Top Exclusion of Alexander Standish of Duxbury born in 1604
There are several further solid reasons for concluding that the “Alexander gent” in 1655 was Myles’s son and that Alexander Sr of Duxbury Hall was dead by then.
1. If he had still been alive (and everyone concerned in the court case at the Assizes in Lancaster must surely have known this at the time), then the “Alexander Standish gent” in the court case would have to have been distinguished from him in some way. It is regrettable that he was not named in this document as ‘son of Myles Standish of Duxbury in New England’, or even ‘overseas’, which would have solved the matter completely. However, nor was he named ‘Alexander Standish of Duxbury, gent’, the standard designation of all those of Duxbury in the Standish of Duxbury Muniments, usually to distinguish them from any of the same name in Standish. The main interim conclusion here, therefore, is that there was only one “Alexander Standish gent” in the world in 1655 with any claim to the Duxbury based estates and a chance of winning his case, which he did.
2. In 1655, during the Commonwealth, no local Royalist Alexander Standish could possibly have had any hope of winning a claim against Parliamentarian Richard. He was the most powerful and influential Standish at this time. He was not only a respected former Colonel of a local regiment in one of the last battles of the Civil War but was also the current M.P. for Lancashire in 1654-5. He could presumably have called on the support of many local former fellow-Colonels and lawyers and other M.P.s. If he had so desired, he could have called on the support of Protector Oliver Cromwell himself. Any of these could have argued successfully that he had acquired the lands legally and that any local Royalist would have had his lands sequestered anyway.
3. Richard had in his possession a document of 1647 (DP397/21/16) proving his legal possession – by gift, not inheritance - of the Duxbury Hall based estates. The only possible reason for a claim that would query the validity of this would be one from a distant relative who, by his ancestry, found himself in the position of being the last of the family and therefore, under the laws of the time, entitled to inherit. There are many examples of going back several generations to find a collateral branch descended from a younger son, when the senior line died out. One example is the Earls of Derby. When the last Earl of the senior line died in 1735, they went back to a younger brother of the 2nd Earl, who had died over two hundred years earlier, to find the branch next in line.
4. Richard presumably protested initially, or the case would not have ended up in court. However, he accepted the court jurisdiction and agreed to pay up. The claim must therefore have been legitimate and provable. Anyone can hunt for as long as they like, but I predict that they will come to the same conclusion as I have that there is, quite simply, no trace of any collateral Standish branch descended from a younger son who moved away and had descendants still living in 1655, other than Myles’s branch.
5. If this were by any chance ‘Royalist Uncle Alexander’, why on earth wait until 1655 before pursuing his claim? And why accept compensation rather than the lands themselves? And why bother to hire a lawyer, when everyone in Duxbury must have known that he was the rightful heir after his last nephew died without a son and heir? None of these questions make sense when applied to this Alexander. All are answered logically when applied to Myles’s son. It took so long because a Civil War had been raging until four years before and it would very reasonably have taken this time for the news from England to reach them in the first place, take up correspondence with Colonel Richard, the chief Standish left in Duxbury, hire a lawyer, assemble all the necessary documentation and witnesses, make an application for a hearing at the Assizes and whatever else one might need to do when making a claim from across the ocean. We know that Myles and Alexander had settled permanently in Massachusetts and never showed any signs of wanting to return to England. Money would have been of more value to them than lands they had no intention of occupying. Unless they were going to return to present the case themselves, without any legal skills, they had no alternative but to hire a lawyer, and we know from Alexander’s will of 1702 that he still had lawyers underway pursuing his cause in Old England, which could only have been in Lancashire and the lands mentioned in his father’s will.
Also my will is That whatsoever Estate Either in New England or in old, which I have committed into ye hands of Robert Orchard to Recover in England by letters of Attorney from under my hand and Seal . . . (The Mayflower Descendant, vol. XII, pp. 101-2.)
6. We know from the attempts in the 1820s and 1840s by Myles’s descendants to claim Duxbury Hall that they had passed on a persistent family tradition that he had somehow been entitled to it. This had became rather muddled and the true story forgotten over a century after son Alexander’s death in 1702 but nevertheless the tradition provides yet another reason, even on its own, for him being the strongest possible candidate as “Alexander Standish gent” in 1655. Myles, by the way, was also ‘gent’ in much of the documentation and reports from New England, including his will, which would have been a prerequisite for his son receiving the same status.