The Hancocks Part 2: Robert & Prudence, Generations of Endurance
This story is part 2 of my family line that lived in Cornwall until Samuel Hancock and Elizabeth (nee Menear) migrated to Australia in 1876. Robert and Prudence lived a long life in St Austell, Cornwall during the volatile times of the mid 1600s to mid 1700s.
Robert Hancock and Prudence Clements
Robert Hancock, my seventh great-grandfather, was baptised at Holy Trinity Church on 12 March 1661 in the parish of St Austell, Cornwall.1 He was born into a world still unsettled by one of the most violent upheavals in English history. The English Civil War, or Great Rebellion, had torn the kingdom apart between 1642 and 1651, claiming an estimated 200,000 lives, or roughly four percent of the population.
Cornwall had stood firmly for the Crown, contributing men and resources to the Royalist cause with remarkable loyalty. Even after Parliament’s decisive victory at Naseby in 1645, resistance in the county continued. The execution of Charles I in 1649 shattered long-held beliefs in the divine right of kings, and for eleven years England existed without a monarch.
The consequences of war lingered long after the fighting ended. Parliamentary troops occupied Cornwall in 1646, dismantling its military strength and partially destroying strongholds such as Restormel, Launceston, and Tintagel. Royalist families faced heavy fines, and the established social order began to shift. The gentry who had led Cornwall’s resistance saw their influence weakened, while ordinary men who had fought for the king discovered that loyalty offered little protection in defeat.
The restoration of Charles II in 1660 brought celebration, but also a quiet unease. The past decade had proven that kings could fall, that Parliament could rule, and that ordinary people could challenge traditional authority. Robert grew up in a society where these ideas were no longer unthinkable, and where memories of war remained vivid in the stories of family and neighbours.
Amid this uncertainty, the Hancock family endured. Robert’s parents survived the years of conflict, occupation, and hardship, and managed to preserve their position. When his mother, Grace, died in 1679, her will carefully provided for each of her children, ensuring they could continue the family’s work as tinners and yeomen and maintain a measure of stability in an unpredictable world.2
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| Proof version of John Speed's 1611/12 map of Cornwall, which closely followed the Saxton map of 1576 in offering a much more accurate and detailed depiction of the county, but includes additional settlements, rivers and other details. Courtesy of caitlingreen.org |
Robert's Inheritance and Path to Independence
Robert was just eleven years old when his father, Thomas, died in 1672.3 The responsibility for the household fell to his mother, Grace, who managed the family’s land, livestock, and mining interests over the following seven years. Before his father’s death, Robert would already have begun learning the skills essential to a tinner and yeoman—how to read the landscape for “shodes” (tin-stones), how to work the moorland streams for streaming tin, and how to tend the family’s acre of land and its livestock.
An anonymous Cornishman, writing in 1671—the year before Thomas’s death—captured the craft of the tinner in vivid detail:
"Where we suspect any mines to be, we diligently search that hill and countrey, its situation, the earth or grewt, its colour, and nature, and what sort of stones it yields… After any great land flood (in which it is supposed there are some new frets made in the sides of the banks), we go and diligently observe such frets … to see if, happily, we can discover any metallic stones in the sides or bottoms thereof."
The suspected stone would then be “vanned”—crushed on a shovel and washed until the heavier grains of tin were revealed. This was more than a trade; it was a way of life passed from father to son over generations, requiring patience, skill, and a close reading of the land.
When Grace died in 1679, Robert had reached eighteen. Her will set out a carefully structured inheritance: 45 shillings in cash, a suit of leather working clothes, and one head of cattle, loaned interest-free for three years. This was not simply provision, but preparation. The 45 shillings—about £2 5s 0d—was enough to secure a leasehold under the Duchy of Cornwall’s “Three-Lives” system, the foundation of many yeoman livelihoods. The cow offered both immediate productivity and security, while the leather clothing equipped him for the physical demands of tin work. Together, these provisions gave Robert the means to begin establishing himself as an independent yeoman. (To read more about her will and estate)
He did not marry immediately. Though eighteen in 1679, Robert waited until 1691—nearly twelve years—to marry Prudence Clements, when he was twenty-nine. This delay reflects a practical reality of the time: a young man needed to secure land, build up stock, and establish his standing before supporting a household. In these intervening years, Robert likely worked alongside his brothers, sharing labour and resources as each gradually built their own livelihood. By the time of his marriage, he had achieved the stability required to begin a family.
