Robert Brocke

1544 – 1611

✓ Validated against records · 2026-07-02

Robert Brocke stands at the top of this tree — the earliest of the line the written record can reach. He was born at Belton, in the Isle of Axholme, on 2 August 1544, and the register sets it down in the old way, recording the birth itself: “Natus Robtus Brocke, filius Robti” — Robert Brocke, son of Robert. Parish registers were then barely six years old in England, and his entry sits on the earliest, most worn leaves of the Belton book, under a year written out in full Latin words. His father's name — another Robert — stands one name beyond him, at the very edge of what the registers can tell.

On 25 November 1583, a man of nearly forty, he married Anna Fox, a Crowle girl of twenty-one, and over the following fourteen years they raised seven children at Belton — Francis, Isabella, Richard, Anna (who died at six), Ellina, Susanna and Elizabeth. It is through Francis, baptised in 1585, that this whole line descends. Anna was buried on 16 May 1601 — “Anna Brocke, uxor Roberti” — and a Robert Brocke who married Mary Barnard in the parish church two years later may well have been this Robert, a widower marrying again; the register leaves the question open.

He was a yeoman, like his son and grandson after him, and the register gave him the word at the last: “Robert Brocke, yeoman,” buried at Belton on 5 June 1611, aged sixty-six. He had lived from Henry VIII to King James, through the whole of Elizabeth's reign — an Axholme farmer of the undrained fen, whose world of open commons would outlast him by only a generation.

Composed from validated records · 2026-07-02

Birth: About 1544 Belton Baptised 2nd August 1544
Marriage: November 25th 1583 to Anna Fox, Belton
Death: June 5th 1611
Parents: Robert (Robti) Brocke
Children: Francis Brock baptised March 26th 1585 Belton Isabella Brock baptised January 27th, Belton Richard Brock baptised January 12th 1588 ,Belton Anna Brock baptised August 25th 1591 died August 12th 1597 Belton Ellina Brock baptised July 22nd 1593, Belton Susanna Brock baptised June 20th 1596 Elizabeth Brock baptised October 26th 1597
1583: Marriage to Anna Fox. Anna was the daughter of Robert Fox and lived in Crowle.
1601: May 15th burial "Anna wife of Robert"
1611: June 5th burial "Robert Brocke, yeoman"

In your grandmother’s words · from her notebook

Family

Marriage

AFSpouseAnna Fox1562–1601

Children

FBChild · the line continuesFrancis Brockemain line1585–1638

Historical context

Before the drainers — the Isle he knew

The Isle of Axholme of Robert's lifetime was still the old Isle: a low island of plough-land and pasture standing over an immense wet common of marsh, mere and moor, where the parishes kept cattle and geese, cut turf and reed, fished and fowled by ancient right. No engineer had yet touched the rivers; Vermuyden's drainage, and the century of quarrel it brought, began fifteen years after Robert's death. His was the world the commoners would afterwards fight to recover.

He was born into another kind of beginning, too. Parish registers had been ordered in every English church only six years before his birth, and the Belton book that records him — births set down in Latin, the year spelt out in words — was still a novelty of Henry VIII's last years. Robert's seventy years run from that first generation of written parish memory, through the whole Elizabethan age, to the reign of King James; his family's story is traceable at all because the writing began just in time to catch him.

Composed for this site from published local history — the family’s world, not one of Mum’s records.

Life

Confirmed — anchored to a recordEstimated — inferred

1332

The Brocks before the registers

In 1332 the king's assessors came through the Isle, taking the fifteenth and tenth — Edward III's lay subsidy, a tax on movable goods that only householders of substance paid. Those below the threshold left no name at all. On Belton's list stands Thomas Brok — and the only other man of the plain surname taxed in all Lincolnshire that year was a John Brok, at Holdingham, near Sleaford. Two hundred and twelve years before Robert's birth, a man of the name held enough at Belton to be worth the king's counting.

Between Thomas and Robert the written record of ordinary Isle families barely exists — no parish registers, and the manor's surviving court rolls begin only in 1491. Yet what does survive says the name never moved: when the registers open, the Brocks are at Belton and nowhere else — before 1650, every Brock baptism and burial in Lincolnshire's indexed registers belongs to this one parish, and the marriages all but one — a single Grantham stray. Wherever the line wandered in those two silent centuries, it did not wander far.

The name itself is older than any record of it here. “Brock” in the old tongues was both the badger and the brook, and men were named for either, in many places independently — there was a Norman family “de Broc” too, but nothing ties them to the Isle. On a fen island veined with becks and drains, the brook-dweller reading fits as naturally as any. Domesday cannot reach the question: in 1086 ordinary men carried no surnames, and its entries count villagers without naming them.

Whether Thomas's blood ran to Robert's, no document yet found can say — continuity of name and place is not descent. But the documents that could carry the line back toward it survive, catalogued and waiting: the Epworth manor court rolls from 1491, and the king's tax rolls of Robert's own infancy. The gap is two centuries wide, with named documents standing on both sides of it.

Historical context Evidence

Background composed for this site from published history. It frames the family’s world; it is not one of Mum’s records.

1544

Born

about 1544

Natus: Robtus Brocke, filius Robti — secundo die [the 2nd of August], 1544.— Birth entry, Belton register (1544)

All Saints', Belton — the church where the Brocks enter the written record, on the earliest leaves of its register. Photographed by Jon Brock on a family visit, 21 July 2026. © Jon Brock 2026.

