I have tried to contact the author and researcher, but was not able to do so. I feel, however, that her work should not be lost and have therefore placed it on my site for the benefit of all those who are researching the larger Candy family. I have included some information that I have researched and other information discovered by others. The main bulk of this work was carried out by Gwenyth Candy and I give her the credit for that.
THE CANDYS OF SOMERSET.
Written by:
Miss Gwenyth Candy
CHAPTER I
CANDYS IN WARMINSTER
(16th Century)
The story of the Somerset Candys begins, not in Somerset, but just over the county boundary in Wiltshire. The earliest known Candy reference in Somerset is in 1617, when Christopher Candy married Sarah Luckocks in Frome parish church. But earlier than that there are some twenty or thirty references in Wiltshire, around the Salisbury/Fovant area and in Warminster, and one family in the parish of Tisbury. There are a few scattered references earlier still in different parts of the country, but no continuous picture is possible until, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, churches began to keep regular registers of baptisms, marriages and burials. It is lucky that Warminster is one of the few churches which has a register going right back to the time when such registers were first started. And there are Candys in it almost from the first page.
On January 12th, 1571/2 (5-1-1572/3) Christopher Candie married Alis Due in Warminster parish church. On April 5th, Thomas Candie, son of Christopher Candie was baptised. On May 5th, 1573, Alis Candie, wife of Christopher Candie, was buried. A story begins to develop.
Christopher does not appear again in the register, but the Wiltshire record office has two references to Christopher Candy. One is a document dated 1577 which refers to Christopher Candy of Norton Bavant. And in 1612 Christopher Candy of Bishopstrow died. Norton Bavant and Bishopstrow are villages only half a mile or so apart just on the edge of Warminster. There is every reason to suppose that these refer to the same Christopher Candy.
The 1577 document is a bond in which Christopher Candy and John Edwardes, of Norton Bavant, agreed to pay to William Bennett, also of Norton Bavant, 100 marks if they failed to keep the conditions of certain indentures. Unfortunately the indentures themselves have not survived. But one can make a guess about them. Warminster, like Frome, was an important centre in the wool trade, and the Bennett family, who lived at the Manor House at Norton Bavant, were wealthy clothiers. Wool would be bought by clothiers, spinning and weaving were "cottage industries", and the cloth would then be returned to the mill for further processing and distribution. John Edwardes and Christopher Candy are described in the bond as weavers, so maybe they had agreed to supply, or to organise the supply of, certain quantities of woven cloth to the Bennetts. Possibly on quite a large scale, since the fine of 100 marks if they defaulted was substantial. A mark was worth two thirds of œ1, so 100 marks was quite a sum in an age when the wages of a skilled workman such as a mason were about 5d a day.
The 1612 document is not actually Christopher's will. He hadn'tmade one and his widow had to apply for the legal right to administer his property. It is this administration document which has survived. In it she lists the various expenses which she has to pay. As well as funeral expenses, legal expenses and a debt to be paid, there are two other times of particular interest. She wishes to pay 48 shillings to "Christopher Candy, the grandchild of her husband deceased which he desired a little before his death might be paid unto him". Not, you will notice, her own grandchild. So she is Christopher Candy's second wife. This fits nicely with the entries in the Warminster register. It looks as if the baby Thomas, baptised in 1573, survived and had a son Christopher. We know that there was a Thomas Candy in the Bishopstrow area, for in 1598 the will of Anthony Stokes of Castle Combe says that he owed Thomas Candy 13s 6d. Thomas didn't get his money, either, for in 1602 Thomas Stokes of Bishopstrow still owed Thomas Candy 13s 6d.
The other item of interest in the administration is that Christopher's widow has to pay "a herriott to her Lord". This was a kind of death duty payable by tenants to the lord of the manor. So Christopher, as well as being involved in the wool trade, also farmed some land. He might quite well have done both. Farms at that time would have been very self-sufficient, and would certainly have had a loom on which they wove at least the cloth needed for their own use, from thread they had spun themselves, possibly using wool from their own sheep or linen from their own flax crop.
