HEBBORN FAMILY HISTORY & NEWS -  July 2003.

THIS MONTH’S ANNIVERSARY - 4TH JULY 1733.

On the 4th July 1733, a certain Thomas Hebborn was among six of the keepers of Waltham Royal Forest who captured four deer poachers. Just another piece of odd information that can be picked up from the records of the National Archive at Kew. What the record does not tell is that the poachers probably dealt with a local butcher named Dick Turpin. He was not the gallant highwayman riding Black Bess as glamorised by Harrison Ainsworth, but a notorious and violent horse thief who was hanged at York in 1739.

Thomas Hebborn (or Heybourne) was present when keepers captured five more poachers on the night of 19th December 1733. The prisoners were to spend Christmas in Chelmsford Jail.

For the arrest and conviction of the deer stealers, Thomas and his fellow keepers were entitled to a reward. It seems that getting the reward money was no easy task. Certificates of conviction, and details of the proclamations and advertisements by which the rewards were offered had to be sent to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, who in turn referred the matter to the Treasury Solicitor. It was not until February 1736 that he recommended that, if the Lords Commissioners felt fit, rewards should be paid to the claimants. By a proclamation of 1731 a reward of £10 was payable for each person convicted of stealing deer.  Thomas Hebborn/Heybourne, William Mason senior, William Mason junior, Thomas Mason, Thomas Hide and Henry Pater/Painter should share £50. For the conviction of Onyon, Brook, Pateman, Hicks and Croot. 

By a proclamation of 1733, the reward became £50 for the conviction of each person. This meant that the same keepers, and Thomas Hyde/Hide who was present on this occasion, would share £200 for the capture and conviction of Downham, Woodward, Field and Rose. The Treasury Solicitor’s recommendation can be found at the National Archive reference T53/37. 

Let us hope that the recommendation was put into practice a little more swiftly. By my reckoning, Thomas was due a total of £33.6s.8d., which was quite a worthwhile sum in 1736.

Efforts to find out more about Thomas have proved disappointing. I have very few references to Hebborn/Heybourne in Essex for that period, and nothing that seems relevant, I do have a note of the marriage of Thomas Heborn and Hannah James at Enfield, Middlesex in 1742, which is just to the west of Epping Forest. I have nothing that would link this marriage to Thomas the game Keeper.

Also on this day in 1900, my father Frederick John Hebborn was born in Paddington. I remember him with great affection. It was he who first got me interested in my family history back in 1954.

John Hebborn.