The record image is with the family — family sign-in

Mum’s record record Evidence

From Janet Brock’s research, cited — not yet re-verified at the image:

Birth entry, Belton register (1544) — Belton, Isle of Axholme — Lincolnshire Archives. Among the register's earliest leaves (English parish registration began only in 1538), the year written out in full: “Anno Domini millimo quingentesimo quadragesimo quarto.” The early Belton book records births (“Natus”), not baptisms — the entry is his birth itself, and it names his father. from Mum’s research

1583

Married Anna Fox

25 November 1583

Nupti: Robertus Brock et Anna Fox — 25 [November], 1583.— Marriage register, Belton (1583)

The record image is with the family — family sign-in

Mum’s record Evidence

From Janet Brock’s research, cited — not yet re-verified at the image:

Marriage register, Belton (1583) — Belton — Lincolnshire Archives. The register page is shown on Robert's page. from Mum’s research
Marriage register, Belton (1583) — Belton — Lincolnshire Archives. Anna Fox was of Crowle, across the Isle; the wedding was at Belton. from Mum’s research

1601

His wife

Anna was buried at Belton on 16 May 1601 — “Anna Brocke, uxor Roberti.” Her own page carries the record.

1611

Died

5 June 1611

Sepultus: Robertus Brock, yeoman — quinto die [the 5th of June], 1611.— Burial register, Belton (1611)

The record image is with the family — family sign-in

Read at the image record Evidence

Confirmed against the original record, read at the image:

Burial register, Belton (1611) — Belton — Lincolnshire Archives (findmypast image BELTON_IN_AXHOLME_PAR_1_2 f.0337), read from the original; indexed in Lincolnshire Burials and the National Burial Index. The register gives his trade, as it would give his grandson's: yeoman. read at the image

Our research

The edge of the record

Open research · Belton, Isle of Axholme

Robert is where the parish registers give out — and what remains open around him is precisely what registers alone cannot settle.

His father — one name beyond

The 1544 birth entry names his father: Robert Brocke the elder. Born before parish registration began in 1538, the elder Robert can never have a baptism entry; his marriage and burial, if they survive at all, lie in the register's damaged earliest leaves or in records of another kind — manorial rolls, wills and the king’s tax lists are the road further back.

A second marriage? — the Barnard question

On 13 June 1603, two years after Anna's death, a “Robert Brocke” married Mary Barnard at Belton — read from the register itself. A widower of fifty-nine marrying again would be entirely ordinary, and no other adult Robert Brocke is known in the parish. But the same years show Belton held a second Brock household this research had not previously charted — an Alexander Brocke, marrying in 1603, with children baptised through the decade — so an unknown Robert of that kin cannot be excluded, and no child of the Barnard match has been found to settle it. The register itself adds a last twist: in December 1611, six months after Robert's burial, a child was baptised “Robt, son of Anglissa Bagaley and, as it is reputed, of Robert Brock” — conceived while our Robert yet lived. Whether that points to a second Robert of the name, or lays a final scandal at a dead man's door, the register does not say. Possibly his marriage; not proven.

The wider Brock kin

That Alexander-Brocke household (and a Maria Brock who married Edward Meggott in 1611) show the family name was broader in Elizabethan Belton than this line alone — most likely descendants of Robert the elder. A thread for another day.

Found since: his will — and the rolls that survive

Both roads this thread named now have doors. The Stow probate index (British Record Society vol. 57, p. 22) records, under Brocke: “Rob, yeo, Belton 1611, 4” — Robert left a will, proved in the weeks after his burial. And the Epworth manor court rolls survive: 92 rolls, 1491–1702 (Lincolnshire Archives, TGH/4/A; further rolls 1551–1657 in 2-TONGE) — the manor whose jurisdiction covered Belton. Behind both, a deeper mark: a Thomas Brok, taxed at Belton in the 1332 Lay Subsidy — continuity of the name in the parish, not yet proven descent.

His will — photograph order to Lincolnshire Archives drafted — a purchase, and the family’s decision. May name his living children, settle the Barnard question, and describe the land.
The court rolls, 1491–c.1560 — the deepest road to Robert the elder: a photography order (a purchase) or an archive visit at Lincoln — Jon’s action.
The Tudor subsidy rolls — E 179/137/401 [1544], E 179/137/434 [1546] and E 179/138/449 [1547] name the Isle of Axholme: tax lists from the very years of Robert’s infancy, the best chance of reading Robert the elder’s name in his own lifetime. TNA record-copying order — Jon’s action, a purchase.
The 1380–81 poll tax (E 179/135/83, Manley wapentake) — check Fenwick’s printed edition first for whether Belton’s return survives; only then order images. A library catalogue check, then a purchase if it holds.
Temple Belwood deeds — Belton’s own sub-manor; 14th-century deeds onward at Lincolnshire Archives (collection 1134). One enquiry line in the archives email — Jon’s action.
The Axholme FHS enquiry — court-roll transcripts, early Belton register transcripts, prior Brock research; email drafted — Jon’s action.
The kin at the register images — the 1636 Alexander burial first (it may name the father), then the Alexander marriage (indexed 1597, read from the register as 1603 — the image settles which), the Williams’ burials, Alicia’s 1576 marriage — a findmypast image read, a future research session.