So, with some guesswork and imagination, we can build up quite a good picture of our earliest known ancestor.
The other entries in the Warminster register do not form a connected picture. There were several Thomases, and a John, but one cannot tell how they were related. But there is one entry which is of interest. As well as the baptism of Thomas, son of Christopher Candy, on April 5th, 1573, there is three weeks later the baptism of Christopher, son of Thomas Candy on April 28th, 1573. This looks very much like two brothers each standing as godfather for the other's child. Baptisms, like weddings and funerals, were important family social occasions when all the relatives within reach would gather, and the baby's godparents would be close relatives. So it was the custom to stick to family Christian names. All the Somerset Candy boys over a period of more than 200 years, were either Christopher, Thomas, John, William, Richard or James. It was not until the 19th Century that the custom of using family names was dropped. Then they went to town with names like Theophilus and Artemis.
CHAPTER IITHE CANDYS OF FROME
(17th Century)
If the Christopher Candy who married Sarah Luckocks in Frome in 1617 was indeed the first Candy in Somerset, as he appears to be, he must have come from a Wiltshire family. Of the places in Wiltshire where there are known to be Candys at that time, Warminster is far more likely than Fovant. Not only is Fovant much farther away, the Candys there have a quite different set of Christian names. It is tempting to take it for granted that he is the grandson Christopher of the 1612 Bishopstrow will, and this does indeed seem very probable. The dates are just about right. but there would have been more than one Christopher in that generation of the Warminster family. Maybe the baby Christopher baptised in 1573 had a son or nephew named Christopher. Anyway, if Christopher of Frome is not the same person as Christopher of Bishopstrow he is his cousin. The Frome Candys are undoubtedly descended from the Warminster Candys.
Not very much is known about the 17th Century Candys. Just the bare record of baptisms, marriages and burials in the Frome register. Frome Selwood, as it was then called, was a very large parish, covering a wide rural area as well as the town of Frome, so they didn't necessarily live in the town itself.
Christopher and Sarah lost several of their children in infancy, but a son Christopher, baptised in 1627 survived. He in his turn lost several children, but at least two of his younger sons survived, yet another Christopher, baptised in 1670, and John in 1673. John's family appear in the Frome register and Christopher's in that of the neighbouring village of Cloford.
It is not possible to trace John's family very far. There are a number of Candys in the Frome register in the 18th Century. Other Candy families appear to have come and gone from the town and their relationships to each other are not at all clear. A great deal of research has been done by Philip Candy of Australia, whose efforts to trace his own family history led him to form the Candy Family History Group. He has an ancestor, a William Candy, baptised in Frome in 1793, so he has concentrated on this period, but in spite of all his efforts the picture remains confused. Frome was an important centre of population, and there was probably quite a lot of movement of families in and out of the town. By the nature of their occupations, town dwellers were more mobile than their country cousins. By contrast, the rural Candys were yeomen, and their lives had a stability which makes things very easy for the family historian. The general pattern, for two or three hundred years, was that the oldest son took over his father's farm and younger sons found themselves farms in the same or a neighbouring parish. Occasionally younger sons changed their occupation. In the 19th Century many emigrated. The Candy family who were farming at Walton Farm, Kilmersdon, until 1947 are direct descendants of the Warminster Candys, the family having moved less than 20 miles in nearly 400 years, getting from Warminster to Kilmersdon via Frome, Cloford, Cranmore and Doulting.
The was a Christopher Candy in Frome in the early 18th Century, presumably John's son, who got himself in a bit of trouble with the law and appears in the quarter-session rolls. In 1711, with another boy, he is accused of stealing three iron wedges, which they claimed to have found in a wood near Longleat, but which actually belonged to a farmer from Marston Bigot. Perhaps there is a clue here that the 17th Century Candys may have lived near the southern boundary of Frome Selwood parish, towards Longleat. This would make sense, as it would be in the Warminster direction and not far from Cloford.
