Jone Bartone

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Jone Bartone (ca. 1518–1568), a 15× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers her birth in Rotherfield, Sussex, her marriage to Thomas Paine, her son Richard Paine, her death at West Hill, Ardingly, and Tudor-era Sussex context. Notable: she lived through the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I.

Jone Bartone was born about the year 1518 in the parish of Rotherfield, in the wooded Weald of Sussex, England, and she died in April of 1568 at West Hill, in the neighboring parish of Ardingly, having lived approximately fifty years. Hers was a life bounded entirely by the rural settlements of Sussex, where generations of yeoman and tenant families worked the heavy clay soils and tended the small holdings of the Wealden countryside.

The span of her years coincided with one of the most turbulent religious and dynastic periods in English history. Born during the latter reign of Henry VIII, Jone would have come of age amid the dissolution of the monasteries and the establishment of the Church of England; she lived through the brief Protestant reign of Edward VI, the Catholic restoration under Mary I, and at last the Elizabethan settlement following 1558. Rural Sussex parishes such as Rotherfield and Ardingly, though distant from the court, felt these upheavals in the rhythms of parish life, in the alteration of services, and in the keeping of the parish registers that have preserved her memory.

She became the wife of Thomas Paine, and through this union the Paine line was carried forward into the next generation. To Jone and Thomas was born at least one son, Richard Paine, sometimes recorded under the variant surname Payne, who lived a long life and survived until the year 1638. Through Richard the family line continued onward across the seventeenth century and eventually, by paths of migration and marriage spanning many generations, into the New World and at last into the ancestry recorded in this register.

Jone Bartone was a 15× great-grandmother of the compiler, standing on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line at one of the earliest verifiable points reached by this branch of the family record.