James Chilton (Mayflower Pilgrim) - Life in England

Life in England

James Chilton was born before 1556 (age 63 in 1619) probably in Canterbury. Kent, England. The Chilton surname is an ancient one that appears in records from at least 1339, when his ancestor Robert Chilton was a Canterbury parliamentary representative.

James's grandfather Richard Chilton was of St. Paul’s Parish in Canterbury and in a will dated and proved in 1549, it named his deceased wife Isabel and bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his son Lyonnell. and served two years as churchwarden of St. Paul's Parish Church there.

In 1583 James Chilton, tailor, was listed as a freeman of Canterbury.

Just before 1587 James Chilton married possibly Susanna Furner, the daughter of his step-mother Isabella and her first husband Francis Furner.

James Chilton and his wife Susanna had seven children who were baptized in Canterbury. About 1600 the family moved to Sandwich, also in Kent, where three more children were baptized, including his youngest daughter Mary, who was baptized at 12th century St. Peter’s Church, Sandwich in 1607.

It is believed that here James met Moses Fletcher, who was also a Mayflower passenger, as well as other Separatists who later went to Holland, and so became part of the English Leiden religious company.Sandwich was becoming a center of Separatist activity, and was home to several future members of John Robinson's Leiden church.

The first evidence that the Chilton family had its own Separatist views appears in 1609. In late April, Chilton's wife was among four people that secretly buried a dead child, without having the Church of England perform its mandatory burial rites. For this defiant act, Chilton's wife and two of the others were excommunicated from the Church of England on 12 June 1609.