Robert Tate

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Robert Tate (1638–1689), a 9× great-grandparent of the compiler in the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his English origins in Berkshire, his marriage to Elizabeth Henderson, his daughter Mary Tate, and the broader 17th-century English context in which his life unfolded.

Robert Tate (1638–1689) stands among the earliest forebears recorded in the compiler's paternal-grandfather line, a 9× great-grandparent whose life was lived wholly within the bounds of seventeenth-century England. He was born in 1638 in Berkshire, a county of chalk downs, market towns, and ancient parish churches set along the Thames valley west of London. His birth fell in the closing years of the reign of Charles I, on the eve of the great civil conflicts that would reshape the realm.

The England of Robert's lifetime was a kingdom in profound transformation. His childhood coincided with the English Civil Wars and the execution of the king in 1649; his young manhood with the Commonwealth and Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell; his middle years with the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the religious settlements that followed. The plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666 fell within his adult years, as did the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which deposed James II and brought William and Mary to the throne only months before Robert's own death.

Robert married Elizabeth Henderson, and to their union was born at least one recorded child, a daughter, Mary Tate (1688–1729). Mary entered the world in the very year of the Revolution that ended her father's England as he had known it, and she would carry the Tate line forward into the next generation.

Robert Tate died in 1689 in England, at the age of fifty-one, having lived through one of the most consequential centuries in his nation's history. Though the particulars of his trade, parish, and daily circumstances are not preserved in the family record, his place in the lineage is firmly established: through his daughter Mary descend the generations that would in time cross the Atlantic and join the lines gathered in this archive. Robert was the compiler's 9× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.