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==Christopher Woodward, Jr., Esq., of Lambeth Marsh, London== There was a man named Christopher Woodward, who lived in Lambeth Marsh, Surrey (London)(7). Back in Roman times, “Lambeth Marsh” was indeed only an ordinary tidal marsh on the south side of London, and across the River Thames from Westminster. By the time of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, however, the original marsh had largely been drained, and replaced with housing, so that “Lambeth Marsh” had instead come to refer, not to the ancient marsh itself, but to a thoroughfare bearing that name, and to the dwellings on either side of the thoroughfare (8). This Christopher Woodward appears to have been identical to the man by that name (“of Lambeth, Surrey, Esq.”), who died on 25 August, 1627, and left a will in which he named a son Thomas (9). He also seems to have been the same man by that name who was recorded in the 1623 "Visitation of Surrey." That Christopher Woodward, whose father Christopher senior originally hailed from County "Sallop" (Shropshire), was recorded as being "of Lambeth in com. Surrey" in that year, and had seven children, of whom the middle child was a son Thomas, said to have been fourteen years of age in 1623 (thus born about 1609). I will say more on this Thomas Woodward momentarily. Interestingly, for what I will say shortly, the grandfather of this Christopher Woodward Jr. was an Edward Woodward of County Salop.(10) Equally interesting is the fact that the daughter Elizabeth “Ash” also mentioned in this same 1627 will turns out to have been an ancestor of none other than the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (of recent memory), and thus of the present-day British royal family (11). This same Christopher Woodward who died in 1627 seems to have been the same person who in 1622 purchased a property in London from a Sir Nicholas Smyth (12). This property was described as being on the south side of Cheapside (then the most heavily-travelled street in London [13]), and in the northwest corner of the parish of St. Mary le Bow (14). Christopher Woodward’s son Thomas had evidently (so say the editors of “British History Online”) inherited this Cheapside property by the year 1630, which makes sense when one considers that his father Christopher had died in 1627. This Thomas Woodward was “dead by 1655” (again, according to the same editors), because it was in that year that his “widow” Grace Woodward “made a lease of 16A [one third of the said property], as guardian to her son Edward.” This same Edward Woodward “of Lambeth, gentleman” made a lease of the property himself (as an adult) in 1661 (15). One can, of course, take the above statements flatly, at face value. In that case, we are manifestly dealing with a separate Thomas Woodward than the immigrant to Isle of Wight County, Virginia (even though, as per my earlier paper--and others, the immigrant Thomas Woodward is known to have held the office of Assay Master of the Royal Mint in 1649 [16]), since the latter Thomas Woodward (the immigrant) clearly left a widow named Katherine and several named children in Virginia in 1677 (17). But '''''was''''' that Thomas Woodward of Lambeth Marsh, Surrey and St. Mary le Bow, Cheapside, really and truly '''''deceased''''' “by 1655”? Might it not be at least '''''possible''''' that, instead of merely dying, he had rather simply absconded to the colonies—to Virginia—leaving a wife and child (or children?) back in London to believe he had met an untimely end? Such occurrences were not at all uncommon back then. Another, equally-valid possibility is that he could have been officially “encouraged” to go there (in view of saving his skin—and head) because his outspoken Royalist political views (which had already caused Parliament to sack him from one lucrative position) had rendered his remaining in England ‘problematic’ for those then in power (the Cromwellian ‘Long Parliament’). Perhaps he was even sent there '''''involuntarily''''' by the English Parliamentarian government (this would later become a common--and highly controversial--practice during the Restoration), though this last possibility would appear unlikely based on Woodward's evident position of influence and power upon his arrival in Virginia. This is all merely speculation, yes; but there are several circumstances which (intriguingly) lend themselves to this new interpretation (that the Thomas Woodward of Lambeth, Surrey might not have '''''died''''' "by 1655"):
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