The Tinner's World: From Thomas to Robert
Cornwall’s tin industry underwent gradual but important changes between the generations of Thomas Hancock and his son Robert. In 1663, a new coinage town was established at Lostwithiel, adding to an administrative system that had governed the tin trade for centuries. Tin from the St Austell area was likely taken to Lostwithiel, the nearest stannary and long-established administrative centre on the River Fowey.
A coinage town was a designated centre where all locally produced tin had to be inspected, taxed, and stamped before it could be legally sold. This process, known as tin coinage, had been in place since at least 1156, making it one of the oldest forms of taxation in England. The term “coinage” did not refer to minting money, but to the act of stamping the tin as proof that the duty had been paid.
Once a tinner had refined his tin into blocks, he was required to transport them to one of these towns. There, a Duchy official known as a “prover” would cut away the corners to test the quality of the metal. If the tin met the required standard and the duty—set at four shillings per hundredweight since the reign of Edward I—was paid, the blocks were stamped with the Duchy seal and cleared for sale.
Coinage days were held quarterly, drawing tinners and merchants from across the region. For families like the Hancocks, these journeys would have been a familiar part of working life, linking their smallholding on Hensbarrow Downs to the wider network of Cornish trade. By 1778, the historian Pryce observed that Lostwithiel alone was coining more tin each quarter than several other towns had once managed in an entire year, reflecting the gradual westward shift of the industry.
Beyond the mines, Cornwall’s social and physical landscape was also evolving. A growing “middling sort” of lawyers, traders, and merchants was emerging, though much of the county remained rural and relatively isolated. St Austell itself was still modest in Robert’s time. In the reign of Henry VIII, the antiquary John Leland had described it as “a poor village,” and it was not noted as significant by either Carew or Norden. Its later growth owed much to its proximity to the nearby mines at Polgooth and elsewhere. Although the parish was expanding during Robert’s lifetime, it would not become a “considerable thoroughfare” until the main road from Plymouth to Land’s End was routed through it around 1760.
A rare glimpse of Cornwall at the end of the seventeenth century comes from the traveller Celia Fiennes, who journeyed through the region on horseback in 1698. She described narrow, tree-lined lanes, steep hills, and towns with streets “very close.” Roads were often in poor condition, with deep ruts and potholes that made travel slow and difficult. Yet she also noted the landscape’s beauty, observing that in many places one might ride “as if in a Grove,” with regular rows of trees lining each side of the road.
By the 1690s, newspapers were beginning to reach Cornwall, and literacy was slowly increasing. Even so, for most tinners like Robert, the world remained largely local—shaped by the parish church, the moorland bounds, the coinage town, and the enduring rhythms of the Stannary courts that governed their ancient trade.
Marriage to Prudence Clements
By the time Robert had secured his footing as an independent yeoman, he was ready to establish a household of his own. On 2 March 1691, he married Prudence Clements at Holy Trinity Church in St Austell.4 She was twenty-two years old, having been baptised there on 29 August 1668,5 while Robert was twenty-nine.
Prudence was the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Clements. Thomas was likely born in the nearby parish of St Blazey in 1632.6 No marriage record has been found, and the only baptism records located for the couple are Prudence in 1668—when Thomas would have been thirty-six—and a son Thomas in 1671, who may have died in 1673.7 Her father died in either 1684 when Prudence was sixteen, or 1693 when she was twenty-five.8
Elizabeth Clements died in 1676, when Prudence was just seven years old.9 Who helped raised her after her mother’s death is uncertain. When Prudence was fourteen, her father may have married Marjorie Grigg in 1682.10 (I cannot be certain this record is for her father or another person with the same name.) If he did remarry, the arrangement may have altered her place in the household and the opportunities available to her. As the only daughter, she would no longer have been expected to run her father’s household, and she would have been freer to marry once she came of age. I have ordered the scan of the probate and will documents for Thomas Clemence, Tinner of St Austell who died in 1684, to determine if this record relates to him.
Robert and Prudence’s marriage marked the beginning of a long and productive partnership, rooted in the rhythms of parish life and sustained by the skills and stability Robert had spent years building. Together, they raised a large family:
- Elizabeth Hancock (1692–1692).
- John Hancock (1693–?).
- William Hancock (1695–1730).
- Robert Hancock (1698–1768) — married Rebecca Mufford (my direct ancestor).
- Grace Hancock (1700–1785).
- Thomas Hancock (1702–1744).
- Richard Hancock (1704–1783) — married Mary Nicholls (also my direct ancestors).
- Oliver Hancock (1707–1740).
- Jane Hancock (1711–?).
