He goes on to write about a branch that emigrated to Maryland in the 17th Century. But it is the English family I am more interested in and it would seem that they were to move from the village and settle mainly in the adjacent county of Berkshire, whose records show a number of Wills for the 17th Century.My branch were to follow a path south through Hampshire that would eventually lead them to Eling, near Southampton and then to London. I am fortunate that unlike families such as Smith, the family name appears rarely in records and one particular family is more prominent. to find the connection. The Hampshire Record Office at Winchester has some of the earliest documents relating to the Mattingly family. The name was open to misspelling as well as Mattingley, it appears as Mattyngle and Mattenley in these.The earliest document so far found is shown below.

I have studied all the Parish Registers for Hampshire and slowly built up a list of all relevant Mattingly’s and it is surprising how small it is. There are other avenues to study such as the Hearth Tax returns for 1664, but none appear in their listings. I have checked Poor Rates, Church Rates and Land Taxes, but little has turned up at present. There does not seem to be a link between the references until suddenly I came across the village of Wootton St. Lawrence, again about 10 miles from Mattingley whose appearance is very similar. This village it would seem was where the family were to prosper by the beginning of the 18th century and there is a preponderance of information in their Parish Records from which I have been able to build up a family tree and link it with mine. After visiting the village recently I was surprised how little there was to see. Just an attractive church with cottages and farms grouped around it. It would have been different in the past as there was a large estate known as Manydown Manor that had been owned by the Wither family for many centuries. The large house that once stood there, which was demolished in 1965, will always be famous because of its literary connection, as it was here that Harris Bigg-Wither`s proposal to Jane Austen was turned down. The Map below gives an indication of how my branch of the Mattingly family migrated from the village named after them to Eling over nearly a thousand years. For the village of Mattingley is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and no doubt existed in the Anglo-Saxon times prior to the Norman invasion. I have listed below every record I have been able to find of the family from Parish Records to be found mainly at the Hampshire Record Office in Winchester as well as Census’s and other records. From this I have built up a Family Tree almost up to date. It would seem that the Hampshire branch that split from the Berkshire side had not moved far from their original site at Mattingley by the beginning of the 18th century.