THE CLOFORD FAMILY
(18th Century)
The Christopher Candy who was baptised at Frome in 1670 was buried at Cloford, 26th February, 1715/1716, and his wife Kimbera a few weeks later, 18th March, 1715/1716.
(The register records it as 1715, but we would call it 1716. It was not until 1752 that it was generally agreed that the new year began on 1st January. Before that, January, February and March appear in the registers as the last months of the previous year.)
Christopher and Kimbera were only in their forties when they died, and they left a teenage family. But those youngsters must have worked hard to hold the family fortunes together, for each of the four sons, Christopher, John, Thomas and Richard, became the founder of a line of prosperous yeomen farmers persisting for many generations.
The oldest son, Christopher, remained in Cloford, and his son and grandson after him. He must have had some standing in the village, for the entries in the register of his marriage and the baptisms of his children record him as Mr Christopher Candy, a dignity normally reserved for local gentry. (When the name of a Candy appears in a document he is usually described as "yeoman". Occasionally as "gentleman".)
Christopher had two sons, James, baptised in 1731, and Thomas, 1734. They married two sisters, Frances and Mary Clark. Thomas married late in life and had no family, but James had seven daughters and two sons, another James, baptised 1768, and Thomas 1777. This James married his second cousin, Elizabeth Candy. But in the early years of the Nineteenth Century that death of Elizabeth and several of their children left him with only two daughters surviving and the name of Candy died out from this branch of the family. The Manor House in which they had lived, passed into other hands. The west window in Cloford church is a memorial window to this family.
James's brother Thomas married Hannah Coles of Marston Bigot, and this family achieved notoriety in 1840 when Hannah and four of her sons were tried for conspiracy to defraud. Apparently they forged documents to lay claim to some land which they didn't possess. One son, Thomas, was transported, and died on the way to Australia. Hannah and another son, William, were each sentenced to two years imprisonment, though Hannah was released after one year. The other two sons, Francis and Theophilus were acquitted. Another son, James, became a merchant in Bristol, and has descendants still living in the Nailsea area.
Returning to Cloford at the beginning of the 18th Century, another son, John, farmed at Wanstrow and then at East Cranmore. He had four sons, Christopher, John, William and Richard.
Christopher stayed at East Cranmore for some years, then moved to Ashwick about 1812.
John married his cousin Betty Candy and farmed all his life at Studley Farm, Wanstrow. They had descendants living in the Cloford Wanstrow area. A grandson lived at Walton near Street, where his descendants were living until quite recently.
William married Anna Batt, and farmed at West Cranmore, then at Stoke Lane. We have no information about his family. Nor do we know much about his fourth son, Richard.
The third of the Cloford boys was Thomas, who farmed at East Cranmore until he died in 1755. He had two sons, William and Thomas. William farmed at West Cranmore and Thomas at Doulting. We don't know much about William's family, but Thomas had 12 children, all survived, and 9 of them were boys. So there was something of a population explosion of Candys from Doulting in the late 18th Century. More of Thomas and his family in the next chapters.
The fourth son of the Cloford family was Richard. He farmed in Cloford all his life. He had only one surviving son, Richard, who married a Wanstrow girl, Ann White, and lived at Nunney. Richard II died young, and left Ann with a family of young children. She lived to be 91, dying at Wanstrow in 1840. They had two surviving sons, Richard and Robert. Robert stayed in Nunney. Richard III married his cousin Hannah Candy and settled at Weston Town Farm, Wanstrow, where his descendants lived for generations, until well into this Century. I think there are still some descendants living in the Mells area.
Richard III had three sons, Richard, William and James. Richard IV stayed at Weston Town. William farmed in Wanstrow for some years, then moved away into Wiltshire. He had a large family and has numerous descendants in various parts of Southern England, and in other parts of the world, including Australia and Argentina. James moved to Worcestershire.
