Does anyone know anything about a Henry Wattes, gentleman, who seems to have been knocking around Winslow and the surrounding area in the 1530s, and was of Hurst in Berkshire in 1556? My reason for asking is that, as I've mentioned before, I'm studying the people of Great Horwood between 1400 and 1600 for a PhD, principally through the manorial court rolls. My main focus is on the people who held land there, and I need to place each landholder in his social context - how wealthy he was, how much land he had and where, how he made his living, who he was connected to, where he lived. But of course not everyone who held land in Great Horwood was resident in the village. I have quite a bit of the sort of information I need for the resident landholders, from the Great Horwood records, but very little for most of the absentee landholders. Many them were probably peasants living in the neighbouring villages, like Little Horwood, Whaddon, Nash, Thornborough, Addington, Adstock and Winslow, and it is quite difficult to discover anything about such people in the 15th and early 16th centuries - the records just don't exist. However I occasionally come across someone who appears to be from a little higher up the social ladder, from the classes whose records do often survive, and it may be that some information about him is already in print somewhere. He may even be an ancestor of someone subscribing to this list. So I'm planning to make two or three postings about people of this sort, in the hope that someone may be able to point me towards some information about them. Ideally economic information, but even purely genealogical data would be gratefully received. And of course if he is anyone's ancestor then I'll be happy to supply what information I have about his activities in Great Horwood in return (in fact generally I can do this for anyone who has ancestors in Great Horwood before 1600). The subject of this particular posting, Henry Wattes, gentleman, appears in the Great Horwood records several times between 1529 and 1541. In 1529 he is described as of Winslow, and in 1535 of Whaddon. He appears once more in 1556, when he is of Hurst in Berks. He doesn't appear in the 1522 Muster Roll anywhere in Bucks, but is one of the richer taxpayers of Winslow in the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy Roll. However he doesn't appear in the 1535 Lay Subsidy roll for Winslow (nor in Whaddon or any of the other villages surrounding Great Horwood). A Gilbert Wattes was resident in Great Horwood from 1507 until 1522, and might possibly be his father, but Henry's rather higher social class makes this unlikely. Thanks very much, Matt Tompkins Centre for English Local History University of Leicester 5 Salisbury Road Leicester LE1 7QR