He's my father's maternal grandfather, and he was something of a reprobate. He was imprisoned four times for neglecting his wife and children, having earlier appeared in court charged with the same offence (and drunkenness) but getting away with basically a fine. He makes regular appearances in the Gloucester newspapers as a result of these activities.
I hit a wall trying to find who his own parents were. I knew from his wedding certificate that his father was called John; the problem was that there were two candidates, both born in the right place (Cirencester) at the right date (1836), seven weeks apart, who both claimed at the time of their marriage that their father was called John.
The slightly older Edward Cooke is from a respectable family: John Cooke and Caroline Haviland. Caroline is descended from Thomas de Haviland of Guernsey, whose line was Norman nobility; he served with distinction at the recovery of Mont-Orgueil Castle in Jersey in 1471. Because of this, I can get as far back as Thomas in an unbroken line, 1130 with breaks and ultimately all the way to 1066 — if that's my Edward Cooke.
The slightly younger Edward Cooke is the child of an unmarried mother, Ann Cooke.
The Edward Cooke who wasn't my relative went on to live a completly unblemished life. He had three children, gave his age in the 1861 census (the only one in which he appears as an adult) as 25, and didn't end up in the workhouse.
The Edward Cooke who was my relative had eight or perhaps nine children (three of whom didn't make their first birthday), recorded his age in the census successively as 23, 32 and 46, and his final term in prison was precipitated by his going on the run for failure to pay the workhouse fees for his wife and family.
Deciding which of the candidate Edward Cookes was my ancestor proved problematical. The prison records were almost a help, in that they gave the age of Edward Cooke when he was gaoled, but unfortunately the two candidates were born so close together that their ages were the same at the times my Edward Cooke was imprisoned and released. Likewise, although the date of the 1861 Census fell between the two men's birthdays, the fact that one of them was a habitual liar means I can't trust what he said.
I was stuck at this point for many years, but a recent scan of the Gloucester Chronicle came to my aid. It turns out that my Edward wasn't the only Cooke who had a problem with the law. One Henry Cooke was arrested for beating up one Mary Ann Cooke in 1874. Mary Ann Cooke, née Manning, was Edward's wife.
It seems clear, then, that Henry was a relative of Edward's. The unmarried mother, Ann Cooke, only had one other child (a daughter she called Ann); the respectable family, John and Caroline, had a son called Henry who was two years younger than Edward.
I can therefore suppose with a degree of confidence that my Edward Cooke was the elder of the two candidates, and so was descended from a Norman baron. There's always the possibility that coincidence could interfere (the Henry Cooke who assaulted Mary Ann might have been no relation to Edward, for example), but the new evidence ftends to favour the elder Edward as being my Edward.
Although having a criminal ancestor is not something to celebrate, I have to admit that sometimes it does help with genealogy more than somewhat.