This story, in following the Candy name, is concentrating on the sons and ignoring the daughters. They almost invariably married neighbouring farmers. There was a daughter, Kimbera, in the Cloford family. She married Thomas Ball of Cloford.
THOMAS CANDY OF DOULTING
(Late 18th Century)
It is now possible to present the story of the Candys in order, from the 16th Century to the 20th, but of course the research was done from the other end, working back from the present day.
I had a good start when I first began to the an interest in family history, since my father and grandfather were both born in Kilmersdon and my great-grandfather lived there most of his life and is buried in Kilmersdon churchyard. So I knew that he was born in 1798, and family tradition said that he came from Doulting. The Doulting church register is held at the Somerset record office in Taunton, which is very convenient for me. It is in excellent condition and I had no difficulty in going back two more generations. I got great-grandfather Thomas's father, James, and his grandfather, another Thomas, with a lot of information about James's numerous brothers and sisters. But the earliest Candy entry in the Doulting register is 1772, and there for a time I stuck.
One entry in the Doulting register said that Anna Batt had married William Candy of East Cranmore, so I tried the registers of East and West Cranmore. These are very different from the Doulting one, untidy, muddled and with chunks missing. But I did get severalmore bits of information, including great-great-great-grandfather Thomas's marriage in 1766 to Elizabeth Batt of West Cranmore. His marriage entry described him as "of Downhead" but this proved a disappointing dead-end. There are no Candys whatever in the Downhead register in the 18th Century.
Again one entry in the West Cranmore register took me a step further. Kimbera Candy married Wadham Young "of Cloverd" in 1757. And Wadham Young was one of the witnesses on Thomas's marriage certificate. So I tried the Cloford register, not really expecting to get very much, and was once more in business. The Cloford register is in excellent condition and is full of Candys going back to 1701. But when I had sorted out that mass of information, I still hadn't got the particular bit that I was looking for. Where did Thomas of Doulting fit in? That he did fit somewhere was obvious. The names he chose for his children would alone have been a strong indication of that. He had to be a grandson of the Cloford family, but I had no direct evidence as to whose son he was.
Then I had an incredible bit of luck. On one of my visits to the record office, where I was beginning to be known, one of the county archivists showed me some documents which had recently been sent in by a solicitor. They related to an estate in Chesterblade bequeathed in the mid 18th Century by one John Gane to Thomas Candy. Chesterblade is a mile or so south of West Cranmore. Thomas was described in John Gane's will, dated 1755, as the son of the late Thomas Candy, yeoman, of East Cranmore and of Ann his wife. He was then a minor, the estate being left in trust for him. This began to look very much like my Thomas, who was buried at Doulting in 1816, aged 73 years, so he was born in 1742 or 43. Later documents described him as "of West Cranmore". Then came one in 1765 where he was "late of West Cranmore, now of Downhead". Eureka! It was indeed my Thomas, who was living at Downhead at the time of his marriage in 1766. If further proof had been needed, a comparison of his signature on his marriage certificate with those on the documents provided it.
The estate was a farm, with field names like Ladycroft, Littlefield, Brooksacre and some cottages. It was probably what is now called Ladycroft Farm. Who John Gane was I have never been able to discover. He must surely have been a relative of Thomas's on his mother's side, though her maiden name was Vaizey. Thomas's father was buried on February 25th, 1755. John Gane's will is dated 17th March 1755. Thomas, the youngest of his family was then about 12. His brother William, the oldest, was 28, with several sisters in between. William was already married and living in West Cranmore. Probably William inherited most of his father's property, either immediately or when his mother died, and John Gane is safeguarding the future of the younger son.
