I first noticed this record while canvasing Devon’s historic records in 2021 and posted about it at that time.
Standing in Phillip’s Shadow – Babb Unabridged
At the time I was still assembling about 7,000 records and wasn’t yet ready to make a pronouncement as to any connections. As I make final preparations for a new book that details Phillip’s ancestry for the first time ever, I am reviewing my older posts and did some additional work on this today.
No source document is available to me for the records that I’m going to describe next.
The Devon Protestation Returns of 1641/2 provide valuable historical information. These records are the closest we have to a census from that time. By order of the House of Commons, all adult men were asked to swear an oath of allegiance to the Protestant religion. Their names were inscribed in lists for each parish, and these lists were sent back to Parliament1. Although no women or children are named, these documents offer insights into the population of Devon during that period.
What I didn’t know at the time is that it was possible for a merchant to sign the oath at a different port than where they lived. The Protestation Returns were not strictly tied to a person’s place of residence. Merchants and seafarers often traveled between ports, so they could have taken the oath at a different location if needed. These records capture a snapshot of allegiance across various communities, including those with maritime connections.
In this instance, a Philip and a Thomas signed the oath in Teignmouth in Devon. This isn’t a typical location to find them.
However, there is a single Babb family we find in Teignmouth in 1620, which is headed by Humphry Babb and his wife Nichola Comyn. The couple were married in Exeter in 1614, which would make him older than our Phillip and brother Thomas. Together they had 4 children: Humphrey, Catherine, Mary & Grace.
None of those names provide any clues, but I see two things as possible at this moment:
- Humphry is Phillip & Thomas’ uncle.
- He is totally unrelated, and the locations are coincidental.
It appears that these two oaths were likely sworn by our Phillip Babb (1) and his brother Thomas Babb, Captain of the ship Hopewell. In that vein, I’ve brought the two record sources together under their names. As for Humphry, that is a question for another day. I leave this here as a breadcrumb trail for anyone who is working on this issue in the future as additional evidence comes to light.