HAWKINS, John (1621-87), of Ashton Keynes, Wilts.

The Hawkins family of Ashton Keynes were yeomen bordering on minor gentry status at the start of the seventeenth century. John Hawkins’s grandfather, Thomas Hawkins, farmed somewhat over 300 acres in Ashton Keynes, Minety and Chelworth before his death in 1619.8C142/388/83. His eldest son, Henry, was described as ‘yeoman’ by the minister of Ashton Keynes in 1621, and the family may a few generations back have been related to the more numerous and apparently better-documented yeoman family of the same name, of Chippenham and Hardenhuish.9Ashton Keynes par. reg.: Wilts. RO, 78/27. It was probably Henry Hawkins, John’s father, who raised the family into the ranks of the minor gentry. In 1615 we find him purchasing estate worth £400, including the house where he and his father lived, from Sir John Hungerford† of Down Ampney.10Wilts RO, 212A/27/46/1. The record of John Hawkins’s matriculation at Oxford described him as the son of a gentleman and he was almost certainly the first of his family to enter high education, even though there is no record of his having achieved a degree. Hawkins matriculated on the eve of the civil war, and thus may have spent the first year of the war at Oxford. Afterwards he seems not to have involved himself in the conflict, following his father’s example.

Hawkins was married in 1655, to Alice Maskerlyne, daughter of Neville Maskerlyne of Purton. The Maskerlynes were of greater social importance than Hawkins’s family. The Maskerlynes had long lived at Purton, and had acquired the hundred and borough of Cricklade in 1618.11Wilts. RO, 335/20. By 1658, Neville Maskerlyne had become indebted to Henry Hawkins, among others, for a sum of £1,500.12PROB11/288/64. Whether Maskerlyne’s personal circumstances had any bearing on the matter or not, it was his son-in-law who sat for Cricklade in 1659, on the family’s interest as lords of the borough and hundred. There is no evidence that Hawkins played any part in the assembly at all, either in debate or in committee. At the time he entered the House, he had not been named to any local government committees of any kind. His apparent complete inactivity may have owed something to a family crisis, as on 27 April, a few days after the dissolution, both Hawkins’s father and son died, and were interred in one grave at Ashton Keynes.13Ashton Keynes par. reg. Only from January 1660 did Hawkins begin to receive appointment to Wiltshire commissions.

In elections for the Convention of 1660, Maskerlyne himself was returned, to suggest that Hawkins had been something of a stalking-horse for the family’s interest. Maskerlyne proved only slightly more energetic as an MP than his son-in-law.14HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Neville Maskerlyne’. Hawkins himself played no further part in public affairs, and settled into the life of a minor squire. He died in February 1687, described by his minister as ‘esquire’. His daughters married into local families, and none of his descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.