The family is subsequently described as "of West Cranmore" so they probably all lived with William. John Gane made his will in 1755, but he didn't die until 1764. By that time, Thomas's mother, Ann, had died and his sisters were married. He himself still appears to be living with his brother William. Ann had been executrix of the will, and the probate document gives Thomas authority to administer it himself, saying "it appears unto us that the said Thomas Candy is of a competent age to take upon himself.....etc.". He was about 22.
Then comes another family upheaval. A land tax return for West Cranmore for 1766 refers to land belonging to the late William Candy. So William must have died, before he was 40. It was at about this time that Thomas moved to Downhead, but we don't know what happened to William's family. The West Cranmore register records the baptism of a daughter Mary in 1753 and a son William in 1761, and there may well have been other children whose baptisms are missing from the very poor West Cranmore register. But we have no more information about them.
But we do know a lot about Thomas and his family. Having been granted probate in January 1765, he sold his Chesterblade estate in May 1765, got married in 1766, and settled in Doulting, where he lived for the rest of his life.
THE DOULTING FAMILY
(Late 18th and early 19th Centuries)
Thomas Candy of Doulting married Elizabeth Batt, sister of Anna Batt, who married Thomas's cousin William Candy. Since William's brother John had married Thomas's sister Betty, family relationships were somewhat complicated. Thomas and Elizabeth had nine sons, Thomas, James, Benjamin, William, John, Richard, Christopher, Samuel and Joseph and three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Anna.
The oldest son, Thomas, farmed for some time in Doulting, then moved to Bathampton. He had many descendants in that area, and some in south Devon, including the founder of the Candy Tile Company.
The second son, James, stayed in Doulting at Broadpool Farm, and a son and grandson after him. Broadpool is a very pleasant farm which has been used by the BBC in a television series on west country farming. James had two sons, James and Thomas, and died at Broadpool in 1838. The son James lived at Broadpool all his life, dying in 1875. He had three sons, but two died as children. The only surviving son, another James, was still living at Broadpool at the time of the 1871 census, but that is all we know about him. Thomas farmed for a few years at Chelynch, in the parish of Doulting, then about 1828 moved to Walton Farm, Kilmersdon, where he lived for the rest of his life and a son and grandson after him.
The third son of the Doulting family was Benjamin, named after his maternal grandfather. He had a son, Thomas and a daughter, Anne, baptised in Doulting, and he died at Charlton Farm, in the parish of Kilmersdon, in 1838. We don't know anything about any further family, or just when he moved to Charlton. But his son Thomas married a Kilmersdon girl in 1824, so it was presumably before that. Thomas lived at Charlton till his death in 1866. He married three times and had a large family.
The fourth of the Doulting boys, William, became a butcher, first in Shepton Mallet, then in Wells. He had descendants in Wells, Bristol and Bath.
We don't know much about the fifth and sixth sons, John and Richard. John married a Stoke St Michael girl. Richard married Hannah Gane, and they probably didn't move very far away, for they are buried at Stoke St Michael, but we know nothing about any family.
The seventh son, Christopher, we know a lot about. He stayed at Doulting, at Temple House Farm, and had several sons who continued to farm in that area. One son, Charles, continued at Temple House. Of Charles's ten children, one died in infancy and four more within a month of each other in 1870. One of Charkes's sons, Theodore, became a cheesemaker with an international reputation. Another of Christopher's sons, Edward, farmed at Bodden, in the parish of Doulting. One of Edward's sons, William, stayed at Bodden and has descendants still farming only a couple of miles away at Downside, near Shepton Mallet. Another son of Edward's, Herbert, married Eleanor Candy, grand-daughter of Thomas Candy of Walton Farm, and farmed at Chilcompton. Another son of Christopher, James, married a widow, Sarah Salmon, of Narrowpool Farm, and lived for some years quite close to his cousin James at Broadpool. Sarah's son by her first marriage inherited Narrowpool, and James and Sarah moved eventually to Oakhill. They had one son, John, who farmed at West Harptree. A fourth son of Christopher, Abraham, moved to West Pennard, then to Templecombe. His family has been investigated by the Candy Family History Society Group on behalf of descendants in New Zealand.
