Past Lives: The Parker, Waters, Chambers & Coggins Families
Four families, reaching back to the Norman Conquest of Britain. The Parkers were residents of
Canterbury for 380 years, largely in just one parish. By contrast, the Skinners were 1600s global trading merchants
living in London, Antwerp, Dover, Surat India and Bantam Java. One of them was Samuel Pepys consort for 33 years.
The Skinners partly came from the aristocratic Corbets of Shropshire. At the other end, the working class Waters
were iron workers in the industrial revolution at Darlington, once Britain's fastest growing town. In the countryside,
the Rookes were labourers around Cirencester for generations with the occasional anomaly - like the 8 year old plough boy
becoming a renowned clockmaker. The industrious Chambers and Coggins were in Raunds, Northamptonshire for 270 years making military boots.
The families took part in 14 foreign wars and were there in the 1348 Black Death, the 1666 Great Fire of London, Jack the Ripper's second
victim in 1888, the 1914 Raunds strikers march on London, the 1942 Baedecker bombing of Canterbury and the 1962 Independence of Uganda.
These mostly ordinary families were associated with people like the poets John Milton and Lord Byron, famed Victorian ship builder William Pile,
Tudor High Court judge Sir Reginald Corbet, Admiral of the Fleet Mark Milbanke and Edward I of England.
Table of Contents:
Front Cover
Title Page
Contents
Preface
1. Parker
2. Osenton
3. Skinner
4. Corbet
5. Waters
6. Rooke
7. Wright
8. Coggins
9. Chambers
Bibliography; Appendices
Index