A History of the Whistler Name
Medieval England
The Whistler name is from the Old English word hwistle meaning a pipe or a flute. One who played these instruments was a hwistlere. Osbert le Wistler was named in the Somerset Assize Rolls of 1243. In 1247 a William Wystle was recorded in the Bedfordshire Assize Rolls. Richard Whistel appears in 1297. In the 1279 Somerset Assize Rolls the scribe changed William le Wyzelere to le Vylur, ‘fiddler’ (1).
In 1378 John Whisteler was an archer under Captain Sir John Arundel in a naval expedition led by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster (2).
Early Parish Records
A system for recording weddings, baptisms and burials in parish registers began in 1538 during the reign of King Henry VIII. Sixteenth century parish registers record the Whistler name in the Thames Valley of Berkshire and Oxfordshire as well as in East Anglia. Early parish registers also document the Whistler name in Dorset where the marriage of Thomas Spencer and Agnes Whistler was recorded on 20 October 1576 at the village of Morden (3).
The Thames Valley of Berkshire and Oxfordshire
At the time of King Edward I (1272–1307) John le Wistler was living at West Hanney, a short distance north of Wantage. In 1375 a Richard Whysteler and his wife Joan had connections to both West Hanney and nearby West Lockinge (4). It appears that the family prospered and, in the sixteenth century, Whistlers were established in the area around Wantage. Early surviving Whistler family wills, proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Berkshire, were made by John Whistler of Stanford in the Vale (1559), Ralph Whistler of Fulscot, South Moreton (1559), and James Whistler of Kingston Bagpuize (1565).
The link to the villages of West Hanney and East and West Lockinge endured as parish registers reveal that Margaret Whistler was baptised at West Hanney in September 1585 and, a few years later, on 24 November 1588 Jane Whistler was baptised at East Lockinge (5).
From the early 1600s to the late 1800s Chaddleworth, south of Wantage, was the home to successive generations of the Whistler family. One of these Whistlers wrote a ‘History of Chaddleworth’ (6). Unfortunately, the whereabouts of this manuscript is not known.
In the seventeenth century the Thames Valley that tracks the River Thames from Oxford to Reading was the base for a network of Whistler cousins. The Protestation Returns for Berkshire and Oxfordshire of the 1640s, a survey of those who promised to defend the Protestant religion, a requirement for holding office, included the names (7):
| Goring | Edward Whistler, gentleman, [Lord of the Manor of Gatehampton]
Robert Whistler, gentleman Henry Whistler, yeoman James Whistler |
| |
[Dr Daniel] Whistler, [later a founding member of the Royal Society and president of the Royal College of Physicians] |
| Trinity College, Oxford | Mr [John] Whistler, absent, [recorder and MP] |
| Stroud (a tything of Cumnor parish) |
John Whistler, Esq. |
| Fyfield | Ralph Whistler |
| |
John Whistler Ralph Whistler |
| South Moreton | William Whistler, [manors of Fulscot and Adresham] |
| Moulsford | Mr John Whistler, gentleman, [brother of Thomas Whistler, rector of Silchester, Hampshire] |
| Steventon | William Whistler |
| Streatley | William Whistler, overseer, [brother of Ralph Whistler,
Lord of the Manor of Whitchurch-on-Thames] |
| Little Wittenham | Henry Whistler, rector, [also rector of Whitchurch-on-Thames] |
| Leckhampstead | [Edward?] Whistler |
East Anglia
In the 1550s the will of John Whistler of King’s Lynn was proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Norwich. In 1565 a man named Flanders married Joan Whistler at a wedding in the village of Bradwell (previously in Suffolk, now in Norfolk near the town of Great Yarmouth). On 2 December 1576 Frances, the daughter of John Whistler, was baptised at Groton, Suffolk (8).
From the seventeenth and later centuries Whistlers continued to reside in Norfolk and Suffolk. The names of John Whiseller and Nathaniel Whisler appear in the 1674 Hearth Tax Returns for Suffolk (9). Parish registers for the 1670s document Nathaniel Whiseler living in Lavenham, Suffolk.
The Whistler family was active in the town life of seventeenth century Norwich. In 1618 Roger Whistler and Frances Bradforth were married at St Peter Parmentergate Church. Roger Whistler was a master dyer of Norwich (10). In 1651 and 1652 Roger Whistler was elected sheriff of Norwich (11).
The church of St John Baptist of Timberhill in the city of Norwich has a monument to Simon Whistler, Alderman, 1682 and his son Simon, 1673 (12).
Notes
(1) Percy Hide Reaney and Richard Middlewood Wilson, A Dictionary of British Surnames, second revised edition, Routledge, 1976; and J. R. Dolan, English Ancestral Names: The Evolution of the Surname from Medieval Occupations, New York, 1972, pp. 287–90.
(2) The Soldier in Later Medieval England online database.
(3) Dorset Marriage Index at the British Origins website.
(4) Rose Fuller Whistler family tree; and V.C.H. Berkshire, Vol. 4, p. 308.
(6) ‘Chaddleworth’ in V.C.H. Berkshire, Vol. 4, p. 163, footnote 3.
(7)
Oxfordshire and North Berkshire Protestation Returns and Tax Assessments
1641–42,
edited by Jeremy Gibson, The Oxfordshire Record Society,
Volume 59, 1994; ‘The Protestation Returns of 1641–42’, Berkshire Family
Historian, September 2009; Tony Hadland, webpage:
Oxfordshire and
North Berkshire Protestation Returns; and
Walter Money, The First and Second Battles of Newbury and the
Siege of Donnington Castle During the Civil War, 1884, p. 114,
available at Google Books online
(8) Norfolk Record Office online catalogue; Boyd’s Marriage Index at the British Origins website; and the IGI.
(9) Percy Hide Reaney and Richard Middlewood Wilson, A Dictionary of British Surnames.
(10) Norwich Apprentices, Norfolk Record Society, Vol. 29.
(11) John T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich, Oxford, 1979, p. 203.
(12) ‘City of Norwich, chapter 42: Berstreet ward’, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: volume 4: The History of the City and County of Norwich, part II (1806), pp. 120-145 (accessed at British History Online).
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