by Garth Throstle » Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:08 am
A Wm. Clayton is listed as a shoemaker in Warsop in White's 1832 Directory.
Richard J Kings book based on Warsop Parish Registers published in 1184 has an entry for Clayton as follows:
1679. — Cleaton, Clayton.
At the beginning of last century, Francis Clayton was a yeoman of Warsop. His name appears also in the old terrier of 1722 as renting seventy-two acres of land, for which he paid £18 16b, a year. Ann Clayton, his grand-daughter, was married in 1775 to the Bev. John Browne, Curate of Warsop. A large flat stone to her memory and to that of her husband, who was curate for thirty-two years, may be seen in the churchyard near the South wall of the church. William Clayton, a shoemaker, was a freeman of the old borough of Retford, and is known to have obtained for his two votes sometimes as much as twenty guineas apiece. In 1827, when a Government enquiry was made into the political corruption of that borough, the said William Clayton was cited to give evidence before the House of Commons.