The eighth of the Doulting boys, Samuel, was not as prosperous as his brothers. He married at 18, had 4 children to maintain by the time he was 24, and remained a farm labourer all his life. He lived at Little Elm, and had descendants in that area. One of his sons, Benjamin, married a Kilmersdon girl, Lucy Snook. He was a butcher, and in 1847 he was convicted of sheep stealing and was transported to Australia. Lucy and her children continued to live in the Kilmersdon area. One daughter, Louisa, married James Champion, and this brings our story within living memory. For Louisa died in Kilmersdon in the early 1930's, aged about 90. Her daughter, Emily Champion, lived in Kilmersdon all her life, till her death in the 1950's.
Not much is known about the ninth son, Joseph. We have just the record of his marriage and the baptism of a daughter.
The three daughters, Elizabeth, Mary and Anna, all married into local farming families.
THE KILMERSDON FAMILIES
(19th and early 20th Centuries)
The two Thomas Candys who lived in the parish of Kilmersdon in the 19th Century were first cousins, both being grandsons of Thomas Candy of Doulting.
Thomas Candy of Walton Farm (1798-1883) married Elizabeth Davis of Doulting. They had 14 children, born between 1822 and 1846. The four oldest were born at Chelynch, Doulting, the rest at Walton Farm. One died in infancy, the remaining 13 all had quite large families, as most people did in Victorian times. So Thomas had scores of grandchildren.
Thomas Candy of Charlton (1793-1866) married three times, and he too had a large family, born between 1825 and 1852, and many grandchildren. The number of descendants of the two Thomases became something of a local legend.
There must have been a lot of social contact between the two families, growing up only a mile or two apart and of about the same age, for no less than three of the Walton family, Alfred, Elizabeth, and Arthur married their second cousins, Elizabeth, Ernest and Frances, of Charlton. Farming folk tended to form a self-contained community, farmers' sons, so there were further inter-marriages in later generations, and some family relationships became very involved.
The farming tradition was still very strong. Most of the sons of the two families became farmers, and many of the daughters married farmers. Most of them settled in the Kilmersdon/ Charlton/Stratton-on-the-Fosse area. Three emigrated to New Zealand, Charles Frederick from Walton and Charles Benjamin and Artemis from Charlton.
Albert Tom Candy, (1846-1927). who lived at Walton Farm all his life, is said to have been fond of recounting that at one time, in all the farms within a certain radius of Kilmersdon either the farmer or his wife was connected to the Candy family. Now, in the 1980s, as far as I know there is only one Candy family in the immediate neighbourhood of Kilmersdon. Some of the numerous grandchildren of the two Thomases became farmers, but many did not. Now, of the hundreds of descendants well scattered round the world and in many different professions, only a small proportion are still farming.
Many of the facts in this history have come from Philip Candy and the Candy Family History Group, and some from Michael Candy whose grandparents farmed at Walton Farm from 1927 to 1947, as well as from my own research. Philip has collected and classified an immense amount of material and Michael has a lot of information about various branches of 19th and 20th Century Candys. So a great deal is known about the family history of Somerset Candys.
SOME OTHER CANDYS
Many Candys in various parts of the world who have traced their ancestors back to England have found that they came from Somerset, Wiltshire or Dorset, with one family from St Just in Cornwall and one from Braemore in Hampshire.
The St Just family goes back to the 18th Century, and there are earlier scattered references in Cornwall, back to the baptisms of the children of John Candye in Launceston between 1574 and 1583.
Candys were firmly established in Dorset quite early, certainly by the 17th Century, and the Dorset Muster Rolls record a Thomas Cande of Wimborne Minster in 1539 and Anthony Candy of Pimperne (Blandford) in 1569.