- John Hancock (1715–?).11
Several of these children lived to adulthood and established families of their own. Robert, my direct ancestor, married Rebecca Mufford in 1728. Richard married Mary Nicholls in 172912 and is also a direct ancestor. Not all, however, enjoyed long lives—Elizabeth died as an infant, Oliver at thirty-one, and William at 35, would have been a heavy loss for parents who themselves lived into old age. Such experiences were part of the fabric of family life, shaping a resilience passed from one generation to the next.
During these years, the parish of St Austell continued to grow. Holy Trinity Church, rebuilt in the late fifteenth century and often described as “a bible in stone,” stood at the centre of community life. Its carvings of the Holy Trinity, the apostles, and Irish saints reflected a long religious tradition, while within its walls the milestones of daily life—baptisms, marriages, and burials—were faithfully recorded. It was here that Robert and Prudence’s family story unfolded, one entry at a time.
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| St Austell was developing into a more prospeous town from the mid 1600s - as seen in this 1830's image. See the Holy Trinity Church, Allom Antique Print 1830 |
A Lifetime of Witness
Robert and Prudence’s story, like that of many families of their time, was not marked by dramatic events but by endurance. Robert died in 1743 or 1744 at around eighty-two years of age. Prudence lived even longer, reaching eighty-four before her burial on 16 April 1753.
Across their lifetimes, they witnessed profound change. Cornwall’s economy continued its gradual shift toward mining, while the wider nation experienced political and social transformation. They lived through the reigns of six monarchs—Charles II, James II, William III and Mary II, Anne, George I, and George II—as well as the Glorious Revolution, the Acts of Union, and the Jacobite risings. What had been uncertainty in Robert’s childhood became, over time, a more settled but still evolving world.
Yet their greatest achievement was continuity. They raised children who could sustain themselves, maintained the family’s place within the parish, and passed on the practical skills and values that had carried them through uncertain times.
When Prudence died, her great-grandson Thomas Hancock—my sixth great-grandfather—was eleven years old. He would have known her and Robert, and would have heard stories shaped by memory and experience. Through them, the family’s living memory stretched back to a Cornwall marked by upheaval, adaptation, and endurance. That inheritance was more than lineage; it was a tradition of perseverance, quietly handed down, shaping how later generations understood both their past and themselves.
Sources, Notes, & Further Reading
Notes:
To find records labelled Kresen Kernow, go to Kresen Kernow - Cornwall Archives, then search the record number
To find records labelled opc, go to Cornwall OPC Database, then do a manual search for the record based on the information provided in the note.
freepages.rootsweb.com link will take you directly to the specific record page.
My ancestry family tree for genealogical sources is also available to view:
https://www.ancestry.com.au/invite-ui/accept?token=2NQi6YrG-SmftSXLJLZQV1w-gTbxWAqNrkWQa0xBCuM=
1 OPC, Baptisms, Robert Hancock, 1661-1662. ↩
2 Kresen Kernow, record number AP/H/1952 ↩
3 freepages.rootsweb.com, 3 Nov 1671.
For Probate record, Kresen Kernow, record number AP/H/1708
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4 freepages.rootsweb.com, Clements. ↩
5 freepages.rootsweb.com, Clemence (common spelling variation). ↩
6 OPC, Baptisms, Thomas Clemence, 1632-1632. ↩
7 For Prudence's baptism: freepages.rootsweb.com, Clemence (common spelling variation).
For Thomas's baptism: opc, baptism, 1671-1672, Thomas Clemence & burial: opc, burial, 1673-1674, Thomas Clemence.
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8 For 1684 Probate & Will documents: Kresen Kernow, record number AP/C/1915
For 1693 burial: opc, burial, 1693-1694, Thomas Clements.
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9 OPC, Burial, Elizabeth Clemence, 1676-1677. ↩
10 Marriage record freereg.org.uk ↩
11 Baptism records on freereg.org.uk ↩
12 Marriage records on freepages.rootsweb.com ↩
General Sources:
The Williams Family Tree – Robert Hancock and Prudence Clements family;
Wikisource – VCH Cornwall 1, Tin Mining Methods;
Wikisource – The Parochial History of Cornwall, St Austell;
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–1727);
Celia Fiennes, Journeys (c. 1698);
The Tinners Grievances (1697) by Thomas Tresilian;
History of Parliament Online – Cornwall;
FreeREG – Holy Trinity, St Austell parish registers;
FamilySearch – St Austell, Cornwall, England Genealogy;
Kresen Kernow Archives;
Wikipedia – Tin coinage;
Caitlingreen.org – Some Interesting early maps of Cornwall.
Part 3 of the Hancocks in Cornwall will look at the lives of Robert Hancock & Rebecca Mufford
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