Many people often remark on how “cool” my
last name is: “Shaken, not stirred”, “Bond-Allison Bond”, “Do you go by 007?”,
“is your uncle James?”… I have heard them all.
Some decades ago I decided to look up just how cool the origins of my
name really are. It turns out that the
name isn’t “Bond – Allison Bond – International Spy”, but “Bond - Serf, Almost Peasant”. Our origins are as humble as can be on the
Bond side.
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| Master Shipwright's House and Officers' Offices, London |
The furthest back Bond ancestor I can trace is William Bond, born in Bermondsey, London, around 1766. He was a shipwright. The family of Bonds continued to live on or
near the Thames for another century and a half.
It is often difficult to trace ancestry to
the 1700s and further back when the families had little wealth. I can’t seem to reach past William with
absolute certainty, although there are a couple of leads I am following. Since I know from census documents where and
when William was born, I found two possibilities.
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| Possible birth of William Bond in 1768 |
The first possible set of parents for William
is William Bond and Sarah Fogg, who were wed at St. Stephen’s church in London
in 1762. The other is William Dickenson and
Mercilla Bond who baptized their son William in Bermondsey at the workhouse in 1768. While the latter has the right place and
year, based on what I know about naming conventions, it seems less likely that our William is the son of Mercilla (he would have named a daughter after his
mother). On the other hand, had he been
raised at the workhouse (left there by William and Mercilla), perhaps these naming
conventions wouldn’t have been relevant to young William when he
married Sarah Acton in 1786. Neither
William and Sarah Fogg, not William and Mercilla have any other records to
their name of which I can sure. Thus,
the origins of William, for the moment, remain a bit of a mystery.
In any, case, there is no doubt that William
was born into the 18th century needing a trade and a decent job to
care for his family. He came by his
humble origins honestly, inheriting the family name of Bond from those who left
their medieval lives of servitude to pursue a new livelihood for themselves and their children.
Up until the Norman Conquest (1066), the name
Bond meant a peasant farmer. The origin
is Scandinavian and dates back to pre-7th century. At that time, Bonds would have held land on
behalf of a local lord. They would not
have been land-owners, but tenant-farmers, husbandmen, and definitely of the peasant
class. They were not servants.
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| Medieval painting of serfs hard at work |
When the Normans arrived, though, things in
England changed for this relatively independent class of rural farm-workers. The name Bond was linked to the idea
of servitude. Bonded peasants no longer
worked the land on behalf of a lord, but served the lord in whatever way was
wished. While the lord was required to
offer protection to these bonded peasants (serfs), the serfs were really at the
lord’s beck and call. Serfs were expected to serve the lord's pleasure and provide taxes in the form of money, goods, and a couple of days work per week for the lords. Our Bond family ancestors
would not have been able to see their way out of this servitude as long as the
manorial system lasted.
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| Modern photographic tableau of peasants' revolt by Red Saunders |
England's manorial system began its radical
shift with the demographic changes that resulted from the Black Death in the 14th
century. A labour shortage meant that peasants had far greater bargaining power, which allowed our
“bonded” ancestors find freedom from their lords.
A peasant revolt in the 14th century still has historians
arguing over its significance, but what is without debate is that it demonstrated the increased influence of the peasant class on England's future prosperity. Serfs across the country were freed as part of this shift. Elizabeth I liberated the last
remaining serfs on some of her manors in 1574.
Demographic shifts, cultural changes,
economic changes and the advance towards innovation and the Industrial Revolution meant that keeping serfs (or being a serf) was no longer an
economically sound strategy. Free at
last to pursue their own family journeys, but still in a tremendously
class-oriented society, our ancestors would have moved
away from their work for lords into either work in towns or on small plots of
land in the country.
All of the Bonds in our family tree hail from
London, and more particularly near the Thames. It’s likely that their ancestors chose to move
into towns having survived the scourge of the plague, and been freed from their
servitude to a lord and manor. They took
up work related to the Thames River as shipwrights, lightermen, and eventually
brewers and clerks. Ultimately,
one of these ancestors, my grand-father, a banker, married a Scot and moved to
Canada. A story for another day.
Sources
Census and
other documents from England and London relating to the family Bond
Political
Economy and the Rise of Capitalism, David McNally (1990)
Telegraph UK
(image of shipwrights offices)
http://gossamerstrands.com/Hist100/lecture14new.htm
(image of serfs harvesting grain)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2043576/London-Riots-1381-Blood-soaked-Peasants-Revolt-changed-England-forever.html
(photograph of peasants revolt by British photographer Red Saunders who
re-creates moments in history with “tableaux vivants”)
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