As we have already seen, there are numerous references in Wiltshire from 1562 onwards. Quite a lot of the early references are in the Fovant Area, but these are scrappy and disconnected and appear to fade out in later generations. The West Wiltshire Candys have been traced back, by a Miss Margaret Candy, to the Tisbury/East Knoyle area in the late 17th Century.
Wiltshire record office possesses several 17th century Candy wills, including one of Elizabeth Candie of Lindley, in the Parish of Tisbury, in 1627. This led me, on a visit to the record office, to look at the Tisbury register, which is a very early one. It records the marriage, in 1587, of Thomas Candie to Elizabeth Godard, and the baptisms of their children and some of their grandchildren. Lindley Farm lies between the villages of Tisbury and East Knoyle. This family is clearly the origin of Margaret Candy's West Wiltshire branch of Candys. Lindley was the home farm of the Pitt House estate, which belonged to the Bennett family. The same Bennett family a junior branch of which we have already met living in the Manor House at Norton Bavant.
Elizabeth's will is a fascinating document. In 1627 she was a widow, still living at Lindley with her son Thomas and his family. There is no mention in the will of any farm property. This must have passed to her children at her husband's death. She has only personal and household goods to bequeath, but she does this in detail, down to her old red petticoat to her son Thomas's servant!
Thomas seems to be the only Candy in Tisbury in the 16th Century, so maybe he came there from somewhere else, probably Fovant or Warminster. Fovant is only about 6 miles away, Warminster about 12 miles, but nevertheless I think Warminster is more likely. The Christian names fit better, and we know that there were several Thomas Candys around Warminster at that period. It is just possible that the Bennett family might provide a link. To get the tenancy of Lindley Farm, Thomas must have been known to or recommended to the Bennetts. So maybe Wiltshire as well as Somerset Candys have their origins in Warminster.
There is a Candy story from Devonshire which is of interest. It concerns the village of Ilsington, near Bovey Tracey on the edge of Dartmoor. Early in the 18th Century, a William Candy settled there and bought a farm. When he died, in 1727, not having any family he left his farm to the church to form a charitable trust, by which "nine poor men, such as are of sober life and resort duly to the parish church on the Lord's Day" were each to receive each year a complete suit of clothes and a Christmas dinner. That trust still exists. The trustees still own some of William's land. Thousands of people of Ilsington have benefited from it, in the 250 or so years since it was formed, and it still reaches over 100 parishioners annually. William is buried in Ilsington church, and there is a memorial inscription on the wall giving details of the trust. Details in his will show that he came from Dorset.
EARLY CANDYS
There are very few known references to Candys earlier than the 16th Century. There is said to be a document of 1318 which refers to "John Candy of Suthewick" who has a watermill in the village of Steeplemorden in Cambridgeshire. In 1406 there is a reference to "John Candy of Erithe" (Kent?). And there is said to have been a Nicholas Candie in Normandy as early as 1195.
The 16th Century spelling of the name is usually Candie. But they weren't at all fussy at that time about the spelling of names, and it is quite usual to find a name spelt two or three different ways in the same document. As well as Candie and Candy, I have seen Candi, Candye, Candey, Canday and Cande. In the 17th Century, it settled down to Candy.
A number of suggestions about the origin of the name have been put forward by various people writing books on English surnames, but none of them appears to be supported by any evidence. There could easily be associations with similar names like Cundy or Condy or Gandy. The suggestion of a link with Candia (Crete), perhaps dating from the time of the Crusades, seems rather far fetched. Much more likely is the idea that the name is French in origin, and was originally Cande or Conde, and possibly associated with the town of Cande in Normandy. This would be quite possible through the links between Normandy and England after the Norman conquest and through the Middle Ages.
It would be interesting to try to trace the Candy line backwards from the Warminster family. But before the time of regular church registers, the possible sources of information become much scarcer.
First Candy page
Descendants of first son
Descendants of second son
Descendants of third son
Descendants of fourth son
References by name
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