circa 1840s-1870s). ↩
2 To read the Farr’s Stories: Roots in Lincolnshire Pt 1. ↩
3 Original verse, describing the longhouse Thomas and his family likely lived in. ↩
Sources & Further Reading
My ancestry family tree for geneological sources: https://www.ancestry.com.au/invite-ui/accept?token=2NQi6YrG-SmftSXLJLZQV1w-gTbxWAqNrkWQa0xBCuM=
(I am in process of uploading the sources for this family line to this website, so use this link in the interim)
Story related to Grace and Thomas Hancock's wills
[1] It's a hard-knock life https://cornishstory.com/2024/12/05/its-a-hard-knock-life/[2] working conditions in Cornish copper & tin mines https://victorianweb.org/technology/ir/samuel5.html
[3] Patterns of Agriculture in Seventeenth-Century England https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/1746
[4] St Austell Facts for Kids https://kids.kiddle.co/St_Austell
[5] Nation on Film - Tin mining - Working conditions https://www.bbc.co.uk/nationonfilm/topics/tin-mining/background_conditions.shtml
[6] United Kingdom - 18th-century Britain, 1714–1815 https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/18th-century-Britain-1714-1815
[7] Full text of "A Cornish Parish: Being an Account of St. ... https://archive.org/stream/acornishparishb01hammgoog/acornishparishb01hammgoog_djvu.txt
[8] Work Life https://www.cornishmining.org.uk/about/mining-in-cornwall-and-west-devon/mining-characters-and-society/work-life
[9] Trewithen and its Cornish Context in the Early Eighteenth ... https://www.artandthecountryhouse.com/essays/essays-index/trewithen-and-its-cornish-context-in-the-early-eighteenth-century
[10] St Austell: the good old days – Cornish studies resources https://bernarddeacon.com/2022/10/11/st-austell-the-good-old-days/
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